<....What we’re witnessing is step one in the dictator’s playbook: silence those who tell the truth about your regime. We’ve seen this pattern in Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and countless other countries where democracy has withered into authoritarianism. First, attack the press. Then, criminalize dissent. Intimidate lawmakers, lawyers, and judges. Finally, consolidate power in the hands of a single leader.

Bondi’s memo added that there will be procedures in place before members of the media are compelled to testify or their records are seized, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Justice Department is now prepared to compel journalists to testify, and their records will be subject to seizure.

But the most alarming part of all is what Bondi reportedly wants to do next. According to sources close to the Justice Department, she has argued that leakers — or even reporters — who provide information that she doesn’t like could be prosecuted for treason, a crime that carries the death penalty.

Let that sink in: the Attorney General of the United States believes that journalists doing their constitutionally protected job could be subject to execution.

I’ve been covering American politics for five decades, and just to be very clear: This is not normal. This is not just another partisan policy dispute. This is an existential threat to our constitutional system of government.

When a government official can decide that reporting unflattering information is “treason,” we’re no longer living in a democracy. We’re living in an authoritarian state where power flows from the top down, not from the people up.

Bondi’s actions reveal the Trump administration’s true nature. They have no interest in our democratic traditions or constitutional liberties. Their only goal is to consolidate power and silence dissent.

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which documents threats to press freedom, has condemned Bondi’s decision and criticized Republicans in Congress who killed a federal shield law in 2024 that would have protected journalists from such subpoenas.

We’ve seen this before. Nixon’s attacks on the press were a precursor to his abuses of power. The Bush administration’s aggressive prosecutions of leakers after 9/11 helped enable his unconstitutional torture program and illegal surveillance. And Trump’s first term was marked by constant rhetorical attacks on the press as “enemies of the people.”

But this move by Bondi takes things to a new and dangerous level. By institutionalizing the persecution of journalists and their sources, she’s laying the groundwork for a full-scale assault on press freedom.

She claims that “subpoenaed news outlets are to be given advanced notice” and that the subpoenas will be “narrowly drawn,” but these are empty promises from an administration that has repeatedly shown contempt for democratic norms and the rule of law.

The time for polite disagreement or “strongly worded letters” is over. The time for waiting to see what happens next is over. We must act now to protect our democracy before it’s too late....>

<....First, demand that Congress pass a federal shield law to protect journalists from being forced to reveal their sources. This is not a partisan issue; it’s about preserving the basic functioning of our democracy.

Second, support independent journalism with your dollars and your attention. Subscribe to newspapers, donate to nonprofit news organizations like ProPublica, and share important stories with your networks. A robust press is our best defense against tyranny.

Third, contact your representatives and tell them that protecting press freedom must be a top priority. Remind them that their oath is to the Constitution, not to any president or party. The phone number for the congressional switchboard, which can connect you to both your senators and your member of the House, is 202-224-3121.

Fourth, prepare to take to the streets if Bondi follows through on her threat to prosecute journalists for treason. That would be a red line from which there is no return to normal democratic governance.

Finally, remember that the press isn’t perfect — no human institution is — but it’s essential. When governments attack journalists, it’s rarely because they’re telling lies. It’s almost always because they’re telling truths that the powerful don’t want heard.

We stand at a crossroads in American history. Down one path lies a renewed commitment to our democratic values, including a free press that can hold the powerful accountable. Down the other lies authoritarianism, where “truth” is whatever the leader says it is, and those who disagree face persecution or worse.

The choice should be obvious. But making the right choice requires courage, from journalists who continue to do their jobs despite threats, from whistleblowers who risk everything to expose wrongdoing, and from citizens who refuse to be silent in the face of growing tyranny.

Pam Bondi and Donald Trump have shown their true colors. They’ve revealed their contempt for the Constitution and their fear of the truth. They’re trying to create a country where no one can challenge their power or expose their corruption.

We cannot — we must not — let them succeed. Our democracy depends on it.

The time to act is now.>

<Wherever corporate power is running roughshod over culture, the climate, the economy, or our politics, progressives can count on Naomi Klein to provide a clear-eyed assessment of the damage and to offer pathways to resist with hope, rather than cower in despair.

A social activist and public intellectual, Klein is the author of The Shock Doctrine - about how right-wing elites leverage moments of crisis to advance unpopular economic agendas - and This Changes Everything: Capitalism Versus the Climate, an examination of how free-market dogma is accelerating the threat to our planet's survival. Her most recent book Doppelganger limns how conspiracy culture is shattering our notions of shared reality.

Klein recently co-authored an essay for The Guardian, sounding alarm about the dark worldview of politically insurgent tech billionaires like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Klein views these men - who are guiding Donald Trump's presidency - as abandoning any positive vision for our collective future, and instead retrenching in preparation for a dark, nearly end times-level social collapse, from which they and other elites emerge unscathed, and all powerful. "The governing ideology of the far-right in our age of escalating disasters," she writes, "has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism."

Rolling Stone reached out to Klein for a conversation about Trump's unique shock doctrine - as well as his administration's confounding war on science and basic research. Klein is a professor at the University of British Columbia where she directs the Centre for Climate Justice. (You can almost forget she's not American until you hear the pop of a hard ‘a' when she says "against.") Klein also offered her views on the recent Canadian election, and the legacy of Pope Francis, who invited her in 2015 to participate in the launch of his encyclical calling for a shared reverence of the glories of our Earth.

The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

For readers who are unfamiliar, can you quickly unpack the thesis of The Shock Doctrine?

In its simplest terms, the shock doctrine is just a strategy to advance deeply unpopular - and profitable - ideas. It's using a moment of crisis to advance policies that benefit elites, but that tend to be opposed by most voters.

Trump's trade war is certainly creating a shock. On some level, this protectionism runs counter to the GOP's free-market free-for-all we've watched since Ronald Reagan. Yet on a macroeconomic level, it also looks like they're trying to cool off the economy so they can justify jamming through their tax bill, which is the same old Republican wish list: tax breaks for the wealthy and cuts to the social safety net.

Look, there's only so much I can do to make any of this seem rational. Because I do think we're in an extreme phase - which is what I was trying to get at with that "end times fascism" piece.

What I've been tracking in the with The Shock Doctrine is a normie version of this. When people have public assets and social services, they tend to protect them. People tend to be opposed to water privatization; public transit privatization; Social Security privatization. So the right needs a crisis to exploit. You need an austerity crisis, or you need to do it in the name of bringing down inflation.

This is not a new phenomenon. I quote [the preeminent right-wing economist] Milton Friedman in the Shock Doctrine, saying, "Only a crisis, real or perceived, produces real change," and when that crisis occurs, change "depends on the ideas that are lying around."

He came up with that theory about how to advance his ideas, because he had seen the left do it during the Great Depression - when you had the social safety net emerge in the United States. People were trying to get at the root causes behind the Great Depression. Deregulated capitalism? Let's regulate it. And let's make sure nobody falls through the cracks six times. These were real attempts to solve crises.

But Friedman believed everything went wrong with the New Deal. So this was always a counter-revolution. The Friedman version of this was: Let's be the ones who are ready. When the crisis occurs, let's ram [our agenda] through. And then when it doesn't do what it's supposed to do, we'll ram it through even harder.

What do you see as different about our current moment?

The reason that we're in a deranged circle of hell here, is that we're very deep in the project. There's not much to sell off; there's not much left to privatize; there's not much left to deregulate. And the effects of all of their earlier successes mean that we are in a very volatile state. Whether it's our Earth systems in the face of climate change, or how financialized and shock-prone our economy is....>

<....The shocks are not surprises anymore. The shocks come continuously. Not just the way Trump generates them - and that is different from earlier forms of shock. But the system itself generates shocks, at a staccato tempo.

If you look back to earlier stages of how neoliberalism came to different parts of the world - in the states under Reagan, in the U.K. under [conservative Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher - it was its own kind of utopian project: We're going to get rid of all the dead wood, and we're going to have this efficient economy, and the rising tides will lift all boats. Democracy will spread throughout the world. I came of age politically with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, when [political scientist] Francis Fukuyama [observing the triumph of the capitalist West in the Cold War] declared "the end of history."

But now, capitalism has entered a radical and apocalyptic phase. There is no utopian vision in any of this. Instead, there's a final battle. And this is where it gets really dark. The people who are advancing this agenda are also building their luxury bunkers and their spaceships to Mars. They don't believe that there is a future. These people believe history is ending, literally. It's end times! Get onto your rocket ship, or get into your golden city in the sky. And that is distinct.

It's important to see the continuities with earlier moments of shock and shock exploitation. But we have to not be blinded by history - where we think that all we're seeing is repetition. Because history is cumulative. The fact that this has been done many times before, successfully, means that the stakes are infinitely higher. And it also means that the people who are doing it have to rationalize something much more monstrous.

That's a lot to unpack. So you're saying that in the early stages of this process, you had the Soviet Union, with a competing system of state-run economics. So one could imagine bringing about a neoliberal revolution, which leaves the world awash in freedom and prosperity, and, gosh, things will be amazing. But now, in this later stage, there's no new frontier to target. In fact, everything that they've done so far has imperiled the livability of the planet. So the billionaires and their political faction are preparing for something dark and apocalyptic?

Yes. Which isn't to say that Peter Thiel and Elon Musk think that they're the ones who are going to face the consequences. That's where these stories follow a similar narrative structure to the rapture. [The evangelical fable in which the faithful are hoovered up to heaven while unbelievers are left behind to face the chaos and violence of the End Times.] And that, whether or not you're religious, is quite frightening. Because they're not telling a story where everyone is OK. They're telling a story that is more like that biblical story, where the chosen get lifted up and are protected, in their golden city in the sky. But maybe in this case in their fortress nation state, or in their luxury bunker.

Or is Mars that city in the sky?

Exactly. There is also this story of a great culling. We started to hear more open talk during Covid of, well, "Maybe we should just let the virus do its work." And, "Maybe we should just let it cull the herd." I don't think we have reckoned enough with the fact that a lot of people now more openly believe in these eugenics-inflected ideas - "Maybe climate change is just gonna cull humanity. And that's OK."

You have somebody like J.D. Vance talking about the order of love - and our job is to love your family first, and then your neighbors, and then your community. [With the dark implication that it's OK to disregard those at the margins.] But the Pope said, You have it wrong. That's not what Catholic doctrine says. That's not what loving your neighbor is. Francis said love is not a series of concentric circles.

But that is what MAGA is telling itself: the story that says you don't have to care about people being deported to Salvadoran gulags. In fact, you need to celebrate that. It's all of this culling-

Arguably we see that in Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s move to end federal support for the anti-overdose medication Narcan or the LGBTQ+ suicide hotline. Or in the demolition of U.S. foreign aid and the suspension of global health support, which may cause millions of deaths in the developing world.

This is an openly supremacist project. The supremacist ideas surge when they are needed to rationalize monstrous policies. This accelerated during Covid. For people who wanted an argument about why they didn't need to do anything - whether it was mask, or get vaccinated, or close their yoga studio, or whatever it was. People started playing with: "Well, what would it feel like to just not give a s*** if people die?" And once you play with that, you're playing with fire. And it starts spreading. And it becomes, "Well, who else could we say it's OK if they die?">

<....Another piece of this puzzle is the corrupting influence of wealth concentration, which is another byproduct of the successes of these [economic] policies. When you have the rapid-fire privatization that has been the hallmark of the neoliberal era, that's how you get oligarchs. We first started using the term, recently, talking about oligarchs who got exceedingly wealthy in the privatization era of post-Soviet Russia. Or the oligarchs in the privatizations of Mexico - where you [still] have a state monopoly, except it's private.

And here's the puzzle. These people were not hurt during the pandemic. Billionaires doubled their wealth in the first year of Covid. So it's not just about money. It's about being so rich that you actually believe yourself to be God. This is the corrupting influence.

We have all these slogans: "Every billionaire is a policy failure." But it goes beyond that. When you have people who have more money than has ever been concentrated in the history of money - you do believe that you're better than other people, in a way that I don't think that we can totally fathom.

What does Elon Musk think it means to be the richest person in the world? How does that change you? One of the ways that it changes people's brains is you believe the rules shouldn't apply to you. You believe you should be able to act like a king. And when you can't - when you're told by the state you actually have to follow these rules, or do other things - it ignites rage. And we're in that rage.

That rage also comes from empowered workers saying, "We don't want to build this contract that's going to give tech to ICE." Or, "We think we should be able to work from home." Or, "We think you shouldn't sexually harass your workers." Particularly in Silicon Valley - even though these aren't unionized workplaces for the most part - workers have been empowered to stand up to their bosses. You think about the Google walkout [over sexual harassment].

We underestimated the rage that inspired. So we're in a counter-revolution. And it's hard to understand, because these people have everything. But what they want is beyond that. They want to not be accountable to anyone. Because what they want is absolutely everything.

A key part of the Trump agenda, which is confounding a lot of people, is the administration's war on science and basic research. You wrote a post on Bluesky characterizing this as "pandemic revenge," because "as far as these oligarchs are concerned, all science does is tell them stuff they cannot do." Can you expand on that?

I've spent a lot of time studying the infrastructure of climate-change denial. I interviewed the then-head of the Heartland Institute, Joseph Bast - a University of Chicago trained economist - back in 2011 about why he'd decided to make climate change denial the main mission. He said that they realized that if the science was true, that anything would be justified by way of regulation. Very, very robust regulation. And so, he said, "We took another look at the science."

I thought, "Oh, that's an extraordinarily honest thing to say." It was very motivated reasoning. If the science is true, everything that they do at the Heartland Institute - which is argue for more deregulation of markets and more privatization - would be in jeopardy.

I've been seeing parallels in the backlash against Covid public-health measures. Something extraordinary happened in the United States. In the name of saving the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in society - the elderly, the disabled, immunocompromised - shopping malls were closed, factories too. Not for very long, but the first move was to lock down.

The decision was made to put lives ahead of markets. And I'm not sure I ever thought I would live to see that. Many Republicans were advocating at the time, "Just let it rip," and, "Maybe this is what God wants," and, "Maybe old people should sacrifice themselves for young people." But despite all of that, it did happen.

We know from Elon Musk's trajectory, that this was an important part of his radicalization - how angry he was that he had to close his factories, briefly. And anger at workers who were saying, "Why should we come back to the office when there are risks, when we've seen that we can work from home?"

I see something recognizable in this rage from what I've seen studying climate change denial. Science is saying: This is the best way to save lives. But this is not the best way to run the business. And this is actively threatening my bottom line. This is part of the wholesale attack on research and public health.

So, if you end the public funding that creates the evidence about what you should and shouldn't do, that allows you to do whatever you want?

No research, no problem.

Oof....>

<....Look, they're not just attacking the "woke" parts of the university. They're attacking everything. You see all these ways that they're turning off the lights.

One of the most extraordinary things came when they cut a bunch of partnership programs between NOAA and Princeton. (If you don't remember this, I don't blame you; it's a minor footnote in so many other profoundly wild things that have happened.)

The Commerce Department announced it was cutting $4 million for Princeton's world-renowned climate research programs, to bring them in line with Trump's objectives and priorities. Among the cuts was a program called the "Cooperative Institute for Modeling the Earth System I" - that's the official name of it. The government's reason for defunding the research was that it promotes "exaggerated and implausible climate threats, contributing to a phenomenon known as ‘climate anxiety,' which has increased significantly among America's youth."

This is a can-do problem solving attitude! Knowing about climate impacts makes young people anxious. That's the problem. And the solution is: Don't tell us. No research. No problem.

That attitude is pervasive.

These moves are being made by very smart, rich people who have made their money on the back of research and technological advances. How do we square that?

There are wild fantasies that AI is just going to be able to fix it. Sure, we're attacking cancer research, but don't fret: AI is going to fix cancer for us. Or fix climate change for us. This is mainly just a story of rationalization. I don't think they really believe that. But you do need some kind of a story that you tell yourself that would make this kind of attack on research infrastructure palatable.

There's a range of rationales. But I do think that somebody like Thiel is telling himself that AI is going to fix it.

He's not the only one. In your recent piece, you write about Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO who used to be an Obama guy, who has recently been arguing: Well, we have to just throw caution to the wind to power AI; let let her rip with coal and natural gas and anything that burns, because the AI God will solve the climate problem, somehow. With a blind faith that the AI solution is going to be painless. And without any evidence that actually, this hyper intelligent generative AI can even be called into existence.

Where it ties in, is that AI is a bubble. This is where the growth is. You're right in calling it an AI God. But I don't think it is just about belief. There's a huge amount of motivated reasoning in this, because this is where all of the, all the big money is - including public money, which Eric Schmidt specializes in drumming up. He wants DoD money for AI.

So the big idea here is that, even though these billionaires are perpetuating catastrophes, they've got a grand narrative where they end up being the good guys?

You need that when you're doing something this damaging. Because we aren't talking about people who are denying climate change. I mean, Eric Schmidt has been a major funder of of climate action through his foundation. Peter Thiel doesn't deny climate change. Elon Musk doesn't deny climate change. So you do need a story - but it feels like a rationale after the fact. Most people need a rationale to do terrible things. They don't wake up in the morning saying, "I'm just going to incinerate the Earth so I can get rich." You have to have some sort of a story.

Your point is that the real solutions to curbing climate or pandemic disease involve direct regulation, which these mega billionaires are unwilling to tolerate?

It is irresolvable with their vision of how to run their businesses. Peter Thiel is very influential in Trump's orbit as the patron of J.D. Vance. He is incredibly influential in [advancing] many of the more extreme theories surrounding the MAGA movement.

He has found religion recently. I don't know if you've been following this, but Peter Thiel is now running Bible study groups in Silicon Valley. He said in a few interviews recently that he believes that the Antichrist is Greta Thunberg. It's extraordinary. He said that it's foretold that the Antichrist will be seeming to spread peace. But here's his thinking. He says Greta wants everyone to ride a bicycle. (Now, that's a gross caricature of what she's said.) But he's said Greta wants everyone to ride a bicycle. That may seem good, but the only way that could happen is if there was a world government that was regulating it. And that is more evil than the effects of climate change.

The idea is that the actual devil is the regulation that would rein them in.

So climate is still very much a part of this. He's not denying climate change. But active climate change denial has become less and less relevant, and it's more about spinning these conspiracies about what would happen if we were to take climate change seriously....>

<....We started to see this during the pandemic. There was this pivot from anti-lockdown conspiracy organizing to saying, "OK, their next plan is to use climate change to lock you in your house." There was all this wild stuff around 15-minute cities.

I confess I never understood what the alarm was over the 15-minute city, which is the aim that you'd be able to get everything you need for your daily life - groceries, coffee, restaurants - within a 15 minute walk or bike ride. It always sounded a little like the infamous GOP warning of having "a taco truck on every corner." Like why is this a bad thing?

There's always a little grain of truth that they then explode into a vast conspiracy. The conspiratorial logic was the global elites want to lock you in your home and prevent you from going anywhere.

So instead of it being convenient, they want to keep you from going beyond 15 minutes from your house?

And make you eat bugs. That's the other part. More and more, climate change denial is just taking the form of conspiracy culture. It's: "Who started the fires in Lahaina? did they direct that hurricane to [North Carolina]?" It's about feeding this narrative of paranoia about global elites wanting to take away your freedom.

To pivot to Canada minute, I was struck by new Prime Minister Mark Carney's speech that "President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us." That seems to be a pithy warning against the shock doctrine.

I know Americans want to take heart in what just happened in our election. And it is good that we aren't electing our version of Trump. But Mark Carney is a lifelong banker, and so his version of standing up to Trump is letting our oligarchs get their wish list in Canada.

My question is if state actors like Canada are feeling this vulnerable in the face of Trump, how do average citizens summon hope?

I don't think it's the time to give up. But time is very short. One area where there is - I don't know if I would use the word "hope" - but where there's some productive work to be done, is that this [Thiel/Musk] agenda is not the platform that Donald Trump was elected on. There's quite a lot of vulnerability in the MAGA Frankenstein coalition around the extent to which Trump is not just doing the work of the billionaires, generically, but specifically the of tech billionaires. That is a place to break apart the coalition.

People who are in it just for the white supremacy are going to stay. But I don't believe that's everybody who voted for Trump. And the radicalism of the vision - if they have given up on the future - provides a basis on which to organize, and to oppose, that is incredibly broad.

I take heart from what we're seeing from AOC and Bernie - just in naming that this is the culmination of a project of corporate rule that many of us have been trying to stop for a long time. It isn't just Trumpism. It's oligarchy. And it isn't just in the United States. It's global. More and more people are understanding that.

The passing of the Pope removes moral leadership from the global stage. I know that you were part of the launch of his environmental encyclical and had a personal connection to him. I wonder what you make of his passing and the future of the Catholic church?

It's gonna be a fight. When I was at the Vatican as part of this coalition to help launch the encyclical, it was clear that the more conservative Catholics had no interest in bringing this forward, and were threatened by the ways that Pope Francis was challenging the idea that Earth is just there for us - that it's our dominion.

Pope Francis was trying to reawaken a sense of sacredness about this earthly realm. And that was part of why he chose Francis as his name. Francis preached to the birds and the plants. He stood for a cosmology that was much closer to what we now associate with indigenous cosmologies, around seeing all of life as being our family.

Where Francis was taking the church was about saying there's so much here in this dimension that we have a duty to protect and to save and to care for. That's true. Whatever god you believe in - or none at all - we have a deep duty of care. That provides part of the basis of solidarity that we need to build in the face of these maniacs - sociopaths - who have given up on this world. I believe they're treasonous to this world and treasonous to creation.

I can't really speak to the future of the church. But if Pope Francis was able to change an institution with as thick and rigid a history as the Catholic Church - at the speed that he was trying to change it - it shows everybody that we should be doing a hell of a lot more to try to change our own institutions, whether it's a university or an NGO. What's our excuse?>

<imagine a United States president so callous that he tells America’s struggling small businesses to piss straight up a rope. imagine a president so out of touch that he tells Americans they’re greedy s***wads for wanting things.

now imagine a president so f***ing ignorant that he has no clue if he’s supposed to uphold the Constitution or not.

actually, you don’t have to imagine any of that s*** — because yesterday, Donny Convict sat down with NBC News’ Kristen Welker and actually blithered all those things.

here’s a fun passage from the Oath of Office that every incoming president swears to uphold. keep it in your mind, because there’s going to be a quiz later on.

“I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

got that? okay, here we go. now tell me if you think this is the most totally unhinged thing you’ve ever heard a president say.

Kristen Welker: “your secretary of state says everyone who’s here, citizens and non-citizens, deserve due process. do you agree?”

Donny: “I don’t know. I'm not a lawyer. I don’t know.”

Welker: “don’t you need to uphold the Constitution as president?”

Donny: “I don’t know.”

oh. my. god. — he. doesn’t. know.

folks, what did we just read in the Oath of Office, the one that Donny has now mumbled his way through twice?

SPOILER ALERT: YES YOUR LITERAL F***ING JOB IS TO UPHOLD THE CONSTITUTION, IT'S RIGHT THERE IN THE OATH OF OFFICE YOU'VE TAKEN TWICE NOW. JESUS F***ING CHRIST WHAT THE F*** IS WRONG WITH YOU. IT'S LIKE TALKING TO A F***ING WALL.

now here’s me, typing out that not-tweet.

imagine if Joe Biden had said he “didn’t know” if he was supposed to uphold the Constitution. the entire Wingnut Outrage-Industrial Complex would have begun howling in unison about how Sleepy Joe had finally lost all his marbles and was unfit for office. MAGA would have rioted in the streets. Hannity would have s*** hot roofing nails on live TV.

but Dear Leader professes blissful ignorance about his primary duty as president, and all we hear from Republicans is deafening sounds of crickets.

because it’s a cult.

now here’s the guy who s***s into a golden toilet, taking you to task for wanting too many things.

Welker: “you were at your cabinet meeting, and you said — I’m going to quote you — ‘maybe the children will have two dolls instead of thirty dolls. and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.’ are you saying that your tariffs will cause some prices to go up?”

Donny: “no, I think tariffs are going to be great for us, because it’s gonna make us rich.”

Welker: “but you said some dolls are going to cost more, isn’t that an acknowledgement that some prices will go up?”

Donny: “I don’t think a beautiful baby girl that’s eleven years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls ... they don’t need to have 250 pencils. they can have five.”

ok, so the “beautiful baby girls” only get three or four dolls now — but what about the baby girls who aren’t beautiful? can we let the heinous ones grab a few extra dolls, as, y’know, sort of a consolation prize?

three or four dolls, and five pencils. in just four months we’ve gone from the world’s greatest economy to forced rationing, with Dear Leader making kingly pronouncements as to who deserves how much of what.

hey, how many s***hole golf motels does each American get to own? because I’m thinking more than one is too many.

let’s take a wander down memory lane.

in 1977, a sweater-clad Jimmy Carter went on TV, and asked Americans to turn their thermostats down a couple of degrees — and the entire country lost its mind.

how dare this f***face peanut farmer tell us that we can’t have everything? it’s our God-given right as Amurricans to consume as much as we want.

right now, there are MAGA morons who have rigged their trucks to belch out as much soot and thick grey exhaust fumes as possible. they call it “rolling coal.” why do they do this? because f*** you, that’s why. nobody tells MAGA to conserve.

but mark my words: at the next family cookout, your drunk uncle — the one whose TV is permanently tuned to Fox News — is going to corner you, and tell you that your kid has too many pencils.

because it’s a f***ing cult.

meanwhile, while you’re making do with your government-approved two dolls and five pencils, Donny’s planning to take forty-five million dollars and flush it straight down the s**tter....>

<....he’s spending it on a gaudy emotional support parade for his birthday — just like the kind they have in North Korea.

because America is now a third-world autocracy led by a fragile pit of need.

hey, instead of a parade, how about this draft-dodging coward lay wreaths on the graves of the five soldiers who took his place in Vietnam, and maybe mutter a few words of thanks to the quack doctor who ginned up that bulls*** note about imaginary bone spurs that allowed Donny to get those five deferments. it’d be a lot cheaper, and we’ll even let him do a f***ed-up graveside thumbs up.

Donny has a message for America’s small businesses, and that message is go f*** yourselves.

Welker: “are you considering tariff relief for small businesses?”

Donny: “why do you always mention that, you know — you pick up couple of little businesses. what about the car business? they’re going to make a fortune.”

yeah, commie. what about the giant corporations? what about the plutocrats?

I guarantee that right now, some MAGA dips*** with a persistent cough is driving a crappy car on crumbling roads past abandoned storefronts to a low-paying job and pumping his fist and going “hell yeah!” as he listens to some dime-store Rush Limbaugh knockoff explain that billionaires have been getting a raw deal in America, and Dear Leader is going to fix that.

because — say it with me — it’s a f***ing cult.

I’m so old, I remember a woman who campaigned on the promise to help Americans start their own small businesses.

whatever happened to her? all I can recall is that she had a funny laugh and couldn’t prove she worked at McDonald’s, so I guess America was right to kick her to the curb.

the stupid. it just f***ing burns.

Welker: “when does it become the Trump economy?”

Donny: “it partially is right now, and I really mean this. I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy.”

I don’t know how Kristen Welker kept herself from blurting ‘what the f*** is wrong with you,’ throwing her notes to the floor, and walking out.

and finally, last night, aboard F***face Force One, on his way back from Motel-a-Lago, Donny held a press gaggle.

“all costs are down. everything is down, other than the uh thing you carry the babies around in.”

that thing you carry the babies around in — you know. that thing. what the f*** is it called? a shover? a pushinator?

could someone please get Sundowning Grandpa Befuddlepants a pudding cup, and help him to bed?

oh yeah, this f***ing country is in great hands.

here’s your daily reminder that I can be found on Blue Sky at this link.

this is going to be my closing message for the foreseeable future:

practice self-care. do what you need to do to keep sane. if that means you need to disengage with my daily posts for a while, I get it. this community of ours will still be here when you return.

to all the people who have signed on in the days since the election, welcome aboard. settle in as we all try to deal with the s***f***ery that’s ahead of us.

we are all in this together, and we are all here for each other.>

<<<DOUBLE STANDARD!!!

STOP the DISCRIMINATION!!!

STOP the HARASSMENT!!!

<>FTB> Nobody is picking on you.>

THAT is a LIE and YOU know it!! Stop being fake, dismissive, uncaring and deal with the reality of CG's renegade representatives.

FTB's account has been clearly targeted by your people for years and it has gotten worse. FTB's account has been used as a guinea pig for hacks and technical deprivation. You have given permission to a select few to vandalize my posts, my bio page, my collections, and it just keeps happening.

You know who has access. Instead of termination, your hoodlums are all still empowered to harass. You even gave an extra free account to non-paying member z-bear (breaking your prior pledge not to empower that troll) who bragged of targeting my account, while my "free" account is shut down by the tech department. You KNOW this is dishonest abuse. Select volunteer editors and biographers are allowed to rampage all over the website.

Treat FTB fair and square, like YOU would want to be treated. Show some appreciation for FTB's chess contributions. Tell your minions to BACK OFF, leave my account entirely ALONE. Hell, FTB cannot even mention Hans Neimann without being DELETED and SUSPENDED!! This ritual stoning of FTB's chess contributions is against all CG consumer pledges. This blatant mistreatment is in full violation of your business contract and has been for years.

<A group of New York Republicans slammed a proposed deal on state and local tax deductions on Thursday, throwing a wrench into House GOP efforts to advance a sweeping tax bill tied to President Donald Trump’s agenda, according to NBC News.

“We reject this offer,” according to a joint statement issued by Reps. Elise Stefanik, Andrew Garbarino, Nick LaLota and Mike Lawler.

The group on Thursday informed House leadership that they were rejecting what they called an “insulting” offer from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-MO). The deal would raise the SALT deduction cap to $30,000 – triple the current $10,000 limit set by Trump’s 2017 tax law – but the New York lawmakers say there’s still no deal, NBC News reported.

“We’ve negotiated in good faith on SALT from the start—fighting for the taxpayers we represent in New York. Yet with no notice or agreement, the Speaker and the House Ways and Means Committee unilaterally proposed a flat $30,000 SALT cap—an amount they already knew would fall short of earning our support,” the group of Republicans said in the statement obtained by NBC News.

“It’s not just insulting,” they added, warning that the proposal “risks derailing President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.”

“New Yorkers already send far more to Washington than we get back—unlike many so-called ‘low-tax’ states that depend heavily on federal largesse,” the statement said. “A higher SALT cap isn’t a luxury. It’s a matter of fairness.”

The SALT cap is among “one of several difficult issues” GOP leaders are scrambling to resolve before the committee takes up the bill next week, according to NBC News.>

<President Donald Trump repeatedly labeled Jimmy Carter as one of America’s worst presidents. But with his recent insistence American children can make do with fewer toys, the billionaire real estate developer sounds a bit like the late peanut farmer who once asked Americans to sacrifice for a cause they don’t really believe in.

“Wasn’t there a president — he wore a sweater?” asked Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), referring to the one-term former Democratic president who wore a sweater in 1977 as he urged Americans to turn down their thermostats to conserve resources in the face of what Carter called a “permanent” energy shortage.

The sweater image and accompanying economic message fueled years of Republican backlash.

“How’d that work out for him?” Coons continued. “I’m just saying Americans in general don’t want to hear their president lecture them about austerity and how they should plan on being less generous to their children at Christmas from a guy who’s a self-described billionaire.”

Trump’s shocking statements defending the prospect of fewer, more expensive consumer products come as his approval slides thanks in large part to public dissatisfaction with his tariff policy, which is essentially a unilateral tax that will increase the cost of a broad range of consumer goods, especially toys and other products made in China, for families with young children.

Speaking about the prospect of his tariffs reducing the supply of consumer goods and raising their prices, Trump said last week on Air Force One, “Maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”

In a follow-up interview with NBC News, Trump elaborated and expanded the universe of things children will have to do less without. “I’m just saying they don’t need to have 30 dolls. They can have three. They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five,” he said.

And Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that doll-deprived little girls can take solace in the brighter future Trump is building for them with his tariffs.

“I would tell that young girl, that you will have a better life than your parents, that you, your family, thanks to President Trump, can now be confident again that you will have a better life than your parents,” Bessent said. “Which working-class Americans had abandoned that idea. Your family will own a home. You will be able to advance. You will have a good education. You will have economic freedom.”

For Trump, implementing the tariffs is the fulfillment of a decadeslong wish built on a conviction Americans are being screwed by an international trade regime whose details Trump frequently gets wrong. He insists the tariffs will boost manufacturing, bringing back jobs making toys and all sorts of other goods to American shores.

But Americans, for as much as they have been skeptical of free trade at points in the past, do not share his deep-seated convictions. Polling indicates they believe the tariffs will raise prices on consumer goods, will harm the United States more than our trading partners and do not necessarily want jobs in factories making toys or anything else. Sacrificing dolls in order to change the balance of world trade, to them, simply isn’t worth it.

Polling analyst Lakshya Jain said Trump’s rhetoric “seems like something where he’s saying, ‘Your life will become worse and that’s fine, because you’ll understand.’ And, really, no voter is ever fine with degrading their quality of life for the president’s pet project.”

Dan Pfeiffer, a former adviser to Democratic president Barack Obama, said the tariff toy statements “might be the worst, dumbest, most politically damaging message I’ve ever heard,” arguing in his newsletter Trump can’t pitch a message of patriotic sacrifice while also seeking tax cuts for the rich and aggrandizing his own family with a corrupt crypto scheme.

Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), one of several younger progressives advocating for an aggressive response to the Trump administration, said the administration’s defense of emptier shelves is nothing to celebrate even if they might be advantageous for Democrats.

“The whole situation isn’t helpful for us,” Frost told HuffPost. “I mean, we don’t want the economy to be bad. We want people to do well. We want our constituents to do well. I mean, I’m not here praying that things go negatively because Trump’s in the White House, but things are going negatively.”....>

<....The prospect of fewer, more expensive dolls is no empty threat. The toy company Mattel — maker of Barbie dolls and Hot Wheels cars — told investors this week that in response to tariffs, it would try to move some of its manufacturing out of China, but that it would also likely be “taking pricing action in its U.S. business” —meaning price hikes.

In a statement to HuffPost, White House spokesman Kush Desai said “cheap Chinese toys” aren’t an important part of American prosperity.

“Real prosperity is American workers being able to support their families and communities because they have good jobs that pay well and provide dignity,” Desai said. “This what the Trump administration’s America First agenda of tariffs, deregulation, tax cuts, and domestic energy is focused on unleashing — not cheap Chinese toys.”

The president’s statements that children don’t need so many dolls have confounded some Republicans on Capitol Hill. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a vocal critic of Trump’s tariffs, compared Trump’s directive to that of Big Brother, the leader of a totalitarian sate in George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”

“I think how many dolls you have is up to the people who buy, not up to the president,” Paul told HuffPost. “It sounds like the government choosing for you what is a good amount of things to buy. ... When it’s your own money, you decide. I don’t care if you have four TVs in your house or one TV or no TV. It’s none of my business. But for the government to tell you shouldn’t have so many TVs, that sounds like Big Brother.”

But Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who has also questioned Trump’s trade policies, said the media should quit fussing over Trump’s toy comments and focus on other issues like President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

“You guys want to talk about dolls? Give me a break,” Johnson said. “It’s a comment he made and now you guys are obsessing over it. Nobody cares about this other than anybody who wants to poke a stick in President Trump’s eye.”

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), meanwhile, said the president was essentially thinking out loud when he mused on the availability of toy dolls.

“I think the president is, he is so accessible that you’re hearing real-time conversations you might hear in a golf club or in a bar or in a church,” McCormick said. “That’s the president. He’s so accessible that you’re hearing things that most presidents don’t even talk about. That’s just his nature, and that’s why people like him, because he’s a guy who says things a lot of people think.”

Democrats have taken the remarks in stride, with several lawmakers saying it simply shows that the billionaire president is out of touch with everyday Americans. Some suggested it was weird for the president to assume American children have so many dolls in the first place.

“What average family gives 20 dolls on Christmas?” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) said.

To Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), however, it makes sense that President Donald Trump is willfully increasing the cost of toys and telling the American people it’s for the best.

“In a way, it explains a lot, because I’ve often wondered if he had toys as a child. There was clearly something wrong there, and maybe that’s it. Maybe he was just never allowed to have toys,” Huffman told HuffPost. “What’s next? Are we going to be hoarding rubber and copper like in World War II? I mean, this is the Trump economic dystopia.”>

<[Event "8. Niedersächsischer Kongress"] [Site "Bad Nenndorf GER"]
[Date "1932.05.15"]
[EventDate "1932"]
[Round "3"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Cherubim, Reinhard"]
[Black "Tarrasch, Siegbert"]
[ECO "D34"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<No reason for my ever-present cyberstalker, the wicked perfidubious to concern himself with the new pope. Orange face Al now thinks age 69 is too old for such an esteemed position. Satan's helper is headed straight for hell at top speed, blabbering his dull comments, profanities, perversions and worn-out insults all the way there. He'll worry himself sick-er about the justice department's criminal investigation of the corrupt New York AG Letitia James, the hater of white men. No more Susan Rice dealing off the bottom of the deck for the dirty Clintons. No more Eric Holder running guns for Mexican drug lords to kill cops. Don't ya just luv it when the shoe is on the right foot?

Lett us rejoice for Robert Prevost from Pullman to Durham!

Sorry saffuna, FTB cannot read a word you've written, but it rarely changes so you're likely still cheering for Joe Torre and Catfish Hunter. Just take those old records off the shelf...

I'll sit and listen to 'em by myself
Today's fake news ain't got the same soul
I like that old time Reagan roll

$$$

P.S. You're sooo boring, perhidious. Of course, if you'd kept your big vermin mouth shut, FTB would not have had provocation to entertain everyone at your expense.>

<Full disclosure: Damien Lehfeldt, board chairman of USA Fencing, is a friend and was my son's college teammate. I fenced against him when he was coming up, and he regularly kicked my a** up and down the strip. Often, during open fencing periods at the Boston Fencing Club, he and I fenced against women and, occasionally, girls. Some of them kicked my a** too. It simply is the way fencing works for an overwhelming number of the people who enjoy the sport in the country’s fencing clubs. To its everlasting credit, at its most basic levels, fencing is one of the few competitive mixed-gender sports.

Unfortunately, on Wednesday, it was Damien’s turn to face Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s performance-art Subcommittee on the Voices in My Head. The hearing was yet another exercise in the current conservative mania to make the lives of trans people miserable and to render them second-class citizens in our putative democratic republic. It also was another festival of TV hits for raving conservative nutballs. I knew that the exercise had descended completely into bedlam right from jump when chairloony MTG opened the proceedings with a statement from the roiling steam vents at the bottom of her id.

Female athletes should never be forced to compete against mentally ill biological men who parade around in women’s clothes.

Personally, I don’t think decent folks like Damien Lehfeldt should be forced to appear in front of clearly deranged former Crossfit tootsies, but life is full of trouble and woe. MTG raved on:

USA Fencing makes a mockery out of women’s fencing by allowing biological males to compete in its women’s fencing competitions. We understand there are roughly 200 biological males competing in the USA Fencing Women’s division. This includes males who have won national titles and represented the U.S. in international competition in women’s fencing.

I suspect that some of these numbers were produced in the laboratory of MTG’s director of research, Dr. Otto Yerass.

Then, in a burst of classic McCarthyite bullying, MTG made a big deal of the fact that Lehfeldt was appearing under subpoena, implying that Lehfeldt had been hiding from participating in this legislative freak show—for which, to be fair, I wouldn’t have blamed him.

Lehfeldt explained that USA Fencing was adhering to existing rules and regulations. From The National News Desk:

Lehfeldt said USA Fencing is governed by the Ted Stevens Olympic and Amateur Sports Act, which he said forbids organizations like his from adopting eligibility criteria that are stricter than the sport’s international federation. The International Fencing Federation doesn’t ban transgender participation, he said. And the consensus among national governing bodies, including USA Fencing, is that a transgender ban could violate the Ted Stevens Act, he said. He said USA Fencing is prepared to change participation requirements if the law, research or international consensus changes. But, he said, “Ultimately, fencing is a sport of strategy and technique.”....>

'Dr Otto Yerass'; classic.