“Scholars often note that the American Revolution of 250 years ago was a movement not to change the status quo but to protect it. The colonists who became revolutionaries sought to make sure that patterns of self-government established over generations could not be overturned by officials seeking to seize power.

We seem to be at it again….”

#Politics #USPolitics #HandsOffProtests #DemocracyVsOligarchy #DemocracyVsAuthoritarianism #DOGEbros #LettersFromAnAmerican

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-5-2025

“Despite the attempt of right-wing media to hide the [economic] crisis, more than half of Americans have heard unfavorable business news coverage of the government’s policies. While MAGA continues to approve of Trump, he’s rapidly losing support among the rest of the coalition that put him into office.”

#Politics #USPolitics #TrumpTradeWars #TradeDeficitMyth #TrumpTariffs #EconomicSlowdown #RecessionRisk #DemocracyVsOligarchy #LettersFromAnAmerican

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-4-2025

“The administration’s attempt to ignore the laws the Constitution charges it with executing amounts to an attack on the right of the American people to establish the rules under which we live.”

#Politics #USPolitics #DemocracyVsAuthoritarianism #USConstitutionalOrder #FightTrumpism #DemocracyVsOligarchy #DemocracyUnderThreat #DemocratsFightBack #DemocracyMatters #DemocracyVsDictatorship #LettersFromAnAmerican

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-19-2025

“What Sanders has been doing recently is highly instructive—and Democrats don’t need to be die-hard enthusiasts of his particular policy portfolio to extract the key lesson and act on it: Identify the victims of Trumpism, give them a voice, and get their stories told.”

#Politics #USPolitics #BernieSanders #DemocracyVsOligarchy #DefeatTrumpism #TellPeoplesStories #EconomicPopulism #NotMeUs

https://newrepublic.com/article/192744/bernie-sanders-anti-oligarchy-tour-trump-victims

“We need to lose the theory that these Dems are ‘spineless’ and just don’t understand how to wage political war. ... It’s not that they cannot—they *will* not. When it was Sanders or an individual who demanded even a modest change in policy on Gaza, they brought out the knives. When it’s Musk and his apartheid army of incels, they wield sporks. Yet, as we keep seeing, spork fighting is demoralizing.“

#USPolitics #Politics #DemocratsFightBack #DemocracyVsOligarchy

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democratic-party-fecklessness/

And that serpent is back: “The idea of a small government that serves the needs of a few wealthy people, Lincoln warned in his era, is ‘the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it.’”

#Politics #USPolitics #History #AbrahamLincoln #WorkingClassPolitics #DemocracyMatters #DemocracyVsOligarchy #DemocracyUnderThreat #USConstitutionalOrder #MuskCoup #TechBrosCoup #LettersFromAnAmerican

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-11-2025

“A coup is underway, against Americans as possessors of human rights and dignities, and against Americans as citizens of a democratic republic. Each hour this goes unrecognized makes the success of the coup more likely.” — Timothy Snyder, 5 Feb 2025

#Politics #USPolitics #MuskCoup #USConstitutionalOrder #CivilRights #RightToPrivacy #DemocracyUnderThreat #DemocracyVsOligarchy #DemocracyMatters

https://snyder.substack.com/p/of-course-its-a-coup

“Five years ago, on February 5, 2020, Republican senators acquitted then-president Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial. Trump immediately vowed retaliation against those who tried to hold him accountable before the law for his actions. … Now Trump is back in office and purging the government of those he perceives to be his enemies.”

#Politics #USPolitics #Vengence #Revenge #TrumpVengeanceMachine #Impeachment #DemocracyVsOligarchy #LettetsFromAnAmerican

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-5-2025

“A debt ceiling breach would have damaging economic consequences.

But a congressional stalemate over the debt limit could also provide the Trump administration with an opportunity to further aggrandize and legitimate its usurpation of Congress’s spending power.”

#Politics #USPolitics #DebtCeiling #USConstitutionalOrder #USCongress #MuskCoup #DemocracyVsOligarchy #DemocracyVsAutocracy

America’s constitutional crisis could come to a head in four months - Vox https://apple.news/A-KjP4PgcTPSPmrin4nBoKg

“All this is why the unions have filed their lawsuit. Musk’s ‘buyout’ offer is so wildly at odds with federal law and regulations that any honest judge would rule in their favor practically automatically. Whether the Trump appointees filling the Supreme Court will do so, of course, is another question.”

#Politics #USPolitics #MuskCoup #KingMusk #TrumpIsAPuppet #DemocracyVsOligarchy #DemocracyVsAutocracy #USConstitutionalOrder #RuleOfLaw

https://prospect.org/labor/2025-02-05-king-musks-government-purge-hits-snag/

“There is a larger story than that of Trump’s attempt to blame Democrats for a disaster that happened on his watch. His administration seems to be trying to replace the government Americans have created through their representatives over centuries to promote the interests of all Americans with a group of white men who can operate as they see best, without restraint.”

#Politics #USPolitics #Project2025 #TrumpIsUnfitForOffice #DemocracyVsOligarchy #LettersFromAnAmerican

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-30-2025

In spite of my issues with Democrats, my answer is an emphatic NO! “No matter the incompetencies of the Trump presidency … it appears the answer will be: You might not like what we’re doing, but don’t you hate Democrats more?”

#Politics #USPolitics #TrumpIncompetence #DemocracyVsOligarchy #ElectionsMatter #Project2025 #TrumpIsUnfitForOffice #DemocracyMatters #LettersFromAnAmerican

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-29-2025

*Now* can we eat the rich?

“The unglamorous but key federal office that sent out a mass ‘deferred resignation’ offer to federal employees on Tuesday has reportedly been taken over by people with ties to Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close confidant of U.S. President Donald Trump.”

#Politics #USPolitics #OPMTakeOver #BillionairesShouldNotExist #DemocracyInDanger #DemocracyVsOligarchy #DemocracyVsOligarchy #ElectionsMatter

https://www.commondreams.org/news/elon-musk-opm

Coach Walz warned us that when someone writes a playbook, they intend to use it: “A number of the people who wrote Project 2025 have been tapped to serve in Trump’s second administration & that nearly two thirds of the executive orders Trump has signed either mirror or partly mirror the plans in that nearly 900-page document.”

#Politics #USPolitics #Project2025 #TrumpFundingFreeze #DemocracyVsOligarchy #JusticeDepartmentPurge #DemocracyInDanger #LettersFromAnAmerican

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-28-2025

“The United States could be a society of mass affluence. But in the absence of a mass political movement in favor of redistribution of inclusive growth, the trend toward ever more zero-sum, extractive economic relations is set to continue unabated — until it won’t.”

#Politics #USPolitics #Economics #Tariffs #WealthDistribution #ElectionsMatter #DemocracyVsOligarchy #DemocracyMatters #EconomicPopulism #WorkingClassPolitics #BillionairesShouldNotExist

https://jacobin.com/2025/01/tariffs-nonsolution-trump-social-crisis/

“So what can [Democrats] do now? Tell the truth—and do it clearly, and do it loudly. ... For now, the public’s wondering what to think about Trump. Explaining how damaging and dangerous Trump’s policies will be would be important. Do it forcefully. Do it often.”

#Politics #USPolitics #OppositionParty #DemocratsInOpposition #DemocracyMatters #DemocracyVsOligarchy #StandUpFightBack #WorkingClassPolitics #EconomicPopulism

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/dems-dont-have-to-inspire-they-have

“U.S. President Donald Trump's administration fired the independent inspectors general of at least 12 major federal agencies late on Friday, the Washington Post reported.

The agencies include the departments of defense, state, transportation, veterans affairs, housing and urban development, interior, and energy, the newspaper said”

#Politics #USPolitics #FridayNightPurge #InspectorsGeneral #DemocracyMatters #DemocracyVsOligarchy #ElectionsMatter

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-fires-least-12-independent-inspectors-general-washington-post-reports-2025-01-25/

This is frightening: “There have been informal discussions in the department [of Defense] about sending as many as 10,000 troops to the border, a discussion that raises the question of whether Mexico would feel obliged to respond in kind.”

#Politics #USPolitics #Immigration #BorderSecurity #ElectionsMatter #DemocracyVsOligarchy #LettersFromAnAmerican

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-23-2025

And now we know just what this regime’s legacy will be: “For the past two days, the new Trump administration has been demonstrating that it is far easier to break things than it is to build them.”

#Politics #USPolitics #TrumpRegime #DemocracyVsOligarchy #ElectionsMatter #DemocracyMatters #LettersFromAnAmerican

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-22-2025

“Trump is demonstrating that he intends to create a country dominated by the right-wing, white men who supported him. It is not clear that that intent is any more popular than his pardons for the January 6 rioters.”

#Politics #USPolitics #DemocracyVsOligarchy #Racism #Mysogyny #Sexism #BirthrightCitizenship #14thAmendment #January6thInsurrection #LettersFromAnAmerican

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-21-2025