Over the last 12 days, one over arching theme seems to keep coming up in every corner of social media, and every political conversation - what are we supposed to do?
Watching Donald Trump take a sledge hammer to every aspect of the federal government has made one thing abundantly clear…
This will NOT be like the last administration.
Just in the last 24 hours we’ve seen:
The State Department replace “LGBT” with “LGB”
In a blatant attempt to erase the recognition of the Trans community from the federal government.
Trump announces tariffs of 25% on Mexico & Canada, and 10% on China
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he would impose hefty new tariffs of 25% on goods from Mexico and Canada and 10% on imports from China, and nothing could be done by the three countries to forestall them.
Trump did, however, reference a potential carve out for oil from Canada, saying that rate would be 10% versus the 25% planned for other goods from the United States' northern neighbor. But he indicated wider tariffs on oil and natural gas would be coming in mid-February.
Source: Reuters
Besides the obvious asinine nature of attacking your 3 largest trade partners; the only effect this will have, is increasing everyday costs for all of us. Axios estimates that the average American household will see an additional $830 a year in expenses.
Trump’s Justice Department ha just fired EVERY SINGLE prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s office, that was involved in prosecuting someone connected to January 6th.
The Justice Department abruptly fired dozens of prosecutors who worked on criminal cases stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to correspondence reviewed by POLITICO and an interview with one of the people who was terminated.
It’s the latest extraordinary purge of officials Donald Trump has deemed adversarial to his interests. In recent days, the administration initiated a major reshuffling at the FBI, and last week, Trump fired numerous inspectors general across the federal government.
Source: Politico
Trump is purging every member of the federal government who may not be loyal to him.
That’s not including:
Elon Musk attempting to access secret information at the Treasury department
Trump promised to impose tariffs on the European Union
Trump orders all federal employees to remove pronouns from their email signatures
And another plane crashed today, over the city of Philadelphia.
This has all happened since the last time I posted…roughly 24 hours ago.
So you may be asking - where’s the positive news here?
That would be a fair question to ask, given everything I just listed. However, we’ve focused enough on the bleakness for one post, let’s transition to something more hopeful.
Let’s Address Our Current Reality
I’ll just start off by saying - no, there is no easy or quick way out of this situation. We are truly witnessing an unprecedented event in our modern history.
We’ve never seen the federal government weaponized the way it is currently being manipulated by the Trump regime.
With that being said, Bernie Sanders is absolutely right when he talks about the vulnerability of the Republican regime. With slim margins in the legislative branch & a narrow popular vote victory.
Trump honestly has less space to operate than he believes. The problem is that we just haven’t figured out how to organize against him yet.
In our last post, we spoke about organizations like the ACLU, which are consistently bringing the fight to the Trump administration, levying hundreds of lawsuits against their attacks on our civil liberties.
And while the Democratic response in Congress has largely been a joke so far; so much so in fact, that it’s leading to people in the Executive Branch leaking more information to journalists for help
I do believe that members like Bernie, AOC and others will start stepping up soon. The Democratic Party is desperately in need of new leadership & I personally would love to see the Progressive Wing finally take over.
Even if that does happen though, we can NEVER rely on politicians to save us from this nightmare. At the end of the day, the people have to protect the people.
I personally will be spending time looking for other organizations that are fighting back & sharing them with you as I come across them.
If you happen to know of an organization that should be highlighted in a future post, please comment below & let me know who they are.
In Closing
All the answers are not clear yet, but we have to stand in solidarity and resist these moves from the Trump regime.
It is my firm belief that they want their opposition to feel defeated and powerless, amongst this onslaught of attacks the last 2 weeks.
The biggest act of resistance is simply - not giving up.
In time, we will discover more ways to resist.
We will learn new ways to fight back.
We not allow ourselves to be broken by a narcissist, nepo-baby, pathological liar, who’s just trying to create a government that cannot tell him - no.
In the meantime, please continue to speak up. Don’t normalize his behavior by staying silent. Support marginalized folks who are the most vulnerable. Support organizations, unions, and independent journalists. Please support each other.
Most importantly,
Please have patience with yourself & take the breaks you need to navigate a stressful moment in history.
Until next time,
Desmond
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