Archives for category: Elections

This a great article that will uplift your spirits!

Jennifer Rubin is a journalist and lawyer who was hired by The Washington Post to be its conservative columnist. But Trump radicalized her, and she became a leading voice for liberal policies. After Jeff Bezos decided to placate and woo Trump, she resigned her job and started a new and wildly popular blog called “The Contrarian,” where she and other brilliant writers gathered to critique the madness of MAGA.

She recently posted an optimistic analysis of American politics. Despite the gerrymandering, despite horrible court decisions, Democrats are in a great position to wash the MAGA stain out of the nation’s government.

It’s the most optimistic piece I’ve read in a long while, and I think you will enjoy it too.

Rubin writes:

In a span of less than two weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court (contravening the text and intent of the post-Civil War amendments and decades of court precedent) and the Virginia State Supreme Court (overturning the will of Virginia voters and inventing a new definition of “election”) have bulldozed through the electoral landscape to slant the 2026 midterm playing field in Republicans’ favor.

In Louisiana v. Callais, the U.S. Supreme Court demolished 60 years of progress in voting rights, robbed Black and Hispanic communities of the power to elect representatives of their own choosing, and aimed to decimate the ranks of non-white U.S. House members, state legislators, and local officials. This is nothing short of an attempt to reimpose white supremacy.

Voting rights legal guru Rick Hasen wrote:

This decision will bleach the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and local bodies like city councils, by ending the protections of Section 2 of the act, which had provided a pathway to assure that voters of color would have some rudimentary fair representation. It’s the culmination of the life’s work of Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who have shown persistent resistance to the idea of the United States as a multiracial democracy, and a brazen willingness to reject Congress’ judgment that fair representation for minority voters sometimes requires race-conscious legislation…. It protects Alito’s core constituency: aggrieved white Republican voters.

As infuriating, partisan, and legally unsound as these rulings are, they are not the final word on either the midterms or the future of our multi-racial democracy.

The Midterms

Even with the loss in Virginia, Democrats’ five-seat pick up in California should more than counteract the original Texas re-redistricting (where two of the five seats Republicans sought to steal may well go to Democrats). And despite the Virginia decision, Democrats may still pick up one to two more seats under Virginia’s old map. The net pickup for Republicans currently is less than ten before Democrats pursue their own redistricting in New York, Illinois, Colorado, and Maryland.

However, even with the advantage of, say, a dozen rigged seats, Republicans are unlikely to keep the House majority. Since 2024, Democrats have swung the electorate substantially in their direction, over-performing in comparison to Kamala Harris in 193 of 226 state legislative races, by 20 points in some cases. On average, Democrats are doing more than 10 points better than they did in 2024. (Brookings’ William A. Galston wrote: “In the six special elections for the House conducted in 2025-2026, the swing toward Democratic candidates averaged about 15 points, while the swing toward Democratic gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia averaged 14 points.”)

More than 20 Republican House seats were won by less than 10 points in 2024; 43 Republicans won by less than 15%. Given the electoral shift, Democrats’ list of targeted seats expands each week.

The New York Times reported that gerrymandering “tells only part of the story” about the midterms. While “Democrats could end up losing at least half a dozen safe seats, and possibly more,” depending on new maps drawn in Southern states, Republicans face gale-force “headwinds” thanks to Donald Trump’s atrocious approval numbers, his reviled Iran war, soaring gas and other consumer prices, snatching away healthcare coverage from millions, disaffection of Hispanic voters, and rampant corruption.

In short, gerrymandering, however outrageous, will not be enough to save Republicans if Democrats generate huge turnout, especially among those voters enraged that they have been stripped of voting power. (As Hungary demonstrated, a determined opposition can overcome a raft of unfair impediments imposed by a corrupt, unpopular regime.)

Democrats, independents, and disaffected Republicans know that the MAGA cult has no message — which is why MAGA lawmakers and courts must rig the election to cement white supremacy. That’s all they’ve got.

Democrats have their targets

The enormity of reversing 60 years of progress on voting rights necessitates a new era of intense organizing and public education — a new civil right movement to counter MAGA’s court-imposed Jim Crow. That effort kicks off with a grassroots National Day of Action on Saturday, May 16, in Alabama. Organizers declared, “The dismantling of the Voting Rights Act is a reminder that we have unfinished business. The fight is ours and we are going to finish it.” Scores of democracy groups, faith-based organizations, and civil rights organizations will rally to oppose Jim Crow redistricting and to support multi-racial democracy.

The goal: Democrats must win, and win big, in 2026 and 2028. Senate seats, governorships, and other statewide offices cannot be gerrymandered. A massive registration and turnout-the-vote operation must expand deep into Republican areas, appealing to disgruntled independents and Republicans while firing up the base. Democrats will need a broad, inclusive electoral coalition to pursue bold reform. As former attorney general Eric Holder likes to say, progressives “need to be comfortable with acquiring power and using power.”

What then? If Democrats come out of the 2028 election with House and Senate majorities, and the presidency, they will have all the motivation and tools required to reverse the slide into Jim Crow, beginning with substantial reform of the discredited Supreme Court. The MAGA justices’ willful misreading of the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution to concoct a “color blind” interpretation of voting rights (coupled with their monstrous expansion of executive power and abuse of the emergency docket) should unify democracy defenders on the urgency of Supreme Court reform through court expansion, term limits, revised appellate jurisdiction, and ethics reform.

Election law guru Rick Hasen argued:

The Supreme Court itself has shown itself to be the enemy of democracy. If and when Democrats retake control of the political branches, it will be incumbent on them not only to write new voting legislation protecting minority voters and all voters in the ability to participate fairly in elections that reflect the will of all the people. They will also have to consider reform of the Supreme Court itself.

With the election of aggressive Senate Democrats running in 2026 and 2028, Democrats should have little trouble carving out a filibuster exception, especially if they win by large margins that affirm voters’ rejection of MAGA assault on pluralistic democracy.

In addition to reforming the MAGA Supreme Court, a myriad of solid proposals for undoing the damage wrought by Callais include: state voting rights’ protections, a federal statute that requires nonpartisan redistricting, proportional representation, and a constitutional amendmentguaranteeing the right to vote. Democrats should pursue an “all of the above” approach, not merely to regain but to expand diverse voters’ participation and power.

Though the tools to sustain multi-racial democracy may be different from those employed in the 1960s, Madeleine Greenberg of the Campaign Legal Center reminded us: “Every generation has faced attempts to restrict access to the ballot box, and every generation has pushed back.” If Democrats win elections decisively and fully exercise the power they obtain, they can fix what MAGA white supremacists have broken. Only then can we fulfill the promise of pluralistic democracy.

The midterm elections of 2026 are approaching. Start working now to reclaim our democracy! Our time is now.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Health, History, Justice, Trump

Tennessee GOP Rushes to Eliminate Sole Majority-Black District

By dianeravitch

May 7, 2026 //

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision eviserated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The far-right 6-member majority struck down Section 2 of the Act, which required states to provide Black voters opportunity to represented. In effect, the ruling rejected Louisiana’s redistricting, which would have created two majority-Black districts.

Most black voters live in urban districts. It does not require a gerrymander to produce a Black-majority district.

To eliminate districts that are not likely to elect a Black candidate does require a gerrymander. The compact urban district must be sliced like a pizza, so that most Black voters are in districts where they are a minority.

That’s what’s happening now in Tennessee and other states that to reduce districts that are currently held by a Democrat, usually a man or woman of color.

Tennessee Republicans wasted no time slicing up Memphis in the expectation that the new districts would never elect a Black candidate.

The New York Times reported:

Tennessee Republicans on Wednesday proposed a congressional map aimed at diluting the state’s lone majority-Black district, a swift response to last week’s Supreme Court ruling that weakened a landmark voting rights law.

The new map slices Memphis, a majority-Black city, and Shelby County into three districts and likely will give Republicans the ability to flip Tennessee’s lone remaining Democratic seat, which includes the city.

Democratic lawmakers, whose opposition means little under a Republican supermajority in the state’s General Assembly, and Black leaders across Tennessee have compared the effort to carve up the Ninth Congressional District to Jim Crow-era voter suppression tactics. They have accused conservatives of a power grab that undermines Black voters in Memphis, who have long favored Democrats.

Republicans, cheered on by President Trump, have rejected those claims. Instead, they have said, they are responding to the Supreme Court ruling, which raised the bar for what constitutes a racial gerrymander under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Under the map, Shelby County — which includes Memphis — is split into three districts. One district now runs along the state’s western border before extending down to include part of Williamson County, a suburban county just outside Nashville. Two other districts now share part of Shelby County and more rural, conservative communities in Tennessee.

“The Supreme Court has opined that redistricting, like the judicial system, should be colorblind — the decision indicated states like Tennessee can redistrict based on partisan politics,” Speaker Cameron Sexton said in a statement. “Tennessee’s redistricting will reduce the risk of future legal challenges while promoting sound and strategic conservatism.”

The General Assembly is expected to vote as soon as Thursday.

The Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana congressional map that included two majority-Black districts, arguing that it violated the Constitution by using race as the primary factor in redistricting. The ruling has set off a scramble across Southern states with Republican leadership, all of which have at least one majority-Black district, before the 2026 midterms.

Categories Elections, Racism, Tennessee, Trump

U.S. Supreme Court Eviscerates Voting Rights Act

By dianeravitch

April 30, 2026 //

The six conservative-right wing justices on the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, by striking down Section 2, which requires that minorities have districts in which their voting preferences may be heard. This section led to the creation of districts that elected Black representatives.

We can now expect redistricting of Congressional districts and state legislative districts to sharply reduce the number of Black elected officials.

Richard L. Hasen of Slate wrote that the decision “will go down in history as one of the most pernicious and damaging Supreme Court decisions of the last century. All six Republican-appointed justices on the court signed onto Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion gutting what remained of the Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters, while pretending they were merely making technical tweaks to the act.

This decision will bleach the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and local bodies like city councils, by ending the protections of Section 2 of the act, which had provided a pathway to assure that voters of color would have some rudimentary fair representation. It’s the culmination of the life’s work of Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who have shown persistent resistance to the idea of the United States as a multiracial democracy, and a brazen willingness to reject Congress’ judgment that fair representation for minority voters sometimes requires race-conscious legislation. It gives the green light to further partisan gerrymandering. It protects Alito’s core constituency: aggrieved white Republican voters. It’s a disaster for American democracy.

Future generations of legal scholars will review the Republicans’ retreat from civil rights protections enacted in the 1960s. Perhaps psychologists will figure out why Justice Clarence Thomas consistently opposes laws intended to protect people like him.

Categories Civil Rights, Democracy, Injustice, Bigotry, History, Elections

DeSantis Proposes Gerrymander to Eliminate 4 Democratic Seats

By dianeravitch

April 27, 2026 //

Trying to retain control of the House of Representatives, Trump urged states to redraw their Congressional districts, although this redistricting usually happens every 10 years, after the census is reported. Texas, led by ultra-MAGA Governor Greg Abbott, was first to redistrict, creating a likely four additional Republican seats. California countered with a referendum, in which voters approved a temporary redistricting. Other states followed.

Now Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has produced a new map, drawn to eliminate four Democratic members of Congress. If his map is approved (which is likely since Republicans have a supermajority in both legislative houses), the Florida delegation to Congress will have 24 Republicans and only 4 Democrats.

Forget the fact that Florida voters passed a state constitutional amendment to ban partisan gerrymanders in 2010. The State Constitution also bans funding for religious schools, which was reaffirmed by voters in 2008. Now, billions of dollars are spent by the state for religious schools. The State Constitution. Just a piece of paper.

Please note that DeSantis gave his new map to FOX News before sharing it with the legislature.

The New York Times reported:

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida proposed a redraw of the state’s congressional districts on Monday that could give Republicans as many as four new seats, an aggressive gambit that could also set the party up for some losses in the November midterms.

The map appears to eliminate two Democratic-held districts in South Florida, a third in the Tampa area and a fourth in the Orlando area, leaving Democrats with perhaps only four of the state’s 28 congressional seats. There are currently seven Florida Democrats in Congress; an eighth, former Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, resigned last week after being charged with embezzlement.

Florida, which does not hold primary elections until August, is the last state aiming to redraw congressional maps ahead of the midterms. A Supreme Court decision expected soon on a key provision of the Voting Rights Act could provide opportunities for other states to do so, but with many holding primaries in the next month or two, time is running out.

Mr. DeSantis’s map, initially made public without detailed county borders or other critical information, was first reported by Fox News, which received the map before the State Legislature did Monday morning. Lawmakers are scheduled to meet in a special redistricting session starting Tuesday, which means they have less than 24 hours to examine the proposal before they convene.

The short turnaround is likely to upset some state lawmakers, few of whom have expressed much interest in redistricting, as well as many members of the Florida congressional delegation, who will have to introduce themselves to new voters between now and the midterms. State lawmakers are not expected to propose any maps of their own, but rather to vote on Mr. DeSantis’s redraw as early as Wednesday. It is almost certain to pass, given the Republican supermajorities in the State House and Senate.

Should the map pass, it could give Republicans nationwide an edge of roughly two to four seats heading into the midterms. That would hardly be the multiseat advantage that President Trump and national Republicans envisioned when they kicked off the national redistricting battle in Texas last summer.

But should the fight for the U.S. House come down to a few districts, any seat that flips from Democrat to Republican could prove critical. Republicans currently control the chamber by just a handful of seats.

Any redistricting effort in Florida faces a significant legal hurdle. In 2010, voters in Florida passed the Fair Districts amendments, which effectively ban partisan gerrymandering in the state. Mr. DeSantis told Fox News that his proposed map — colored red and blue to indicate the expected political leanings of new districts — “more fairly represents the makeup of Florida today.”

Here is the current party registration in Florida, according to Florida government data:

Current proportions (≈ February–March 2026)

Republican: ~41%
Democrat: ~30%
No Party / Independent (plus minor parties): ~29%

But DeSantis’ gerrymander awards 85% of Congressional seats to Republicans.

Categories Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Ethics, Florida, Politics, Trump

Joyce Vance: Trump Plans to Rig the 2026 Elections

By dianeravitch

April 23, 2026 //

Joyce Vance, former federal prosecutor for northern Alabama, sounds the alarm about a looming threat to the integrity of the fall elections. Trump knows he is likely to lose control of the House and possibly even the Senate. His own poll numbers are very low, in the mid-30s. His war on Iran is unpopular. Consumer prices are rising. Everyone feels the pain at the gas pump. The state of the economy is a millstone around his neck. Prominent MAGA boosters have defected, such as Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly.

Trump’s strategy: Eliminate the guardrails and put election deniers in charge, the people who think that Trump won in 2020, despite the fact that his claims were rejected in more than 60 courts, including the Supreme Court. In other words, cheat.

Joyce Vance warns us about what is happening and what we can do.

She writes:

My friends at Fair Fight, the Georgia-based pro-voting and pro-democracy organization reviewed the results of a ProPublica investigation into how Trump is systematically removing election protections, and produced this summary, that brings you up to date and also provides an important suggestion for what you can do.

We’re all responsible for protection the right to vote. So this is important information to take in.

Trump Has Eliminated Election Safeguards and Installed Loyalist Election Deniers in Key Roles

“The election denial movement is now interwoven within the federal government.”

On Monday, ProPublica released a massive new investigation breaking down how Donald Trump has dismantled federal guardrails that stopped him from overturning his 2020 election loss.

The 4,700+ word investigation, based on interviews with about 30 current and former executive branch officials, provides an unprecedented and detailed account of how thoroughly critical election security guardrails have been gutted within the federal government ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Key Findings from ProPublica’s Investigation:

We read the entire piece (twice) to make sure you’re aware of the findings.

Career officials who protected elections are gone – election deniers have taken over. ProPublica found that at least 75 career officials across several agencies who played key roles in safeguarding the 2020 election have been fired, resigned, or reassigned. They have been replaced by roughly two dozen political appointees Trump has installed in positions that could affect elections. Many are election deniers and ten actively worked to reverse Trump’s 2020 loss.
Federal programs designed to safeguard elections have been dismantled. Since Trump took office, nearly all federal election protection programs have been eliminated, severely defunded, or had nearly all their staff removed or reassigned:
- CISA election team
- NSC election security group
- ODNI Foreign Malign Influence Center
- DOJ Public Integrity Section
- DOJ Civil Rights Division’s voting section
- FBI Public Corruption Team
- FBI Foreign Influence Task Force
- FBI and DOJ Election Day command posts
False claims and politicization now drive federal election policy. ProPublica reports that White House election lawyer Kurt Olsen – sanctioned by judges for false 2020 claims – pressured the FBI’s Atlanta chief to seize Fulton County’s 2020 ballots using a discredited report. When the FBI chief examined the evidence and found it didn’t hold up, and was already dismissed by Georgia Republican officials, he was forced out. The raid happened anyway – using a version of the same rejected evidence. Former DOJ Public Integrity lawyers said they likely would have tried to block the investigation.

Trump is “flooding the zone” to distract us. Billionaires are trying to control what you see, buying up media and controlling algorithms. Share this. Help spread the word.

Comment from Lauren Groh-Wargo, Fair Fight Action CEO: “Let’s be clear about what ProPublica has documented – the federal officials who stopped Trump from overturning his 2020 election loss have been systematically removed and replaced by the same people who tried to help him do it. At least eight key election security programs have been gutted since Trump took office. This is a coordinated effort to ensure there are no guardrails left when Americans go to vote in 2026 – everyone must understand what’s at stake.”

This Investigation Builds on a Pattern of Reporting

ProPublica’s investigation is revealing a coordinated effort to interfere with the 2026 midterm elections:

In February, they revealed that several high-ranking Trump officials – including Kurt Olsen and DHS election integrity official Heather Honey – attended a summit convened by Michael Flynn where election deniers with White House access and influence discussed plans to declare a national emergency to take over the midterms.
In March, ProPublica reported that David Harvilicz, the DHS official in charge of voting machine security, has called to ban voting machines, questioned the validity of Democratic wins, and pushed for Republicans to overhaul election systems to their advantage. Harvilicz co-founded a technology company an election denier who participated in attempts to seize voting machines and spread false claims which Trump considered using as a basis to declare martial law and seize voting machines in 2020.
Taken together, the reporting reveals an effort to embed election deniers inside key federal government roles and use government power to reshape the 2026 midterms.

The Election Integrity Network is the Connective Tissue

The Election Integrity Network, founded by Cleta Mitchell after Trump’s 2020 loss, is the organizational thread connecting these appointees. Mitchell played a central role in efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss, she joined Trump’s infamous phone call to “find” votes in Georgia, was later subpoenaed by the House January 6th Committee and recommended to face charges by a Georgia grand jury.

At least 11 Trump officials have ties to Mitchell’s election denial network – they’ve been installed in agencies like DHS, DOJ, and CISA. One key example is Heather Honey, often seen as a protege of Mitchell. Honey falsely claimed more ballots were cast in Pennsylvania than there were voters in 2020, a claim Trump cited on January 6th – now holds a newly created DHS election integrity role and still gives EIN members private briefings from inside the government. Experts warn this coordination would likely have violated ethics rules under previous administrations, including Trump’s first term.

What Can You Do?

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump and his allies are trying to put their thumb on the scales ahead of the 2026 midterms. They’ve spread false conspiracy theories about voting machines and voter rolls – and reporting shows those claims are now being used to justify federal action.

Trump’s March 2025 executive order attempted to force the decertification of voting machines used in multiple states. Courts blocked it – but the people who pushed for it are still in charge. False claims assembled by election deniers were used to justify the FBI’s seizure of 2020 ballots in Fulton County and federal power is being used to pressure states into handing over their un-redacted voter rolls containing Americans’ personal, private information.

This isn’t a red state or blue state issue. These efforts can target elections anywhere in the country. Regardless of who you support politically, you should want your vote to be protected and your elections to be fair.

Call your Secretary of State (contact info):

Tell them: False claims about elections are being used at the highest levels of government to justify seizing ballots and targeting voter rolls.
Ask them: What are you doing to protect our votes in 2026?

They have a duty to protect the integrity of our elections – make sure they know you expect them to do it.

Speak up. Remain vigilant. Be ready to vote.

Fair Fight Action Team

Paid for by Fair Fight Action.

Categories Accountability, Cheating, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Trump

The Complete and Total Corruption of the Florida Legislature

By dianeravitch

April 20, 2026 //

Jason Garcia is an investigative reporter who focuses on Florida politics. His blog Seeking Rents should be read by every Floridian, as well as anyone who cares about government ethics.

In this post, he shows how corporations buy the votes they need to pass bills that hurt the public interest.

The votes are for sale. The public can’t compete with the corporations. Except at the ballot box.

Question: Why does the public re-elect these scoundrels?

Garcia writes:

Florida lawmakers banked $14 million in campaign contributions on the day before the start of the 2026 legislative session, according to a Seeking Rents review of first-quarter campaign finance reports.

The avalanche of donations recorded on Jan. 12was, in part, the result of an annual fundraising orgy that takes place in Tallahassee on the eve of every lawmaking session. Legislators are forbidden from raising money during their 60-day session, which means they — and the special interests seeking to buy access and influence in the state Capitol — must scramble to beat the opening gavel.

Much of that last-minute money was essentially laundered through intermediaries — like political committees controlled by lobbyists or campaign consultants — that make it difficult to the trace the true origins of many donations.

For example, one of the biggest session-eve spenders this year was “A Stronger Florida,” a political committee linked to the lobbying firm Rubin Turnbull & Associates, which records show doled out more than $500,000 to more than three dozen legislators. Recent large donors to the lobbyist-controlled committee include the billionaire-run insurance firm Ryan Specialty, for-profit hospital owner HCA, online casino operator ARB Interactive, and Outpost Brands, which sells loosely regulated products infused with an opioid-like extract.

But two companies stand out for the amount of last-minute money they dropped on Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature: Gun manufacturer Sig Sauer Inc. and home insurer Slide Insurance, both of whom, records show, showered nearly $500,000 on legislators on the final day of pre-session fundraising.

More than 30 lawmakers deposited a combined $480,000 in donations from Sig Sauer on Jan. 12— including House Speaker Danny Perez (R-Miami), Senate President Ben Albritton (R-Wauchula), incoming House Speaker Sam Garrison (R-Fleming Island), incoming Senate President Jim Boyd (R-Bradenton) and Sen. Jay Trumbull (R-Panama City), each of whom took $50,000 apiece via various fundraising committees they control.

The mass cash infusion came as Sig Sauer was lobbying those same lawmakers to pass a bill shielding the company from legal exposure related to a company-made pistol that can allegedly “ghost fire” without anyone pulling the trigger.

Emails and text messages obtained by Seeking Rents show lobbyists for Sig Sauer gave the original draft of the legislation to Trumbull and Rep. Wyman Duggan (R-Jacksonville), who received a $50,000 donation from the company in December.

Lobbyists for Sig Sauer emailed an aide to Sen. Jay Trumbull a draft of the legislation that became Senate Bill 1748.

The Sig Sauer bill passed the House of Representatives by a 75-29 vote but was unable to get through the Senate. The legislation could be resurrected in the future, though, particularly with the support of a legislator like Trumbull, who is in line to become president of the Senate after the 2028 elections.

Another text message obtained by Seeking Rents — sent by Eileen Stuart, a lobbyist for Sig Sauer, to Duggan, the House bill sponsor — shows that Sig Sauer representatives dined with Trumbull shortly before the session began. The lobbyist described the future Senate president as “firmly committed” to the legislation.

A text message from Sig Sauer lobbyist Eileen Stuart to Rep. Wyman Duggan.

Meanwhile, more than 40 lawmakers reported a combined $469,000 on Jan. 12 from Tampa-based Slide Insurance, which has become one of Florida’s more infamous insurance companiessince launching in 2021.

It’s not clear what specific bills or issues the now-publicly traded company lobbied lawmakers on this session.

But the House of Representatives attempted tolimit the ability of insurance companies to shift money between affiliates and subsidiaries in order to avoid state laws prohibiting excess profits. And Slide has been particularly aggressive in the past when it comes to using internal transactions to move money across its corporate structure.

The profit-stripping legislation breezed through the House by a 106-3 vote. But it was never given a single hearing in the Senate.

Senate leaders were, it turns out, the biggest beneficiaries of Slide’s session-eve contributions.

Records show that a fundraising committee chaired by Boyd, the incoming Senate president, took $170,000 from Slide — more than a third of all the money the company donated on Jan. 12.

The No. 2 recipient? Trumbull, who will follow Boyd as Senate president and who took $45,000 from Slide Insurance the day before session began.

Now, all the contributions that Sig Sauer and Slide made the day before session went to Republicans — which makes sense, since Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature (as well as the Governor’s Office and all three statewide elected Cabinet posts) and have complete control over the agenda in the Capitol.

But to be very clear, plenty of corporate interests buying access in Tallahassee also make sure to spend a bit of money currying favor with some Democrats, too.

A particularly interesting example: The new campaign-finance reports show that the giant landowner behind the “Blue Ribbon Projects” bill gave $10,000 on Jan. 12 to a committee controlled by Rep. Christine Hunschofsky (D-Parkland), the incoming House Democratic Leader.

It could perhaps help explain how the legislation — which would have enabled the largest landowners in Florida to develop city-sized projects on rural tracts of land with minimal local oversight — managed to pick up a handful of Democratic votes in each of the three House committees it passed this session, despite opposition from environmental groups and local governments.

The Blue Ribbon Projects bill ultimately failed in the Senate — but just barely.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud

Norm Eisen: These Trump Financial Deals Should Be Investigated

By dianeravitch

April 16, 2026 //

Norm Eisen was the White House ethics officer during the Obama administration. There were no financial scandals during the Obama administration; President Obama did not profit from his office during his presidency.

The financial conflicts of interest during the Trump administration are too numerous to mention.

Norm Eisen was especially disturbed by one of them and asked the Trump-controlled SEC to investigate.

This post is also an advertisement for The Contrarian, where this post appeared. It is a premier site for those trying to save democracy from Trump’s authoritarianism and grifting.

Eisen writes:

When I was the Obama White House ethics czar during the Great Recession, I would not even allow the president to refinance his modest family home in Chicago. He was regulating the banks in a time of crisis, and it wouldn’t have looked right.

That’s not exactly the approach that President Trump, his cronies, and their families have adopted. I’ve written before about the Top 10 most outrageous corruption scandals of this administration. This week, my Democracy Defenders Fund colleagues and I added another item to the list. Working with former New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, we filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission urging it investigate ALT5 Sigma(ALTS).

This company boasts Trump’s son Eric as a board member and Trump Special Envoy Steve Witkoff’s son Zach as its board chair. Its history in recent months is one of serious failures of compliance, breakdowns of governance, and profoundly concerning financial connections with another Trump and Witkoff-linked venture, World Liberty Financial (WLF).

The story starts in August, when ALTS told the world that it had raised $1.5 billion through various investment vehicles. ALTS then moved the money to WLF by buying $750 million of its $WLFI governance tokens, about 7% of total supply. As detailed in our letter, “ALTS appears to have steered as much as $500 million of private investor money directly into the pockets of the Trump family and their associates.” When this money hit their wallets, Zach Witkoff (co-founder and CEO of WLF) and Eric Trump (also a WLF co-founder) assumed leadership roles on the board of ALTS.

These facts give rise to questions that are of the utmost importance to the integrity of our financial markets and of our democracy, as our letter explains. The most profound: who were the investors who funded the ALTS $WLFI purchase–and did they do so in order to get in the good graces of the Trump administration?

The concerns about this transaction are only deepened by what went on in the period in and around this massive financial transfer to WLF. In August, ALTS disclosed that several months earlier a Rwandan court had ruled that ALT5 Sigma Canada Inc., a subsidiary of the company, and its former principal were criminally liable for illicit enrichment and money laundering, ordering imprisonment, fines, and dissolution of the subsidiary. Shortly thereafter, the CEO of ALTS was suspended without explanation, auditors changed multiple times within just a few weeks, and the company failed to meet the due date for filing its annual report. It’s little wonder that ALTS was at risk of being delisted from Nasdaq and its share price has plummeted. Despite the immense capital influx from these transactions, the share piece has declined by around 75%. The company is looking at hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for the 2025 fiscal year.

Given these troubling data points, our letter urges the SEC’s Enforcement Division to “carefully examine these issues because they indicate, both individually and collectively, that ALTS may have engaged in a number of securities violations, thereby harming investors and financial marketplace writ large.” This is not just a story about corporate governance. It is a test of whether the rules that protect investors and the integrity of American markets still apply when political power and private profit intersect.

Our SEC letter calling for an investigation of ALTS is just one of many similar filings we’ve made. This one is outrageous enough that even Trump’s SEC may investigate. But whatever they do, we’re laying down a marker for the press, the public and other enforcement authorities. Whether for state attorneys general and securities regulators, a future more independent Congress, or future federal regulators, there will be a trail of breadcrumbs to follow. Meanwhile, we must all demand answers.

Our ability to continue pushing back against Trump and his cronies’ web of dubious dealings is, of course, supported by your paid subscriptions. We are deeply grateful that you Contrarians make this work possible as well as our weekly pro-democracy Contrarian coverage. See for yourself in this week’s roundup of our best content produced by my terrific colleagues:

War Crimes

What Comes From the Failure to Confront Insanity

Jen Rubin wrote on the cascade of civil and political failures behind Trump’s genocidal threats on Tuesday: “some muddled tale of a diplomatic breakthrough should in no way diminish the illegality, the horror, or the frightful intrusion of religious zealotry into our politics.”

The Strategic Gift to Tehran

Brian O’Neill wrote on how Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be helping to produce the strongest Islamic Republic since 1979. “It would be one of the great strategic self-inflicted wounds in Middle East policy.”

Toxic Religious Rhetoric & Why a Ceasefire in Iran Isn’t Enough

On the podcast this week, Jen spoke with Robert P. Jones about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s crusader rhetoric and the dangers of Trump’s “refrigerator-magnet style” theology, and with Joyce Vance about Iran after the ceasefire, the Republicans finding a shred of conscience, and more.

Break Glass

Norman Ornstein thinks it’s time to call an emergency an emergency and invoke the 25th Amendment. “We have a malignant narcissistic psychopath as president, with control over the military and the atomic arsenal, who is deteriorating mentally before our very eyes.”

Cabinet Chaos

What Pam Bondi Destroyed in One Year Could Take Decades to Rebuild

Stacey Young wrote on just how much Pam Bondi’s reign as AG degraded the Justice Department: an exodus of talent, criminal cases shut down, an utter loss of good faith with the courts and more. “Now, the best way we can fight for the department is from the outside.”

Which Cabinet Member is Next on The Chopping Block?

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) joined Jen to consider the next attorney general—and the next vacant cabinet seat—amid war with Iran. “I think Kash Patel stands a very good chance of being shown the door.”

The Home Front

Texas Stripped 15,000 Businesses of Opportunity. Now It Faces a Legal Challenge.

Stacey Abrams wrote on how Republicans have made disadvantaged communities a scapegoat for failed economic policies, including a Texas comptroller who quietly decertified more than 15,000 minority- and women-owned businesses in December.

Don’t Forget About Minnesota

Annastacia Belladonna-Carrera of Common Cause reminded us that, despite what the Trump regime claimed, ICE has never left Minnesota and is continuing operations across the state. “The media may not be all over it … but the need is still there.”

No Farms, No Food

John Boyd, founder of the Black Farmers Association, spoke to April Ryan to sound the alarm on Trump’s devastating attack on small and minority farmers. “There’s going to be a lot of generational land that changes hands.”

Affordability is the Issue, Especially for Childcare

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf wrote on how the Trump administration is putting the onus on states to fund social services — while making it impossible for them to provide those services.

Checking in With the Bots

5 Things You Should Know About AI Right Now

Amid the many hype and doom cycles about AI, Adam Conner of the Center for American Progress gave us a breakdown of what AI is actually doing right now — to the economy, to warfare, to your job.

How the Media is Helping AI Spread Lies

Josh Levs wrote on the problem with AI summaries having taken the place of traditional media as the first source of information for many, even when it comes to war — and how this is compounded by the media’s acquiescence to AI-first search.

History Has Its Eyes on You

Operation Enduring Glory

Tim Dickinson gave us a rundown of all the things Trump is naming after himself, which somehow includes both the Institute of Peace and the “most lethal warship ever built” at the tip of the iceberg.

The Infuriating Hypocrisy of Usha Vance

Meredith Blake checked in with the second lady, who thinks kids should read more but doesn’t have much to say about the Trump administration defunding libraries (or anything else).

Split Screen: Giorgia Meloni — Feminist or Fascist?

Azza Cohen took a nuanced look at Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister, as both gender-empowerment opportunist and persevering target of media sexism. “That a woman can be the head of a political party named ‘brothers’ is some kind of ironic victory.”

Fighting Back

The Contrarian Covers the Democracy Movement

This week, we saw anti-war protests nationwide in New York, Illinois, Washington, D.C., Missouri, Tennessee, and more. Get help organizing from Indivisible, find protests in your area at mobilize.us, and send us your protest photos at submit@contrariannews.org.

This Congresswoman Is Jamming the Gears of Trump’s Chaos Machine

Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) joined Jen Rubin with an update on the ongoing standoff over ICE funding and why there is still cause for hope. “The point really is people’s freedoms … so we’re not going to vote for one more penny until these reforms are done.”

Culture, Cartoons & Fun Stuff

This week, our cartoonists took on hollow wins (Rescue from Iran, Nick Anderson), obvious losses (Both Sides Win, Michael de Adder), better worlds (Tom the Dancing Bug, Ruben Bolling), and more.

The Auriemma/Staley Spat is Good for Women’s College Basketball

Carron J. Phillips wrote on how the 2026 Women’s Final Four will be deservedly remembered for one thing — and it wasn’t the championship game. “Sports are more enjoyable when what’s at stake is more than the final score.”

This column is based on our letter and associated materials

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Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, For-Profit, Fraud, Trump

JD Vance: Master of Hypocrisy

By dianeravitch

April 12, 2026 //

JD Vance traveled to Hungary last week to help right-wing leader Viktor Orban, whose Presidency is being decided today by the voters.

Orban is the hero of the MAGA cult, because he has cracked down on universities, free speech, the judiciary, and the LGBT community. Hard-right conservatives in the U.S. admire Orban because of his success in curbing people and institutions who disagree with him. He is the successful template for curbing freedom and democracy. Orban has a close relationship with Putin and has strongly opposed aid to Ukraine in repelling the Russian invasion.

Today, his party is being challenged by a new party formed by Peter Magyar, a former ally of Orban. The polls predict that Magyar’s party, Tisza, is likely to beat Orban’s party, Fidesz.

Opponents of Orban’s authoritarianism fear that he will rig the election, or like Trump, refuse to accept a loss.

JD Vance arrived last week and spent a few days boosting Orban’s campaign and endorsing his anti/democratic accomplishments. Vance did not mention the hundreds of thousands of Hungarians who have left the country or the country’s low economic growth.

Vance denounced interference in the Hungarian election by EU nations and Ukraine. This foreign interference, he said, was deplorable.

Did it occur to Vance that his vigorous campaigning for Orban was precisely the foreign interference of which he accused other nations? Imagine how Americans would feel if top officials from other nations showed up in the closing days of a major election to campaign for their favored candidate? Not good, I suspect.

It’s odd to see Trump and Putin coalescing behind the same candidate. And ominous. It will be a healthy sign if Hungarian voters toss out this authoritarian bully, this champion of censorship and repression.

Categories Censorship, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Vance, J.D.

Viktor Orban’s Best Friends: Trump and Putin

By dianeravitch

April 10, 2026 //

A very important election takes place on Sunday. Hungarians will vote whether to keep Viktor Orban or to replace him with Peter Magyar, leader of the center-right party Tisza. The latest polls show Magyar leading Orban’s Fidesz party. The election is close, and there are many undecided voters.

Orban is a favorite of Trump and his MAGA base. He is also admired by Putin because he has been a disruptive force within NATO, blocking aid for Ukraine. Orban has fascist tendencies: he has clamped down of freedom of the press and expressed hostility to immigrants. He has a special hatred for gays.

JD Vance visited Hungary this week to convert support for Orban’s “illiberal democracy.”

In this post in The American Prospect, editor-at-large Harold Meyerson describes what is at stake in Sunday’s election in Hungary.

The friends of Viktor Orbán

Trump and Putin, Bibi and Tucker Carlson, thug-ocrats of all nations flock to Orbán’s banner.

If you wanted to find some way to cluster in a single room the individuals who pose a genuine threat to liberal freedoms, egalitarian values, and scientific epistemology, you might want to call a meeting of the Viktor Orbán fan club. There, Donald Trump would rub elbows with Vladimir Putin, JD Vance with Xi Jinping, Tucker Carlson with—yes—Bibi Netanyahu. Orbán, whose longtime rule over Hungary is threatened by Sunday’s election there, is uniquely positioned at the center of a set of overlapping Venn diagrams representing every xenophobic, obscurantist, homophobic, ethno-nationalist, and anti-democratic thug either currently in power or maneuvering to get there.

Right now, the two major players working to save Orbán from defeat on Sunday are Trump and Putin. Ukraine, Schmukraine: Both see in Orbán a fellow immigrant-hater, who, like them, has walled off his borders, seized control of his nation’s judiciary, created (through the miracle of kleptocracy) a new oligarchic elite devoted to bolstering his rule, taken control of the news media (both public and private), turned education into indoctrination, banished an entire university endowed by George Soros (whose legacy includes bringing down Putin’s beloved USSR and backing anti-Trump candidates and initiatives), served as Putin and Trump’s inside operator to undermine the European Union, mobilized homophobia when it’s been politically useful, and done his damnedest to curtail freedom of speech. Is it any wonder that Putin’s agents have tried to rig the upcoming election in his favor, or that MAGA culture warriors have rushed to bolster his cause because he’s demonstrated that even partial authoritarianism can impede the woke and exile the empiricists? Is it any wonder that Vance was stumping for him in Budapest last weekend as a way to solidify his own support from the American MAGAnauts whose affection he needs to rekindle? Is it any wonder that Trump himself has endorsed Orbán, or that Putin sees him as his man inside the EU?

Idolizing Orbán is also the common thread linking Tucker Carlson, who probably has done more to promote Orbán to MAGA conservatives than anyone else, and Bibi Netanyahu, who sent a message last month to the MAGA faithful attending their annual CPAC conference in Budapest, hailing Orbán as a leader who can “protect against this rising tide” of Islamic terrorism. “Viktor Orbán,” he added, “means safety, security, stability.” If that didn’t suffice, Yair Netanyahu, Bibi’s son, traveledto that Budapest conference to echo his father’s endorsement.

Orbán has emerged as a kind of Jeffrey Epstein of geopolitics. Just as Epstein managed to assemble a mind-boggling assortment of elites in the cause of sex with underaged girls, so Orbán has also brought together an equivalently mind-boggling assortment of elites in the cause of ethno-nationalistic anti-liberalism—a cause, clearly, that can unite communists and capitalists, Jews and antisemites.

The Trump-Orbán lovefest is nothing new. Orbán has endorsed Trump in all three of his presidential campaigns, and last October, Trump rewarded him by exempting Hungary from the sanctions his administration has placed on nations buying Russian oil and gas. Trump later made clear that this agreement was specifically between him and Orbán; were Orbán not re-elected (the most recent polls show him trailing his opponent by roughly ten percentage points), Trump made clear there was no guarantee that he would continue to honor it.

But Orbán’s ties to America’s Christian nationalists go beyond Trump’s “what’s in it for me?” ethos. When a number of Hungary’s European neighbors were welcoming Muslim refugees a decade ago, Orbán built barricades on the borders and made clear that Muslims were not welcome. While endorsing Orbán during his drop-in to Budapest, Vance said he’d come there “because of the moral cooperation between our two countries,” that each was engaged in a “defense of Western civilization” based on their common adherence to “Christian civilization and Christian values.”

As even the most cursory course in Hungarian history can make clear, one of the nation’s defining Christian values has long been antisemitism. Imagine the kind of 20th-century Silicon Valley that Hungary could have cultivated had it not compelled such Jewish scientific and mathematical geniuses as John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller, and Theodore von Kármán to leave their homeland in their late teens or early twenties. Imagine how many more Hungarian Jews would have survived the Holocaust had Hungarian Christians not been steeped in antisemitism well before the Gestapo arrived.

“Will you stand for freedom, truth, and the God of our fathers?” Vance concluded. “Then, my friends, go to the polls and stand for Viktor Orbán.”

But, hey: If Bibi is willing to overlook such incidents, who am I to cavil?

Of course, there have always been lots of Hungarians who never cottoned to Orbán, the God of their fathers notwithstanding. Like most big, cosmopolitan cities, Budapest has been a bastion of anti-Orbán sentiment, favorably disposed to the arts and sciences; his support, like that of most Christian nationalist leaders, is disproportionately rural and parochial. But the redistribution of Hungarian wealth and income to the oligarch class that Orbán has created has apparently taken a political toll even among some longtime Orbánistas—much as its American equivalent seems to be taking a political toll on Republicans here in the States.

JD Vance was right: Illiberal kleptocratic Christian nationalism is on the ballot in Hungary this Sunday, just as it will be on the ballots that Americans will cast in November. Here and there, may it be massively repudiated.

Harold Meyerson
Editor-at-Large

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Immigration, International

Timothy Snyder: How to Foil a Coup Attempt

By dianeravitch

April 9, 2026 //

The distinguished historian Timothy Snyder is deeply steeped in European history and in the ways of authoritarians, tyrants, dictators, and others who lust for power. He warns us that the possibility of a coup attempt is real, and we must be prepared. How does he know it’s real? Trump tried to stage a coup on January 6, 2021. He failed then, he suffered no consequences for his effort to overturn the election.

Now Trump knows that he’s facing a Democratic wave against his authoritarianism in November. He is unlikely to accept the voters’ decision. What can we do?

Snyder writes:

We are seven months away from the most consequential midterm election in the history of the United States. Meanwhile, we are fighting a war. These are the structural conditions for a coup attempt in which a president tries to nullify elections and take permanent power as a dictator. If we see this, we can stop it, overcome the movement that brought us to this point, and make a turn towards something better.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Pete Hegseth are stuck in the logic of escalation, according to which the feeling of defeat today can be reversed by doing the first thing that comes to mind tomorrow. Trump is surrounded by people who are making money from the war; each day of war strengthens a warmongering lobby with personal access to the president. As the war lengthens, the chance that it will be exploited for a coup attempt increases.

Trump tells us that he is chiefly concerned with the permanence of his own comfort and power (think about ballroom and bunker), much of which he will lose when his party is defeated decisively in the midterms. He regularly declares his intention to meddle in the elections. His party backed a bill which would have turned elections into a sham. Trump wants to increase the defense budget by nearly 50% without any review of what the money is for; this is strategic nonsense, and has to be understood as a payoff for the men who, as he imagines, will help him install a dictatorship. Hegseth is meanwhile purging the highest officer ranks of people of principle.

It is up to us to put two and two together: Trump will seek to exploit the war (or the next one) to alter the elections. We bear responsibility for what comes next.

The eventuality can seem frightening, but Trump’s position is weak. The gambit of turning a foreign war into a domestic dictatorship is complicated and difficult. Its success depends on us. If the possibility of such a coup is not anticipated and the variants of the gambit are not called out as they emerge, he can succeed. He has attempted a coup (or, technically, a self-coup) once, in January 2021 — there is no reason to think that he will not try to do so again.

As always, history can help us to imagine the immediate future. History does not repeat, but it does instruct. We know that war offers at least five kinds of opportunities for aspiring dictators. Let us consider the moves that Trump could make, and how they could be stopped. I offer them as five clear types; in practice, of course, they will be mixed and matched from day to day. But if we have the concepts in advance, we can recognize the threat, and turn any sort of coup attempt against Trump.

We are not spectators of this unfolding drama. We are actors inside every scenario. And “we” means journalists who report, judges who follow the law, servicemen and servicewomen who follow the Constitution, and above all citizens who organize, protest and vote. If we know the coup scripts in advance, we know when to take the stage — and where to take the rage.

So here are the scenarios:

1. The Steady Hand. A war is going on, is the claim here, and so we should not change leadership, regardless of what happens in an election. This stance nicely dodges the questions of whether the war was worth starting in the first place, and whether the people in charge are the best qualified to make war (or peace). The steady hand argument has been used countless times; it was the approach that George W. Bush took against John Kerry in the presidential campaign of 2004. But whereas Bush was using such arguments to win an election, Trump will have to use them to overturn the results of an election that his party loses, most likely by huge margins. Given that Trump’s polling on the war is terrible, he is in a weaker position than Bush was, and would have to do much more. It is unclear why a steady hand would rig elections; and, for that matter, Trump’s conduct during this war has made his hand seem (even) less steady. To rig an election, he needs a tight elite consensus around him; he needs allies who are willing to break the law and the Constitution, risking not only prison time but also historical infamy as people who wanted to end the republic. The war is breaking up that consensus and leading to the firing of some of the likely election riggers. The case for a steady hand that should not be hindered by electoral results should be easy to defeat; but we have to see the logic and work to break the ranks of Trump allies who would follow orders to rig elections. They have to know that they will fail and that when they will bear the consequences for the rest of their lives. The one truly steady hand is that of justice.

2. Bonapartism. In this tactic the aspiring dictator says: I know that you would like democracy at home, and so let us prove our ardor together by fighting a war for democracy abroad. This is meant to allow the tyrant to claim the mantle of democracy even while he undoes it at home. This approach was behind the original Napoleonic wars; it was perfected by Napoleon III in the 1850s as “diplomatic nationality.” Trump, however, is not pretending to care about democracy. He prefers dictators; and among dictators, he prefers Putin more then the rest. Trump’s allies though will make the case that war spreads “the American way” or something of the sort. But such arguments can be easily defeated. Whether by insider trading, political bets, arms dealing or (in Putin’s case) higher oil prices and conveniently dropped sanctions, the people around Trump are making money on this war — they are literally warmongers. What is good in America is bled away in this war; as oligarchs foreign and domestic make billions of dollars, as we are asked to sacrifice everything in exchange for nothing. Trump himself ran for office on an anti-Bonapartist platform: no wars abroad for democracy, spend money instead at home. Instead he is proposing to defund basic domestic services in order to the bribe the armed services with a ridiculous funding increase during a senseless war.

3. Bismarckian Unification. Here the ruler no longer pretends to care about democracy (so far so good for Trump), but speaks about bringing the nation together. This was the great success of Otto von Bismarck in central Europe between 1864 and 1871. Germany before Bismarck was a culture but not a unified state; in the age of nationalism the question was who would succeed in bringing numerous German entities together. By winning three wars (against Denmark, the Habsburgs, and France), the Prussian leader was able to create the conditions for the establishment of a new, united German Reich. Because unification was achieved by force of arms rather than by revolution or elections (as many Germans had hoped in 1848), the new state was a militaristic monarchy from the beginning, with an essentially symbolic parliament. Trump would no doubt like this model; but he has the problem of being unable to win one war, let alone three; also, the war that he is fighting do not address an essential national problem. Instead it seems to be about tearing the American republic apart. Trump’s budget proposal, offered during the war, amounts to this: the wealth of working Americans will be transferred to oligarchs and defense contractors, and the government will no longer provide basic services. It uses war to advance the impoverishment and peonization of everyone but a tiny elite.

4. Fascist Sacrifice. The fascist leader kills enough of his own people in a major campaign so that the survivors begin to accept the worldview: that all is struggle, that enemies are everywhere, that the world is a conspiracy against us, etc. Death on a mass scale becomes a source of meaning, uniting the Führer with his Volk. There is an element of this in Putin’s war in Ukraine, but the classic example is the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The very difficulty of the war after 1941 helped fascist arguments in Germany — Victor Klemperer’s diaries are helpful here — for more than three years. Trump, however, lacks some of the attributes of historical fascism: the historical fascists actually did believe in struggle, which he does not. Trump believes in saying words and then having things handed to him on a silver platter. Fascists always believed in war; Trump converted to war late in life, having become convinced that it was a way to easy “wins” abroad that could be translated into dictatorship at home. Having boasted of winning in Iran dozens of times already, he is in a poor position to call for the large-scale land invasion that would be necessary to trigger huge American casualties and the bloody fascist dialectic of events and sentiments. Even if he did order a land invasion, it would probably not work, either militarily or politically. He has not done any of the ideological spadework; no one, listening to Trump, would think that he believed in a struggle for survival. By 1941, Hitler had already won quick wars in Poland and France, which created a sense among previously doubtful military commanders and civilians that he knew what he was doing, which then opened the way for a second, more ideological, stage of the war. Military commanders are presumably dubious of Trump; in any event, they are being fired by Hegseth at an extraordinary rate during a war. It is in this light, again, that one must understand Trump’s strategically senseless notion that we should increase the military budget right now by nearly 50%: it is meant as a payoff for officers, soldiers, and sailors — people he has openly disrespected his entire life, people whose funerals he treats as an opportunity to sell his own branded merchandise — to assist him in a coup against Americans. That bribe should fail, for many reasons; but it will not fail unless we notice what is happening.

5. Exploitation of Terror. This gambit (or one variant of it) depends on something happening during a war. A foreign enemy carries out an act of terrorist violence against Americans, providing an aspiring dictator with a pretext for a state of emergency and a suspension of elections. Nothing exactly like this has happened in the United States, although we can recall our self-destructive reactions to 9/11. This is Trump’s best hope among all of these scenarios, which is one reason why it might not happen: Iranian leaders must be aware that Trump would seek to exploit such an event. Iranian propaganda certainly involves threats against individual American leaders, but it seems unlikely that they would carry them out. Teheran has more to gain by mocking Pete Hegseth (as in a recent video) than by seeking to assassinate him. (Indeed, given Hegseth’s particular combination of strategic incompetence and Christian nationalism, he must seem like a God-given enemy for the regime in Teheran.)Subscribe

Another possibility is that Iranians do nothing inside US borders, but Trump and his people pretend that they have, or even organize a fake terrorist strike themselves. It is important to understand that such things do happen, and have been done by the people Trump admires the most. Consider the 1999 false flag terrorist attacks in Russia, the bombing of apartment buildings by the Russian secret services, which began a chain of events that allowed Putin to begin his march towards dictatorship. Self-terror is a Putinist strategy, and it worked. This means that it can be presumed to have been considered by Trump, Putin’s client in the White House. Putin is one of the people to whom Trump listens.

But Trump unlike Putin does not come from the secret services, and it is hard to imagine him not botching such an operation (even the Russians had some slips); it is also hard to imagine that Americans ordered to do such a thing would not leak such a plan before it could be realized (it did leak in Russia and was reported before it happened — but it still worked). Even if the false flag attack itself took place, Trump would have to go from self-terror to a state of emergency and some sort of self-invasion to halt the elections. But a self-invasion by whom? ICE is unpopular and untrained. The war has not been run in a way that brings military commanders to trust the president. Again, one has to see Trump’s proposal to increase the defense budget by nearly 50% as a kind of desperate bribe. There are sound strategic reasons why it is a terrible idea, but there is also a political one.

Elements of these scenarios can be mixed together. Some variant of terrorism is Trump’s best bet. And so one should be (preemptively, now) skeptical of Trump’s account of any future terrorist attack; we can be sure that, whatever its true origins and character, Trump will provide a self-serving account meant to serve a coup and a dictatorship. It is utterly predictable that he will attempt to pass responsibility for any act of terror to his domestic political opponents and discredit or undo elections. We have to think through this chain of events now to make sure that we are ready to block it — and to turn any such attempt against him.

The terrorism scenario should not work. We should consider it in advance, and hold Trump responsible for any horror inside the United States brought about by his mad war. None of the other scenarios should work either, in any combination. Indeed, all of them should only hurt him, if we are attentive and active. But there is no neutral position. We cannot do nothing and expect the republic to make it through. Indeed, Trump’s one chance to succeed, in any of these scenarios, is our own silent collaboration. He can only carry out a coup if we decide to obey in advance: to pretend that wartime pretexts for coups are never used, although history instructs us that they are; and then to offer our surprise to Trump as the unique political resource that can transform his weak position into a strong one.

Trump is weak, but weakness only matters if it is treated as vulnerability and pushed towards defeat. He will try to make his weak position strong, which will expose further vulnerabilities that have to be seen and exploited. All of his policies make him vulnerable; the war in particular makes him vulnerable; and any gambit to exploit that war should make him and his party easy to defeat and discredit his authoritarian movement forever.

A coup attempt is not at all unthinkable; Trump has done it before, and he makes it very clear that he is thinking about it now. When we think about it now, about how it might take shape, we make it less likely; indeed, we deter it. Knowledge of history can change the future. If we remember what history shows us is possible, we can prevent a coup from succeeding — and turn any such attempt against its instigator.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Fraud, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: Reasons for Optimism about U.S. Politics!

Tennessee GOP Rushes to Eliminate Sole Majority-Black District

U.S. Supreme Court Eviscerates Voting Rights Act

DeSantis Proposes Gerrymander to Eliminate 4 Democratic Seats

Current proportions (≈ February–March 2026)

Joyce Vance: Trump Plans to Rig the 2026 Elections

Trump Has Eliminated Election Safeguards and Installed Loyalist Election Deniers in Key Roles