DC Media Group
DC Grassroots Groups Prepare For Authoritarian Takeover Of City
Washington DC—Grassroots groups held an urgent press conference Monday in response to the regime’s declaration of a crime emergency and its federal takeover of the DC Metropolitan Police Department. Speakers from FreeDCProject, Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, and 50501 organized the press conference along with other groups. Collectively they said the takeover was unwarranted, without a justification, and it actually endangered DC residents by placing them in a virtual police state and making them less safe.
Nee Nee Taylor, a longtime DC Civil Rights advocate and activist, and co-founder of FreeDCProject said, “The only violence that’s happening against our communities is the violence this president is directing.” Taylor, who has been involved in the Movement for Black Lives, also drew on the experiences she has witnessed with ICE, lambasted Trump’s provocative policies.
“For 4 months straight, the president has been trying to provoke violence in the Black and the Brown communities by having ICE kidnap our neighbors,” she said. ICE actions have ramped up in the region as the Federal police agency, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, has begun rounding up immigrants and green card holders as part of a misguided plan to curb immigration.
Another speaker also intoned the same sentiment, casting the takeover of DC as destabilizing to city safety and well-being of peaceful communities while wasting taxpayer money on a scheme that was ill prepared and haphazardly implemented. “Nothing Trump is doing is about our safety. If Trump cared about safety, he would stop kidnapping immigrant neighbors. Terrorizing people is not about safety. If he cared about safety he would fund Medicaid, schools, and SNAP because people being sick, hungry, and out of school is not about safety.”
As night time set around the District, there was a report that the newly federalized police force had set up a checkpoint at the large intersection of New York Avenue and Bladensberg Road. Every car that passed that intersection was being stopped and its driver queried.
Police were seen in force at many metro train stop platforms throughout the day and were visible in high numbers particularly in the downtown area. Squads of police were recorded roving near the African American Museum and the Washington Monument. Groups of federalized police were also roving in downtown shopping areas.
Earlier in the day Trump cited an August 3 assault by juveniles on an individual working for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency as an indication that crime was out of control in the District.
However, a report published on the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the District of Columbia, dated January 3, 2025, just weeks before Trump was sworn in, reflected crime in DC had fallen to 30-year lows. The report read, “Total violent crime for 2024 in the District of Columbia is down 35% from 2023 and is the lowest it has been in over 30 years, according to data collected by the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and announced by United States Attorney Matthew M. Graves. A breakdown of the data is available here.”
We saved the report on an archive server so it could be accessed in case it is removed from the U.S. Attorney’s Office website.
FreeDCProject has published a series of bulletins on its website outlining what the residents of DC can do to ensure safe DC communities even though the Federal government is not acting in the city’s best interests. They urged residents not to obey in advance, to put up banners and signs resisting the takeover, to speak to their neighbors about what was happening, to organize resistance campaigns while expressing joy and camaraderie, to resist the takeover.
FreeDCProject is offering free training on cop watch, community building, and safety b st practices in the worsening climate of authoritarian oppression.
Visit their website here and consider donating to their grassroots efforts.
Media Also Faces Authoritarian Threat
We are already bearing witness to a trend of established institutions bending to authoritarian pressure. The capitulation of mainstream media to lawsuits by ‘obey in advance’ payout settlements is a sign of that.
Independent media provides a buffer between the truth and the authoritarian machine rolling through our communities. We are on the ground going to events and reporting the voices mainstream often avoids.
How does one support independent media? By check and following the continuing coverage of the crisis in our government and supporting independent media by sharing these story links across social media. You may also donate your resources to support independent media.
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Tesla Takedowns Will Not Go Quietly
Arlington, VA—Many would have given up by now at standing up to this regime and its chaos clout chasers parroting its narratives and supporting its take down of our democracy and our institutions. This regime is building an oligarchy beholden to the wealthy class—indeed many institutions already have quit or caved to pressure to obey it in advance. But these are inordinate times and rising to meet these times are extraordinary people, and new faces are joining them every day. Many of them are in their 50s, 60s, and 70s. They didn’t choose the times and challenges before them, but they didn’t shy away, either.
They are a tenacious lot with diverse experiences and most of them had nothing in common and would not have met except for the reelection and reemergence of a chaotic despot and his accompaniment of D-listers. Otherwise, they have nothing in common except for their commitment to rebuild their communities and a just society that serves everyone.
Improbably, they have outlasted even the most generous estimates of how long their grassroots campaign at Tesla showrooms could last. They keep returning to the street to draw joy and share a commitment to keep challenging this regime’s grip as long as it takes to see it fall.
They are joined by a swarm of much younger activists half their age who bring with them their zeal and energy but perhaps less awareness of the pain and disappointment life can toss in one’s way.
For one, many of the youth on the line handle the heat much better than the older members. They’ve also not experienced hip and knee replacements like the older crowd. The younger ones have not experienced going to the funerals of many friends gone before them. But comparisons between age and generation gaps is lost energy, as the divisions confronting this country are much more relevant. Divisions are not an issue on the Tesla boycott line.
What matters is that they’re all still here, they’re fighting together in the same battle. Because an authoritarian cannot take absolute control if the people continue to resist it. It’s going to be a long fight because we are not going quietly.
For many months since February, they’ve gone with their signs, bells, and enthusiasm on weekends to the busy road outside the Tesla showroom in Arlington. Suddenly, its week 25.
At first, they rose together in defiance against Elon Musk and his DOGE minion invasion of the U.S. government agencies, because DOGE was taking down the very government operations that maintained the order and functioning civil society built over 80 years. Then protestors championed the cause of federal workers themselves being forced out of their jobs.
They continued to rail against the trampling of rights and freedoms of civil servants as sensible rulings in the lower courts protected those rights. The Supreme Court textualists saw otherwise and often ruled against the mass firings anyway. What is the use of textualism when the rulings don’t come with context or even a written explanation? The “shadow docket” leaves out the necessary legal explanation of why they made the decision they published.
The boycott line continued rallying as the regime shuttered or radically diminished a handful of agencies like USAID, Department of Education, and Health and Human Services. They returned as more and more agencies were decimated, often with feeble justifications like saving money, while throwing billions of dollars on building a border wall already proven not to be effective.
The Tesla Takedown started in winter. Then came spring as the freezing weather turned warmer, and then came summer and blazing heat.
An activist pokes his head out from a sea of signs about fascism. Photo: John Zangas/ DCMediaGroup
Meanwhile, the regime sent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to seize handfuls of brown-skinned immigrants and naturalized persons who had followed the laws to gain their citizenship. In its depravity, they even seized U.S. citizens. The Tesla boycott line became more of a resistance line because to them, it was a moral duty to stand for what was right.
The Tesla Takedown protestors have plenty of reasons to keep going back. Daily, this regime stoops to new lows in taking rights or liberties away, or striking out against institutions and perceived threats to its power.
Activists are keeping the Tesla Takedowns alive outside the electric vehicle car company showrooms and their zeal and energy cannot be stopped. For the 25th consecutive week, they displayed signs about authoritarianism, fascism and one activist made a large banner listing a batch of wrongs the regime has done to the citizens. It read:
“In the last 6 months Trump and Musk have: cut medicaid and snap, removed DEI, fired 30,000, disappeared innocent people, defied laws, normalized cruelty, militarized ICE, pardoned January 6th offenders, bullied universities media and lawyers, weakened science, raised prices, and alienated allies.”
Below is a video from the 25th consecutive week of the longest running grassroots campaign against a specific brand in modern history.
An Injured Beast Lashes Out
Tesla Takedowns are continuing across the country in resistance to the U.S. regime as it continues to dismantle democratic institutions and tries to create an absolute authoritarian state. The regime is not making the country great—in fact the opposite is true, as evidence mounts of the damage it is doing to government, the economy, U.S. world standing and influence, and global order. Tourism is down sharply in major tourist centers like NYC, Las Vegas, and Washington, DC. Many in the MAGA party are beginning to see the regime as dishonest, untrustworthy, and not keeping its campaign promises, so they are turning against it. But this turn is mostly based on Epstein case files dripping into the public sphere and not because of the regime’s decimation of the government and institutions.
The current U.S. government is beginning to act like a wounded beast. It is lashing out at whatever and whoever is nearby because it is failing. In this case, the Beast is Trump because he is the charismatic chosen one with the MAGA party, just like Hitler was one with the National Socialists—the NAZI party. As his party policies fail to get the traction he wants, he, as the leader, is behaving less and less rationally and more like a wounded Beast in its last throes. A weakened beast is dangerous and can inflict damage.
Some of what happened the last few weeks:
The Beast spoke from the Oval Office accusing President Barack Obama of “treason” for linking Russian influence to the 2016 presidential election. Obama responded that this was not something he would normally respond to, but it was an “outrageous claim.” This accusation was apparently designed to distract from Epsteingate, in which new evidence points to a more friendly connection between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted child trafficker.
The Beast initiated an investigation of Jack Smith, the special prosecutor appointed by Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate the January 6, 2021 coup attempt. This is another example of a politically motivated distraction designed to take attention away from Epsteingate.
Next, the Beast said he would deploy nuclear submarines closer to Russia in response to Putin’s delay of a peace deal with Ukraine. This was triggered by a social media post by Dmitri Medvedev, a former leader with little influence in Moscow. This is an abuse of formidable power, which in ordinary times, had there not been so much unpredictability and chaos in the U.S. political sphere, would be a major international political event.
The Beast fired Erika McEntarfer, head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after BLS released an economic key indicator jobs report. It reflected only 73,000 jobs were added in July, far below expectations. The Beast falsely claimed the data was “rigged” and politically motivated. The Beast ran on a campaign promise to create jobs and U.S. manufacturing, but his repeated tariff snafus have actually caused job loses, reduced trade, and brought on inflation due to destabilization of global markets. The BLS is an important agency in that it publishes trustworthy information in reporting economic trends which heavily influence world markets. Losing trust in this agency may increase volatility as economic data it publishes is doubted.
ICE efforts to remove legal immigrants are being exposed for what they are, and echo Auschwitz-type human rights abuses brought back to life from 80 years ago. Kidnapped witnesses from Venezuela have come forward to tell of the abuse ICE caused them by disappearing them to CECOT in El Salvador. Word of a hunger strike at the Florida Everglades tent camp, which is actually a concentration camp, has further soiled the image of the Beast’s regime. Over 65% of Americans disagree with ICE kidnappings and disappearances of legal immigrants arrested when they show up for their immigration hearings.
It is becoming clearer that the Beast is not able to follow through successfully on its objectives and when it does, it concocts grand schemes to distract or shift blame. It is left appearing wounded like a bleeding beast, striking out at whatever it perceives as a threat.
Eventually, the people themselves will decide when they’ve had enough of the chaos of this regime. And when that time comes, the Beast will be forced to retreat into hiding for good. Meanwhile, the Tesla Takedown protests will continue to shed light on the atrocities of the current regime.
See DCMediaGroup.us for more reporting on Federal government and Tesla Takedowns under keywords Federal, Agency, and Tesla.
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Find Your Courage In This Chaos
It’s easier than you think and more necessary than ever.
If you find yourself alarmed, furious and deeply anxious about the unraveling of our democracy, you are not alone.
Most everyone I know is horrified about this regime’s rampant abuse of power and the thoroughly incompetent leadership purporting to run the country.
Trump is defying the courts, Kristi Noem has no idea what the Constitution is about, Pam Bondi is thoroughly confused about the Epstein List, among other things, and JD Vance has proclaimed the Big Beautiful Bill as marking a new era of stability and prosperity for working families. The cruelty of this regime is unlike anything we have seen in our country’s history.
In reality, the ridiculous funding bill signed into law on July 4 will leave many Americans with no health coverage and no food security, all in the name of giving billionaires more money through tax cuts.
ICE is boldly kidnapping immigrants who have no criminal record and depriving them of their right to due process. Horrid concentration camps are housing illegally kidnapped people.
U.S. Government agencies continue to reel after the chainsaw massacre imposed by Musk’s DOGE. Universities are being targeted and losing billions in research funding due to what Trump believes is ideological indoctrination, and Trump is suing mainstream media whenever he gets his nose out of joint. Most recently he sued the Wall Street Journal for its report on the Epstein case.
You don’t need to look far to see the damage being done, so my question to you, to quote Bob Marley, is “Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?” And make no mistake, they are coming for all of us. No one is safe.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with all that is happening and the speed at which it is unfolding, but simply observing and commenting on it is not the answer, it’s not what’s going to save us. I am increasingly distraught by how many people who could do something are finding endless excuses not to.
It’s easy to make excuses: I’m too busy, it’s too hot, I have a job, I don’t like public speaking, I can’t draw well enough to make a sign, I’m not sure what to do, I’m afraid. WE ARE ALL AFRAID! Fear is not a remedy. It’s action we need. It’s time for us all to step outside our comfort zone and do something, anything, to keep democracy alive.
I have recently done so much that is way out of my comfort zone. For starters, I’m an introvert. Meeting people at protests, joining group calls, attending meetings – so not my style. But it helps that those I am meeting are good and just people wanting to make our country whole again. We are forging bonds and finding so much common ground as we join in protest, make signs together, brainstorm non-compliance ideas and share strategies. The core group at my local Tesla Takedown protests, people I had never seen before March, are the people who inspire me every day to do more, to be strong, and to step up. We are a community and we keep each other strong and hopeful.
I’m hanging ribbons around my neighborhood that say “Release the Disappeared” in Spanish and English. I bought a bucket of chalk and leave messages on public property (like sidewalks) letting neighbors know about our local Tesla Takedown and inviting them to join the resistance. I’ve visited the offices of House Representatives to pass out flyers and to discuss concerns. It’s amazing how easy it is to find your voice – and we all have one – when you care deeply about what’s happening around you.
I recently spoke at a county Board Meeting to encourage the Board to do more to protect our immigrant neighbors from ICE. I have signed up for training to be a court monitor at local immigration hearings, and I’m learning how to safely protect my neighbors from ICE. I join countless zoom calls, organized by grassroots organizations, where I learn about upcoming actions and how to make a difference.
One of the best calls I’ve been on this year was the first of three One Million Rising calls organized by Indivisible, held on July 16. Over 100,000 people joined that call to learn about next steps in saving our democracy. The organizers asked participants to sign a Gathering Pledge – they hoped to get 1,000 participants to host local meetings to bring others on board. Over 5,000 of us signed up on the spot – and I was one of them. Out of my comfort zone? Hell yes, but I am all in.
If ever there was a time to take action and to do things you aren’t used to doing, that time is now. I am guessing you will find, as I have, that it’s actually liberating to step outside your comfort zone and help resist tyranny. Taking action goes a long way to easing the anxiety of what we see happening around us, and by joining with others, you will find the hope you need to get through these troubling times. With hope, we can do anything.
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NASA Workers Say Defunding Agency Will Erase Future U.S. Science and Technology Gains
Washington, DC—Scientists, engineers, and contractors working at NASA rallied near the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum recently, warning that budget cuts will end U.S. leadership in space exploration, scientific discovery, and technology development. They said that the fiscal year 2025 budget previously approved by Congress last year was being systematically and illegally cut by pressure from inside and outside the Agency, specifically from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) by its newly appointed interim leader Sean Duffy. These cuts take the form of canceled contracts that support programs, and extraordinary pressure is being placed on existing employees to take an early employment exit from the Agency.
Duffy has no science background and no experience in space exploration. He previously appeared as a cohost on Fox and Friends ‘The Bottom Line,’ and played a role on ‘The Real World’ reality TV show. He was tapped from the Department of Transportation to temporarily lead NASA after Trump dropped the planned appointment of Jared Isaacman. Isaacman is an associate of Elon Musk from SpaceX, but lost out on the position after a public squabble between Trump and Musk blew up on social media. Duffy led the FAA’s reduction in force of air traffic controllers during a period when the FAA recorded a sharp increase in air accidents, including the first airline accident in 16 years.
About 150 participated in the Save NASA rally at Eisenhower Park to both save and promote what NASA does to benefit the public. It was held on a symbolic date in U.S. space history, the 56th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. It was on this date in 1969 that the U.S. safely landed the first humans on the moon in the Apollo 11 space vehicle named “The Eagle.” The landing site became widely known as “Tranquility Base” when the ship’s Captain, Neil Armstrong announced, “Tranquility base here…the Eagle has landed.” The astronauts landed The Eagle with less than 30 seconds of fuel left in its descent tanks.
The scientists and engineers at Eisenhower Park were not focusing on NASA’s glory and past achievement on that historic day 56 years ago. Perhaps in any other given year they should have been focused on it because such a momentous day of achievement deserves celebration of some kind. Instead, they were focused on what was to come of their embattled science Agency with the plans to cut 47% of its budget, which they say will devastate NASA.
NASA employees were there to tell the public that U.S. science discoveries would be lost due to many canceled projects and scientists and engineers being forced to leave the Agency. They urged the public to contact their representatives in Congress and ask them not to approve project defunding or the mass exodus of talent from NASA.
Many held hand-made signs and were observant of the constraints of their permit to remain within the boundaries of the small Eisenhower Park. A few assembled a large ‘Save NASA’ banner behind which they rallied. Some passed out stickers of the planets and provided cold water and energy bars in the searing heat. They beat drums and used noise makers to get the interest of tourists going in and out of the Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian’s most popular museum in terms of annual visitors, though few tourists could hear them from across the street. The passing tourists remained oblivious to the coming fate of budget cuts awaiting one of the most successful agencies in terms of economic payback, in U.S. history.
A question remained unanswered by everyone at the rally: would NASA suffer the same fate as other shuttered agencies such as USAID, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Department of Education, and National Institutes of Health? Would NASA be shut down too, or rendered insignificant as other vital agencies have been, in the political interest of handing over public services to a few hand-picked corporations enviously eyeing their data and contracts?
NASA—Storied Accomplishments In Space
With the beginning of the Apollo missions in the early 1960s, the U.S. opened a new frontier in the quest for knowledge and understanding of the heavens. With it came the possibility that questions eluding star gazers for centuries might be uncovered. A new age dawned in which the answers could be found to the age-old questions of what is the purpose of human existence and what is mankind’s place in the heavens.
After U.S. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took the first walk on the moon during their Apollo 11 mission, many of the country’s youth dreamed of doing the same thing one day. Ten other astronauts followed them onto the moon on successive missions. The missions carried three astronauts; two descended to the moon while one remained aloft in the command module 47 kilometers above them. Apollos 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17 each landed two men on the moon and successfully returned them to Earth.
Apollo 13 was the only planned moon landing mission that did not reach the lunar surface because of an oxygen tank explosion in space which almost caused the unimaginable deaths of its three astronauts in space. However, they returned successfully three days later because of the extraordinary skills of engineers and scientists who understood the ship’s capabilities and worked together to learn what had happened to the stricken Apollo and to find a workable solution and safely return the astronauts home. That itself may have been the most important mission of the Apollo series because it taught some hard-learned lessons about space travel: never take any system for granted, design independent backup systems, and know the ship’s capabilities inside and out.
The Apollo missions required the development of advanced technologies using primitive machinery compared to today’s standards. There were no super computers or calculators. Slide rules were still being used for complex calculations. A complete guidance computer had to be envisioned, designed, built, and tested, and this took humans to the boundary of knowledge and beyond, as applied physics had to be merged with existing materials knowledge to create its components. Software had to be written for it and there were no such things as microprocessors or integrated circuits. Scientists and engineers had to learn to convert the computer software code into instructions the physical computer could understand using an archaic process known as rope memory. It was a technique using thin wires to generate permanent bits of data. But NASA scientists and engineers figured out how to do it.
Scientists and engineers from across the country collaborated on individual components and then teams of design engineers made sure all the components worked together. A woman-led team wrote a daisy chain code to guide the Apollo mission to the moon and back. Margaret Hamilton was the first to coin the term “software engineer.”
Margaret Hamilton wrote the software that guided Apollo missions to the moon and back. The engineers and scientists at NASA embody her spirit in what they do. Photo: courtesy of NASA.
As the project gained publicity, many young people dreamed of becoming astronauts or becoming engineers and scientists. There would be many new missions as science and engineering progressed beyond Apollo. Skylab followed Apollo and the concept of a working laboratory in space came to fruition and paved the way for the International Space Station. Next came the Viking missions to Mars which beamed some of the first real-time images to Earth from Mars on July 20, 1976. These breakthroughs led to others and attracted a new generation of young minds with new ideas leading to space rovers on Mars in the last decades.
Then came the Voyager missions in 1977 sent to rendezvous with, photograph and explore the planets which appeared as specks in the most powerful earth-bound telescopes. Later, scientists and engineers repurposed the Voyager I and II spacecraft to explore beyond the solar system. They are the only two functional missions returning data from outside the influence of the “solar wind” and returning information about the cosmic flux, and NASA designed and built them.
As the Space Shuttle program came online in the early 1980s, NASA also began using the shuttle to launch technologically advanced platforms directly into space and ferry the large parts needed for in-space construction of the International Space Station (ISS), Then there were many Shuttle missions to ferry astronauts to the ISS once it came online in the 1990s; deliver weather and GPS satellites; deliver and position the Hubble Space Telescope into geosynchronous orbit; and complete some top-secret military projects, possibly involving “eye-in-the-sky” telescope platforms.
The benefits the U.S. has gained by investing in NASA missions has been more than three times its budget costs. A published report in Universe Space compiled figures showing that the 2023 budget of $26.4 billion dollars returned $75.6 billion dollars in economic returns even though there were private companies concurrently pursuing space exploration. There is not another Agency that creates such an economic return to the U.S. economy from tax dollars invested in public interests.
Many Ongoing Missions Will Be Discontinued
One speaker at the rally who gave his first name only as Lewis, compared the science cuts to a home invader selfishly removing the copper wire from a home everyone else shared just to cash it in for their own benefit. The metaphor resonated with the audience, particularly the engineers and scientists working on the projects facing personnel and funding cuts. He warned that the cuts are shortsighted and bound to end future U.S. discoveries.
Other countries such as China could fill this void and become the new leader in space discoveries. However, China has not typically shared its space achievements or technology advancements with other nations or even made them public like NASA has. The authorization to create NASA in 1958 stipulated that the information and science generated by public funding would be made public.
Nasa Workers Speak About The Budget Cuts
Julie Hoover, a contractor who works jointly with National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said, “A lot of changes are being made before the budget is passed and we’re losing a lot of intelligent people from the Agency before we find out what’s going to happen to the budget.” She added that her remarks were her own and not made on behalf of NASA.
Hoover added that the project she was working on involved satellite information that tracked weather measurements. “[We] provide data to weather forecasters so they can determine what’s going to happen with the weather in time to let the public know if a disaster is imminent.”
Vi Nguyen, an employee who works on a weather satellite program said she was concerned that projects were currently being defunded illegally. She described the advanced weather satellite program as essential because the “data goes to NOAA and NOAA sees hurricanes way ahead and informs the National Weather Service to alert the public.”
Dr. Casey McGrath, an employee who works at Goddard Space Flight Center as a postdoctoral research assistant, spoke not as a representative of NASA or his company, but as an individual, saying “The senior leadership is over-complying with foundational changes to the Agency. The changes that are happening now might undermine what Congress’s intentions are if they aren’t stopped immediately. Many of us are going to lose our jobs because NASA is trying to preemptively encourage as many people as possible to leave.”
Dr. McGrath warned that NASA leadership intended to completely cut Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) recruitment. This would decimate the future of NASA and its growth as an agency.
Scientists and Astronauts Respond To NASA Cuts With Resistance Letter
Over 280 scientists, including four astronauts, signed the Voyager Declaration Letter in dissent of the ongoing NASA science cuts on Saturday.
The letter reads, in part, “We commend the NASA personnel who have courageously spoken out in defense of scientific integrity, despite clear retaliation against other scientific agencies. Their actions reflect a deep commitment to truth, accountability, and the core mission of advancing knowledge for the benefit of all. We urge NASA leadership and the current administration to work closely with NASA staff to safeguard the Agency’s mission and values. NASA must not be used as a political instrument divorced from its foundational commitment to scientific exploration, discovery, and service to humanity.”
NASA contributions to civil society have benefited everyone living in one way or another. The list of life-saving technologies is quite remarkable. NASA Spinoffs has published a diagram which illustrates some of these innovations. They have returned $14 dollars of economic benefits for every tax dollar spent.
One may recall the fable of Jack and the Golden Goose. The children’s story has a moral about how an individual’s greed can lead to his own ruin, and it applies to the taking over of NASA. The reasons why a handful of wealthy individuals are taking NASA apart may not yet be fully apparent, but if it comes to pass, it is likely to benefit a few at the expense of the nation.
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Tesla Takedown FAQs And Why We Aren’t Stopping Anytime Soon
As I’ve posted previously, grassroots groups began organizing protests at a nearby Tesla dealership on Saturdays, Sundays and Tuesdays, starting in February. I have been attending since March, three times a week when possible. The protests started out small, and the ranks swelled to 80 or 90 protestors on weekends in April and May. Since then, although our numbers have dropped off a bit, we have a core group of protestors who show up regularly and have no interest in quitting.
We show up in the rain, we show up in intense humidity and heat. The only thing to stop us yet is thunder and lightning. We all chip in for the gear we need to keep going: one of our crew sourced a free canopy which we set up to provide shade. A lightweight camping table was provided to put out snacks and cold water which are regularly supplied by group members.
Several protestors bring cooling clothes to give us relief when the temperatures soar above 100. We have buttons (so many different buttons!) and flyers to hand out. We bring portable Bluetooth speakers so that we can enjoy the fabulous resistance playlists we have created, as well as dance music to keep us joyful as we wave our flags and display our signs. Bubble makers are often on hand to keep the mood upbeat. We have an abundance of signs and banners, and anyone who shows up without a sign is encouraged to borrow one. We even have wagons to cart all this gear from our cars, parked a few blocks away. As one organizer recently quipped: looks like we are here to stay! Yes, yes we are.
In the last month we have been getting lots of questions – both from within our group and from passersby – about the impact of our Tesla Takedowns and why we continue them. There are many good answers – here are a few.
DOGE: While Musk has distanced himself from Trump since the end of May, Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) continues to operate and has accumulated vast amounts of our personal and financial data from the IRS and Treasury Department. The chainsaw massacre of federal government offices led by Musk will have a lasting and dangerous impact on the many vital services provided by the U.S. government. USAID has been gutted, the CFPB is barely limping along, USIP has been dismantled (twice), and countless other agencies have been decimated due to extensive and unwarranted personnel cuts.
Conflicts of Interest: Musk used his role in DOGE to ensure protections for his lucrative contracts with the government: His companies Starlink, SpaceX, the Boring Company and most recently his Grok chatbot all benefitted as a result of Musk steering oversight away from the obvious conflicts of interest. Starlink has been installed in various government installations, SpaceX is not adhering to federal reporting protocols (including those which impact safety), and the Federal Railroad Administration is in talks to use Musk’s Boring Company on an Amtrak rail project. This egregious lack of oversight and rampant conflicts of interest will line Musk’s already full pockets and steer the competition away, often with ramifications for safety.
Community: We continue the protests to celebrate the strong, compassionate community we have formed over the months. It’s uplifting to know we are not alone in this fight, and, more importantly, we are learning from each other as we all bring our own history, stories, fears and concerns to the protests.
Joy: I will admit that I was confused the first time I heard one of the organizers encourage us to bring joy to the demonstrations. I asked myself how anyone could possibly find joy in this time of great upheaval and cruelty. Over the weeks and months, I have found that joy – it is the joy of knowing that we are not alone, that we will continue to fight, and that we respect and lift each other up. There is the joy of hearing hundreds of cars, buses and trucks honking at us, often for a prolonged time, and seeing countless drivers give us a thumbs up, flash us a peace sign, or raise a determined fist in the air. We are not alone, our numbers are great, the fight will continue unabated, and that alone is cause for joy. Those honks are like a dopamine hit, trust me.
Learning: We are learning from each other every single day: about the threats within our communities, where and how to speak up, how to make rain-proof signs, what wording is most effective, which Zoom calls to join, other protests to attend, where to park for the banner drops at local overpasses. We adjust our signs and flyers to meet the needs of a particular week’s news. We are all stepping out of our comfort zones in this time of need, and that is much easier to do when surrounded by compassionate people who support you and cheer you on.
I’m so grateful for my Tesla Takedown community. This group is a window into what compassion and diversity look like. We have each other’s backs, and we are fighting together to keep our communities safe, to keep each other safe, to let our neighbors know their rights, to help get out the vote and ultimately, to save our democracy. We know this is not a sprint – sadly, we are in this for the long haul. If you drive past us, be sure to give us a honk!
Tesla Takedowns are happening at a Tesla showroom near you. Go to https://www.teslatakedown.com/ to connect with those in your community or organize one of your own.
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ICE Kidnappings Mirror World War II Germany; It Will Soon Be Difficult To Claw Our Way Back
Arlington, VA—If anything is true about Tesla Takedown Arlington activists, it’s that they’re not afraid to take on bullies. On Saturday, they went after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), slamming it for its illegal kidnapping policy and the state-created chaos the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is spreading across the country.
Several protestors brought signs written in Spanish “Chinga la Migra por Vida,” translating to F— ICE forever. This message connected with many dozens of Latino motorists passing the Arlington Tesla showroom on their way to and from weekend yard work, or various labor-intensive employments, judging by the tools and equipment they carried in their truck beds. Some may have been returning home to families or going shopping. And many gave a resounding thumbs up and lots of honks in approval of the new signage critical of ICE.
By the end of Saturday’s Tesla Takedown, everyone there knew how to pronounce the catchphrase and what it meant. Apparently it originated in Los Angeles, where ICE agents have been terrorizing immigrant communities and their workspaces for months.
The Tesla Takedown tapped a torrent of support from Latinos, which the boycott line had not expected and did not know existed. And yet, it was right at the curbside, passing them by these last five months outside the Arlington Tesla showroom.
By focusing on the ICE terror in their signage, the boycott line brought out some of the most damning examples of how this regime has effectively morphed more closely into a fascist regime. The Trump regime has funded ICE $75 billion for ICE operations over the next four years to supercharge ICE into a secret police force. Its roving patrols and seizures of individuals of a particular ethnicity, all while denying them due process, will give ICE powers beyond any police force in the U.S. The regime awarded ICE $45 billion for building concentration camps in which to hold them captive in deplorable conditions. In total, Trump’s bill allocated $165 billion for immigration enforcement, seizure, building encampments, border walls, and relocation to other countries.
Taken as a whole, ICE, which falls under control of DHS, is no different than the Gestapo secret police of early Nazi Germany. When the Gestapo began persecuting Jews in post-WWI Germany, it was a gradual progression of scapegoating Jews through myths and misinformation by the Nazi party. Nazis gradually stripped Jews of rights and banned them from serving in positions of power and from the armed forces. The Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht, in which Jewish businesses, homes, and synagogues were looted and burned, lead to the rounding up of Jews in Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia once Nazis gained uncontested power in post-WWI Germany. The Nazis did this in part as a self-purported purification of their race but also, in part, out of economic envy. The Gestapo stripped Jews of their rights, dignity, religious practices and their citizenship. They separated Jewish families, removed them from society by crowding them into ghettos, then shipped them in boxcars to concentration camps.
ICE is orchestrating a similar scenario now by rounding up Latinos and other minorities under the fabrication that they are criminals, they are taking jobs from U.S. citizens, they are members of gangs, or they have come to the U.S. illegally. ICE roundups are so fragmented, misdirected, and disorganized, that they have even seized U.S. citizens who fit their arbitrary appearance standard for who appears to be a suspect. ICE has outpaced the Gestapo in that they have jumped right past nearly all the initial stages the Gestapo used to persecute Jews and have gone straight into roving patrol roundups. And ICE is implementing it at a much faster rate—attempting to seize 3,000 people a day. ICE bases its justifications for their arbitrary roundups on junk law and its grossly contorted interpretation of justice—just like the Nazis did.
U.S. District Judge Maame Frimpong of the Central District of California ruled as much when she issued a temporary restraining order late on Friday, July 11, against DHS Secretary Kristi Noam and the subordinates in her chain of command whom Noem tasked with implementing Trump’s orders. In her ruling, Judge Frimpong wrote that DHS and ICE:
—cannot conduct roving patrols to detain people based on race or ethnicity
—cannot deny people legal representation
—must honor the constitutional rights of all people, including immigrants, under the 4th and 5th Amendments of the Constitution
—cannot deny immigrants access to an attorney or the ability to seek representation
—must use warrants in all cases
—must provide those being held at a temporary ICE holding cell in LA access to phones to contact families and attorneys
Judge Frimpong further wrote that since Trump began his self-described “largest mass-deportation operation in history” on June 6, “federal law enforcement arrived in Los Angeles to participate [in] roving patrols to indiscriminately round up numerous individuals without reasonable suspicion and having done so, denied these individuals access to lawyers who could help them navigate the legal process they found themselves in. What the Federal Government would have this court believe—in the face of a mountain of evidence presented, is that none of this is actually happening.”
Defining ICE For What It Is: An Authoritarian’s Secret Police Force
Exposing how ICE has sharply increased roundups requires correct definitions delineating the parallels between ICE and the Nazi persecution of Jews from 1933 to 1945. Some are suggesting not to describe ICE as doing the same things the Gestapo did, because it dilutes the seriousness of the crimes against humanity for which the Nazi leaders were tried at Nuremberg. The Nazi party took time to ramp up its persecution of the Jews from the initial stripping of rights, to moving them to ghettos, to shipping them to internment camps, to the mass murder, and to the final chapter of the death marches. ICE just hasn’t reached that stage yet. But it could reach that stage and, based on the unrelenting speed with which it has coalesced and the whopping funds it is being provided, ICE may not be able to stop itself.
One reason ICE may be unable to stop itself is because this regime’s power lust and it’s demonstrated inability to hold itself accountable to both moral and legal standards. It has already revealed what it is capable of doing to elected officials and others operating within the prerogative of their government offices. The recent arrests of high profile officials opposed to their immigration policies are a warning of what is to come.
They include an FBI arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly interfering with the seizure of an immigrant undergoing proceedings in her courtroom; the arrest New Jersey Representative LaMonica McIver for allegedly interfering with ICE operations when she was exercising her legal oversight of a private detention center to her district; and the ICE arrest of NYC Comptroller Brad Lander at a federal immigration courthouse in Manhattan, though he was later released. The ICE agents arrest and accuse citizens of assault, although video has confirmed they are clearly not assaulting ICE agents. These incidents demonstrate that ICE and DHS immigration actions are taking this country into the abyss of human rights abuses and stolen liberty, and it will be very difficult for us to claw our way back out. Once this becomes entrenched in practice, it will be easier for ICE to use their power to go after opponents and silence them too.
ICE is not a traditional police force, rather they operate as secret police, and by its actions, ICE is comparable to the Gestapo of the Nazi party. The agents executing the kidnappings are masked and hidden behind black face cloths and dressed as paramilitary forces dress. This is designed to instill terror in a specific ethnicity and economic class across the entire country.
Standard police forces have an elected chief, a sheriff, or a chief of police appointed by an elected mayor. As a federal agency, ICE has no defined jurisdictional zone; they don’t display or disclose names or badges to identify themselves and they do not arrive in marked vehicles representing their jurisdictional authority. They arrive in unmarked vehicles without license plates or painted logos, and they bring no warrants or charges with them to serve on specific individuals. They have operated with no grand jury impaneled by the state or locality to determine if the state’s charges are of sufficient evidence to warrant prosecution. ICE therefore operates with no definable code in a functioning republic where individual rights and liberties are respected and honored.
Detaining a person implies that people who are suspected of a crime are being afforded due process. ICE is not detaining people. ICE is violently hard-arresting people, and when they encounter resistance, throwing individuals to the ground, jumping on them and choking them. Video recordings made by concerned citizens offer proof of this. ICE is not showing warrants or evidence of any crime having taken place. They are disappearing people based on skin color and ethnicity alone.
ICE is not affording due process. The Latinos being kidnapped and disappeared are not given the opportunity to appear before a judge. They are not having any charges read to them and are not given an opportunity to respond as to their guilt or innocence. They are denied the opportunity to depose the charges against them as afforded by the 4th and 5th Amendments of the Constitution.
ICE internment facilities are actually concentration camps, not jails or prisons. Once silenced, ICE shuttles Latinos away in unmarked vans. Their whereabouts are unknown and they are housed in crowded temporary holding cells until they can be stolen away to be locked inside cages of mass camps in other states without anyone knowing where they are or how to contact them.
Conditions inside the concentration camps are inhumane. Inmates are being caged, according to State Congressman Maxwell Frost (FL-10), who gave a first-person account of what he saw on Saturday, July 12. “These people are being caged with 32 people per cage and only 3 toilets for a group of 32 grown men. Where they drink water comes from the toilet-spigot. The food portions are horrible. It was very warm and hot in the tent. I saw people sweating. People were yelling, ‘Help me, help me.’”
Up to this point, ICE has run unchallenged in cities across the U.S., confiscating people as if they were chattel and the U.S. were operating as a slave state rounding up its escaped slaves.
Will Accountability Come To ICE Leaders
The last thing anyone in the Nazi Party envisioned was that their final judgment day would come at the Nuremberg trials. The allies and Soviet Union convened an International Military Tribunal (IMT) to hold Nazi leaders accountable for war crimes, crimes against humanity, false imprisonment, and hate crimes. The trials began in 1945, almost immediately after WWII, and lasted two years. In all, 22 Nazi leadership survivors were accused of the concentration camp murders of millions of Jews. The defendants were afforded representation and translation of the words of their accusers into their native language. They were given an opportunity to respond to the charge, were presented with all the evidence used against them, and they were allowed to face their accusers. They were provided livable conditions during their trials.
None of those rounded up by ICE have been afforded any of these rights, and that in itself is an indictment against the ICE roving patrols and kidnappings and especially against those in its chain of command.
One of the arguments proposed as a defense by the accused Nazi criminals was that they were just following orders, but the argument did not bode well for them at their sentencing. Of the 22 defendants tried at Nuremberg, 12 were convicted and sentenced to hang, seven were sentenced to prison terms and three were acquitted.
ICE is not accused of the war crimes and organized mass murder that the Nazi party leaders committed. But the conditions ICE has created, false imprisonment, hate crimes, and deplorable camp conditions, could lead to the death of many innocent people. This is based on first-hand accounts of visiting officials from within the Everglades concentration camp.
The chain of command leaders at ICE will be held responsible for their treatment of the thousands they have seized and many thousands yet to be disappeared in their camps. Future generations will look harshly on what leaders did or failed to do to protect those who were held in subhuman conditions in the ICE camps. Following orders will not be a workable defense at their future trials. History will judge this American period harshly.
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Secret Police And Concentration Camps Are Here
The Coming Storm: Secret Police and Concentration Camps are Here
The Big Horrible Bill was passed by both the House and Senate, and Trump signed it into law on July 4, an ironic date considering the devastation this bill will wreak on our democracy.
Much of the conversation around the bill has been about the horrific cuts to Medicaid and SNAP that will go into effect after the midterms, resulting in millions losing healthcare and far too many children facing food insecurity. Additionally, hospitals, especially those in rural areas, will be forced to close, requiring residents in those areas to travel great distances for care, including any emergent needs. At least one hospital has already been forced to close due to the financial hardships starting to face many states.
Of more immediate concern, however, is the alarming amount of funding this bill allocates to ICE: a stunning $170 billion is dedicated to immigration enforcement over the next four years, of which $45 billion is earmarked for ICE detention space. These vast sums will enable a rapid escalation of the horrific scenes we have witnessed playing out in a number of cities across the country, in which masked, armed goons without badges or judicial warrants are grabbing innocent immigrants off the streets, often with undue force. We need to call them what they are: Secret Police. ICE is preying upon those who show up to their court appointments in addition to trolling immigrant neighborhoods and raiding businesses where immigrants are employed. Families are being pried apart, and upstanding members of our community are being illegally targeted. Many immigrants are afraid to be out in public, go to the grocery store, or visit their place of worship.
ICE agents, whose ranks will swell to an alarming number with this new infusion of funding, are shockingly brazen in their quest to detain as many immigrants as possible in response to quotas issued by Trump. Since the Inauguration in January, more than 39,000 people have been arrested, and, according to federal data, over 80% of these detainees have no criminal record. Many of the immigrants who have been arrested are in the U.S. legally, and once they are captured, their future is uncertain, as they are removed to detention centers out of the area and likely out of the country. They are not being deported – that word does not do justice to reality. They are being disappeared. Often, their families do not know their whereabouts and are unable to be in contact with them.
The detention centers being utilized by ICE are nothing more than concentration camps, and Alligator Auschwitz in Florida, where squalid conditions are reported, is a perfect example of the inhumane conditions in which harmless immigrants will find themselves. Trump’s flippant remarks about detainees who try to escape being eaten by alligators underscore the cruelty being dealt to immigrants who have committed no crime and who have been illegally seized from their families and their communities.
Anti-ICE protests are growing as communities are increasingly shocked by the cruel disappearance of non-violent immigrants. At the same time, the tactics ICE agents are employing are growing more vicious and occasionally ensnare members of Congress and even a judge seeking to defend the innocent targets. The scenes playing out daily in citizen-captured videos of these ICE arrests are shocking, difficult to watch, and in complete violation of the Constitution.
Make no mistake, the cruel tactics and disappearances that we have seen at the hands of ICE will grow exponentially in the coming months. Communities have been organizing to inform immigrants of their rights, to witness the disappearances, and to prevent ICE agents from making arrests on private property. While these actions have been bold and courageous, they alone will not be enough to stop the newly emboldened ICE or to prevent the continued dismantling of our vibrant immigrant communities.
It is up to us to respond to this dangerous escalation of ICE. We must protect the immigrants in our communities who bring such vitality and economic support to our nation. The time is now, and the need is real.
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Don’t Let the Noise Drown out Your Voice
Washington DC—Reflections on July 4, 2025.
After the very disappointing but not unexpected passage of the big, ridiculous bill on July 3, I was in little mood to celebrate the 4th of July. Our democracy is being dismantled, and what we see before us is unmistakably fascism. The suffering this bill will bring to millions of people is not what our country stands for, and funding ICE with billions of additional dollars will only rush pain and terror to innocent people.
Instead of celebrating with fireworks or watching the parade in DC, I attended a group reading of the Declaration of Independence. It was originally slated to take place in front of the National Archives, home to the original, signed copy of the Declaration. The organizers had to move the location across the street, next to the Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, due to crowds, the parade, and a previously scheduled event at the Archives. There were about 30 or 40 of us gathered.
As I stood and listened to a number of people taking turns, with a bullhorn/microphone, to read each paragraph of the Declaration with solemnity and conviction, I had to fight hard to hear these important words, as they were being drowned out by the passing parade. Marching bands, people yelling, and all the commotion that comes with a big city parade proved to be more powerful than the readers and the message of freedom that they sought to share as a reminder of what our country fought so hard for nearly 250 years ago when we declared we would not be ruled by a tyrannical king.
Watching the scene unfold, I realized that drowning out the reading of the Declaration of Independence provided a metaphor for this very moment in time. Millions of people are voicing their dissent, their outrage, and their refusal to accept fascism in the U.S., but is it loud enough? Are our voices making a difference?
We must prevent this regime from drowning us out. We must be louder, bolder, and stronger than those we seek to defeat. We cannot, we must not, let the noise around us be louder than our message.
Grab your signs, and if you don’t have any, make one. My favorite is “Oh Hell No”, a multi-purpose outrage that applies to everything being done to dismantle our democracy. Choose the topic(s) that matter most to you: protecting immigrants, crushing ICE, SCOTUS caving to tyranny, No Kings, etc. Join a banner brigade on an overpass near you. Join any rallies in your area. Be active in helping to get out the vote. The mid-term elections are going to be absolutely critical in helping us eliminate tyranny and repair the damage done. Most importantly, stay informed through independent media channels that bring accurate and timely reporting.
Whatever you do, however you show up in this fight to save our democracy and resist tyranny, make sure your voice can be heard above the relentless din of those who seek to control us. It’s up to us now.
You may follow Susan Douglas on Substack here.
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Tesla Takedown Arlington Signage: Fascism Is Here, And It Is Happening Now
Arlington, VA— For over five months on consecutive weekends and Tuesdays, the Tesla Takedown boycott line has been taking on Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, diminishing his wealth in terms of Tesla stock value, exposing his illegal Doge takedown of federal government agencies, and the firing of tens of thousands of federal civil servants.
The Tesla Takedown of Musk is credited with creating friction between Trump and Musk and they have been successful beyond expectations.
Meanwhile, in March and April, Trump gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) permission to begin illegal kidnappings of green card holders. Then a wave of so-called ICE agents—no one could actually tell who they were or if they were legitimate because they covered their faces and car license plates—began forcefully taking people out of their communities and work spaces. During these raids, ICE also swept up American citizens—children born on U.S. soil—with these kidnappings. Like Lara C., these victims were brown-skinned or Muslim but not White, and they were being taken by the thousands to places unknown, and families, loved ones, and attorneys often could not determine where they were.
The idea to challenge the regime’s rapid goose step toward authoritarianism came to Lara C., a participant of Tesla Takedowns, as she watched the trickle of ICE agents snatching brown-skinned people grow to a rush and then explode into a torrent. In fear, she began carrying copies of her birth certificate proving where she was born and that she was a U.S. citizen. It, too, could certainly happen to her she thought, simply because she was brown.
Habeas Corpus—‘you should have the body’
A bedrock of liberty is the right to know what charges are being made against an individual and to be able to appear in a public court to have those charges read and explained. We understand it in modern terms as due process. The Founding Fathers specifically wrote this into the Constitution right up at the top in Article I, Section 9. One might say it was a very important aspect of liberty because King George III had an unfair inclination to disappear people who disagreed with him into indefinite detention in the Tower of London without any charges, explanation, or recourse.
Article I, Section 9 reads, “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”
What ICE has been doing and continues to do is deny the liberty of Habeas Corpus to thousands, Supreme Court rulings notwithstanding. It remains one of the most basic rights provided in the Constitution. On the issue of birthright citizenship, on which the Supreme Court recently ruled in Trump’s favor on the issue of whether or not District Courts could grant class standing of suits against the government for any citizens born in the U.S. to immigrants, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson published a blistering dissent against the conservative Court majority to grant Trump’s request. “I have no doubt that, if judges must allow the executive to act unlawfully in some circumstances, as the court concludes today, executive lawlessness will flourish, and from there, it is not difficult to predict how this all ends. Eventually, executive power will become completely uncontainable, and our beloved constitutional republic will be no more,” she wrote.
Lara thought about how wrong it was that a handful of people could authorize kidnappings of so many, without due process, at the whims of the President, and just like King George III did, deny them rights to appearance before a judge to hear the charges against them, be afforded a trial, and have an opportunity to challenge those charges before legal proceedings. She knew that these bedrock principles and rights were wrongfully being swept away.
Lara wondered what she could do to educate others about the injustice of growing ICE actions against innocent people. She thought of making street signs to educate others and those passing by the Tesla Takedowns about the elements of fascism. The societal conditions that she saw materializing around her certainly weren’t anything normal.
She quoted Nelson Mandela as the impetus for helping her come up with her idea to fight back against fascism: “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.”
ICE—The Dream Team Fit For A Dictator
ICE went into hyperdrive and blew through its budget within months of its new authorization to round up green card holders. Congress recently allocated more than a 265% increase in its spending bill—more money for new detainment camps and for ICE agents—more than the budgets for the FBI, Bureau of Prisons, the DEA combined; and more than the U.S. Marine Corps.
With the passage of the Big Ugly Bill aka HR1, it was time for Lara to say out loud what fascism is so there could be no confusion or ambiguity about what was happening in the U.S. She and others from We of Action (WofA) and Third Act created the messaging on signs with 17 characteristics of a fascist regime. They attached H wire stakes to each sign and set them about 20 feet apart at the Tesla Takedown action. Now the drivers passing Tesla would have something to think about:
- Combining Church and State
- Human Rights Violations
- Eliminating Due Process
- Attacking Free Press
- Disinformation, Lies, and Propaganda
- Militarized Police
- Corporate Profits over Workers
- Assault on Academia and Arts
- Attacking Political Opposition
- Unqualified Political Appointments
- Blaming Immigrants for Problems
- Using Fear and Violence
- Legalized Gender Discrimination
- Racism
- Persecution of Minorities
- Centralized Power (Dictator)
- Anti-Science
The Trump culture embodies all of these indicators. There are multiple instances of how they have ticked the characteristics in every case.
Fascism Its Indicators and Characteristics
It’s difficult to actually define what fascism is and tell when a elected government becomes authoritarian and then has crossed over the line to meet the definition of fascism. Fascism is a hybrid of authoritarianism. Different social justice groups have published a varying number of character traits to define what fascism is.
Fascism Fighters lists 22 indicators of what Fascism is and assigns Trump as meeting all 22 of the characteristics on its website.
—Use of enemy as a scapegoat and distraction
—Anti-minority / chauvinistic
—Call for a national rebirth
—Extreme nationalism
—Use of violence
—Aggressive militarism
—Cult of personality
—Anti-intellectualism and cultural repression
—Advancement of propaganda through a controlled mass media
—Authoritarian tendencies and aspirations
—Imperialistic ambitions
—Mass mobilization
—Elimination of human rights to prioritize the state
—Religion and government are intertwined
—Promotion of corporate power / Suppression of labor power
—Obsession with law and order
—Youth indoctrination
—Cronyism and corruption
—Demand of unwavering loyalty
—Fraudulent elections
—Desire for economic self-sufficiency
—“Work makes you free”
The Political Science Blog characterizes Fascism with 10 major indicators:
- Opposition to Marxism
- Opposition to Political and Cultural Liberalism
- Glorification of the State
- Extreme Nationalism
- Imperialism
- Opposition to Parliamentary Democracy
- Totalitarian Ambition
- Millitary Values
- Acceptance of Racism
- Economic Policies that are conservative
- Mass Mobilisation
- Education as Character Building
In each of these definitions, within 5 months, Trump and his group of cabinet-appointed enforcers has quickly corralled the republic into a fascist regime.
Hope Is Not Lost—The People Are Mobilizing
All across the country people are mobilizing to fight this political scourge. There are many actions planned for the coming weeks and months. Today’s action outside the Arlington Tesla showroom is but one of many Tesla showroom protests.
The historian vlogger, Heather Cox Richardson said in her video series posted on July 3, Letters From An American, that the passage of the budget bill was a major setback but she also championed the diversity, resources, and capacity of people of the resistance. She urged people to get involved because “if we don’t step up, each day is going to get harder and harder.” Harriet Tubman said, “ The only way out is through.” These are not the times we chose but we must do what we must because we don’t have a choice.
One last point Richardson made was that a few days ago “we just got the support of a whole lot of people who didn’t realize they were part of the resistance.”
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NASA Scientists And Engineers Defend Science, Decry Steep Budget Cuts to Agency
Washington, DC—Something almost as strange as the discovery of dark matter itself happened outside the NASA headquarters building in Washington, DC on Monday morning. NASA scientists, engineers, technicians, and supporters protested ongoing government cutbacks outside their headquarters office in Washington, DC. They wanted to make the public aware of the impact that ongoing budget cuts and the spending bill would have on the U.S. space agency.
At 7 a.m., as civil servants were beginning their workday, dozens began arriving and stood for three hours with protest signs to tell the public they would no longer remain quiet about the budget cuts. One of the spokespersons of the group said the budget cuts are already being implemented despite Congress not having yet approved them.
The proposed budget cuts will reduce NASA staff by 25%, shut dozens of near earth, deep space, and earth research programs, both ongoing and in the planning stages at the space agency. The reductions in force would reduce staffing to 1960 levels at a time when NASA plans to begin its return to the moon with the Artemis lunar human project, while at the same time jump-starting its plans for human travel to Mars. These cuts would almost certainly lead to serious safety issues for those who embark on those missions, argued several authors who wrote a stinging analysis of the fiscal year 2026 budget cuts.
Almost all of those assembled declined to speak on the record about their disapproval and sense of betrayal over the cuts for fear of retribution. But scientists and engineers are typically some of the most unobtrusive and matter-of-fact thinking folks one is likely to meet, and to see them out on the street in front of their headquarters protesting the elected government leaders as well as the pressure coming from the White House through Doge, is striking.
There was plenty of evidence outside the NASA headquarters that there is already a struggle over what projects would be cut, as cuts are already underway as evidenced by the signs and faces of the scientists and engineers gathered on the sidewalk. NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro has bent to White House pressure before Congressional approval of the spending bill, and more cuts are likely to come for many of them, according to one of the speakers.
The NASA civil servants’ experience has been a story repeated throughout government since February, when the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s (Doge) scorched-earth policies first began at the Office of Personnel Management. Although a recent internal riff played out on social media between the Trump and Musk duo, Doge is still operating in agencies across the federal government. Doge personnel are still behind the pressure scheme to cull civil servants from the ranks of virtually every department and agency, except Immigration and Customs Enforcement and a few other police agencies.
Comparatively, the budget bill has allocated an unprecedented increase of 265% to the current annual Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention budget, according to a report from the American Immigration Council. ICE will get $29.9 billion in funding for enforcement and deportation operations, increasing ICE’s annual budget three-fold. The budget will allocate $46.6 billion on border wall construction, a policy already proven to be a failure. These allocations blow past NASA’s annual budget, and produce no benefits to society, according to the teport.
NASA’s FY 2026 budget is only 0.3 % of entire U.S. discretionary spending, according to the 2026 NASA budget report.
The 70 or so NASA civil servants protesting on Monday still managed to lighten the sidewalk mood with an inflatable Pikachu dancing and waving at the passing traffic. Many drivers honked their approval as they drove past the protesters on their way to work. Some of the signs were couched in humor as well: “We don’t Even Know What Dark Matter Is Yet,” and “Stopping Climate Change Is Our Moonshot,” and “In Science We Trust.”
Marshall Finch, a contractor who spoke as an individual and stressed that he was not speaking on behalf of any government agency, said the cuts were already happening “because contractors were already being laid off while civil servants were given a deferred resignation offer.” He added that civil servants were “facing unusual pressure” to “strongly consider taking the resignation [offer] by the leadership.”
Monica Gorman, Lead Organizer, Goddard Engineers, Scientists, and Technicians Association (IFPTE Local 29) said, “In all these attacks, they’ve attacking science at NASA, NOAA, and in the Department of Health and Human Services. They’re attacking scientists and engineers and federal workers across the whole government.” She urged everyone to get involved by speaking to those they know to join and get involved in the fight against these attacks. “This is the biggest fight of our lives and we are all in it together in solidarity,” she said.
Budget for FY 2026 Will Break NASA
The proposed cuts at NASA will discard billions in taxpayer investments in deep space and near earth probes, helio (sun) projects, planetary exploration, and associated project equipment already operating in space. Terminating these programs is certain to end the U.S. standing as a leader in space exploration and technology development, which NASA has provided the nation and the world since its inception in 1958. It will mean that $12 billion already spent on existing space programs will be discarded, according to a published report.
The president’s discretionary budget request for 2026 contains a 26% reduction in funding for NASA as compared to 2025. It reduces NASA funding to $18.8 billion from $24.8 billion, the smallest NASA funding allocation since 1961, eight years before the U.S. put a human on the moon, and less than three years after NASA was created. It is the largest cut in terms of percentage of funding since NASA’s inception.
This means that many programs will be cut, including existing space programs, future space programs already under development, and outreach programs for high school and college students. Programs centered on earth studies to predict weather and advance the understanding of how the climate emergency impacts crop yields and weather will also see severe cuts. Many future programs that have received funding and are still in development are slated to be eliminated altogether, meaning that funding already allocated and spent on those projects will be wasted.
“We have seen the President’s budget request. If it is passed by Congress, then that will include cuts to satellites and probes already doing science in outer space,” said Finch.
A published story in The Space Review concluded that Trump’s NASA budget was “deeply flawed,” and summed it up with three words, “unprecedented, unstrategic, and wasteful.” The report further criticized the cuts for it’s deprivation of vital resource investment on the heels of the Artemis moon program and future plan to take humans to Mars, a time when funding should be increased, not decreased for those projects.
NASA STEM Programs Supporting Youth Intellectual Development Will Be Cut
A mother of one of the civil servants presently working at NASA spoke on behalf of her son, who always dreamed of working at NASA. “His job at NASA was like a dream come true. Like a lot of other NASA employees, his job is on the line. By defunding science and research, by defunding NASA, we are taking away our kids dreams and futures,” she said.
Another NASA employee who did not give their name said, “This administration said that NASA has no place doing engagement and outreach with learning. It’s critical for NASA to engage so we can inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, and professionals so NASA can solve the big problems like climate change and getting to Mars.”
One might argue conversely that if the same policy were applied to the Department of Defense, which incidentally spends tens of millions of dollars annually on advertising and recruitment outreach, the DoD would suffer the same fate as will certainly happen as the result of RIFs of NASA civil servants and RIFs at other agencies.
NASA Inspired Generations Towards Science
There are many stories about how NASA created synergy around interest in science and technology because NASA developed a grassroots interest and sense of pride in arcane subjects. NASA scientists and engineers showed others what could be. If one could dream something, then why not strive to make it come to be? Such was the idea presented by President John Kennedy in 1962 when he said “We chose to go to the moon,” before an audience at Rice University Stadium. The dream to walk on the moon took flight at that very moment. It came to be on July 19, 1969, just seven years later.
But it was not getting to the moon and walking on it that was the payoff. It was the impact of the technology development and advancement, scientific achievements and undertakings by civil servants dedicating themselves to novel ideas that propelled the country and the world forward.
Great advancements were achieved in computer hardware, software and interface with equipment as the result of NASA funding for development and applications, using existing science and understanding of materials.
The concept of ‘software engineering’ and the ‘software engineer’ came into the lexicon of science speak as the result of a software coder, a woman named Margaret Hamilton, whose team began writing the computer code in 1965 to help Apollo missions successfully reach the moon. She also developed the concept of programming code for a real-time recovery of a computer failure so it could self-reset its system when its code failed to properly calculate its position (known as an exception). She thought of the idea when her daughter was with her watching a simulation test run by astronauts practicing for a mission. In her curiosity, her daughter’s hand flipped one of the switches controlling the guidance system. Hamilton thought to herself, what if this happened in space? There would be no recovery. Thus her daughter was the impetus for creating a recoverable software solution.
This process saved the Apollo 11 crew from having to abort its moon landing when certain unplanned conditions overloaded the lunar module Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) with a “1202 alarm.” The ability of the AGC to reset its own code in real time with no adverse consequence to the lunar module orientation it was controlling, was a revolutionary advancement in computer science. The concept of computer code reset is one example of the many accomplishments—too many to note here—made by NASA scientists and engineers.
Some Of NASA’s Extraordinary Achievements
NASA innovation has transformed life as we know it. Its progress has resulted in technology development that has and will continue to benefit the public. NASA has listed the most recent product development of its technologies since 1976, and these are presented on a NASA website named Spinoff.
The NASA website notes, “When Congress created NASA, it mandated the agency disseminate its innovations as widely possible. To that end, the Technology Transfer Program was created in 1964, and it has functioned under various names ever since, making it NASA’s longest continuously-operated mission.”
The ability of NASA to lead in space exploration and achievement was made possible by the diligence of its civil servants and contractors. Some of its noteworthy achievements include:
The Apollo program which successfully landed four teams of two astronauts on the moon and successfully returned them to Earth between 1969 and 1972. Apollo 13, a mission which almost resulted in losing three astronauts in space, demonstrated that NASA was capable of rewriting the manual of a mission from the ground and returning a stricken spacecraft to Earth. It rewrote the process for redundancy and safety on space travel. Since 1972, no human has returned to the moon.
The Voyager inter-planetary space program, consisting of spacecraft Voyager I and II which were launched in 1977, is credited with being the first interstellar probes to exit the influence of the sun’s solar flux and leave the solar system in 2012. These missions continue returning data about the cosmic flux to Earth for scientific study. Voyager I has a gold-plated record attached to it with recorded music and greetings in languages from across the Earth.
Voyager Mission design layout c. 1977. The Voyager I and II deep space missions are continuing to provide vital data 48 years from their launch and decades beyond their expected end of mission date. Image courtesy of NASA
The Perseverance Mars rover explorer landed on Mars in 2021 and included a payload of an operational laboratory, multiple cameras, sample tubes for later collection, and an autonomous, independent, unmanned autonomous vehicle helicopter, capable of flight in the thin atmosphere using its own computer guidance software program. The miniature helicopter named Ingenuity was self-charging, weighed about 4 pounds and flew 72 missions before a computer miscalculation resulted in a hard landing, it proved so successful that its mission was extended several times over. It was the first vehicle to independently fly on a planet other than Earth. On its underside was attached a small piece of cloth from the wing of the Wright brothers’ Flyer aircraft flown at Kitty Hawk in 1903.
Deep Cuts to NASA Are A Setback To Space Exploration And Technological Advances
The budget cuts to NASA would decimate not only scientific research and discoveries in space, it would have a significant impact on technological developments on Earth, according to a published report by Northeastern University. The extent of the budget cuts at NASA “[C]ould end up costing the U.S. more in the long run,” said Jacqueline McCleary, an assistant professor of physics at Northeastern University. McCleary said that decommissioning programs already underway creates additional costs. The programs cannot just be turned off.
The programs NASA has undertaken and completed have resulted in industries that have benefited everyone. GPS and cellular phones and communications are a few of the examples of how NASA has provided global benefits.
Jonathan Tuttle, a supporter of NASA, its scientists and engineers, summarized what was at stake: “Looking up to the stars and wondering what they are is something our ancestors have done ever since we gathered around campfires long before history began. NASA’s legacy is that it delivers the dream of flight to all of us. The warlords and petty tyrants don’t own the stars. We own the stars!”
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Federal Workers Fight For Continuity Of Government Operations
Washington DC—Dozens of Federal workers took to the sidewalks and streets outside administrative offices and departments for a third day as a five-alarm fire continued raging through government operations. That fire was lit by billionaire Elon Musk as he deployed surrogates inside multiple agencies throughout the U.S. Government to seal off offices and upend normal operations. His actions over the last week were with the consent of President Trump and were effectively dismantling normal government operations from within its own walls.
Key employees in certain departments were locked out of central computer systems at U.S. Treasury, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) FBI, and USAID. Lockouts were also reported occurring at the Department of Education and Department of Justice. Other agency Federal employees were reporting similar actions taken and passed their personal experiences to DCMediaGroup on the condition of anonymity. Many were reluctant to speak out for fear of retribution but urged the public to call their Congressional representatives and Senators for support.
International Agency for International Development (USAID) Offices Illegally Closed by Musk
Outside the U.S. International Agency for International Development (USAID), several hundred Federal workers rallied outside their office which is located at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Building on Monday at Noon. Over the weekend or before then, Elon Musk surrogates illegally entered and locked down their offices, took over the servers, and began taking down the website pages. This was reported by USAID officials from within its offices. Senator Tom Holland (D-MD) and Representatives Jamie Raskin (D-MD) along with Don Beyer (D-VA) said the actions taken by Musk were illegal and unconstitutional. They spoke outside USAID offices during a press conference Monday at noon.
Federal workers were shocked and saddened when they suddenly learned this morning by email they should not report to work because their offices were locked and their building access credentials were disabled. Many stood outside during the press conference barely able to comprehend their role in the unfolding U.S. Government crisis. Some of the workers hugged each other while some cried in each other’s arms.
Many USAID workers have been working on projects with the Congressionally created agency for their entire career.
The USAID Federal workers did not know if they would still have employment in the following days. It was reported that USAID would now fall under the control of the U.S. Department of State, however no such Congressional approval had taken place.
USAID is a government agency established by Congress in 1961, and later that year was approved by President John Kennedy. For 6 decades it has been responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance to promote global well-being, assist the economic growth, and improve living conditions in developing countries. Some of its many programs include developing strategies to fight pandemics and disease, providing family assistance, and infrastructure projects such as bridge construction, water treatment plants, and schools.
A Congressional delegation was barred from USAID even though Congress approved the Agency in 1961. Screenshot from Congressman Don Beyer account.
Kristina Drye, a speech writer, who was locked out of her office and up until Monday morning, worked at USAID, said that democratic principles promoted around the world were under attack and called on Congressional leadership to intervene. She further said that loss of such democratic principles would directly harm millions in developing countries worldwide who depend upon the assistance provided from USAID to help their nations. “People would die,” she said as a result of having funds shut off.
USAID has provided aid for decades to developing nations dealing with world issues, including conflicts, refugees, infrastructure development, disease and pandemic intervention programs, family development and assistance, food assault and many other programs. Drye said that USAID was responsible for using less than 1% of the part of the budget allocated for discretionary spending. In comparison, the Department of Defense is allocated nearly 57% of the budget for discretionary spending.
Update: 7 pm February 3. U.S. Department of State Marco Rubio said that USAID would fall under the supervision of the Department of State. However there was no approval from Congress to transfer control of the agency to the Department of State.
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Federal Workers Block Doors of Admin Building Over Elon Musk Data Breach
Nearly 100 Federal employees took part in a protest now into its second day of a takeover by Elon Musk surrogates of the high administration arm of the Federal government. Photo: DCMediaGroup
Washington DC—Federal employees and supporters returned to the main Federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM) building today in much greater numbers to continue protesting an incursion into its sprawling computer network by a team of Elon Musk’s computer surrogates.
About 100 Federal employees and supporters occupied the courtyard of the OPM building for most of Sunday afternoon and into the evening. For a brief period they blocked the doors to the building when a handful of self-identified ‘data miners’ waited to be admitted to the building. The small group of young men eventually left without entering after the protesters would not let them near the front doors. A team of DC Metropolitan Police stood nearby watching but did not intervene in the spontaneous doorway block. There was no attempt by the self-identified group to get past the doors and the doors remained locked from the inside.
Federal employees and supporters privately expressed deep anger and concern after learning that Elon Musk’s surrogates had gained access to the OPM building, revoked regular Federal employees’ authorized access credentials, and denied them login privileges into the personnel computer systems. As of late Sunday night the surrogates continued to lock Federal employees out of the systems while they accessed the systems.
There is no way to determine what they are doing with the systems or its vast trove of databases and information which records the personnel actions across the entire Federal government.
These personnel systems and databases house the business accounts and personal information of over 2 million former and presently active Federal employees, their personnel data, work history, job information, payroll records, and retirement benefits and information.
A massive intrusion of this scale taken against a system of secure government computer networks is unprecedented.
Similar activities by Elon Musk’s surrogates were reported at the U.S. Treasury and at USAID. Federal employees were denied login privileges into their systems while unauthorized persons connected to Elon Musk accessed key software, accounts, and databases.
The entire management and administrative arm of the Federal government files and accounts have been effectively captured and taken over by Musk’s surrogates and could conceivably be further accessed further by unknown unauthorized third parties or entities.
While a half dozen protesters blocked the doors the remaining group chanted slogans and heckled Musk’s surrogates inside who periodically looked down on the protesters from the windows of the fifth floor.
They chanted, “There’s a robbery in progress! Stop the steal!” and “No Oligarchs No king!.”
But the protesters laughed and relaxed the tension at least for at a few moments when one of them coined the phrase, “No Elon, no coup, no fascist shiba inu!” (Video below)
The shiba inu is a meme reference to a Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a fake government department which was not authorized by an act of Congress. Musk is recognized as the creator of this department to oversee the reduction in force (RIF) initiative of up to what may be removal of as much as 80% of the regular Federal employee workforce.
Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation manifesto written to outline a complete overhaul of the Federal government lists RIF of public servants and near complete elimination and replacement of its role in civil society.
The shiba inu dog is also the visual image on the DOGE meme coin, an intrinsically worthless cryptocurrency which Elon Musk began backing and supporting by recommending it as a worthy token sometime after developers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer created the cryptocurrency as a joke in 2013.
Towards the end of the night a security guard from the OPM came outside to lower the American and DC flags. One of the protesters questioned him about his role as a secretary guard if he was allowing un-credentialed third parties into the building to access commuter systems. He said he was just doing his job.
The OPM protests are planned to continue all next week as public interest has rapidly grown to do something about the unprecedented seizure and physical takeover and control of the administrative functions of the various departments of the Federal government.
We will continue to cover this story as developments occur.
Update: February 3, 0400 EST (4 am)
Several protesters who stayed late into the night keeping an eye on the OPM building doors watched as two people entered a service portal at the west side of the building after hours at approximately 2100 EST (9 pm).
There would typically be no official Federal employees entering the building at such late hours on a Sunday evening/Monday morning; certainly not using a portal to enter the OPM building. A witness said they left OPM to pick up food from a delivery request.
The witness, who is reporting their observations at OPM from an Bluesky account @MissMouse (missmouse.bsky.social) has been releasing video clips of the OPM activities and Federal employee protests since Sunday afternoon.
A group calling itself Shutdown DC is organizing daily protests around the OPM building starting Monday afternoon and plans a continuing presence outside the OPM building.
We will continue to update major developments of Elon Musk’s administrative takeover of the Federal government departments and agencies as these developments occur.
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Federal Workers Protest Elon Musk Takeover Of Top Government Office
Washington DC—A handful of Federal employees demonstrated against billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of the top Federal government administrative building on Saturday afternoon. They said their protest was spurred by the unauthorized breach of their data and financial information by surrogates working for Elon Musk. The operatives locked authorized Federal workers out of access to their computer systems and forced access to the government computer systems. The surrogates are associated with the billionaire’s corporations and are in his closest corporate circle.
Federal employees chanted, “ Hands off our data, hands off our money!”, “Six Trillion, you can’t have it!” and “No body voted for Elon Musk!” Meanwhile, five floors above them lights remained lit on the Saturday afternoon while several unidentified persons watched the protesters from the windows above.
The few employees said it was self-evident that the billionaire was the master planner orchestrating the actions inside the Theodore Rosevelt administration Office of Personnel Management (OPM). His actions were not close to resembling anything like the orderly and traditional transfer of government power from one elected executive to the next. The activities inside the OPM resembled an administrative coup of government operations they said.
Their signs read, “Democracy not Oligarchy, “ Save OPM,” “Hostile Takeover,” and “Democracy Died in Complacency.” The signs are references to Musk’s actions at OPM.
The Federal employees, who wished not to be identified, expressed anger and frustration that the stunning breach of security of computer information was authorized by Trump. The employees were themselves required to undergo extensive background investigations and be thoroughly credentialed before gaining access to even the most basic information systems. Such investigations and credentialing requirements take months to complete before access is approved with requirements for periodic additional credentialing.
The OPM building is located in a sleepy Federal office building zone in Northwest Washington DC at 1900 E. Street NW, and has rarely, if ever seen protests, at least by its own public servants.
According to published report by Reuters and widely reported elsewhere in major news websites, as well as reports circulating generally among Federal members’ offices, Musk’s associates were not granted official government credentials and had not been issued the typical government identification badges and security access permissions connecting them to access of OPM. They bypassed all layers of security at the OPM office spaces and connected external computer drives to the entire trove of government employee information. They set up couches and worked around the clock to access data without oversight. This data includes but is not limited to email accounts, personal identification information (PII), financial records, evaluations, work history, retirement data, and assessment reports.
A published report established that the same type of activity was unfolding elsewhere in Federal government departments, including at the U.S. Treasury, where yet other surrogates of Elon Musk had also gained access to the central money disbursement accounts. Such accounts are managed at the highest levels of government security and control the payment of $6 trillion annually in Social Security, Medicare, Federal worker pay, IRS tax refunds, and government contracts. The accounts are the working spigot of Congressionally authorized disbursements.
David Lebryk, the top Treasury career manager responsible for access to the accounts, reportedly clashed with Elon Musk’s operatives as he tried to stop their breach of U.S. Treasury accounts but he was escorted out of his office and his access was revoked.
There remains a question as to whether or not the president has the constitutional authority to take any role in the U.S. Treasury account operation or seize access to the account, lock out the designated manager, and delegate authority to an unelected external third party.
The OPM building itself stands as the central hub of Federal Government administrative operations and houses a vast computer array and links to the most sensitive PII data of millions of Federal employees, both past and present.
Up to this moment, the OPM has been the most continuously stable pilar of government operations; not subject to the periodic transition of personnel as occurs in the changeover of elected branches of governance—the Executive, Legislature, and High Court. All the practical operations of government and the authority at OPM is delegated by Congress and put into operation at the OPM. But the stability of this pilar is being shaken at its foundation as PII access and control points are breached by the billionaire’s surrogates.
It is questionable as to the constitutionality of said actions and as to whether or not the Executive branch has been vested the authority to wrestle control of and take over the administrative arm of the government and then delegate control to an unelected third party, Elon Musk.
The Federal employees told of how earlier in the week they were confused and later angry after they received a suspicious series of email from an account identified as the official OPM. The email was sent to every Federal employee with the subject line, “Fork in the Road,” and spurred a government human resource crisis. It offered to cancel their return to regular work offices with 8 months pay and benefits under the condition they reply with one word “Resign,” to end their employment. It was part of certain reductions in force (RIF) slated to come later on under a plan to reduce the Federal service workforce by 80%. The email did not tell when the RIFs would occur, but vaguely implied they could be given 8 months of pay and vacation but they must respond to the message with a one word “resign” not later than February 6. Legal analysts said the agreement was not legally binding and employees would be tricked and trapped if they took the deal.
The suspicious nature of the email created instant chaos in the minutes after it was sent as managers in agencies across the government scrambled to determine if it was legitimate. OPM had not previously issued such a vague and sweeping notice directly to its public servants.
An email titled “Fork in the road,” was a mimic of a previously sent email from Elon Musk to Twitter employees in November 2022 after he purchased the media platform and then terminated most of the twitter workforce. They were also asked to take a severance offer; were not paid as promised after they took the offer; and were then later forced to seek payment in court.
In a speech before Congress, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) said Federal employees should ignore the email offer from Musk and called it bogus and urged non-compliance.
Federal workers vowed to return to protest again on Sunday.
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Indigenous Activist Leonard Peltier Sentence Commuted
Washington DC—Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of Indigenous Activist Leonard Peltier on January 20, just minutes before his term was set to expire. It was one of his last official acts as President.
Leonard Peltier was convicted 47 1/2 years ago for the killing two FBI agents in June 1975 during a raid on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. But many questions remain unanswered about the legality of the evidence submitted against him during his trial. Indigenous groups and supporters have maintained and championed his innocence since his trial conviction in 1977.
The commuted sentence is an act of clemency but not a full pardon. It forgives a sentence or a portion of a sentence and it does not restore one’s civil rights. A pardon both forgives a sentence and cleans the criminal record while restoring full civil rights of citizenship. Peltier will have to stay in home detention to serve what remains of his sentence. A full pardon would have afforded Leonard Peltier full civil rights and freedoms of any citizen.
The Presidential Certificate of Commutation was issued, in part, by the urging of the U.S. Attorney who oversaw his prosecution during his trial and appeal. It was also supported by many advocacy groups, the Dalai Lama, and indigenous tribes both here and abroad. It reads:
The President is commuting the life sentence imposed on Leonard Peltier so that he serves the remainder of his sentence in home confinement. He is now 80 years old, suffers from severe health ailments, and has spent the majority of his life (nearly half a century) in prison. This commutation will enable Mr. Peltier to spend his remaining days in home confinement but will not pardon him for his underlying crimes.
Mr. Peltier is a Native American activist who is currently serving life in prison for killing two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and escaping from federal prison. Tribal Nations, Nobel Peace laureates, former law enforcement officials (including the former U.S. Attorney whose office oversaw Mr. Peltier’s prosecution and appeal), dozens of lawmakers, and human rights organizations strongly support granting Mr. Peltier clemency, citing his advanced age, illnesses, his close ties to and leadership in the Native American community, and the substantial length of time he has already spent in prison.”
Leonard Peltier Advocated For Indigenous Justice and Restoration of Lands Illegally Taken
Leonard Peltier is an enrolled citizen of the is Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. He is an indigenous activist and was involved in the American Indian Movement (AIM) which fought for restoration of land rights and indigenous peoples freedoms as provided in the Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868. It was the deliberate abrogation of this and subsequent treaties and other agreements signed between the U.S. Government and Indigenous leaders which led to the eventual formation of AIM.
He advocated for the social justice of his people and cared for the impoverished members of his community. He was co-owner of an automobile repair shop in Seattle where customers who were unable to afford costly repairs could get discounted rates or free services for repairs. The shop also provided a halfway house for those recovering from substance abuse.
He joined AIM in 1972 to help the indigenous movement fight for civil rights. In June 1975 he was at the Pine Ridge Reservation as a part of AIM to help in efforts to restore peace between political factions on the reservation.
Evidence In Trial of Shootout At Piney Ridge Reservation Woefully Inadequate
On June 25, 1975, two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams went to the Pine Ridge Reservation in unmarked cars wearing civilian clothes to serve a warrant to another person, Jimmy Eagle, who was at Jumping Bull’s ranch. Jimmy Eagle was a suspect in another crime which took place previously. A shootout resulted in the two FBI agents being wounded and another member of AIM being killed. About the time of the shootout, another car pulled up to the scene and a passenger got out, according to a statement from Peltier to Peter Kroft for a 60 Minutes interview in 1992. During the interview Peltier said he was not the person who killed the FBI agents. Kroft pressured him to tell who was but he said he “was not a rat” and would not name the person who actually shot and killed the FBI agents. Peltier has always maintained he did not kill the FBI agents. He also admitted to being involved in the shootout.
One of the glaring facts of Peltier’s trial is not so much the evidence presented against him but the evidence necessary for a conviction that was not presented. The shell casings of Peltier’s rifle did not match those found near the slain FBI agents. The shell casings left in the trunk of the car where the agents were killed at point blank range were not from Peltier’s rifle.
A published report in Navajo Nation outlined inconsistencies with trial evidence and irregularities with jury selection which under today’s trial standards whould have been sufficient grounds to grant Leonard Peltier a new trial. Even under later trial standards there was adequate opportunity for subsequent administrations to order a new review of his case.
“Kevin Sharp [Peltier’s attorney] points out that judicial review of cases was different in 1977 than it is today. Ruled inadmissible at the time, the jury in Peltier’s trial never heard about the relevant underlying tensions between factions at Pine Ridge Reservation leading up to AIM followers being invited there. There was hidden exculpatory evidence, which normally would have been cause for a new trial. One member of the jury admitted a prejudice against Native Americans and was, nonetheless, permitted to serve as a juror in Peltier’s case. The jury didn’t know Myrtle Poor Bear had falsified her witness affidavit. They also didn’t know that ballistic experts could not match shell casings in the trunk of the shot-at FBI agent’s car to Peltier’s rifle. Further, misconduct on the part of the FBI never prompted another trial. Rebuking former FBI Director Louis Freeh for opposing executive clemency, former Attorney General Janet Reno under President Bill Clinton never called to question the prosecutorial misconduct in Peltier’s case.”
Commutation Came Far Too Late
The trial and conviction of Leonard Peltier will forever be counted among the injustices waged against Indigenous peoples of this country. The commutation of Leonard Peltier’s sentence came when it was most convenient for the outgoing administration to sign it. Joe Biden could have signed it years ago but political pressure made it an unpopular act and he delayed it until the very last minute. The FBI has always been opposed to clemency for Leonard Peltier.
The breaking news report that Peltier’s sentence had been commuted, diverted for at least a moment, the rapt media attention on the ugly line dance of oligarch sycophants kissing the ring of the one who would be king for the nation’s 60th presidential inauguration.
Leonard Peltier is in ill health the result of nearly 50 years held in maximum confinement facilities and denial of adequate healthcare. He can barely walk and he uses a wheelchair. He has diabetes and he has suffered a stroke. He can barely speak. He may never get full rights and freedoms restored to him but he will be surrounded and supported by close family members caring for him during his last years. And that is at least some measure of security and closure for he and his family and those who fought for decades for his release.
In his journal written while imprisoned and published in 1999, “My Life Is A Sundance,” he wrote: “Innocence has a single voice that can only say over and over again, ‘I didn’t do it.’ Guilt has a thousand voices, all of them lies.”
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Tens of Thousands Rally Against Trumpism At the People’s March 2025
Washington DC—Tens of thousands from a coalition of hundreds of groups rallied and marched through downtown Washington DC in opposition to the incoming president and his agenda on the eve of his second inauguration, Saturday. It was the same president and agenda they rallied and marched against on the eve of his first inauguration in 2017.
Their issues and rallying cries were plainly written on their signs and were as evident in their voices as they echoed off the granite walls of the office buildings they passed. They paused frequently and when they passed the windows at the seat of power in the White House and Old Executive Mansion their voices rose there as well. But with inauguration weekend at hand and many government officials having already cleared out their offices there were few to hear them. (video of People’s March 2025)
The throngs of protesters were swarmed by scores of reporters and independent media influencers often tripping up their pace and stopping their progress. As many as 100,000 marched proving that their will to resist is strong and they remained determined to resist against the incoming president’s agenda to strip more individual rights and diminish any more norms of democratic government.
The People’s March 2025 looked and felt just like the women’s march of 2017 only this time it was comparatively much smaller and those gathered were therefore able to form columns and navigate through the streets. In 2017 nearly a million, by some estimates, were crowded in such a concentrated mass of humanity onto the National Mall that it was impossible for them to effectively form any column or organize a march anywhere through the city.
The People’s March 2025 was certainly not as big as the historic Women’s March of 2017 but it didn’t need to be to prove its point. What it lacked in numbers was offset by a resolve to resist. And they demonstrated that there was plenty for them to resist.
This inauguration year there were many carrying homemade signs and banners with the similar words and messages, and voices echoing the same chants as in 2017. “I can’t believe I have to do this again,” read one, “Resist,” read another, “No King,” read yet another.
The People’s March 2025 will not go down in history as epic march compared with the historic marches of the past. But it does signify the beginning of what is likely to be a contentious period of resistence in Washington DC.
Many wore embroidered pink pussy hats and carried signs about access to reproductive healthcare as they did in 2017. Other sign texts ruminated the climate emergency, buoyed the Black Lives Matter Movement, demanded passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) (it already has gained enough States’ legislative approvals to be enacted), demanded protections for the rights of the LGBTQ community and immigrants not fully made citizens, and many other groups.
The People’s March 2025 demonstrates that there are still many concerned about the direction this country is going. There is deep-rooted dissatisfaction with rulings from the Supreme Court, excessive expenditures of defense spending while education and social programs suffer, and the signage of the People’s March 2025 reflect those issues and more. The incoming administration has centered the interests of the billionaire class as many of the new president’s political nominees are ultra wealthy and billionaires. The billionaire class has bought into and infused itself throughout government and that does not bid well for anyone—left leaning or right, according to Senator Bernie Sanders.
The resistence has tasted Trumpism before and spat it out then. It watched the MAGA party meltdown and its assault of the U.S. Capitol during an insurrection in 2021 yet it kept its cool and held itself together. The incoming president squirmed and slid out of three trials and certain findings of guilt and the resistance again remained calm. On January 6, 2025 the resistence did not break into and raid the U.S. Capitol when the president won a hotly contested campaign, unlike his followers did. The resistance is therefore ready and able to spat out Trumpism and oligarchy yet again this time around.
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Jimmy Carter Built Legacy of Public Service Was Oldest Surviving President
Washington DC—Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States and oldest surviving former Chief Executive, died today at age 100. He served as President from from January 1977 to January 1981. He was Governor of Georgia from 1971-1975 and served as Georgia State Senator from 1963-1967. He married his lifetime partner, Rosalynn Smith in 1946, a union lasting 76 years. Rosalynn Carter preceded him on November 19, 2023.
Jimmy Carter was a Naval Academy Midshipman studying Nuclear Engineering from 1943 to 1946 and a graduate in the class of 1947. He accepted an accelerated commission due to WWII. He went on to serve aboard the USS Submarine Sandwolf. He served in the Navy until 1953 and he was awarded the WWII Victory Medal and Dolphin insignia. He resigned his commission and returned to Georgia to help his father run his peanut busness.
His Administration replaced the Gerald Ford Administration, which overlapped and followed the tumultuous Nixon and Watergate period. His Presidency was seen as a revitalization of trust in government and a break from a troubled time of steep erosion in public trust of the Executive Branch which preceded his administration.
Once in office, his vision was to enact secure ethics standards throughout government and in the Executive Branch to reestablish trust in Oval Office decisions. His policies laid the ethics bedrock in governmental affairs across its agencies for decades to come.
On his second day in office he kept a campaign promise by granting an unconditional pardon to hundreds of thousands of Vietnam “draft dodgers,” many of which had fled to Canada to avoid certain combat service in Vietnam. His Executive Order granted them amnesty and honorable discharges under what became known as the ‘Carter Program’ but such Veterans were permanently locked out of Veterans benefits for being absent without leave and in desertion during wartime. Many Veterans groups opposed the move because it forgave thousands who abandoned their responsibilities during the Vietnam War. But had it not been for his Executive Order, thousands of Veterans would not have been able to reassimilate into their communities after the unpopular war ended.
Up to that point pardons were available to Vietnam Veterans who fled service under the Ford program. Pardons under Ford were contingent upon voluntary civil service of some amount of months based upon the length of absence from military service but under the Carter Program pardoned Veterans received clemency without requiring voluntary civil service.
While in office he brokered the Camp David Peace Accords in 1978, a 12-day marathon of secret meetings between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. A pair of agreements laid the groundwork for a lasting peace agreement between Israel and Egypt and ended a 3 decades’ long military standoff that elluded five Presidents before him. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat shared the Nobel Peace Prize later that year for their peace agreement.
The Camp David agreements generated controversy however, because Palestinian leaders were not consulted or included in the negotiations during the 12-day accords. The occupied Palestinian territories were not guaranteed sovereignty in the Camp David agreement.
Jimmy Carter was environmentally minded, perhaps the most “green“ minded president who has served. He convinced Congress to pass the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act to protect 104 million acres of Alaska wilderness. He signed it into law on December 2, 1980. The remote refuge would protect wildlife for future generations. In recent years the refuge was thrown into controversy as attempts were made to build a road through it. In May 2022, he filed an amicus brief in the dispute and in opposition to developing the land.
Economic Challenges Trouble Carter Administration
His presidency was not without controversy. Inflation and unemployment undermined the economy during his administration. OPEC raised oil prices and growing U.S. demand caused gasoline shortages. At that time the U.S. was importing 40% of its energy needs. Economic difficulties resulted in what he called a “crisis in confidence.” On July 14, 1979, he laid out plans for energy independence in a speech to the nation about energy and inflation. His plan to reduce reliance on imported oil would soon be preempted by another crisis in Iran: the overthrow of the Shah and the U.S. Embassy takeover.
Bridge of Turquoise—Desert of Despair
On November 4, 1979, Iranian students raided the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 66 hostages, beginning a 444 day standoff lasting until the very last minutes of his Presidency. Up to 1979 the U.S. and Iran shared mutual interests in global influence. Shah Reza Pahlavi, the king of Iran, sought to become a regional military power. The U.S. traded military equipment for oil in an agreement which elevated the Shah to the 5th most influential country with billions in military projects. In return Iran provided discounted oil to the U.S. and gave the U.S. a close ally in the Middle East.
The Shah was overthrown in early 1979 as popular discontent rose against him among the middle class, On February 2, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had been living in exile in France, returned to Iran, and soon unseated over 25 years of American influence in the region. This undermined the security of thousands of U.S. and other foreign workers in Iran.
The hostage crisis was triggered days after the Shah, Reza Pahlavi was granted access to healthcare in New York City for cancer treatment. This incident led to the students taking over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, an event that would eventually lead to President Carter’s political downfall.
The U.S. embassy takeover in Tehran enraged the American public. President Carter sought a negotiated settlement with the release of U.S. Embassy petitions, but the students agreed to the release only Women and Black Americans in the early months of the standoff because of their minority status. As Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran and subsequently to power in 1979, relations between the U.S. and Iran deteriorated and tensions over the hostage crisis made it seemingly unsolvable.
Throughout this crisis Carter worked patiently with his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński to broker a release of the hostages through diplomatic channels, appealing to the UN and even the World Court for help. But the hostages were not released. The anger from voters would rise until the election in 1980.
Carter authorized a secret military rescue plan called Eagle Claw, which conceived a special operations group from all the branches of the military that eventually became known as the Delta Force. The mission ended tragically in the desert on April 24, 1980, when a helicopter collided with a C-130 refueling aircraft on a makeshift runway, killing eight service members. The burned service members bodies were dragged and displayed on Iranian TV, enraging the entire U.S. It was a spiritual low for the country and a calamitous outcome of a mission that would have restored national confidence in the Executive Office had it succeeded—an outcome his Administration had worked so hard to achieve.
This incident placed the White House in an unenviable position of appearing weak on international relations. The hostages were not released until minutes after Ronald Reagan took the Oath of Office on January 20, 1981. In recent years evidence came to light that operatives in the Reagan Administration negotiated with the Khomeini regime to hold the hostages until after Reagan was sworn into office.
A recent published report in the New York Times, illuminated evidence of a trip by John Connelly, a Texan stalwart in Republican political circles at the time, was a lobbying effort to delay the hostage release until after Ronald Reagan was sworn in. Had knowledge of Irangate been exposed before the election it is likely those responsible in the Reagan Administration would have faced a flood of political backlash.
The remaining U.S. Embassy hostages were released within the hour of President Ronald Reagan’s oath of office.
Incidentally the failed hostage rescue exposed serious lapses in coordination of military branches and resulted in the creation of Special Operations Command. The crisis launched the career of TV reporter Ted Koppel and popularized his nightly news program “The Iran Crisis” because his even-tempered coverage of the story captivated viewers. It was eventually renamed Nightline after the Iran hostage crisis was resolved. Koppel would go on to host Nightline for another 25 years.
An Environmentalist Futurist
Jimmy Carter was the first President to envision a green future of renewable energy as a path away from fossil energy sources, decades before it became an economic and social imperative. In August 1979 he was first to commission solar panel installation on the West Wing of the White House, having 32 panels installed. The panels generated enough energy to meet the hot water needs at the White House. His vision to produce 20% of the country’s national energy needs by the year 2000, most certainly would have relieved the country’s energy dependence on fossil energy sources and its vulnerability to fossil energy price fluctuations.
His vision for energy dependence continued after he left office. He leased 10 acres and installed a solar farm in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, which continues to generate 1.3 MW annually, and supplies 50% of the town energy needs. It demonstrated a renewable energy project could be scaled nationwide and would have benefited the nation’s energy policies.
Carter Achieved Many Successes After He Left Office
After leaving office in January 1981, he envisioned a new direction and dedicated his life to public service. He and Rosalynn Carter established the Carter Institute, in partnership with Emory University. The Carter Institute was committed to fundamental human rights, the alleviation of human suffering, preventing and resolving conflicts, enhancing freedom and democracy, and improving health. The Carters have overseen transparent election standards in dozens of countries.
He joined with Habitat for Humanity in 1984 and assisted in home construction with Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter for 35 years and into his 90s, proving that age is not a barrier to productivity. In 1993 he helped Habitat for Humanity build 10 homes in 1 week on Benning Road, Southeast, Washington DC.
He was the recipient of many awards and accolades, for his humanitarian work and public service.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter the Presidential Medal of Freedom for the Camp David Accords and their work in the fields of international peace, health issues, and the environment.
Nobel Peace Prize Recipient 2002
In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize ”for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development,“ according to the Nobel website.
He won three Grammy Awards in the category of Best Spoken Word or Non-musical Album in 2006, 2015, and 2016, and was nominated nine times for the award.
Carter Slammed Supreme Court Rulings on Corporate Personhood and Citizens United
He said of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Corporate Personhood, “I think the most stupid decision that the Supreme Court ever made and one of the most damaging was to rule that corporations are people and that major corporations now can give unlimited supplies of money to candidates.”
In 2015 he learned he had cancer and it had spread to his brain and revealed it publicly in 2019 during a church service. He was completely at ease about his death, saying, “I obviously prayed about it. I didn’t ask God to let me live, but I asked God to give me a proper attitude toward death. And I found that I was absolutely and completely at ease with death,” Carter said in 2019, according to CNN.
The engineering building at the Naval Academy, a place he spent many nights studying, was renamed Carter Hall in his honor in 2023.
On October 1, this year he reached age 100, the oldest surviving president.
On November 6, he voted in this year’s presidential election, one of his last acts of civic duty.
The Carter Institute has set up a message board on which admirers may leave personal notes to Jimmy Carter’s legacy.
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Starbucks Barista Strike Spreads To 300 Stores Across U.S.
Washington DC—Over 5000 baristas walked off their jobs on Christmas eve in the largest action ever taken against Starbucks corporation. It was the fifth day of an escalating strike stretching from coast to coast across the country. The action involved over 300 stores that had previously voted to join Starbucks Workers United Union (SBWU) according to a press release from the union.
The strike comes amidst growing tensions between SBWU Union representatives and Starbucks corporate lawyers after 98% of union members voted to reject a wage increase of less than 2%. The Starbucks wage offer amounts to about 35 to 50 cents per worker and would not go into effect until the next fiscal year. The corporation offered no increases or relief for its barista healthcare package. (See video at foot of this story or here.)
The cost of living for the average U.S. worker was 2.7% ending on November 2024, according to a calculated cost average provided by the U.S. Department of Labor. For the same period In 2023, the cost of living increase was 2.6%. That means that the wage increase offer from Starbucks corporation was effectively at least 0.7% lower than the increase in the cost of living for last year and another 0.6% lower for the year before, placing Starbucks baristas at an increased economic disadvantage in terms of inflation.
Meanwhile Starbucks corporation has enjoyed increasing profits year over year during the same two periods. Starbucks corporation is the second highest profitable fast food company in the nation.
Union Stores Provide Barista A Voice
In December 2021 baristas in the first U.S. Starbucks store voted to form a union in Buffalo, NY. In the three years since then about 517 stores have voted to join SBWU Union with a steady increase of baristas voting to unionize at several stores each week. Each store is considered a separate work site, so baristas in each location are required to independently vote to join the union, and each store requires a majority of baristas to vote for union protection.
Starbucks representatives would not negotiate with the baristas when the union first organized but showed up to negotiations anyway without responding in substance to union negotiators. Starbucks corporate lawyers would only listen to union offers and then abruptly walk out. As the number of locations began to increase and public pressure began to build on Starbucks representatives to bargain with the union, they began to respond during the negotiations. Growing awareness that baristas were unionizing brought pressure on Starbucks corporation to take the union seriously and it first began to respond to the SBWU Union negotiation team in February 2024, over 2 years after the first Starbucks stores unionized.
The corporate representatives promised to complete a negotiated package by the end of 2024 but their wage and benefits offer to SBWU Union fell far short of union expectations. The backtrack began after the incoming anti-union administration was elected. It cannot be absolutely determined whether or not the election was the reason Starbucks representatives backtracked on their promises to offer reasonable wage increases but it is apparent, at least coincidentally, that many of the incoming administration’s cabinet and key position appointees are noted billionaires with corporate interests and none are union supporters.
“Starbucks has yet to present workers with a serious economic proposal. This month, less than two weeks before their end-of-year deadline, Starbucks proposed an economic package with no new wage increases for union baristas this year and a guarantee of only 1.5% in future years, which amounts to less than 50 cents an hour for most baristas,” wrote Molly Nunez, a press spokesperson for SBWU.
Starbucks Profits While Baristas Struggle
Starbucks is one of the most profitable companies in the United States with over 16,480 locations in the U.S. and over 40,200 locations worldwide, according to Cafely, a statistical research blog.
According to a Starbucks financial release in September, 2024, consolidated net revenues declined 3%, including on a constant currency basis, but Starbucks still had $9.1 billion in net revenues.
In 2023, net revenues were $6.9 billion.
There is sharp contrast between the median Starbucks barista wage of $17.50 per hour compared to the $50,000 per hour compensation package for CEO Brian Niccol. The Starbucks CEO makes over 2800 times the median wage of Starbucks baristas.
Court House Starbucks in Northern Virginia Joins Strike
The Starbucks store at Court-House in Northern Virginia joined the strike for 1 day. It was a cold and icy Christmas eve but several dozen took place in the strike which included affiliated union representatives and union allies as well as baristas from the store itself. Several former baristas also joined the strike to show their support of the baristas now employed.
All but one of its baristas from the Court House location took part in the strike. Managers from other Starbucks locations opened and staffed the store but the striking baristas outside dissuaded dozens of customers from crossing the picket line into the store by their presence. Baristas were careful not to block the doors of the store and allowed customers to freely go into the store but many customers chose not go inside in sympathy with strikers. Other customers chose to patronize a open deli across from the Court House Starbucks. Striking baristas handed out flyers to customers outlining their concerns about Starbucks low wage offer, worker treatment, lack of hours and reduced staffing, while they explained why they were striking. Some customers joined baristas for free coffee and doughnuts which baristas provided on a table outside the store.
Baristas and supporters picketed into the afternoon, chanting demands for a fair and equitable contract. They waited and watched as the managers staffing the store closed it at 12 noon, 6 hours before it was scheduled to close.
Sam Ducore, a barista for 13 years and a union leader at the Court House Starbucks said that wages have not kept up with inflation and told of the economic struggle many baristas face. He also spoke of the many hundreds of unresolved labor practice complaints still pending with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an independent Federal agency that mediates issues in the workplaces of private employers.
“The company still has 100s of unresolved unfair labor practice [complaints],” said Ducore. “They have backtracked on the negotiations and not given us a fair wage.” Ducore explained that baristas are currently paid starting wages of $16.75 per hour but must work 5 years to qualify for a wage increase and then must work another 5 years to qualify for a second increase. He also noted the lack of hours given to baristas often fell under the 20 hour threshold for healthcare benefits. This along with late posting of schedules made it difficult for baristas to plan their work and life balance, he explained.
“They’re out here playing with people’s lives,” he said. He related his personal experience of being forced to hold off travel plans to visit family out of State during the holidays because the store manager posted the work schedule too late for him to plan travel.
The NLRB is vested with the power to safeguard employees’ rights to organize and to determine whether to have unions as their bargaining representative. The agency also acts to prevent and remedy unfair labor practices committed by private sector employers and unions, according to its website. Starbucks has hundreds of pending cases related to barista petitions.
Many Customers Supported The Starbucks Barista Strike
Many customers supported the strike once they understood why baristas were striking and decided not to enter the Court House location, at least for the period while the strike was in progress. Most customers who did not go into the store did not want to comment about their decision not to go inside but one customer did. Mya Mason who had previous experiences working in retail, said she did not go inside because she understood what was at stake with the workers struggling to make ends meet.
“I think it’s commendable that the working class is uniting,” said Mason. “If they don’t get what they’re asking for I’d choose not to go into Starbucks again,” she said.
Mason also was disappointed that Starbucks corporation stood against the Palestinian rights, an issue important to her. She previously boycotted Starbucks for a period over this issue.
Multiple union leaders joined the Starbucks baristas on the picket line, including Joseph McClure, President of DC-Baltimore Pride at Work, a union which advocates for the LGBTQIA+ community. DC-Baltimore Pride at Work is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America (CWA).
“Pride at Work and CEA supports SBWU Union because so many Students baristas are LGBTQIA+,” said McClure. “One big issue for us is that most workers can’t afford to live in the neighborhoods they work because housing is too expensive and they have to commute a half hour or more just to get to work. Workers rights are human rights so we support the workers trying to unionize.”
After the store had closed early, customers continued to stop only to find locked doors. Ducore waited and watched the disappointed customers stand at the door for a few moments before he spoke, “You see, this is what happens when Starbucks doesn’t treat their baristas right—they go on strike.” It was probably the most effective message helping customers to understand what Starbucks baristas were going through and that there were consequences for Starbucks labor practices.
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Baristas Vote To Serve Starbucks CEO A Hot Strike Following His 35 Cent Raise Offer
Washington DC—Just in time for the holidays, over 10,000 Starbucks Baristas voted to strike at up to 537 stores across the country. The vote comes after top management made a final offer of a paltry 2% raise on a contract negotiated over the last 8 months. Baristas in three States will stop brewing lattes and blending frappuccinos starting Friday morning at the start of the busiest shopping weekend before Christmas. The escalating strike will begin in Seattle, LA, and Chicago, and will spread to other locations across the country.
The announcement came on Thursday, 19 December night during a webinar attended in person by over 500 barista union representatives of Starbucks Workers United Union from Los Angeles stores of the coffee giant. It was viewed by 1000s of baristas online. The strike is scheduled to last for 5 days until Christmas eve, and will hit Starbucks corporate offices deep in its pockets during its most busy and profitable time of the year.
Sylvia Baldwin, the lead contract negotiator on behalf of the union asked the assembly of baristas, “How do we handle disrespect?” And to answer her own question she described how the last 8 months since April 2024, their contract negotiation team had bargained in earnest with the company lawyers but was slapped down with the offer that “was [valued] less than the cost of a stick of gum.”
Baldwin also noted that Starbucks representatives did not offer any improvements to the healthcare options it offers its baristas. Starbucks is the second largest fast food corporation in the country. McDonalds Corporation is number one.
Another spokeswoman at the webinar, Jazmine Riley noted that corporate managers are given 18 weeks of maternity leave while baristas are given only 6 weeks of maternity leave. Brian Niccol the new Starbucks CEO was offered a $113 million pay package, more than 10,000 times the average pay of baristas.
The Starbucks strike announcement came as another corporate behemoth, Amazon, watched as its drivers walked away from their delivery routes in response to a negotiation stalemate in Amazon worker pay, worker’s conditions, environmental, and anti-democratic policies at Amazon warehouses. In that strike 1000s of Union represented workers began picketing on the same day and plan to continue striking until next week. The issues raised by Amazon workers parallel the narratives of Starbucks baristas and resonate a common theme in their workplaces: workers are paid less than it economically possible for them to live in the economy.
Workers in the service industry are increasingly standing up for their own interests and forming or joining unions. Workers are no longer willing to be a silent partner in creating the vast amounts and record wealth that corporate owners and managers enjoy while worker compensation remains below a living wage, healthcare remains unaffordable, and corporate CEOs and management receive compensation thousands of times greater than the average worker.
“The corporate big wigs have no idea what’s coming,” said J. J. Dezion, a spokeswoman at the webinar. She further added that Starbucks Workers United Union had reached a tipping point with barristas, having reached 537 locations which had voted to unionize and representing over 10,000 baristas, a record which was growing. Seven additional locations voted to unionize last week.
The meteoric rise of union representation at Starbucks locations would have been unthinkable just four years ago. There are more than double the number of unionized locations compared to two years ago when only 200 stores had voted to unionize. The first Starbucks locations voting to unionize were in Buffalo NY in December 2021, just 3 years ago.
A press release issued by Starbucks Workers United Union urged allies to become involved in worker’s issues and to support their efforts to improve their benefits. The press release exposed a corporate culture of callousness towards baristas while living high off their labor.
“Starbucks has lost its way. We know that because we see it every day in our stores. We also know that because this year Starbucks gave Brian Niccols a compensation package of $113 million, while also giving its baristas paltry raises – which for most baristas are the equivalent of 30 and 50 cents an hour. It’s insulting and shows their failing to value the people who earn their profits and run their stores.”
The press release also pointed out the elitist culture of its headquarters staff, in effect, comparing them to feudal lords, “Our workplaces are Starbucks stores, where we interact with customers every day. Brian Niccol’s office is a private jet, and executives work out of cushy executive headquarters. We need allies and customers to join us and show them who really runs Starbucks.”
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Law and Order for Me, but Not for Thee. Morality Was Never the Issue.
Trangender people, Abortion, Critical Race Theory, Books, Wokeness, Immigrants, Crime
Many would think that the religious right would have issues with Donald Trump, convicted felon, serial cheater, the subject of numerous accusations of alleged sexual assault. As it turns out, his election has never been about moral issues.
Trump promises to protect women and at the same time paints immigrants as criminals when immigrants statistically commit fewer crimes than U.S. born citizens. One can only conclude that the far right cares more about assaults and rapes committed by immigrants than they do about those committed by U.S. citizens.
RFK Jr is a serial cheater who molested his babysitter and whose behavior appears to have led his first wife to suicide. Matt Gaetz, no longer a nominee for AG is alleged to have had sex with a minor and engaged in sex trafficking. There are details relating to an assault allegation against Pete Hegseth, a man who, like Trump, is known to have cheated on two of his three wives. Linda McMahon, inexplicably nominated as education secretary, is the subject of a lawsuit alleging that she overlooked the abuse of ring boys by a WWE anouncer. Prior to the election, hints about Trump’s relationship with the notorious Ephebophile /Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein began to emerge. Pam Bondi, his new nominee for AG was responsible for allowing Epstein to avoid consequences in Florida while she was AG there. It didn’t matter. While QAnon looks under rocks for pedophiles, they display selective blindness to Trump and his minions. To my knowledge, Elon Musk has not been accused of sexual assault but has been accused of running a hostile work environment and sexual harrassment. I am also reminded that Elon Musk has fathered 12 children, many of whom were born out of wedlock. Something that you would think would offend the ostensibly moral far right fundamentalists.
We could easily be led to believe that the other major reason that the religious right supported Trump was over the subject of abortion. If Hitler had been running for president on the promise of banning abortion, something that Hitler actually did, at least for the Aryans (at least one exception was made for a Jewish couple), much of the religious right would have voted for him. Nobody thinks that Hitler actually valued life and nobody can accuse the far right of caring about the well being of children that are not them and/or under their control. Similarly, the Republicans in congress are very concerned about a trans woman who has no history of committing sexual assault using the women’s bathroom. Why isn’t the right concerned about Pete Hegseth raping an unconscious woman, RFK Jr molesting his childrens babysitter, Linda McMahon overlooking a pedophile molesting children, Pam Bondi slapping the hand of Epstein and more importantly Trump, who has been found liable by a civil court jury of sexual assault, not to mention the many other victims of the kind of assaults that he has openly bragged about?
What most voters know about Elon Musk and Donald Trump is that they are successful businessmen, not the details about how they acquired their wealth. They don’t know about Trump’s many business failures or that while Musk’s genius lies in investing in innovative technologies, he is not necessarily the brain behind those technologies. Pete Hegseth, nominee for defense secretary, has allegedly stated that having sex with an unconscious woman should be legal and is accused of doing this exact thing, but none of these things matter.
While not all evangelical leaders are on the far right and many spoke out against Trump, those religious leaders who fueled his rise in the far right evangelical world belong to an elite group of pastors who advocate for dominionism.
Dominionism is fueled by the belief that man (and only man) has dominion over the earth. This is directly in conflict to the belief by more mainstream clergy that we are stewards of the earth. Religious movements like Quiverfull encourage large families, no birth control, traditional stay at home Mothers and homeschooling. The children of these Dominionist movements are considered to be part of an army, raised in insular communities to take over the Seven Mountains, seven areas of government and society, to reform them. These seven are Education, Religion, Family, Business, Government/Military, Arts/Entertainment and Media.
It would take too much time to go into the individuals who appear to have entered these arenas over the past few decades or the successes that they have had. The successes are many. We can expect more success over the next 4 years. There are a couple of notable dominionist individuals now in positions of power. Senator Ted Cruz is the son of evangelical leader Rafael Cruz who once dreamed that his son would become president. Supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett was groomed by the Federalist Society, a powerful right wing organization that is responsible for the nomination of six of the current conservative justices on the court. Although a Catholic, Coney Barret was raised as a member of “People of Praise”, an extremely conservative charismatic Christian movement that some consider to be a cult.
Earth, the Dominionists believe, is there to be exploited and this is done in exchange for wealth. Wealth, they believe, is God’s reward for those who deserve it. It is Donald Trump’s wealth, not his morality, that is a signifier of his worthiness and God’s favor. RFK Jr has even been said by some to have “Christ consciousness”, “a type of spiritual awareness that is supposedly on the same level of spirituality as Jesus”. It is Elon Musk’s wealth that makes him worthy. Some believe that Trump is the savior. The fact that these men are singularly self absorbed and lack empathy (according to family members) is entirely unimportant. Women, unless they are being groomed for positions in the Seven Mountains, are meant for child rearing and expected to be subservient to their husbands.
There are many interpretations of the book of Revelations. In the Puritan era, individuals behaved as though they were upright, moral people likely to be among the chosen when Jesus returns. Some believe that the initial 144,000 will be Jewish people who have finally converted to Christianity which leads to a different but related discussion about Christian Zionists and Israel. Let’s say that if you believe one interpretation, that only 144,000 individuals are going to initially be raised to heaven when Jesus returns, it will not be trans people, the “woke mob” or their allies and supporters that go to heaven. It may be men like Trump, Musk and RFK Jr who lead them there and their morality does not matter.
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Peace Vigil Activists Eye Future As White House Readies For Change Of Hands
Washington DC—It is a sunny hot Saturday afternoon in mid-November at Lafayette Park as a steady line of tourists filter past the little white tent of the Peace Vigil outside the White House. The signs covering the tent reflect views contrary to everything the incoming administration stands for. The activists go about their daily rituals of preparing for a shift change. It’s 4 o’clock. Time seems to stand still.
Nearby the sounds of carpenter’s tools, hammers, drills, and saws, echo from the scaffolding while truck warning beepers sound across Pennsylvania Avenue as the temporary inauguration stands are slowly going up. The Peace Vigil tent has been moved back about 150 feet from its regular spot on the sidewalk. It temporarily resides just to the side of Andrew Jackson Statue, squeezed to a narrow part of the sidewalk where barely two can pass. Right on top of the tent’s regular resting place, a giant three-storied scaffolding is partially completed as carpenters and construction crews scamper like ants over its detail.
The temporary building will supposedly welcome a new president on January 20, 2025. But every activist at the Peace Vigil knows well—they won’t be welcoming him there on the sidewalk at the tent or during protests on the streets in the coming 4 years. As inauguration day approaches the entire park will be closed and the Peace Vigil will be forced to move further back to the edge of the park outside a 15-foot metal fence along Black Lives Matter Plaza.
No one at the Peace Vigil expected the reemergence of Trumpism in Washington. None of them saw this coming.
Phillipos, the Peace Vigil manager sits quietly pondering the future and silently wonders what is to come of the little tent. It’s symbolism in simplicity and minimalism is just as its creator, William Thomas envisioned. The 6-foot signs he created are long-gone, victims to weather, seasons and sun, but they have been replaced with exact replicas reading “Wanted: Wisdom and Honesty” and another sign exhibiting photographs of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki World War II nuclear bomb aftermaths. The signs are among the central themes to its message. They also challenge the willful lack of intent since President Reagan was elected, to end some of the most dire threats to humanity since the Peace Vigil’s inception in 1978 and approval of its first permit on June 4, 1981. Failure by the last seven presidents to tackle those issues has propelled it forward and made it the longest running continuous vigil for peace in the Americas—now 43 and a half years long.
Since then other issues have come to bear weight and are now intertwined with its main message and there are so many pressing issues that the activists have added signs that were handed to them after major protests over the years. The signs hang like rotting fruit from a tree and bear witness and truth against the combined procrastinations of all the presidencies since Reagan.
During the first Trump administration from 2017-2021, the Peace Vigil was a corner stone and both a beginning and ending point for many resistance protests. Washington DC swirled in chaos as a result of that administration, its indifference towards human rights and worker’s struggles spurred hundreds of protests, and created contentious social upheaval after trump unexpectedly stumbled into power in 2016. Under the Biden administration, some of the protesters left and the great volumes of surging humanity dwindled to a trickle, yet the Peace Vigil remained stoically toming the same drumbeat of issues the Biden administration discounted: Gaza, climate, greed, nuclear weapons, war, and many others.
On Saturday almost no-one was stopping to talk to the activists and the donation bucket was empty except for a few cents left by someone. Passersby seemed troubled and glum and in no mood to stop and talk about societal issues so soon after the election results just weeks before. Gone also were the multitudes of tourists, crack-pots, and odd-ball protesters who usually spring up on weekends and turn Pennsylvania into a strange cacophony of star seekers and personal grievances. A man with a cardboard box over his head, a woman reading scripture over a bullhorn begging people to repent, a man painted silver dancing to old tunes for donations, dancers and performers; protesters for Gaza, Indonesia, Ukraine and Iran freedoms, all were gone.
On Saturdays hundreds of visitors typically stop and talk to the weekend mainstay at the tent, Phillipos who is usually sitting straight across from the North Poritico of the White House. But today he was subdued and spoke queitly about the results of the 2024 election and it shows on his face and in his voice. He spoke with steady resolution about what he and the other vigilers are likely to face the possibility that the 43 years old vigil may be forced to permanently shutdown and leave the park.
Although no one knows for certain if the Peace Vigil will be forced to go, there are many indicators of the chaos and tumult that is to come, and it the possibility of the tent being removed or raided looms as the liberal administration subsumes to what many are saying is an extremist in charge of an ideological agenda walking the country backwards and towards the last century.
For one, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, the nominee for Secretary of the Department of the Interior, the portion of government which oversees all the National Parks, including Lafayette Square Park, is a climate change denier and therefore an obstacle to renewable energy progress. A billionaire, he wants to lease much more public land for fossil fuels drilling and mineral extraction. Such environmental parasitism would practicably push the global climate emergency past the point of no return. And so it would not be much of a reach to sweep aside a small tent and a few activists.
He will also oversee the Park Police and this would certainly would mean some amount of pressure will be applied to remove the Peace Vigil tent even though it was authorized by a Court order to remain in the park. And even if it comes to outright removal Phillipos intends to keep coming back anyway. He pointed out that William Thomas and other activists stood on the sidewalk for years from 1978 to 1981 and fought countless court battles just for the right to be there; before the court finally agreed to issue a permanent permit so the Peace Vigil could remain.
The activists of the Peace Vigil get ready for a shift change. Photo: J. Zangas/DCMG
Phillipos tells that during the early months of the first Trump administration an unidentified person came to him with an official offer on White House stationary promising a modest payment package to the Peace Vigil if the activists would agree to permanently take leave. Phillipos refused the offer but countered in writing on the back of the letter with a demand for several million—the value of which he calculated from all the labor activists put into the Peace Vigil over the (then) previous 35 years. The person left with their offer and Phillipos’ counter-offer but never returned.
Phillipos knows Trump doesn’t want the Peace Vigil to remain there. And it is likely he’ll do whatever it takes to remove the little tent and its signs for good from the red bricked sidewalk. And even though the Peace Vigil permit is enshrined in law, so long as the activists maintain it continuously without sleeping, when has the law ever been an impediment to Trump’s willfulness to disobey it? It is conceivable that every time he or any other President looks out the West Wing windows of the top floor of the White House it is the tent that he sees along with the two 6-foot signs, one on either side of the tent. And it is conceivable that he wants it gone no matter what the law says.
If there is a will to resist the coming policies of the incoming administration then this is and has been an example of what that will look like. Examples of ordinary people with little means standing up for rights of others are found here on the red bricks, not in the offices of bankers and CEOs who have paid millions for access and certainly not from the desks of news pundits who fly down to Mar-e-lago to smooth away ruffled feathers so they can continue their their coverage like the news staff of Morning Joe did last week.
It’s 4 o’clock and without discussion the activists prepare for a shift change. Craig arrives on time like an atomic clock and slips into the tent where he changes into warmer clothes he’ll need as night falls in the Autumn chill. Steve-O helps Phillipos gather his belongings and pushes his wheeled chair out from the front of the tent and towards his car. Craig quietly takes his seat and resumes the Peace Vigil evening watch. There are no thanks or goodbyes exchanged, no instructions or notes to pass on, just a resolve to continue doing their duties as they have done for years and will continue doing for as long as they can.
If there’s any chance that what remains of human rights here will remain, then many more like Phillipos and the activists of the Peace Vigil are going to have to put away their fear for the future and their doubt about what is to come and their reservations of what needs to be done about it and refuse to accept that it has to be this way. They’re going to have to resolve to fight for what they believe in and not pack up and go home.
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