20250220

Drug trafficking patterns are always evolving. Every decade since the 1970s has been marked by dramatic shifts in the illicit drug economy, including new substances and criminal organizations. Who, in 1970, would have guessed that the heroin trade from southwest Asia would suddenly collapse (along with South Vietnam) and give way to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, followed by the prescription opioid crisis in the 1990s? Or that the mighty Medellín and Cali Cartels in Colombia—the richest and most powerful crime syndicates in the world—would cease to exist and give rise to the emerging Guadalajara and Sinaloa Cartels in Mexico?

Flying, arguably, is less safe under the Musk-Trump regime; the risk of calamities is higher.

“Where are the American values that I used to admire?”

This week in Florida, a Jewish American named Mordechai Brafman fired 17 shots at two people, believing them to be Palestinian. He later openly confessed that he believed he had killed them. In reality, his bullets only grazed the two victims, a father and son duo. One victim suffered a grazed bullet wound to his left forearm while the other suffered a gunshot to his left shoulder. But this story has a bizarre twist. His victims were not Palestinians, not Arabs, and not Muslims—they were Israeli Jews, a father and son, the Rabeys. And sadly the story gets even worse from here.

Even after surviving an attack by a Jewish American gunman, Ari Rabey, one of the victims, took to Facebook to blame Arabs for the violence. He posted, “Dear Jews, they tried to kill us for nationalistic reasons,” and falsely claimed the attack was “anti-Semitic.” He even posted “Death to the Arabs.”
Florida man arrested after shooting 2 Israeli tourists he mistakenly believed were Palestinian

Similarly, when Trump tries to seize control of all independent agencies within the executive branch, he is also swimming into Congress’s lane. That’s because Congress delegated the rule and regulation-making to these agencies, and if the president can simply go in and rewrite them, then Congress would become nothing but an advisory body.
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Every time Trump claims to be king or to be above the law in any way, he is not just talking about his power within the executive branch, or even his improper incursions into the legislative. He is of course talking about being entirely unanswerable to the courts—something that, if he openly insisted upon it, would truly call the question on whether we can keep our Republic.

For now, these are only words, which always mean little coming from Trump’s mouth. It will be when Trump acts directly to defy the courts that we will truly see the Constitution shredded, with the last judicial guardrail gone and only the people and their power to alter our course.

That is why Trump’s growing unpopularity—which has now dropped quite low for a president at this point in his term at just 45 percent approving with a majority of 51 percent disapproving according to Gallup—matters a great deal.Public anger over mass firings, the loss of billions in federal funding, politicization of our Justice Department, and now abandonment of our allies and Ukraine, just to name a few, could soon spill over into far larger public protests than we have seen to date. Trump is counting on public support to sustain his anti-democratic and unconstitutional assaults on our government and our society, but that may quickly fade as the chaos and lawlessness of his regime continue.

At that point, Trump will either back down from his threats and submit to the federal courts, or up the ante yet further. Those who stand in resistance to him will need to prepare for both possibilities.

1). They never truly expect a long-term resistance movement bc they think people are a collection of trauma triggers who are easily controlled thru terror

2). If they can’t terrorize you 24/7 in your mind, they have already lost the war

3). The single best way you can resist fascism is to not let them terrorize you constantly. Protect your mental health to ensure you are not constantly in a terrorized state

4). Keep connecting to who you are at your core. Your values, preferences, ethics, and beliefs. Build up capacity to resist

5). Remember they are like abusive parents: they only see us extensions of them. They have no clue how powerful joy and community and self-expression can be. We can use this to our advantage — we can be the strong-willed child they never saw coming.

Spending time connecting to your true self is not selfish in these times — it’s intricately connected to a resistance movement that is tied to honoring our bodies, our communities, and to the land. We have to build capacity to resist by being exactly who we are!

“I think Musk wants to reform community notes because he doesn’t like being corrected, as is typical for authoritarian oligarchs.”