We’re Well Past Alarm Bells

The Trump administration is mocking court orders, laying the groundwork for political retribution, and declaring open war on the rule of law.
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In Federalist No. 51, defending the separation of powers and its pitting of ambition against ambition and its connecting the interest of office-holders with the constitutional rights of the place, James Madison explained:

It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

We’re not angels. And rule by angels isn’t available to us. To avoid anarchy, we need a government that can control our potentially violent passions. And we need the rule of law and its institutional buttresses like the separation of powers to enable us to live in freedom, not despotism.
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Niall Ferguson: A User’s Guide to Wrecking the Global Financial System

Elon Musk’s D.O.G.E is crashing the US housing market

Blame Canada

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Kevin Kruse on why Trump 2.0 is worse than he expected

“I didn’t think they would take this bold of a leap into deeply unconstitutional waters, but they have.”

“I want to stress how far off the rails this is in terms of not just our norms and our expectations but our laws,” Kruse said. “There’s a lot that’s deeply unconstitutional here. I get that they’re trying to flood the zone and overwhelm the opposition, but the opposition shouldn’t let itself be overwhelmed. It shouldn’t accept this as the new normal, which is what the administration wants us to do.

“What we see from Musk and the rest of Trump’s crew is that they are making financial gains off this,” Kruse said. “Musk just wrestled an FAA program away from Verizon and gave it to his own company. They’re doing all they can to profit from this. The tax cut alone is a good example. Those people in the cabinet are the ones who are going to benefit from more tax cuts for the wealthy.”
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Resistance to Trump is everywhere — inside the first 50 days of mass protest

From mass refusals to boycotts to walkouts, regular Americans are bravely pushing back against the administration. Their actions are diverse and multiplying — and already having an impact.

It’s been a long six weeks since Donald Trump was sworn into office amid a Nazi salute and a machine-gun barrage of 89 executive orders. We’ve been struggling for our lives, our country and our world ever since.

From boycotts to mass noncompliance to street demonstrations, the response to the Trump administration’s policies has consisted of an impressive range of nonviolent tactics.

More than just outraged protests, people are thwarting raids, refusing to obey unjust orders, standing up to bully politics and taking risks to do the right thing. The resistance is diverse, multi-stranded and feisty — and some of it is working.
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Why we need a new free speech movement

And why universities should sue the Trump regime for abridging the First Amendment rights of their institutions and their students

The Trump regime is actively suppressing speech at major American universities.

Trump’s recent executive orders bar diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at all educational institutions that receive federal funds.

Last week, Trump threatened in a social media post to punish any university that permits “illegal” protests but did not define what he meant by illegal protests.

On Friday he cancelled hundreds of millions in grants and contracts with Columbia University for allowing peaceful protests the regime dislikes.

On Saturday, Trump’s immigration officials arrested a Columbia graduate student — who is a permanent resident of the United States with a green card and an American wife — and sent him to a prison in Louisiana. Why? He did not engage in criminal activity. The graduate student peacefully expressed political views that the regime dislikes.

Then on Monday, the Trump regime warned 60 universities that they could face penalties for allowing peaceful demonstrations and speech that the administration dislikes.

And on Tuesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokeswoman, told reporters that Columbia had refused to help the regime identify people engaged in speech the regime found objectionable, and warned, “We expect all America’s colleges and universities to comply with this administration’s policy.”

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• Heather Cox Richardson – Letters from an American – March 10, 2025
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  According to MarketWatch, this is the worst start to a presidential term since 2009, when the country was in the subprime mortgage crisis. Trump did not inherit an economy mired in crisis, of course; he inherited what was, at the time, the strongest economy in the world. That booming economy is no more: Goldman is now predicting higher inflation and slower growth than it had previously forecast, while its forecast for Europe is now stronger than it had been.

  Trump has always been a dodgy salesman more than anything, telling supporters what they want to hear. He insisted that the strong economy under former president Joe Biden was, in fact, a disaster that only he could fix. In October, Trump told attendees at a rally: “We will begin a new era of soaring incomes. Skyrocketing wealth. Millions and millions of new jobs and a booming middle class. We are going to boom like we’ve never boomed before.”

  That sales pitch got Trump away from the criminal cases against him and back into the White House. Now, though, he needs to make the sales pitch fit into a reality that it doesn’t match.
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  According to MarketWatch, this is the worst start to a presidential term since 2009, when the country was in the subprime mortgage crisis. Trump did not inherit an economy mired in crisis, of course; he inherited what was, at the time, the strongest economy in the world. That booming economy is no more: Goldman is now predicting higher inflation and slower growth than it had previously forecast, while its forecast for Europe is now stronger than it had been.

  Trump has always been a dodgy salesman more than anything, telling supporters what they want to hear. He insisted that the strong economy under former president Joe Biden was, in fact, a disaster that only he could fix. In October, Trump told attendees at a rally: “We will begin a new era of soaring incomes. Skyrocketing wealth. Millions and millions of new jobs and a booming middle class. We are going to boom like we’ve never boomed before.”

  That sales pitch got Trump away from the criminal cases against him and back into the White House. Now, though, he needs to make the sales pitch fit into a reality that it doesn’t match.
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• The universities are next
  Trump is following Putin’s, Xi’s, and Orban’s playbook. First, take over military and intelligence operations by purging career officers and substituting ones personally loyal to you.

  Next, subdue the courts by ignoring or threatening to ignore court rulings you disagree with.

  Intimidate legislators by warning that if they don’t bend to your wishes, you’ll run loyalists against them. (Make sure they also worry about what your violent supporters could do to them and their families.)

  Then focus on independent sources of information: the media and the universities. Sue media that publish critical stories and block their access to news conferences and interviews.

  Then go after the universities.

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• Heather Cox Richardson – Letters from an American – March 8, 2025
  Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made it clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to slash the federal government and to privatize its current services. …

  Bessent’s comments reveal that the White House is beginning to feel the pressure of the unpopularity of its policies. Trump’s rejection of 80 years of U.S. foreign policy in order to prop up Russia’s Vladimir Putin has left many Americans as well as allies aghast. Trump’s claims that Putin wants peace were belied when Russia launched massive strikes at Ukraine as soon as Trump stopped sharing intelligence with Ukrainian forces that enabled them to shoot down incoming fire.

  The administration’s dramatic—and likely illegal and unconstitutional—cuts are infuriating Americans who did not expect Trump to reorder the American government so completely. While billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump repeatedly say they are cutting only “waste, fraud, and abuse” from the government, that insistence appears to be rhetorical rather than backed by fact. And yesterday, new cuts appeared to continue the gutting of government services that generally appear to be important to Americans’ health, safety, and economic security.
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• Heather Cox Richardson – Letters from an American – March 7, 2025
  Black Americans outnumbered white Americans among the 29,500 people who lived in Selma, Alabama, in the 1960s, but the city’s voting rolls were 99% white. So in 1963, Black organizers in the Dallas County Voters League launched a drive to get Black voters in Selma registered. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a prominent civil rights organization, joined them.
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  The leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Selma decided to defuse the community’s anger by planning a long march—54 miles—from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery to draw attention to the murder and voter suppression. Expecting violence, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee voted not to participate, but its chair, John Lewis, asked their permission to go along on his own. They agreed.

  On March 7, 1965, sixty years ago today, the marchers set out. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate brigadier general, Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and U.S. senator who stood against Black rights, state troopers and other law enforcement officers met the unarmed marchers with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. They fractured John Lewis’s skull and beat Amelia Boynton unconscious. A newspaper photograph of the 54-year-old Boynton, seemingly dead in the arms of another marcher, illustrated the depravity of those determined to stop Black voting.

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