America, America. Land of the Cruel and Unusual

Where we’re at and what needs to be done

Next weekend, April 5, there will be protests in 600+ locations in the US, with really big ones in Washington DC and London. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of our neighbors to the north choose to exercise their right to free speech in Canadian cities.

These won’t be your ordinary protests. There are thousands of reasons to raise our voices. Everybody participating will own at least one cause and probably more, whether its elements of the social safety net, real freedom of speech, health and science, the environment, the rights of historically oppressed people, anti-authoritarianism around the world, peace not war, and/or the US Constitution.

Indivisible and the 50501 movement have taken the lead on providing networking and technical assistance to local organizers. As of this weekend, Sarah Dohl, Indivisible Co-Founder & Chief Campaigns Officer says they have 129 organizations who’ve signed on as supporters.

“April 5 isn’t just a protest -- it’s a recruitment drive. There are millions of people watching this crisis unfold, waiting for a reason to jump in. We need to show them the resistance is real.

We’re not just showing up for ourselves -- we’re showing up for:
→ The judges afraid for their safety
→ The journalists getting threats
→ The federal staffers and university leaders under pressure
→ And yes -- the Democrats who’ve lost their nerve

We’re proving they won’t be alone if they choose to fight. That courage is contagious -- and public, peaceful resistance is how it spreads.”

I like the “hands off” messaging because it allows for so many deep concerns that people have in the face of political developments in the US that were unthinkable just a decade ago.

Yes, the world will hear that lots of people want bad things to stop. But, more importantly, lots of people who don’t ever see themselves going to a demonstration will be encouraged to take that first step toward no longer being a bystander.

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Before we take to the streets on April 5th, sign up for a mass call this Tuesday, April 1st at 8 PM EST with MoveOn, Public Citizen, Stand Up America, and national labor leaders.

What can you expect to hear on the mass call?

• Get updates on the legal challenges to Trump’s illegal moves—like the detention of Mahmoud Khalil.

• Hear from national leaders fighting to protect our public services, like social security, public education, and more.

• Find out how to get involved with the April 5th national day of action. If you want to learn more before deciding to join a rally, this call is for you.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are wrecking anything they can get their hands on and daring the American people to stop them.

Together we can fight back. via - Working Families Power

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Things really are scary right now, particularly for non-citizens, regardless of their legal status. At the moment the running dogs of repression are seeking out those calling attention to the plight of the Palestinian people.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement are utilizing extremists accusations as the basis for revoking visas and snatching people off the street with the intent of denying them due process. By the time lawyers for Turkish student Rumeysa Ozturk could get before a judge to insist that she be locally incarcerated, the woman was 1400 miles away at a private prison in Louisiana. Here’s a link to her op-ed published in a student newspaper said to be that basis of her internment; please read it with an eye toward identifying threats of violence or malicious intent.

It’s bad enough that the administration is choosing to revoke the visas of foreigners for expressing opinions, but snatching on the street by masked plainclothes officers is completely unnecessary– unless sadists are running the government.

The people who have immigrated to the US, the land of the free and the brave, are being tossed out like so many rag dolls in a toddler temper tantrum. Many in the plane loads of humans shipped off to El Salvador’s SuperMaxPrison weren’t the worst of the worst or even members of a gang. Some were selected on the basis of tattoos; others had turned themselves in expecting to be returned to their homeland.

As the photograph of our HHS Director standing in front of men packed together in cages in El Salvador proves, this process of deportation is bound up with a sadism usually found in totalitarian states.

That’s a $60K watch she’s wearing.

America, America. Land of the cruel and unusual.

The administration by its actions has demonstrated hostility toward education, preventative health measures, and scientific research. There is already a brain drain in progress, with educators and scientists leaving the country for what they feel will be safer environments.

Of the 1600 US researchers and scientists who answered a Nature poll are considering leaving the country. Europe and Canada were among the top choices for relocation.

• Many respondents were looking to move to countries where they already had collaborators, friends, family or familiarity with the language. “Anywhere that supports science,” wrote one respondent. Some who had moved to the United States for work planned to return to their country of origin.

• But many more scientists had not planned on relocating, until Trump began gutting funding and firing researchers. “This is my home — I really love my country,” says a graduate student at a top US university who works in plant genomics and agriculture. “But a lot of my mentors have been telling me to get out, right now.”

The Yale News reports that three prominent professors at the university have accepted positions at the University of Toronto’s renowned Munk School in fall 2025.

• Snyder and Shore both specialize in Eastern European history and each has drawn parallels between the fascist regimes they have studied and the current Trump administration. Stanley, a philosopher, has also published books on fascism and propaganda, including the popular book “How Fascism Works.”

• In 2021, Stanley and Snyder co-taught a course at Yale titled “Mass Incarceration in the Soviet Union and the United States.” Earlier this week, Stanley and Shore joined nearly 3,000 Jewish faculty across the U.S. to sign a letter denouncing the arrest of a Columbia student protester and urging their respective institutions to resist the Trump administration’s policies targeting colleges.

Another issue troubling Americans is the Trump administration’s unwillingness to adhere to the protocols existing among democracies relating to defense and intelligence. The Signal Gate scandal is/was about much more than loose lips flapping in an unsafe place. The language used indicates that national security policy conversations are being deleted in an attempt to deceive the nation’s historical records.

And the blatantly obvious use of unsecured personal cell phones raises real questions about the motivations of senior officials in day-to-day discussions.

Here’s Noah Schachtman, long time foreign correspondent and editor, writing in the New York Times:

• If you’re running the security directorate of a hostile nation, savor this moment. It’s never been easier to steal secrets from the United States government. Can you even call it stealing when it’s this simple? The Trump administration has unlocked the vault doors, fired half of the security guards and asked the rest to roll pennies. Walk right in. Take what you want. This is the golden age.

• In its first two months, the Trump administration has made move after move that exposes the government to penetration by foreign intelligence services. It’s not just the group chat about forthcoming military strikes that The Atlantic revealed on Monday — although that was, to be clear, as audacious and ridiculous a security breach as there has been in decades.

• The administration short-circuited the process for conducting background checks on top officials, turned tens of thousands of people with access to government secrets into disgruntled ex-employees and announced it was lowering its guard against covert foreign influence operations. It installed one of Elon Musk’s satellite internet terminals on the roof of the White House, seemingly to bypass security controls, and gave access to some of the government’s more sensitive systems to a teenager with a history of aiding a cybercrime ring, who goes by the nickname Big Balls.

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The plan for April 5 in San Diego is to gather downtown at the Civic Center Plaza from noon to 3pm. Following is a statement from the organizers.

• This mass mobilization day is our message to the world that we do not consent to the destruction of our government and our economy for the benefit of Trump and his billionaire allies. Alongside Americans across the country, we are marching, rallying, and protesting to demand a stop the chaos and build an opposition movement against the looting of our country.

• A core principle behind all Hands Off! events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values.

• Check out handsoff2025.com for more information.

TESLA TAKEDOWN - How a Protest in Innisfil Became Part of the Global Fight for Democracy by Charlie Angus at The Resistance

• But when Trump turned his threats to Canada, something happened.

• The spirit of resistance began to sprout across the country, not in any organized fashion, but out of a wellspring of profound feelings of collective indignation. There was simply no way Canadians were going to be pushed around by the convicted felon from Mar-a-Lago.

• This is how the resistance began to grow.

• Canadians went from political somnambulism to being fully wide awake.

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Secret Energy Department "hit list" targets renewable energy industry by Emily Atkin at HEATED and Popular Information

• The existence of the “hit list” was first reported by E&E News on Friday. The "hit list" is a collection of clean energy projects already awarded billions of dollars in grants and loans under the Inflation Reduction Act, bipartisan infrastructure law, and annual appropriations. The DOE is now seeking to cancel these projects. The list will be submitted to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Office of Management and Budget, according to two people familiar with the plan.

• Among many other proposed cuts, the “hit list” includes six long-duration energy storage projects that have already had $156 million in federal funding obligated under the bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The grants for those projects were awarded in 2023, and “seen as vital for turning variable wind and solar production into a reliable, round-the-clock power source,” Canary Media reported at the time.

• The reason these grants were seen as so vital for wind and solar’s future is because they were commercial test-runs of newer technologies. They were intended to “convince private investors as well as utility regulatory commissions that these are trustworthy investments,” Canary Media reported. “If that succeeds, power companies will greenlight more of these projects in the near future.”

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They Are Going to Take Everything If We Don't Stop Them by Hamilton Nolan at How Things Work

• Here is what is happening: First they are coming for the federal unions—the lowest hanging fruit, the most bureaucratic unions, the ones barred from striking. Then they will proceed to come for all public sector unions. Then they will come for private sector unions. Understand that the transparently bullshit nature of the justification for this move— “Uh, everything is national security, therefore Trump is king over you”—is a preview of what will be more transparently bullshit justifications for them to conduct further outrageous assaults on the very existence of organized labor. They don’t give a fuck. They are proving, over and over again, that they don’t give a fuck. This is not about law. This is about power.

• The point of the labor movement is to give working people power. That is what unions do. The unions of America purport to be powerful. If we imagine that all of our power is dependent on the kindness of the president—and that it therefore can be wiped away in one day, because a particular president is willing to stretch the wording of the law as far as his imagination will let him—then we were just bluffing the whole time. In that case, we never really had power at all. We were lying to all of the working people who believed that solidarity would produce a sort of power that was not a polite request, but an inherent fact. Do unions have power, or not? If they do, the time to exercise that power is now.