Trump and Vance want to make opposition illegal
And they're using Charlie Kirk to do it
Welcome to a Monday night edition of Progress Report.
Well, it happened again: I was finishing up a newsletter when the Trump administration went and made news that was impossible — and as I’ll explain — and too dangerous to ignore. Thanks, Don.
So, tonight we’re looking at what could be an unprecedented — both in its rip-roaring stupidity and outright illegality — attack on free speech and association in this country, and tomorrow morning, I’ll send out the big updated Democratic primary challenge breakdown.
Note: The far-right’s fascist takeover of this country is being aided by the media’s total capitulation to Trump’s extortion. It’s never been more critical to have a bold independent media willing to speak up against the powerful. That’s what I’m trying to do here at Progress Report.
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The far-right has always had a disproportionate number of delusional creeps, and for a long time, it was possible to ignore most of the unhinged claims and deranged threats lobbed from the reactionary fringes of society. The paradox is that while the right’s politicos and movement influencers have never been more demented or hysterical, they now control almost every lever of real power in both the federal government and private industry, which are best weaponized when lies and slander go unchecked.
Take, for instance, the nuclear response to the murder of Charlie Kirk. Within minutes of his shooting, the right — from Donald Trump down to the MAGA lemmings who have been polluting my Twitter mentions — began insisting that Democrats are responsible for the bulk of the violent political rhetoric in this country, an utterly absurd claim that anybody even semi-conscious for the past decade instinctively knows is untrue.
It doesn’t feel necessary or worth the time to collect the mountain of evidence — anecdotal, statistical, historical — that would so thoroughly disprove the lie, but we no longer live in a world where the political media is willing to call out obvious lies: TV news networks are crumbling at Trump’s feet, paying him millions and hiring cynical partisans to oversee coverage, while newspapers are either tied up in their obsession with false balance or simply compromised by billionaire owners (see The Washington Post’s disgraceful firing earlier today).
The Trump administration spent the weekend rambling threats and getting what could be hundreds of people fired for posts about purported free speech champion Charlie Kirk, and having experienced little pushback, the White now feels emboldened to take the next step in weaponizing his murder. Earlier today, both Trump and his aspiring podcaster deputy, JD Vance, promised to sic the IRS and federal prosecutors on liberal organizations that are funded by donors like George Soros and the Ford Foundation.
"Crazies on the far left are saying, 'Oh, Stephen Miller and JD Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected free speech,'" Vance said. "No, no, no. We’re going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence."
The idea that liberal nonprofits foment violence is almost too silly to be laughable; I know from experience and observation that the groups Vance wants to target can barely handle internal staff tension, much less cultivate the dedicated followers who are willing to break the law in any major way.
As such, the speech was impossibly hypocritical: JD Vance, protege of Peter Thiel, went after organizations funded by wealthy donors while guest-hosting a podcast produced by Turning Point USA, a group built with right-wing billionaire largesse. Donald Trump, who bears responsibility for violent attacks all over the country and was mentored by mob lawyer Roy Cohn, threatened progressive organizations with RICO charges. The same threats have been made over and over again by Stephen Miller, the administration’s most strident and determined fascist, including today on Fox News.
“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people,” he fumed.
It’s idiotic, but also scary, because this is an administration run by depraved ideologues who through with threats and punishments, even to US citizen children who are undergoing treatment for brain cancer. They are committed to silencing all opposition and have been given no reason to believe that anybody will provide a check on their power, whether it be the compromised media or simpatico Supreme Court.
None of this is new, per se — Trump was screaming lies about Open Society Foundation last month — but there’s now both an impetus and a militant right-wing believer base willing to assist with the prospective purge. With an army of MAGA goons prowling social media for critiques of their fallen martyr, the administration has unprecedented capacity to punish dissenters and chill speech.
I know how vicious these people are, as they’ve been clogging up my Twitter replies for the past 24 hours thanks to this viral tweet, screaming what few nasty epithets and cruel taunts they’re capable of remembering. Likewise, I work for a progressive nonprofit that has consistently been critical of the Trump administration and its corporate allies, and given our leadership and the results we’ve achieved, it wouldn’t shock me if threats came our way.
This is the Trump administration going for the jugular. It’s one thing to silence individuals; going after the political organizations and apparatus of rivals is something different entirely. These organizations are the backbone and scaffolding of the Democratic Party, so tying them up in court, draining them with legal bill, and scaring away donors is really an attempt to debilitate opposition, disable their political networks, and turn the country into a one-party country. Without question, they would make every other political party illegal.
Fascists always seek to silence oppositional organizations, dismantle free infrastructure, and intimidate those who might speak out against their abuses, tactics that have become cornerstones of the Trump era. It’s a terrifying time; the far-right media apparatus has made it entirely possible to stir up anger at anybody for anything, and now there’s an administration that doesn’t just indulge its fantasies, but weaponizes them.
As one institution after another surrenders to Trump’s vindictive whims, out of self-interest and expedience, the danger only grows. The only chance of getting through this time is refusing to be silenced, because going quiet only emboldens them. There was enough outrage this afternoon to force Republicans to backtrack on a bill that would have given Secretary of State Marco Rubio sweeping powers to revoke Americans’ passports. No matter how stupid the idea, we can no longer allow it to go without pushback.
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Lugenpresse Nazi Germany. It’s so overtly obvious that why our press doesn’t SCREAM ABOUT IT is the eighth wonder of the world.