Will Trump invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to enforce his rule, via a militia if need be, ending democracy in the USA in the process?
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
Is Trump about to end democracy in the USA? I fear he might be, and I fear it might be very soon that this happens. So let me explain my reasoning. There are two causes for my concern and one consequence.
Let's look at the causes. The first is a judge named Judge James Boasberg.
Judge Boasberg was the person who said to the federal administration that Trump could not deport people to El Salvador without there being proper due process in place. He ordered that a flight that was already on its way to that country be reversed and returned to the USA and the Trump administration ignored him.
What he's now done is suggest that, and I'm going to quote him, "the US Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial powers, especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it."
In other words, what he's saying is that Trump and his cohort in his regime- and that's the right word for his government - have deliberately ignored the ruling of a federal judge and are therefore in contempt of court.
Now, if you know anything about the law, there is one group in society who really upset judges, and those are the people who are in contempt of court, because judges think that they are really important people and in a real sense they are, because their behavior is fundamental to the upholding of democracy because if we don't have the rule of law, we cannot have a democratic society.
Judge Boasberg is rightly saying that the people in the Trump administration who have ignored this order from Trump downwards, because he has bragged about it, are in contempt of court. They stand at risk as a consequence of going to prison. Let's be clear about that. That's the penalty for being in contempt, and he is starting proceedings.
Now, let me move to my second example of the reason why Trump might end democracy in the USA very soon. In this case, I'm talking about Governor Gavin Newsom in California. He has begun a legal action against the US federal government, brought by his state, which is the fifth-largest economy in the world, to put California into context. And what he is saying, absolutely and indisputably legally correctly, is that Trump is not allowed to impose tariffs in the USA without the approval of Congress, and Trump has never gone to Congress to seek that approval. Therefore, all the moves that he's making with regard to tariffs are, as Governor Newsom puts it, illegal.
He and his attorney general have lined up an argument. They're going to bring the case. They want to overthrow the entire process of disruption that Trump has created.
Those, in my opinion, are the two crisis points in the US legal system that are now facing Trump, amongst many other court cases that are going on, these two stand out to me and what I think is that Trump is going to do something extreme in reaction.
90 days ago, or at the time of recording this, almost 90 days ago, Trump signed an order and that order required that two of the most fair-minded people in the USA should look at whether there was an emergency or crisis amounting to insurrection in the USA, which would require that Trump could declare a state of emergency, meaning that the Insurrection Act of 1807 could be brought into force, basically suspending the rule of law and allowing military law to apply.
Those two fair-minded people were JD Vance, the Vice President of the USA, and Pete Hegseth, the Fox News commentator who happens now to be Secretary of State for Defense.
Do you think it likely that they're going to disagree with Trump?
Do you think it likely that this was all stage-managed to ensure that military law could be enforced?
Do you think that in practice, Judge Boasberg and Governor Newsom are, totally innocently, and totally, appropriately, but nonetheless, provocatively providing Trump with the excuse to actually go ahead with what he has always wanted. Which is to suspend democracy in the USA.
The 1807 act is remarkably short. In fairness, anybody can read it. There is a copy on my blog, but let's look at the key words, which are in section 333 of that Act, and they say this.
"If an action so hinders the executions of the laws of the United States, or opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States, or impedes the course of justice under those laws, then the Insurrection Act can be invoked."
And what happens when the Insurrection Act can be invoked by the President? It means that the President can either call up the army or what it describes as a militia, which these days is thought to be the National Guard, but it is not said as such in the Act, to enforce the law as the President sees it.
Could it be that President Trump could, in fact, call up a militia? There are, after all, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of MAGA faithful in the USA who might respond to his call. They did in January 2021, after all. They staged an insurrection, then. Would they now do it again, legally, according to Trump, under the Insurrection Act, to oppress the powers that are trying to uphold the rule of law in America?
And what would happen if Trump did this?
My belief is that he will try to do this.
My belief is that he may end up in conflict with the US military as a result.
But I do believe he might call up a militia as a consequence, and if he does, wait for the disappearances to start.
How long will Governor Newsom be out of prison?
How long will Judge Boasberg be in office, let alone enjoy his freedom?
How long will many of Trump's long-term political opponents be out there enjoying their day-to-day activities?
How many of those who are now appearing daily on media shows in the USA criticising Trump on things like MSNBC, and elsewhere, will be able to do so for very much longer?
When Trump believes that he can use the Insurrection Act, and he believes that he can use the power of force to literally dictate terms to the USA, anything could happen. And what we know is that there are no tyrants on earth who don't throw their opponents into prison or worse.
Trump might be moving to that point.
It doesn't take long for a democracy to collapse.
It might happen in the space of only three or so months in the USA.
We are living, as I've said before, and will say again in very dangerous times. But, the coming weekend, which will represent the 90 day anniversary of the signing of that order, requiring Vance and Hegseth to form this opinion, might, in the light of the actions of Governor Newsom and Judge Boasberg, give rise to the end of US democracy and that would be quite an astonishing turn of events that the world could never ignore.
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Here’s another list that demonstrates that, for us in the UK, what’s going on in the US isn’t just a spectator sport. This list is about our essential infrastructure.
Water and Utilities
Thames Water: The UK’s largest water utility is in exclusive takeover talks with U.S. private equity firm KKR, which plans a £4 billion cash injection to stabilise the company amid its £16 billion debt burden.
Northumbrian Water: Co-owned by KKR, this utility serves the North East of England.
Cadent Gas: The UK’s largest gas distribution network was sold by National Grid to a consortium including U.S. investors like Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets.
Energy and Power
National Grid: While primarily UK-owned, National Grid has significant U.S. operations and investors. It sold a majority stake in its UK gas transmission business to a consortium including U.S. investors.
Transportation
AGS Airports: Operates Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Southampton airports. U.S. private equity firm Blackstone acquired a 22% stake in AGS Airports for £235 million.
Digital Infrastructure
Data Centres: U.S. companies CyrusOne, ServiceNow, CloudHQ, and CoreWeave announced a combined £6.3 billion investment in UK data centre infrastructure. For example, CloudHQ is developing a £1.9 billion data centre campus in Didcot, Oxfordshire.
Defense and Aerospace
BAE Systems: While a British company, BAE Systems has significant U.S. investment, with shareholders like BlackRock (9.90%) and Capital Group Companies (14.18%).
QinetiQ: Originally part of the UK Ministry of Defence, QinetiQ had a 33.8% stake acquired by U.S. private equity firm Carlyle Group in 2003.
I had hoped that your YouTube channel would be a source of educational information on UK politics and economics. Instead, you’ve decided to chase clicks and advertising revenue with endless hysterical rants about Trump.
Instead of a ‘broadsheet’ channel, you have a tabloid.
Well, you are a quite amusing variant on the trolling theme. You big me up, and then clutch at your pearls in your despair at my fall from grace. How sweet of you (I jest).
In reality, I am a political economist. Trump is the biggest issue in political economy the world has seen for a long time. He is also the most destructive force in current world politics. Do you really think that I would ignore that fact? Why? Are you really stupid enough to think that I would fall for your little ruse?
“clutch at your pearls”
What a patronising sexist insult.
You reveal yourself.
I use it of all genders
The sexism is all your own
Nothing sexist at all about pearls…
“”Casting pearls before swine” is an idiom that means offering something valuable or good to someone who won’t appreciate it or will even be offended by it. It suggests wasting valuable resources, like advice, wisdom, or gifts, on someone who is not receptive or who will misuse them. The phrase is derived from the Bible, where Jesus warns against giving sacred things to dogs or casting pearls before swine. ” (AI summary)
Trolls always reveal their lack of education eventually.
Thanks
It’s a phrase commonly used in the Murphy household of right-wingers, without ever being gender specific. That was how I used it here.
Seems you have attracted a tag team of apprentice trolls.
And, let’s not forget that Trump has also taken away two top layers of career US Army command and replaced them with Trump loyalists.
So, perhaps the militia have their day whilst the army watches on with a “do not intervene” command.
Maybe in September Kier and Charles will be shaking hands with a real live fascist dictator. That would be a very special relationship. Seriously, it’s time to end the military occupation of the UK by the USA and start making proper friends elsewhere – and fast. But this being America, if it gets to that point I would not be surprised if Trump goes the way of Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy.
Trump will never be assassinated. And this indicates to all with any political postwar historical hinterland exactly who and what those of us who possess any moral sensibility are actually up against.
Dem Sen van Hollen met Mr Garcia in El Salvador, along with the Attorney for Mr Garcia’s wife and mother. There’s video of the meeting.
Both the Trump administration and the El Salvadoran administration admitted he has committed no criminal acts.
It looks like Judge Xinis’ threat to jail Trump’s Deputy Dopes is working.
Judge Boasberg’s threat should have the same effect for the 2 plane loads taken to El Salvador without due process. The Judge wants that due process to take place either in the US (or El Salvador perhaps via an internet video link).
Judges can’t be removed without a Congressional vote after an investigation has been conducted and wrong-doing proved.
Trump blinked – again. Martial law averted – for now?
I doubt it….
Ceasar of the Julii vs Pompey – empire, fight over the spoils & power. decade or two of civil war. Most of the US military types I have come across have been fairly thoughtful – Mango-man and his ilk fit badly with that type. Also the military have as much access to info as the rest of the pop’. Militia might be different, police certainly. Don’t think Mango-man will last long enough & I agree with Jim’s comment – time to turf the USA out of the UK & frankly, I’d favour turfing all US orgs particualrly banks & similar financial institutions – parasites – they bring nothing (apart from maiing sure the UK poodle does what master says).
Trump’s temporary climb down on tariffs was due to the power of the bonds market. Surely the same would happen if this sort of martial law option was pursued?
I think there was more to it than bond markets
Or even markets
I wonder if the attempt at controlling the universities is related to undermining possible sources of protest — so not just an issue of the Trump administration to control what they are calling “Antisemitism” (which seems to confuse criticism of Israel with racism) and diversity, but activism on campus in general.
https://time.com/7278236/university-funding-trump-harvard-cornell-northwestern-brown-princeton-penn-columbia/
Any men and women who may ‘choose’ to fight and die in any civil war instigated by MAGA will be choosing between the political choice to uphold the American Constitution or pledging political allegiance to King Trump. The Enlightenment inspired attempt to separate religion from governance failed to amend the underlying informing confictual dualism of Puritan materialism and so has simply morphed into our current wars of political religions.
In a few weeks we celebrate the 1945 victory over Fascism. Now we are faced with it again.
There is never a final victory.
The “price of freedom is eternal vigilance’ -attributed to Thomas Jefferson but no hard evidence. What matters is not who said it but keeping it in mind and acting on it.
The only hope we have is that we have enough people in office in the US willing to do what Pence did with the election results when Biden was elected
I’m getting seriously freaked out by Trump. Saw him on TV yesterday gloating over being invited by the King, who he says is “my friend”, and just after used the Royal “We” where any normal person would say “I”. I think he wants to be King of The World. God help us. I get the feeling that his language seems to be deteriorating too. Not that it was that wonderful before, but recently it feels as if he’s using simpler language all the time.
Given the way he’s behaving – he’s a real danger to the whole world not just US, isn’t it time he was dis-invited from visiting us? While I’m far from being a royalist, I respect the King as he didn’t have any choice over being King (OK I know plenty will argue over that, but can we leave that for another day?) and I thought his Easter message was very good – short and to the point. Why should he have to meet with a fascist dictator?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-says-date-being-chosen-221819088.html
Time that Stupider got his finger out and stopped cosying up to Trump too, and looked to making better links with Europe. Stuff American trade, stop it completely, and look to our neighbours. Aaarrrggghhhh! He’s making UK a laughing stock. Grrrr.
Gosh, I so agree !
The extraordinary openly mobster toned transactionalism exhibited by Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio regarding the atrocity ridden Russian conflict in Ukraine = Gift us your natural resources Ukrainians or we’re outta here and you’re on your own buddy – is a warning sign to the global order that Trump’s government is a criminal cartel.
It is
Trump and his Gauleiters will do whatever his twisted mind decides to do as things come to a head in the Disunited States of America.
What really interests me is how our own Dear Leader here in the Disunited Kingdom will react?
I imagine the “2029 General Election McTeam” in 10 Downing St. are already devising the weasel words that they will use to justify our “special relationship” with a violent fascist dictator, and over 400 “Labour” MPs are desperately trying to convince themselves that the edicts from the McTeam are sufficiently compelling for them to ignore their tortured consciences, and the appeals from their suffering constituents, and behave as if they were sitting in the German Reichstag in the 1930’s.
It gives a whole new meaning to the term “British Values”.
If you DO contact your MP, the time for polite reasoned debate is long gone.
Ask them why they went into politics.
Quote their first election address back at them.
Ask them if their conscience is troubling them.
Ask about genocide, war crimes, child poverty, rickets, and stunted growth.
Point out to them that given the destruction of democracy in the Labour Party, they are the ONLY people, other than the Army or a mass insurrection, that can stop Starmer’s project to destroy the UK and turn us into an impoverished vassal state of Trumpitania.
Make it personal. Somewhere behind that Westminster parliamentary pass beats the heart of a sentient human being, tightly wrapped in dogma, & expediency, motivated by self-interest, ambition and fear, a heart that once, long ago, wanted to make the world a better place. Ask them what they plan to tell their grandchildren about what they did during the struggle to save the UK from fascism, and poverty?
“Listen carefully children, granny stuck to her cast iron fiscal rules and voted for poverty, and fascism, just like they did in the Reichstag a century ago. I had to, I was obeying orders.”
If they decide to do nothing, then they are complicit. It’s as simple as that.
“We will remember them.”
Great and timely advice. A pointless exercise hereabouts unfortunately as our MP is MAGA adjacent Sammy Wilson of Paisley’s DUP…
Ah, Sammy.
I used to debate him on the Nolan Show, not that you can debate with Sammy.
“…that would be quite an astonishing turn of events that the world could never ignore”
That last part I’m not sure about. The world is pretty good at ignoring things. Starmer would be unlikely to stop his “bridge” strategy.
But did we kill democracy?
Guess Trump and his oligarch mates can fund fund their own militia, so extend this into the ‘special abusive relationship’!
But is this a problem one of system-thinking (lack), and is the solution one of system-thinking (increase)?
Without Trump’s MAGA support a collapse in democracy wouldn’t be as possible; I suspect this support was achieved through applying long-standing psychological research.
MAGA – Make America Great Again pressed all the authoritarians buttons with precision, surely not a coincidence?
30% of the population have an authoritarian disposition and the right have been working on this group for years. Why?
Because given the right conditions authoritarians, which we now have, authoritarians will over-throw regimes and trample over the rule of law.
Trump, Farage, Orban, etc seem to understand the authoritarian dynamic well. Trump especially is a maestro at communicating with them. Starmer evidences it, hence the tie, flags and othering, but democrats on the whole don’t connect well.
To protect ourselves from a similar collapse of democracy, it would help if we also applied this psychology (and understand why it’s important to the regulation of a large human system).
Dispossessed angry Authoritarians will bring on chaos if a strongarm leader, like Trump, gives them the Normative Order they crave – Make America Great Again translates directly to Make Normative Order Happen Again.
Personal economic hardship caused by Trump’s economic chaos and tariffs won’t act as deterrent to this group because they are more motivated by groupiness, the well-being of the collective. So, Make America Great Again – presses that button with precision. It’s the decline of America which makes this group angry. The promise of restoring USA’s standing gets their attention.
Those with an authoritarian disposition are often confused with conservatives (small c); it’s a costly mistake.
Conservative-minded people are a different bird. These folk are democracy’s friend, naturally suspicious of change they like status quo, believing it’s too easy to tear things down, chaos is dangerous, and so they act as a bulwark for democracy. (Hence destruction of Conservative party – taking out of True Conservatives, effectively removed these bulwarks of democracy).
Another key group are libertarians (not to be confused with neoliberals) this group enjoy difference and complexity, almost on the opposite pole of authoritarians who as a group tend to be less educated – authoritarians really don’t like difference or complexity. Authoritarians would prefer the clock to go back to the 1950’s-1970’s when there was more conformity and community, coalescing around extended families, factories, trades and practical jobs, unions, high streets in villages and towns…. in fact everything neoliberalism has destroyed.
Authoritarians are not difficult to accommodate. Arguably conservatives, authoritarians, and libertarians each act as an important regulatory function in a large human system. Libertarians bring individuality, new ideas and difference to prevent stagnation; conservatives bring moderation, stability and peace-making; authoritarians bring community and protect the collective’s needs, and at times that might mean disruption; over-throwing a regime to protect the normative order of the group.
The problem we have is there is too much individualism, difference and atomisation, we insult conservatives and have dispossessed authoritarians who are now angry. So our large human system is imbalanced and dysregulated, and that’s dangerous.
If we want to regulate the system we need to start thinking about community.
There can be no democracy without community. Without community what exactly is there to vote for?
For the sake of peace and safety we must fund services and re-build a society which restores real community.
Economic equality is what authoritarians would like, they say they want to go back to the old days when Keynesian economics prevailed, but this needs to be communicated into Trumpspeak, a language which they can connect with – like Homes for All. Economic inequalities doesn’t press their button, it needs to be simple, relatable and relevant.
Neoliberalism – the drive for profit maximisation and marketisation of everything, has de-funded community, set us in competition with each other, silenced True Conservatives, and is destroying peaceful democracy – or as said more poetically the seeds of capitalism’s destruction were sown from within.
If Trump and Farage can stir things up, surely so can we!
Community, Connection and Collaboration?
A powerful three word slogan.
Visually potentially symbolically invoking the triple goddess three spoked wheel or whenever written in a close single row, the perpetual movement of a wave.
I think you are entirely right to highlight this – not because I think you’re great bloke anyway, thoughtful and rational etc., because this is in fact how things happen.
It’s a bit like the failure of dam – at first a small flaw in design or some damage happens to the dam that over time if left unheeded it will get larger and eventually undermine the dam, so that its own weight brings it down and it will collapse under a wall of water.
I think societies collapse like this – one or two small things which are more important than their size suggests are removed, ignored and then the whole thing comes crashing down too or at least things start to fall apart (as in Britain).
A Trump style militia is possible because as pointed out, gun ownership is widespread in the U.S., there were lots of guns on show at Capitol Hill and it could have been a deadly reckoning on that day but somehow those involved pulled back. But now, with their ‘saviour’ in power how would they respond? Are they more emboldened? Or are they already suffering from the new tariffs?
Be that as it may, if Trump invokes this act, he would plunge the U.S. into crisis mode when it is already facing huge pressures Trump has self created. We are talking civil war type chaos.
I think – I hope – that wiser heads will prevail. They need to. The risk you speak of is very real indeed – there is Christian fundamentalism over there which believes in some sort of ‘end of the world’ event to reset the the world as their version of God intended; there is the fly-over state mentality – and we forget that the U.S is a huge country – plenty of room for ignorance to exist and for monopolist greed and weirdos to foment bad ideas; and there is this awareness in the elite and want to be elites of the power in the mode of the opportunistic way American capitalism works which can benefit them and make them very quickly rich.
My personal view is that the Civil War of 1861-1865 never really ended. The more I read about ancient Rome – whose own economy relied on slavery – free labour, stealing other people’s wealth (look how the U.S has bought into the UK’s utility sector) the more I am convinced that Neo-liberalism is the direct descendent of Romanesque rule and the Confederate South was modelled on that too as a mode of ‘civilisation’ (economics, political power, etc, all built on wealth/freedom extraction). Was the Civil War about slavery or was about preserving the Union? If it was about abolishing slavery, what can we say about the condition of African-Americans since 1865? It’s not over, I’m telling you. And Confederate ways and ethos are part of the method of modern U.S Federal government in the U.S right now and have been for ages. They have gone out into the world and helped themselves to everyone else’s stuff having just about exploited everything within their borders. American capitalism IS Confederate capitalism. That is the problem.
Hudson (The Collapse of Antiquity, 2023) talks about ‘tax farming’ by Rome on its conquered lands and how this basically it impoverished those lands. Of course tax has been given a bad name by modern Liberals, but those of us who are not misled know that taxation over the commons by democratic government is for the common good for all sorts of valid reasons (thank you Richard). Roman tax farming benefited the rich individuals and families who basically ran Rome. And there is history of bad tax as well leading to consequences (The French Revolution). In the Neo-liberal world, there is no such thing as a fair tax because tax is just evil as they are concerned. Rents on the other hand, are good! Because they are payable to individuals with assets! And if you have assets, you are a real person.
We are now in an era of ‘rent farming’ brought to us by Neo-liberalism in the UK, never mind the U.S. We have swapped Govt’ taxation for private rents that make us poorer and many of us have not even realised that yet. Stupid.
But in the U.S. – if not now the UK – they are now enslaving white people alongside Afro/Chino/Latino Americans whose wages are dying. What history tells us – well me at least – is that this cannot go on forever. It is going to hit a brick wall at high speed at some stage – it is not a question of ‘if’; it is a question of ‘when’. Sooner or later, people of all colours will just realise that what they have in common is that they are poor and that someone is shafting them. Yes, there will be lots of ingenuity by the powers that be to put the date off but eventually it will happen.
Yu are right; this cannot go on forever.
My limited understanding of the life of Martin Luther King Jnr, is that he was “tolerated” (beaten, arrested jailed, smeared &libelled, but allowed to live), while he focussed on the evils of racism.
Once he started the sort of more broad-based economic things that you say in your last paragraph, calling on economically disadvantaged people of all colours, to unite to end economic injustice, then he was adsassinated.
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/poor-peoples-campaign
PSR – you say “My personal view is that the Civil War of 1861-1865 never really ended. ”
Have a read of HCR’s recent substack post …… A sensible take on it is that the Civil War never really ended (for some) … See:
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-9-2025-wednesday
I could not have said it better myself – in reference to Grant’s writings at the end. Thank you.
As often said here:
“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”
This quote reflects on the idea that those who blindly follow orders without questioning them can be more harmful than the few who are inherently evil. And there are too many blindly following Trump’s orders. Each of them Arselikhans.
It’s very scary indeed.
What will the position of the joint chiefs-of-staff be? Even though their position requires fealty to the commander-in-chief, do they really support the madness of Trump?
Who knows?
[…] By Richard Murphy, Professor of Accounting Practice at Sheffield University Management School and a director of the Corporate Accountability Network. Originally published at Funding the Future […]
It’s just a fear-fuelled dream, but I’d love to see masses of the type of gun-toting, horn-hatted eejits who went to the Capitol last time out answer Trump’s call again, only to come up against the US Army, Air Force & Navy personnel instructed by their commanders to overthrow Trump and usher in fresh elections asap…
One thing is certain: his backers, having seized control of the most powerful nation on Earth, won’t relinquish power peacefully, mainly because this is all consistent with much longer term and wider dynamics, that apply across much of the globe:
https://gezwinstanley.wordpress.com/how-democracy-dies/
Vital that no one moves directly against Trump yet. Not saying “play dead”: the resistance must be kept alive and built up gradually. Yes, for example, for arresting those following his orders for contempt, but not Trump himself, or his inner circle: not yet. Just make Trump look weak and the resistance strong. Trump’s approval ratings are falling but haven’t crashed yet (https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker). It’s essential that his more “transactional” supporters have a chance to see though the pluto-populist scam BEFORE the event I don’t want to spell out starts, and that Trump and his inner circle take maximum blame for that event. There are rumours that some of Trump’s people want the “event” to start this summer, most likely for the reasons I am outlining here: don’t play into their hands.
That event will be horrible and dangerous enough as it is (e.g. WW3 risk when China moves against Taiwan, plus another conflict and another massively threatened democracy), it’d be even more tragic if the wrong side wins.
“Is Trump about to end democracy in the USA?”
It’s up to the bond markets, really. If he did try, it might well be because his pals have shorted the dollar, much as the Brexit backers did with sterling in the run up to 23 June 2016.
The U.S. is becoming an international laughing stock – there are going to be powerful forces who don’t want to see that happen, not do they want the dollar reduced to junk-bond status.
Though it’s all relative, Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, seems to be fighting the good fight in trying to educate his boss about economics and reining in his worst thoughts, eg, he kicked up a storm over Musk trying to have Trump appoint someone completely unsuitable as IRS commissioner when that appointment is the Treasury Secretary’s job. Lutnick, who seems to be a tariff zealot and has Trump’s ear, hates Bessent, though, so that’s not good news if Trump has to choose between the two.
Against a very low bar, he might be better than average.
Fortunately, you were wrong. Word has it (at least CNN) that the insurrection act will not be implemented.
I hope not
But just give it time
And they, too, have taken it seriously
That we need to do so is worrying enough
Not really sure why everyone but a few people like Carol Cadwalladr seem to be ignoring the elephant in the room.
Trump, his psychoses, his vindictiveness, his performative cruelty and MAGA – these are all and have always just been a means to an end. It didn’t quite fly in 2018, but it came fairly close. What didn’t happen at the Capitol almost did.
But consider that to have been a testing of the waters – a feasibility study, if you like.
I think Trump will invoke the Act, on April 21st, or soon thereafter, not because the MAGA rabble want him to, but because his minders and backers want him to and because it’s part of the script for achieving what they want, which is a technocratic/theocratic corporate state.
This is the elephant:
https://www.project2025.org/
I may be wrong, but I think this is what is happening.
The elephant indeed – this is from the front page of Project 2025:
Project 2025 is a historic movement, brought together by over 100 respected organizations from across the conservative movement, to take down the Deep State and return the government to the people. Its Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, published in April 2023, is a product of more than 400 scholars and policy experts from around the country. The book offers a menu of policy suggestions to meet our country’s deepest challenges and put America back on track, including:
Secure the border, finish building the wall, and deport illegal aliens
De-weaponize the Federal Government by increasing accountability and oversight of the FBI and DOJ
Unleash American energy production to reduce energy prices
Cut the growth of government spending to reduce inflation
Make federal bureaucrats more accountable to the democratically elected President and Congress
Improve education by moving control and funding of education from DC bureaucrats directly to parents and state and local governments
Ban biological males from competing in women’ s sports
**
And it suggests 180 days for the first stage….
**
I keep thinking about how we ignored Mein Kampf – he doesn’t mean it, he won’t do it.
He did and he did.
This IS what is coming.
This global oligarch political takeover has been in the works for a long time. Men motivated by the neurotic desire for absolute power and control over all others, like Murdoch, have been finding each other in their predictable class bound cultural circles and creating a loose confederacy of authoritarian capitalism for many decades. With the runaway success of MAGA and Brexit in delivering the US and UK nation state political infrastructures finally entirely into their hands, they are certainly not going to let go now without a nasty fight.