We analyzed the literature of protest and spoke to a range of people, including foreign dissidents and opposition leaders, movement strategists, domestic activists, and scholars of nonviolent movements. We asked them for their advice, in the nascent weeks of the Trump Administration, for those who want to oppose these dramatic changes but harbor considerable fear for their jobs, their freedom, their way of life, or all three. There are some proven lessons, operational and spiritual, to be learned from those who have challenged repressive regimes—a provisional guide for finding courage in Trump’s age of authoritarian fear.
If you have joined, or are planning to join, the millions of Americans who are resisting the Trump regime's expanding fascism, this piece in the New Yorker is a must-read.
[T]he gutting of regulatory oversight has continued, creating a dangerous convergence of the president’s financial interests and his power to shape policy. The ensuing regulatory vacuum will allow cryptocurrency markets to become increasingly susceptible to manipulation and abuse, while providing cover for fraud, money laundering, bribery, and other crimes. The industry under Trump is on course to become even more of a predatory playground where insiders profit from exploitative schemes — high-risk lending programs promising to “democratize wealth”, unchecked bad actors peddling investment scams disguised as business opportunities, and memecoins functioning as thinly-veiled pump-and-dump operations — while ordinary investors are left without protection or recourse. And the degree to which the government has been embracing crypto also poses a risk to those who haven’t gotten involved in crypto trading at all, as regulations limiting things like banks becoming heavily exposed to crypto, or pension and retirement funds incorporating crypto into portfolios, threaten contagion that everyday people could be forced to bear.
The latest newsletter post – by our best reporter covering the grotesquely sleazy cryptocurrency "industry" – states the case plainly in her lede: "In an unprecedented abuse of presidential power, Donald Trump is dismantling federal cryptocurrency oversight while building a sprawling family crypto empire worth billions."
Her detailed, impeccably sourced post is an indictment, though not a legal one. It would be part of a criminal charge, I believe, in an America where corruption at the highest level of government is taken seriously by law enforcement. But in the reign of Trump, by far the sleaziest president in the nation's history, it's the norm.
Please note that even if you (like me) have steered clear of crypto, none of us is immune from the growing likelihood that its pernicious influence will infect the broader economy. In other words, we're all going to be investors in endless scams because our political rulers – including a few Democrats, it pains me to say – are working in concert with some of the richest people in the world to ensure this contagion. They'll do fine. We'll get screwed.
Trump will profit from these accounts in two ways. First, TMTG will invest a portion of its cash reserves in accounts. Secondly, as the majority shareholder in TMTG, Trump will benefit from the fees generated by these accounts. The performance of the underlying assets held in these accounts will determine both TMTG's return on its cash reserves and interest from outside investors. But Trump, as President, will also be able to significantly influence the performance of these assets through tariffs and other policies. It is a jaw-dropping conflict of interest for actively managed investment accounts to be marketed under the president's name through a company that is majority-owned by the president.
This related piece, from the Popular Information newsletter (alternate link here for those who can't abide Substack), goes into another Trump world scheme to profit from the presidency.
Corruption – profiteering from power – doesn't get much more blatant.
Wilkinson’s words will likely be taken seriously by Chief Justice John Roberts and possibly the other GOP-appointed justices because he is one of them. A Reagan appointee, Wilkinson is a conservative jurist who, during the height of the War on Terror, wrote an opinion upholding the president’s wartime authority to detain US citizens indefinitely. And it was Wilkinson’s concurrence in this same case that gave the Supreme Court the “facilitate” language it had recently adopted. Wilkinson’s clarion warning today sends a strong signal to the justices, the conservative legal community, and the country that we are careening toward crisis. What remains unknown is if there’s any way to stop it now.
A three-judge panel from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals slammed the Trump regime for its flagrantly illegal kidnapping a Maryland man and shipping him off to El Salvador's slave-labor-and-torture concentration camp – and then claiming it couldn't (read: won't) bring him back despite admitting the entire thing was a screw-up.
The judge who wrote the ruling was appointed by Ronald Reagan and is about as conservative – in the traditional sense, not the fascist sense that the word has come to connote – as they get. I urge you to read Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III's brief but powerful ruling. Key language:
"The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.
"This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear."
This newsletter is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money. For more details, please read my About page.
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Julia Angwin
Molly White
Judd Legum
Pema Levy
