Thank you for writing this column. Every single day I still wonder how the American public normalized a con man, cheater, felon, rapist (and now likely pedophile) to the point of voting for him (over an incredibly qualified woman) to lead the country. And, so many people were convinced (with no evidence) that he did something worthwhile for the country the first time he was in office. I guess all of this goes to show the extent of human gullability. How much pain does it take for eyes to open to the propaganda?
Start with the internal audit done soon after the election. Supressed. Alleges that Dems won by a wiide margin.
"In December 2024, I was personally involved in an NSA‑authorized forensic audit of the 2024 election. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz won — by a wide margin. Trump lost dramatically. There are multiple layers of complexity to this cover‑up, including transnational organized crime syndicates that extend far beyond the United States and our elections. To that point, I work in the human trafficking sector, which intersects with the stolen election(s) and has ties to Trump and Epstein—not to President Biden, Vice President Harris, or Governor Walz, but to the Democrats and other allied interests responsible for burying the audit."
Lots of other types of evidence but an admission by Trump is the best evidence. If only 1 voter in Pa was intimidated by undue pressure, it's a crime under state law. Musk is especially vulnerable as are Russian psy ops.
Daniel, I quoted Stephen Spoonamore and I was chastised by a subscriber for quoting false information. I took my comment down when I found my comment was not backed up by the research I did.
Apparently, the voting machines and ballots were checked and no abuse was found. Voter suppression caused Harris to lose. However, no plan has been introduced to avoid this from happening again. The democratic party and its leadership have failed us. There are isolated people that have stepped up to the plate, but far too few. Thank G-d for Newsom, Raskin, O'Rourke, Murphy Pritzker, Jasmin Crockett, Ossoff. Robert Reich posted 9 measures that need to be taken to save our democracy. The plan included many things that our democratic leadership should have suggested a year ago.
1. Don’t let Trump get away with his lies.
Have a truth squad that responds immediately with the facts and cites sources.
When Trump claims that Washington, D.C., is rife with crime, for example, get the truth out: that its crime rate is actually the lowest it’s been in 30 years. That Republicans have literally defunded the police in D.C. by stealing more than a billion dollars from the city. That Trump is dismantling the FBI and putting corrupt, unqualified jerks at the top of our federal law enforcement.
Point out that red states have higher murder rates than blue ones.
Make sure the truth gets out by repeating it over and over. If it’s not reported in the media, find out why.
2. Plan and announce ways to catch up with what we’ve lost on the environment, human rights, voting rights, labor rights, and safety nets.
Even when the orange Caligula on the Potomac is history and his lackeys are out of power, America will have a huge amount to repair, rebuild, and catch up on.
Tell the nation how you’d make up for the time and momentum we’ve lost. What sacrifices will be entailed. Explain what we must do to get back on track toward a just society, a strong democracy, and an environment that isn’t collapsing around us.
Tell us how you’ll rebuild the government that Trump and his Republican sycophants have decimated. How we’ll get back the talent we’ve lost — in science, health, the environment, worker safety, the foreign service. How we’ll build back morale.
3. Lay out a vision for the future.
Don’t stop there. Give us a vision of the future. Tell us where we could and should be, and how we can get there.
Medicare for all. Affordable child care and elder care. Affordable homes. Universal Basic Income. Paid for by higher taxes on the wealthy (including wealth tax), a tax on polluters, and a smaller military.
Also: All fossil fuels replaced by wind, solar, nuclear, conservation. Profit-sharing with employees. Living wage. Strict regulation of Wall Street including crypto, so we never again have to suffer a financial crisis and bail out the Street.
Challenge us. Tell us the truth. Demand much from us.
4. Tell us what you’d do to prevent this catastrophe from ever happening again.
Publicly lay out the laws and amendments you’ll pass to ensure this never happens again, the systems you’ll tear down, the safeguards you’ll enshrine, the plan to hold perpetrators of human atrocities accountable, the urgent commitment to immediately bring home those “disappeared” into prisons in El Salvador and other countries.
Set out the electoral reforms you’ll fight for to prevent a dictatorship from ever again forming under our very noses. Voting rights. Civil rights. Tell us how you’ll get big money out of our politics, even if it takes a constitutional amendment.
5. Mount an independent investigation.
Hold public hearings based on an independent, civilian-powered investigative coalition. Build a real-time archive of corruption, overreach, and executive abuse. Use experts, veterans, whistleblowers, journalists, watchdog organizations.
When the people now hurling us into fascist hell are held accountable, we’ll need every name, every signature, every illegal order, every act of silence — documented.
You’re not just preserving truth. You’re preparing evidence for prosecution. The more they disappear people and weaponize data, the more we need truth in the sunlight.
Investigate every author of Project 2025, every aide who defies court orders, every communications director repeating lies, every policy writer enabling cruelty.
6. Join the International Criminal Court.
You cannot control what the other side does, but you can control your own integrity. So call their bluff. Prove that the Democratic Party is still grounded in law, human rights, and ethical leadership. Join the International Criminal Court. If you’ve got nothing to hide — join.
Show the world who’s hiding bodies, bribes, and buried bank accounts. Force the GOP to explain why they’d rather protect a war criminal than sign a treaty, why they’re setting up detention facilities in an alligator-infested swamp.
And while you’re at it, publicly invite ICC observers into the United States. Make this administration explain — on camera — why they’re terrified of international law and oversight.
7. Create a digital safe haven for whistleblowers and defectors.
Not everyone inside this regime is a traitor to America. Some are scared. Some want out. Build channels for them to defect — encrypted, anonymous, and protected. Make it easy for the cracks in the system to become gaping holes.
Stop ostracizing MAGA defectors. Don’t push them back into the crowd. We don’t need purity. We need numbers. We need people willing to burn their red hats and testify against the machine they helped build.
8. Aim at the real culprits.
Don’t let Trump Republicans blame stagnant incomes and insecure jobs on immigrants, the “deep state,” transgender people, socialists, or communists.
Tell Americans the real reason why they’re working harder and getting nowhere: because big corporations are monopolizing the economy and they, and the super-rich, have amassed enough political power to rig the game for their own benefit.
Your corporate, Wall Street, and fat-cat donors won’t like you saying this, but you know something? You’ll do far better in elections by telling Americans the truth and stressing the importance of getting big money out of politics. You’ll get more small-donor support, too. And you’ll help stop Trump Republican fear-mongering and scapegoating.
9. Take back Congress in 2026.
Don’t just talk about it. Have a plan, a strategy. Mobilize us to focus our attention and resources on districts and states we have a chance of taking back. Set out measurable goals. Give us progress reports.
Stop Trump and his Republican stooge governors from super-gerrymandering their states to squeeze out even more Republican votes: have Democratic governors credibly counter-balance whatever they do — matching seat for seat, as California is attempting to do.
Recruit people to run who aren’t corporate Democrats or Wall Street Democrats but who know the economic stresses most Americans are facing, who respect working people, who speak their language, who know how to connect with voters. Tell us who you’re considering and why. Ask us for names.
Stop AIPAC and the crypto crowd from spending money on Democratic primaries. They have no business there. Put resources where they’re most needed.
I honestly never thought of her as black. She far more resembled her mother who was not black. But both of her parents were above average in intelligence as is she.
The high information political junkies know more than the vast majority of tens of millions of low information citizens who work daily and remain largely oblivious to the chaos and corruption taking place every day by Dictator Donny. Being willfully ignorant and highly gullible is something Dictator Donny is counting on so he can destroy democracy and create his delusional view of the country.
Omg Thom, you nailed it! I have been waiting for an article like this for months. I am Jewish and have strong feelings about Germany and the Germans in the early 1930s, I see it here in the USA and ice runs through my veins! I plan to move to Portugal before I am hauled off to a death camp here in the USA. Beautiful and perfect work here Thom, please do more of this!
My own personal experience from childhood onward validates everything that Thom said here. I was raised in a German immigrant farming village in the 1950s. All the nuns in my grammar school were German - our pastor too. Just a coincidence. My DNA is English/Irish. Our town did not have a single Black face and only a couple of Hispanic ones. Later, in my late 20s, I became friends with some German grad students, and one of them became my BFF in Europe. I visited Stuttgart nearly every year from 1980 onward. I was introduced to high society as my friend's family was wealthy. I was easily accepted because I had a title: doktor.
Over the decades (going on 6). I got to spend a lot of time with the parents of friends who lived through WWII. I often asked how Hitler could have come to power, and the answers were almost always the same. It happened very gradually (like Trump) until the Reichstag arson when Hitler seized control of the weakened government and rather clueless citizenry. As people became aware of the atrocities, protest was impossible because you quickly were beaten up or disappeared.
Like Trump, vengeance was an enabling factor as the German economy was squelched as punnishment for WWI. People were told by the rising NAZIs that their poverty was due to ruthless Jewish bankers ripping them off, and mongrel races (e.g., Roma/gypsies) polluting the German bloodline. People already dislike bankers, and Jews were not aryans. So lumping them with Roma and other minorities, who were squatters, beggars, and menial labor, made it easy to rationalize their being marginalized. Here we seem to be going again. Hard to argue that American public education is the worst at teaching history.
On the other hand, lots of guilt expressed by the next generation. The government outlawed the Nazi party, makes holocaust denial a crime. "The German penal code prohibits publicly denying the Holocaust and disseminating Nazi propaganda, both off- and online. This includes sharing images such as swastikas, wearing an SS uniform and making statements in support of Hitler.
"It also places strict rules on how social media companies must moderate and report hate speech and threats. These hate-speech laws were tightened....after three far-right terror attacks in 2019 and early 2020 prompted German authorities to warn of increasing extremism."
It took a war that literally destroyed hundreds of thousands of German civilians and destroyed centuries' old cities to bring Germans to their senses. Along with massive amounts of US helped with food, rebuilding, etc. (Marshall Plan, among lesser aids) to stamp out or at least cover Nazi-ism. And something like 40 million lives in Europe. Europe and Germany has remained stable, democratic because Americans were willing to lead and spread democratic ideas, even when we had trouble living up to those ideals. Now, we have a billionaire-ocracy that is killing everything that once made America a beacon (faint or barely seen at times) of hope to others. How do Americans regain their senses? Will it take millions of OUR lives to do it?
Well the lesson learned in Europe, especially Germany has been forgotten.
NAZIism is on the rise again, and in Germany it has made quite a showing: the AfD and associated, France, Netherlands, Poland as well. No where more pronounced than in Russia.
Those lessons rarely last as long as WW II's did, about 3 generations. History fades with time if the lessons are not refreshed; for many they become totally insignificant, solely the domain of the eggheads and nerds. At least from my perspective, the Democratic Party stopped listening to the workers, or rather they made promises they never intended to honor. The Republicans also lied but what they offered was a mythology, a combination of martyrdom/betrayal and a sense of (genetic) superiority, the logical consequences of which was the rising of fascism in America.
Robert: Thom has covered this and a book has been written about it, it seems that the collective memory lasts about 80 years, until the old folks like me die, out and then mankind reinvents the wheel.
You are right about the Democratic party. The problem is that it was at FDR;s time and afterwards until LBJ, a part of blue collar workers who were also racists.
LBJ flipped the script, and the racists ran to the Republican party, and the economic royalists welcomed them, and now we have an spectacle of the economic royalists and the working class curled up together in the same bed. The oppressed curled up to the oppressor, because the oppressor has been smart enough to know the semi educated working class can be manipulated by creating fears, anger and anxiety over their perceived loss of social status and power.
The Democratic party response was to grovel at the feet of the same donor class, and slop at the same trough, and lost any connection to the working class.
Unfortunately... In the end, I'm pretty sure much of how we interact is hardwired into us. However, there is also the opportunity to choose other ways to deal with real-world situations but there needs to be a clear message, it needs to be tied into the actual needs of the people, and it is imperative that it be acted on. Tyrants need their feet stuck into the fire on a regular basis. I think Newsom is getting the idea but he is way too centrist for me.
Changed the name to further victimize the innocent. These fascist bastards are EVERYWHERE, all the time. They were active in Germany when I was there in the 80's. I worked with the Polizei and asked about them. The officer told me it was awful when they marched. Drew huge crowds to protest them. But then along came the people that he really hated. They were there to break windows and steal TVs.
We have protectors at each rally for first-aid, and they keep a lookout for those types. Cops don't bother us and there are no military troops---so far.
Totally brilliant & prescient - says it all - unfortunately most Americans are not paying close attention to the horror of what is happening and how it is eerily similar to what happened in Nazi Germany 80 years ago
Thank you again Thom - we must publicise these facts to everyone in our community - again and again: we all have relatives who don't want to know (and some because they are frightened to ask) - inlike Iris and John:
Iris Pangburn commented:
I don’t think the goal of this administration is anything like serving the interests of the people — not our health, economic security, personal safety, access to information, or certainly our civil rights. The goal, rather, is to control and crush. The personality of the chief executive is now the model for all public policy. That personality is vain, intolerant, and vicious.
John responded:
It is not an “administration.” It is a fascist regime. He is not a “chief executive.” He is a fascist dictator. Words matter.
The "slums" that TRump is clearing mean people will be sent to the new concentration camps. Hell only knows what exactly he meant by using the term "slums"! In part he was referring to the un-housed. Homeless is a misnomer, since the people he will transport consider Washington DC their home.
Reagan started this situation by closing down some bad places and giving institutionalized people their "rights". What he did not do is have plans to help them reintegrate, have a place to sleep, or food to eat. Reaganomics took it from there. Now a majority of us know we are one paycheck, rent raise, or medical condition away from joining those less fortunate.
Republicans like to wrap-up their cruelty in a bunch of pretty words and promises. Oh, they are VERY big on promises! That is Conditioning 101. Our psychopathic President, Administration, and Cult are Nazis. They too will be held accountable.
They have a date with destiny. Show them. See you in the streets.
This crisis of people living on the streets and outdoors is muddled by political agenda’s,ideologies, and political correctness. Of the last, PC Police have contributed to the reactionary MAGA.
When I was a a young adult, married with children, they were called vagrants, but that was dehumanizing for the PC crowd, and also inexact, so they started calling them homeless, but then the PC crowd decided that homeless was dehumanizing so they invented the idiotic and unhandy word unhoused.
No one left of right addresses the issue, and the only solution offered is one size fits all. and it doesn’t.
I lived in Santa Cruz, Ca for seven years, and it was a dumping ground for people with a wide range of mental problems, and they were shipped in from all of over the country, by family and authorities, because Santa Cruz had favorable weather and no one died of exposure, and it had one hell of a mental health program with case workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, meds and the state provided a subsistence allowance., enough for a room and food. They even had an office and a case worker at large, in the downtown district, who worked with the police. Crime, I can’t remember any, suicides a plenty, and the last I remember was suicide by cop (it really was, I knew the case worker for that person). One guy that attended the same AA meetings, killed himself by drinking antifreeze.
There wasn’t even any shoplifting.
The homeless or whatever you want to call them come in all flavors and each flavor should be treated differently.
There are the mentally ill, and the mentally disturbed (the two are not quite the same), They need to be treated professionally and with meds where appropriate, with case works and visits to a psychiatrist to monitor their behavior and progress if any.
There are those who were gainfully employed, owned or lived in a house, but lost their job, and their income. They need to be treated differently, find them a job and a tiny house for starters., employ them as police and caretakers/sanitation workers for the tiny house community.
Tiny homes are being made out of shipping containers, and some of the are downright luxurious
And then there are the bonafide criminals hiding from justice, They can be dealt with by jail.
And why people turn to crime, well that is another subject, for which there are solutions.
Then there are the teenaged homeless or whatever you want to call them
They too can be split off into different categories.
There are those who fled abuse, physical, mental, sexual
There are those that are just plain ole punks (male and female) who want to live life on their terms, and the hell with their family and society,
These groups need to be treated differently, but both fall prey to drugs, and drug use leads to crime, to feed the habit.
The society in which they and we live, is dependent upon a cheap and compliant source of labor, and that breeds poverty and mental health issues.
That woman screaming NIMBY, today might very well be pitching a tent in a park tomorrow, that is how short sighed we are.
On the other hand, location, location. By "slums" Trump means Black and minority neighborhoods. IMHO DC is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and the tourist areas are highly policed. No homeless on the mall or near the monuments and public buildings.
Many of the homeless are money on the hoof.. need social workers, lawyers.
My office in DC was across the street from the old library where people were living in the bushes...we got great office space in a high crime area, but over time, it became gentrified and crime free, forcing my former colleagues to move from K Street to "main labor" due to rent increases."
From my experience, PG county MD and Alexandria have some ares where high crime and homessness actually is prevalent.
I know your by-line is "no thanks", but I think I have to send you some love. Your list is perfect, especially after that religious crap Hegseth just posted.
Victim that just read her statement next to Gloria Allred breaks my heart. Was Epstein not Trump, but they were joined at the hip.
Thank you for this article. I just passed it on to the Executive Director of our local Jewish Federation as I've been disturbed about the silence from Jewish organizations about the parallels between the Trump & Hitler regimes. Our local Jewish Federation is planning to address this but according to the Executive Director "Many Jewish organizations are concerned about “upsetting” the administration and then no longer “having a seat at the table.” They want to make sure their voices are heard." This eerily echoes your article, sadly.
No matter how much more you do and write in your massively substantial and important career/life, you can be satisfied that you have led a good life, doing so very much to help the disenfranchised and the needy. Not surprised, but I'm consistently impressed by all you have accomplished, the world over.
Now you are doing so much to alert us to the horrors and misdeeds of this tyrannical administration. I want to say every post is the most important, stark and alarming, but then the next day a new set of alerts and importance is published. They are all appropriately alarming and important. Friends and family have buffered the news, the "noise." They don't want to hear it, be aware. They just want to get on with their lives - the business of living, and would rather I not mention, talk about the tyranny, the full throated fascism that has emerged. One would think the shear incompetence, idiocy, and lunacy would naturally bring them down. The people of 1930's Germany had the same idea. Hitler was considered a clown, a raving lunatic, and no one did much to stop him, and then it was too late to stop him.
It will never be easier than it is today to fight this lunacy, this tyranny. And friends and family will have to forcibly gag and bound me to make me stop talking about it, sounding the alarms.
I am coming to believe that the world outside of the United States will have to save us. The Trump cultists, the morally depraved republicans, and the billionaires will never stand up for democracy. Can the outside world have an impact here like it did in Germany?
For you, 108 protest signs for the fight. This is critical for Occupied D.C. Many signs are revised to sing. 🎶. I recommend using a local printer, but national print companies offer great pricing, shipping included. There is time to get the lot printed for your protest group, assuming you have a gathering of 300 to 1,000. This would help fill the hands of the signless.
The most crucial phase of the desensitization of citizens in Germany was in training children to go to school and get their daily dose of German greatness and history and their proper behavior instructions and stern correction when they stepped out of line. They learned to not ask too many questions about the children who were disfavored and then suddenly no longer seen, or about anything else that was arbitrary and disconcerting. They learned how to be "good Germans" there first, and that meant above all else doing what one was told by authority figures regardless of whether or not it made sense or fit with their sense of justice and rationality. They were kept very, very busy with academic exercises and studies, which of course were totally managed and controlled by state officials. Parents were kept informed of their performance and encouraged to enforce school rules, procedures, and discipline. This sort of tells you why we have so many "good Americans", and why the media moguls know that bothering the people with details about flights taking deportees to places we can't even imagine would not interest readers and viewers, don't you think? We got enough details in classes. We need a break. We need to be entertained and amused.
I'm not sure who the "we" is that you refer to, but I am thrilled that someone is aware and trying. But I have grandkids and great-grandkids, and I watch very closely what is happening in schools and do not detect any meaningful change. My belief for fifty years is that they are in a Strait Jacket because we have a paradigm founded on arbitrary authority which derives its power and influence from the state thanks to attendance law and the 900-page of rules and prohibitions flowing directly from them. The changes which reformers have proposed and repeatedly tried to implement for over a century are invariably in direct conflict with arbitrary authority, and arbitrary authority almost always wins in the final analysis. The myth is that children must be coerced to attend and to learn and that once there, they will conform and comply, and learning will occur. No such luck. But they do internalize very thoroughly the virtues of obedience and "good behavior" as defined by super-moralists and institutionalists. Hence, MAGA and passive citizens being screwed by Republican policies. We know better than to rock the boat. And we will probably watch it sink.
I'm sorry. I should have been clearer. I meant our family. Both of our (now adult) children were raised to value education. They now have children, so i hope that family tradition continues.
My wife and I have been voracious readers for our entire lives. Our kids picked that up, though it's been tempered by the pressures of parenthood. I'm sure.
Got it. That's great. I envy you. What many people do not realize is that education is about an estimated 40 - 60% reading, in my opinion. I think it is perhaps 40 - 60% direct observation and experience, depending on the individual circumstances and proclivities, as much as 20% or more rumination, processing, and contemplation, and likely less than 5% school for most kids. You probably have an idea from my posts that I do not believe the primary purpose of school is education, although I support voluntary attendance 100% and full funding with tax dollars. I just spent about 2 weeks on a Substack post which is why your message got buried. I finally posted it earlier tonight. Here is a paragraph from the article that hints at my philosophy:
There are no formulae for transforming a compulsory twelve-year paradigm into a happy-go-lucky, untroubled system when laws and statutes are imposed from above. Please get that straight, once and for all! If it is compulsory, it is by definition oppressive.
The article is directed to students and young parents, even though I will be amazed if any student ever finds it and actually reads past the first page. I am convinced that democracy will be saved by students if it is saved at all. Maybe your adult kids would be interested. The title and subtitle are: "Dear Students: Democracy Urgently Needs a Transfusion of New Blood"
"Earlier Generations Created a Fiasco: We Need YOU to Act Quickly to Fix Our Calamity"
An apt assessment. I refuse to fall for the lure of false superiority and the "us vs. them" it rode in on. I'll be that person who gets arrested for hiding people in my basement.
I appreciate your essays as they help to realize that yes, this is happening here. The 2025 Plan was not a secret as such. Still, those who have been pushing it for 50 years have been influencing elected officials through manipulation, using code, deception, and coercion every time new laws were considered to further their agenda. There is no transparency, and via surveillance, lots of damage is done.
I don't understand why the internal audit was not done before the election results were finalized.
Thank you for writing this column. Every single day I still wonder how the American public normalized a con man, cheater, felon, rapist (and now likely pedophile) to the point of voting for him (over an incredibly qualified woman) to lead the country. And, so many people were convinced (with no evidence) that he did something worthwhile for the country the first time he was in office. I guess all of this goes to show the extent of human gullability. How much pain does it take for eyes to open to the propaganda?
She was black and female.
Start with the internal audit done soon after the election. Supressed. Alleges that Dems won by a wiide margin.
"In December 2024, I was personally involved in an NSA‑authorized forensic audit of the 2024 election. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz won — by a wide margin. Trump lost dramatically. There are multiple layers of complexity to this cover‑up, including transnational organized crime syndicates that extend far beyond the United States and our elections. To that point, I work in the human trafficking sector, which intersects with the stolen election(s) and has ties to Trump and Epstein—not to President Biden, Vice President Harris, or Governor Walz, but to the Democrats and other allied interests responsible for burying the audit."
Adam Zarnoski. https://thiswillhold.substack.com/p/ex-cia-whistleblower-the-nsa-audited?r=57k1uv&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true
Lots of other types of evidence but an admission by Trump is the best evidence. If only 1 voter in Pa was intimidated by undue pressure, it's a crime under state law. Musk is especially vulnerable as are Russian psy ops.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_2024_United_States_elections
Trump Lost. Vote Suppression Won. Here are the numbers...by Greg Palastfor the Hartmann ReportJune 16, 2025
https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/
Jessica Denson has interviewed numerous experts. https://www.youtube.com/@JessicaDenson07
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_efforts_to_disrupt_the_2024_United_States_presidential_election
Daniel, I quoted Stephen Spoonamore and I was chastised by a subscriber for quoting false information. I took my comment down when I found my comment was not backed up by the research I did.
Apparently, the voting machines and ballots were checked and no abuse was found. Voter suppression caused Harris to lose. However, no plan has been introduced to avoid this from happening again. The democratic party and its leadership have failed us. There are isolated people that have stepped up to the plate, but far too few. Thank G-d for Newsom, Raskin, O'Rourke, Murphy Pritzker, Jasmin Crockett, Ossoff. Robert Reich posted 9 measures that need to be taken to save our democracy. The plan included many things that our democratic leadership should have suggested a year ago.
1. Don’t let Trump get away with his lies.
Have a truth squad that responds immediately with the facts and cites sources.
When Trump claims that Washington, D.C., is rife with crime, for example, get the truth out: that its crime rate is actually the lowest it’s been in 30 years. That Republicans have literally defunded the police in D.C. by stealing more than a billion dollars from the city. That Trump is dismantling the FBI and putting corrupt, unqualified jerks at the top of our federal law enforcement.
Point out that red states have higher murder rates than blue ones.
Make sure the truth gets out by repeating it over and over. If it’s not reported in the media, find out why.
2. Plan and announce ways to catch up with what we’ve lost on the environment, human rights, voting rights, labor rights, and safety nets.
Even when the orange Caligula on the Potomac is history and his lackeys are out of power, America will have a huge amount to repair, rebuild, and catch up on.
Tell the nation how you’d make up for the time and momentum we’ve lost. What sacrifices will be entailed. Explain what we must do to get back on track toward a just society, a strong democracy, and an environment that isn’t collapsing around us.
Tell us how you’ll rebuild the government that Trump and his Republican sycophants have decimated. How we’ll get back the talent we’ve lost — in science, health, the environment, worker safety, the foreign service. How we’ll build back morale.
3. Lay out a vision for the future.
Don’t stop there. Give us a vision of the future. Tell us where we could and should be, and how we can get there.
Medicare for all. Affordable child care and elder care. Affordable homes. Universal Basic Income. Paid for by higher taxes on the wealthy (including wealth tax), a tax on polluters, and a smaller military.
Also: All fossil fuels replaced by wind, solar, nuclear, conservation. Profit-sharing with employees. Living wage. Strict regulation of Wall Street including crypto, so we never again have to suffer a financial crisis and bail out the Street.
Challenge us. Tell us the truth. Demand much from us.
4. Tell us what you’d do to prevent this catastrophe from ever happening again.
Publicly lay out the laws and amendments you’ll pass to ensure this never happens again, the systems you’ll tear down, the safeguards you’ll enshrine, the plan to hold perpetrators of human atrocities accountable, the urgent commitment to immediately bring home those “disappeared” into prisons in El Salvador and other countries.
Set out the electoral reforms you’ll fight for to prevent a dictatorship from ever again forming under our very noses. Voting rights. Civil rights. Tell us how you’ll get big money out of our politics, even if it takes a constitutional amendment.
5. Mount an independent investigation.
Hold public hearings based on an independent, civilian-powered investigative coalition. Build a real-time archive of corruption, overreach, and executive abuse. Use experts, veterans, whistleblowers, journalists, watchdog organizations.
When the people now hurling us into fascist hell are held accountable, we’ll need every name, every signature, every illegal order, every act of silence — documented.
You’re not just preserving truth. You’re preparing evidence for prosecution. The more they disappear people and weaponize data, the more we need truth in the sunlight.
Investigate every author of Project 2025, every aide who defies court orders, every communications director repeating lies, every policy writer enabling cruelty.
6. Join the International Criminal Court.
You cannot control what the other side does, but you can control your own integrity. So call their bluff. Prove that the Democratic Party is still grounded in law, human rights, and ethical leadership. Join the International Criminal Court. If you’ve got nothing to hide — join.
Show the world who’s hiding bodies, bribes, and buried bank accounts. Force the GOP to explain why they’d rather protect a war criminal than sign a treaty, why they’re setting up detention facilities in an alligator-infested swamp.
And while you’re at it, publicly invite ICC observers into the United States. Make this administration explain — on camera — why they’re terrified of international law and oversight.
7. Create a digital safe haven for whistleblowers and defectors.
Not everyone inside this regime is a traitor to America. Some are scared. Some want out. Build channels for them to defect — encrypted, anonymous, and protected. Make it easy for the cracks in the system to become gaping holes.
Stop ostracizing MAGA defectors. Don’t push them back into the crowd. We don’t need purity. We need numbers. We need people willing to burn their red hats and testify against the machine they helped build.
8. Aim at the real culprits.
Don’t let Trump Republicans blame stagnant incomes and insecure jobs on immigrants, the “deep state,” transgender people, socialists, or communists.
Tell Americans the real reason why they’re working harder and getting nowhere: because big corporations are monopolizing the economy and they, and the super-rich, have amassed enough political power to rig the game for their own benefit.
Your corporate, Wall Street, and fat-cat donors won’t like you saying this, but you know something? You’ll do far better in elections by telling Americans the truth and stressing the importance of getting big money out of politics. You’ll get more small-donor support, too. And you’ll help stop Trump Republican fear-mongering and scapegoating.
9. Take back Congress in 2026.
Don’t just talk about it. Have a plan, a strategy. Mobilize us to focus our attention and resources on districts and states we have a chance of taking back. Set out measurable goals. Give us progress reports.
Stop Trump and his Republican stooge governors from super-gerrymandering their states to squeeze out even more Republican votes: have Democratic governors credibly counter-balance whatever they do — matching seat for seat, as California is attempting to do.
Recruit people to run who aren’t corporate Democrats or Wall Street Democrats but who know the economic stresses most Americans are facing, who respect working people, who speak their language, who know how to connect with voters. Tell us who you’re considering and why. Ask us for names.
Stop AIPAC and the crypto crowd from spending money on Democratic primaries. They have no business there. Put resources where they’re most needed.
Then win!
Ike I said, an admission should be dispositive.
"burying the audit" Will that ever come to light, and what's o prevent from it happening again?
Apparently several whistleblowers are willing to come forwaed.
I honestly never thought of her as black. She far more resembled her mother who was not black. But both of her parents were above average in intelligence as is she.
We wuz robbed. He cheated.
Did Trump admit that Musk stole Pennsylvania?
The high information political junkies know more than the vast majority of tens of millions of low information citizens who work daily and remain largely oblivious to the chaos and corruption taking place every day by Dictator Donny. Being willfully ignorant and highly gullible is something Dictator Donny is counting on so he can destroy democracy and create his delusional view of the country.
Omg Thom, you nailed it! I have been waiting for an article like this for months. I am Jewish and have strong feelings about Germany and the Germans in the early 1930s, I see it here in the USA and ice runs through my veins! I plan to move to Portugal before I am hauled off to a death camp here in the USA. Beautiful and perfect work here Thom, please do more of this!
I’m so sorry. That must be awful.
My own personal experience from childhood onward validates everything that Thom said here. I was raised in a German immigrant farming village in the 1950s. All the nuns in my grammar school were German - our pastor too. Just a coincidence. My DNA is English/Irish. Our town did not have a single Black face and only a couple of Hispanic ones. Later, in my late 20s, I became friends with some German grad students, and one of them became my BFF in Europe. I visited Stuttgart nearly every year from 1980 onward. I was introduced to high society as my friend's family was wealthy. I was easily accepted because I had a title: doktor.
Over the decades (going on 6). I got to spend a lot of time with the parents of friends who lived through WWII. I often asked how Hitler could have come to power, and the answers were almost always the same. It happened very gradually (like Trump) until the Reichstag arson when Hitler seized control of the weakened government and rather clueless citizenry. As people became aware of the atrocities, protest was impossible because you quickly were beaten up or disappeared.
Like Trump, vengeance was an enabling factor as the German economy was squelched as punnishment for WWI. People were told by the rising NAZIs that their poverty was due to ruthless Jewish bankers ripping them off, and mongrel races (e.g., Roma/gypsies) polluting the German bloodline. People already dislike bankers, and Jews were not aryans. So lumping them with Roma and other minorities, who were squatters, beggars, and menial labor, made it easy to rationalize their being marginalized. Here we seem to be going again. Hard to argue that American public education is the worst at teaching history.
On the other hand, lots of guilt expressed by the next generation. The government outlawed the Nazi party, makes holocaust denial a crime. "The German penal code prohibits publicly denying the Holocaust and disseminating Nazi propaganda, both off- and online. This includes sharing images such as swastikas, wearing an SS uniform and making statements in support of Hitler.
"It also places strict rules on how social media companies must moderate and report hate speech and threats. These hate-speech laws were tightened....after three far-right terror attacks in 2019 and early 2020 prompted German authorities to warn of increasing extremism."
The same should apply here.
It took a war that literally destroyed hundreds of thousands of German civilians and destroyed centuries' old cities to bring Germans to their senses. Along with massive amounts of US helped with food, rebuilding, etc. (Marshall Plan, among lesser aids) to stamp out or at least cover Nazi-ism. And something like 40 million lives in Europe. Europe and Germany has remained stable, democratic because Americans were willing to lead and spread democratic ideas, even when we had trouble living up to those ideals. Now, we have a billionaire-ocracy that is killing everything that once made America a beacon (faint or barely seen at times) of hope to others. How do Americans regain their senses? Will it take millions of OUR lives to do it?
Well the lesson learned in Europe, especially Germany has been forgotten.
NAZIism is on the rise again, and in Germany it has made quite a showing: the AfD and associated, France, Netherlands, Poland as well. No where more pronounced than in Russia.
Those lessons rarely last as long as WW II's did, about 3 generations. History fades with time if the lessons are not refreshed; for many they become totally insignificant, solely the domain of the eggheads and nerds. At least from my perspective, the Democratic Party stopped listening to the workers, or rather they made promises they never intended to honor. The Republicans also lied but what they offered was a mythology, a combination of martyrdom/betrayal and a sense of (genetic) superiority, the logical consequences of which was the rising of fascism in America.
Robert: Thom has covered this and a book has been written about it, it seems that the collective memory lasts about 80 years, until the old folks like me die, out and then mankind reinvents the wheel.
You are right about the Democratic party. The problem is that it was at FDR;s time and afterwards until LBJ, a part of blue collar workers who were also racists.
LBJ flipped the script, and the racists ran to the Republican party, and the economic royalists welcomed them, and now we have an spectacle of the economic royalists and the working class curled up together in the same bed. The oppressed curled up to the oppressor, because the oppressor has been smart enough to know the semi educated working class can be manipulated by creating fears, anger and anxiety over their perceived loss of social status and power.
The Democratic party response was to grovel at the feet of the same donor class, and slop at the same trough, and lost any connection to the working class.
Unfortunately... In the end, I'm pretty sure much of how we interact is hardwired into us. However, there is also the opportunity to choose other ways to deal with real-world situations but there needs to be a clear message, it needs to be tied into the actual needs of the people, and it is imperative that it be acted on. Tyrants need their feet stuck into the fire on a regular basis. I think Newsom is getting the idea but he is way too centrist for me.
Changed the name to further victimize the innocent. These fascist bastards are EVERYWHERE, all the time. They were active in Germany when I was there in the 80's. I worked with the Polizei and asked about them. The officer told me it was awful when they marched. Drew huge crowds to protest them. But then along came the people that he really hated. They were there to break windows and steal TVs.
We have protectors at each rally for first-aid, and they keep a lookout for those types. Cops don't bother us and there are no military troops---so far.
In the south, and even in my ol' home town in Pennsyltucky, the stars and bars and even Nazi symbols are everywhere.
Totally brilliant & prescient - says it all - unfortunately most Americans are not paying close attention to the horror of what is happening and how it is eerily similar to what happened in Nazi Germany 80 years ago
Thank you again Thom - we must publicise these facts to everyone in our community - again and again: we all have relatives who don't want to know (and some because they are frightened to ask) - inlike Iris and John:
Iris Pangburn commented:
I don’t think the goal of this administration is anything like serving the interests of the people — not our health, economic security, personal safety, access to information, or certainly our civil rights. The goal, rather, is to control and crush. The personality of the chief executive is now the model for all public policy. That personality is vain, intolerant, and vicious.
John responded:
It is not an “administration.” It is a fascist regime. He is not a “chief executive.” He is a fascist dictator. Words matter.
No Place Sometimes Is Home
The "slums" that TRump is clearing mean people will be sent to the new concentration camps. Hell only knows what exactly he meant by using the term "slums"! In part he was referring to the un-housed. Homeless is a misnomer, since the people he will transport consider Washington DC their home.
Reagan started this situation by closing down some bad places and giving institutionalized people their "rights". What he did not do is have plans to help them reintegrate, have a place to sleep, or food to eat. Reaganomics took it from there. Now a majority of us know we are one paycheck, rent raise, or medical condition away from joining those less fortunate.
Republicans like to wrap-up their cruelty in a bunch of pretty words and promises. Oh, they are VERY big on promises! That is Conditioning 101. Our psychopathic President, Administration, and Cult are Nazis. They too will be held accountable.
They have a date with destiny. Show them. See you in the streets.
This crisis of people living on the streets and outdoors is muddled by political agenda’s,ideologies, and political correctness. Of the last, PC Police have contributed to the reactionary MAGA.
When I was a a young adult, married with children, they were called vagrants, but that was dehumanizing for the PC crowd, and also inexact, so they started calling them homeless, but then the PC crowd decided that homeless was dehumanizing so they invented the idiotic and unhandy word unhoused.
No one left of right addresses the issue, and the only solution offered is one size fits all. and it doesn’t.
I lived in Santa Cruz, Ca for seven years, and it was a dumping ground for people with a wide range of mental problems, and they were shipped in from all of over the country, by family and authorities, because Santa Cruz had favorable weather and no one died of exposure, and it had one hell of a mental health program with case workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, meds and the state provided a subsistence allowance., enough for a room and food. They even had an office and a case worker at large, in the downtown district, who worked with the police. Crime, I can’t remember any, suicides a plenty, and the last I remember was suicide by cop (it really was, I knew the case worker for that person). One guy that attended the same AA meetings, killed himself by drinking antifreeze.
There wasn’t even any shoplifting.
The homeless or whatever you want to call them come in all flavors and each flavor should be treated differently.
There are the mentally ill, and the mentally disturbed (the two are not quite the same), They need to be treated professionally and with meds where appropriate, with case works and visits to a psychiatrist to monitor their behavior and progress if any.
There are those who were gainfully employed, owned or lived in a house, but lost their job, and their income. They need to be treated differently, find them a job and a tiny house for starters., employ them as police and caretakers/sanitation workers for the tiny house community.
Tiny homes are being made out of shipping containers, and some of the are downright luxurious
And then there are the bonafide criminals hiding from justice, They can be dealt with by jail.
And why people turn to crime, well that is another subject, for which there are solutions.
Then there are the teenaged homeless or whatever you want to call them
They too can be split off into different categories.
There are those who fled abuse, physical, mental, sexual
There are those that are just plain ole punks (male and female) who want to live life on their terms, and the hell with their family and society,
These groups need to be treated differently, but both fall prey to drugs, and drug use leads to crime, to feed the habit.
The society in which they and we live, is dependent upon a cheap and compliant source of labor, and that breeds poverty and mental health issues.
That woman screaming NIMBY, today might very well be pitching a tent in a park tomorrow, that is how short sighed we are.
Millions of Americans don't realize how close they are to joining the homeless.
Correct you are, and those that are, are in denial.
On the other hand, location, location. By "slums" Trump means Black and minority neighborhoods. IMHO DC is one of the most beautiful cities in the world and the tourist areas are highly policed. No homeless on the mall or near the monuments and public buildings.
Many of the homeless are money on the hoof.. need social workers, lawyers.
My office in DC was across the street from the old library where people were living in the bushes...we got great office space in a high crime area, but over time, it became gentrified and crime free, forcing my former colleagues to move from K Street to "main labor" due to rent increases."
From my experience, PG county MD and Alexandria have some ares where high crime and homessness actually is prevalent.
And where is Garcia now? Epstein files bedammned. The real stories are election tampering and concentration camps.
Should have listened to these women.
Jessica Leeds 1980s
Kristin Anderson 1990s
Jill Harth 1992
Lisa Boyne 1996
Mariah Billado 1997
Victoria Hughes 1997
Cathy Heller 1997
Temple Taggart McDowell 1997
Karena Virgina 1998
Brodget Sullivan 2000
Tasha dixon &Others 2001
Minday Mcgillivray 2003
Rachel Crooks 2005
Natasha Stoynoff 2005
Jennifer Murphy 2005
Juliet Huddy 2005/6
Jessica Drake 2006
Ninni Laaksonene 2006
Samantha Holvey 2006
Summer Zervos 2007
Cassandra Searles 2013
E. Jeanne Carroll
Amy Dorris
Karen Johnson
Stacey Williams
Plus, those who remain too fearful to come forward.
Say their names and believe them!
I know your by-line is "no thanks", but I think I have to send you some love. Your list is perfect, especially after that religious crap Hegseth just posted.
Victim that just read her statement next to Gloria Allred breaks my heart. Was Epstein not Trump, but they were joined at the hip.
Are those Trump err Epstein victims.?
125+ camps? Those aren't just for immigrants. They're for all of us. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich shows the blueprint, as does Project 2025.
Thank you for this article. I just passed it on to the Executive Director of our local Jewish Federation as I've been disturbed about the silence from Jewish organizations about the parallels between the Trump & Hitler regimes. Our local Jewish Federation is planning to address this but according to the Executive Director "Many Jewish organizations are concerned about “upsetting” the administration and then no longer “having a seat at the table.” They want to make sure their voices are heard." This eerily echoes your article, sadly.
No matter how much more you do and write in your massively substantial and important career/life, you can be satisfied that you have led a good life, doing so very much to help the disenfranchised and the needy. Not surprised, but I'm consistently impressed by all you have accomplished, the world over.
Now you are doing so much to alert us to the horrors and misdeeds of this tyrannical administration. I want to say every post is the most important, stark and alarming, but then the next day a new set of alerts and importance is published. They are all appropriately alarming and important. Friends and family have buffered the news, the "noise." They don't want to hear it, be aware. They just want to get on with their lives - the business of living, and would rather I not mention, talk about the tyranny, the full throated fascism that has emerged. One would think the shear incompetence, idiocy, and lunacy would naturally bring them down. The people of 1930's Germany had the same idea. Hitler was considered a clown, a raving lunatic, and no one did much to stop him, and then it was too late to stop him.
It will never be easier than it is today to fight this lunacy, this tyranny. And friends and family will have to forcibly gag and bound me to make me stop talking about it, sounding the alarms.
I am coming to believe that the world outside of the United States will have to save us. The Trump cultists, the morally depraved republicans, and the billionaires will never stand up for democracy. Can the outside world have an impact here like it did in Germany?
I think that they can, possibly without military conflict. It won't be pretty for any of us outside the 1%, though.
For you, 108 protest signs for the fight. This is critical for Occupied D.C. Many signs are revised to sing. 🎶. I recommend using a local printer, but national print companies offer great pricing, shipping included. There is time to get the lot printed for your protest group, assuming you have a gathering of 300 to 1,000. This would help fill the hands of the signless.
https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/protest-sign-sign-everywhere-a-sign
These are very good. Thanks.
The most crucial phase of the desensitization of citizens in Germany was in training children to go to school and get their daily dose of German greatness and history and their proper behavior instructions and stern correction when they stepped out of line. They learned to not ask too many questions about the children who were disfavored and then suddenly no longer seen, or about anything else that was arbitrary and disconcerting. They learned how to be "good Germans" there first, and that meant above all else doing what one was told by authority figures regardless of whether or not it made sense or fit with their sense of justice and rationality. They were kept very, very busy with academic exercises and studies, which of course were totally managed and controlled by state officials. Parents were kept informed of their performance and encouraged to enforce school rules, procedures, and discipline. This sort of tells you why we have so many "good Americans", and why the media moguls know that bothering the people with details about flights taking deportees to places we can't even imagine would not interest readers and viewers, don't you think? We got enough details in classes. We need a break. We need to be entertained and amused.
We're trying hard to make sure our grandkids don't fall for that.
I'm not sure who the "we" is that you refer to, but I am thrilled that someone is aware and trying. But I have grandkids and great-grandkids, and I watch very closely what is happening in schools and do not detect any meaningful change. My belief for fifty years is that they are in a Strait Jacket because we have a paradigm founded on arbitrary authority which derives its power and influence from the state thanks to attendance law and the 900-page of rules and prohibitions flowing directly from them. The changes which reformers have proposed and repeatedly tried to implement for over a century are invariably in direct conflict with arbitrary authority, and arbitrary authority almost always wins in the final analysis. The myth is that children must be coerced to attend and to learn and that once there, they will conform and comply, and learning will occur. No such luck. But they do internalize very thoroughly the virtues of obedience and "good behavior" as defined by super-moralists and institutionalists. Hence, MAGA and passive citizens being screwed by Republican policies. We know better than to rock the boat. And we will probably watch it sink.
I'm sorry. I should have been clearer. I meant our family. Both of our (now adult) children were raised to value education. They now have children, so i hope that family tradition continues.
My wife and I have been voracious readers for our entire lives. Our kids picked that up, though it's been tempered by the pressures of parenthood. I'm sure.
Got it. That's great. I envy you. What many people do not realize is that education is about an estimated 40 - 60% reading, in my opinion. I think it is perhaps 40 - 60% direct observation and experience, depending on the individual circumstances and proclivities, as much as 20% or more rumination, processing, and contemplation, and likely less than 5% school for most kids. You probably have an idea from my posts that I do not believe the primary purpose of school is education, although I support voluntary attendance 100% and full funding with tax dollars. I just spent about 2 weeks on a Substack post which is why your message got buried. I finally posted it earlier tonight. Here is a paragraph from the article that hints at my philosophy:
There are no formulae for transforming a compulsory twelve-year paradigm into a happy-go-lucky, untroubled system when laws and statutes are imposed from above. Please get that straight, once and for all! If it is compulsory, it is by definition oppressive.
The article is directed to students and young parents, even though I will be amazed if any student ever finds it and actually reads past the first page. I am convinced that democracy will be saved by students if it is saved at all. Maybe your adult kids would be interested. The title and subtitle are: "Dear Students: Democracy Urgently Needs a Transfusion of New Blood"
"Earlier Generations Created a Fiasco: We Need YOU to Act Quickly to Fix Our Calamity"
Ciao!
RBE
An apt assessment. I refuse to fall for the lure of false superiority and the "us vs. them" it rode in on. I'll be that person who gets arrested for hiding people in my basement.
I appreciate your essays as they help to realize that yes, this is happening here. The 2025 Plan was not a secret as such. Still, those who have been pushing it for 50 years have been influencing elected officials through manipulation, using code, deception, and coercion every time new laws were considered to further their agenda. There is no transparency, and via surveillance, lots of damage is done.
I don't understand why the internal audit was not done before the election results were finalized.