Here Come The Executive Orders. Don't Panic!

The fascists are going for shock and awe. Don't be shocked by awful people trying to overwhelm you.

This is it. This is Germany in the 1930s and what you do will be recorded in the history books. Your children and grandchildren will look back and ask what you did. Will you be able to look them in the face?

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OK, it’s Monday and by the time I’m done writing and posting this article, Donald Trump’s inauguration as America’s first felon wannabe dictator will be underway. The Republican Party has gone full fascist. They have 18 months to rewrite the American Experiment into the Fourth Reich before they lose control of Congress and either have to openly try to overthrow the country again or roll the dice on another election without Donald Trump on the ticket.

Republicans have a plan in place but they know they can’t do it through Congress or the courts. We’ll get to why in a bit. The most important thing for you to do is not panic. Panic is not productive and is, in fact, exactly what Republicans want. You can be worried. You can be angry. You can be depressed.

You cannot panic because panic helps the fascists. Do not help the fascists.

So…what’s this plan? Well, it’s Project 2025 which we’re all pretty familiar with by now. But instead of passing legislation or having the Supreme Court declare Trump the Eternal Emperor of America, Republicans are going to use literally hundreds of executive orders.

I’m old enough to remember when Republicans derided EOs as tyranny of the highest order. But that was when Obama was president and, as always, Every Republican Accusation Is A Confession.

This avalanche of EOs has multiple functions:

1. Overwhelm - This is their “flood the zone” strategy. Unleash so much evil and cruelty and illegal activity at once that it will be impossible for anyone to wrap their head around it.

2. Camouflage - Within the tens of thousands of words they’re about to dump on the country, they will be slipping in intensely illegal poison pills they hope will go unnoticed until it’s too late.

3. Drain resources - The United States Government has unlimited resources to fight in court. We do not.

4. Distraction - With so much dropped at once, people will be too busy sifting through the rubble to notice the myriad of crimes Republicans are committing on a daily basis.

Let me address each of these points individually.

It’s going to be very easy to be overwhelmed by this flood of evil. I’m going to tell you the simplest way to avoid being swept away and burned out: Do not try to absorb it all. I don’t mean absorb it all at once but at all.

These executive orders will run the spectrum from immigration to trans rights to crypto to climate change to reproductive rights to the First Amendment and more. Remember, these are literal fascists trying to undo our civil rights and remake America into a police state where only white men with money have power and freedom.

Do not focus on “the big picture.” Focus on what you understand and are most passionate about and fight for that. It’s OK to be angry about the EOs promoting fossil fuel interests but if your primary lane is reproductive and LGBTQ rights, stay in your lane. That’s where your time and energy will be most needed. You have to trust that other people will continue to fight for the environment and immigrants and the poor and and and.

There’s a lot of intersectionality, of course, but if you try to fight every battle at once, you’ll burn out and that will be the story of you.¹

That’s why they’re dumping 200 EOs at once. They want us to burn out and withdraw. Instead, laser-focus and make them pay dearly for every inch of our freedom they try to steal.

Meanwhile, for every loud and obvious EO declaring an end to Birthright Citizenship, there will be ten little poison pills camouflaged in the text Republicans don’t want anyone to notice. The next couple of weeks is going to be a lot of smoke and mirrors so they can start doing a lot of very illegal things. The hope is that if they build enough momentum, the courts will just shrug and say, “Well, it’s already been in place for six months, might as well allow it to continue.”

This is where people and organizations a lot smarter than me come in. The ACLU comes to mind. These are the people who are going to dissect the EOs and sue the shit out of Republicans for both the obvious stuff and the buried stuff they’re hoping to slip by us. You should donate to them as often as possible because a big part of the flood the zone plan is to drain our resources.

Lawsuits are expensive. Ask Rudy Guiliani how expensive they are. Ask Trump. He spent hundreds of millions of dollars from his imbecile followers to stay out of jail. Now the people controlling him are going to use the unlimited resources of the federal government to fight hundreds of lawsuits as long as possible. They’ll drag the process out because they don’t care how much taxpayer money they waste as long as they drain us of money and time and, eventually, willpower.

So, again, donate money to the groups fighting for us. The ACLU. The NAACP. Even the Democratic Party, whether you like them or not, will be suing the shit out of the Trump regime to block executive orders. Donating is how you help (unless you’re a lawyer and want to volunteer your time?).

Finally, and this is a biggie, all of this will be used as a distraction by Trump’s handlers. The press will gleefully feign outrage at the executive orders while focusing on nothing. They’ll generate a ton of headlines but nothing will come of it because they don’t want to get in the way.

Remember, these are the same news organizations that spent literally years hyperfocused on Bill Clinton’s fake Whitewater “scandal” and then his sex life because they hated him and his wife. Then they hyperfocused on Benghazi and Hillary’s emails. Then Biden’s age and the recession that was always RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER. They spent weeks WEEKS clutching their pearls over a single CEO being shot in NYC.

The press can crusade on a single topic when it wants to. When it comes to Trump and the GOP? They never want to. So they will be willing accomplices as Republicans try to overwhelm us with shit. The press will bombard us with news but they will never focus on a single narrative or express outrage on any one thing for more than a few hours.

If the EOs are the distraction, the legacy press is the conduit. They are not here to help us. They are an eager part of the problem.

Just as a side note, it’s really important to understand that “President” Donald Trump will not know what a single fucking one of “his” executive orders will be. He will not know what they say. He will not know what he signed. He’s doing what he’s told to by the people actually in charge: The oligarchs and the Nazis surrounding Trump in the White House.

If we had a real press, at least one reporter would ask him to explain five of the executive orders he signed. Or even lightly summarize them. When Trump failed to even name, much less explain, two of them, it should be the greatest scandal in American history. But we do not have a real press in this country. We have fascist collaborators.

Why does it HAVE to be executive orders?

Told you we’d get back to this and I’m an ogre of my word.

The House GOP is completely dysfunctional. With a majority of fuckall, they can barely pass a bill agreeing on what time of day it is much less a bill declaring Donald Trump Dictator For Life. The Senate may or may not play ball but the filibuster is still in place and it’s risky to get rid of it.

After all, what happens if Republicans fail to overthrow the country and Democrats have a trifecta in 2029? Even 12 months without a filibuster would be the end of the Republican Party.

What about the courts? Yeah, what about them? Sure, Republicans control the Supreme Court but the lower courts are packed with Obama and Biden appointees, far more so than Trump appointees. Trump only had 4 years and there are not a ton of vacancies to fill this time. At the same time, SCOTUS can only greenlight so many unconstitutional power grabs in one year and their credibility is already in shambles.

Now, it’s likely that Trump and his puppetmasters are planning on removing non-Trump judges. This is what every authoritarian dictator does to consolidate power. But that puts us solidly into civil war territory and everything else here becomes moot so let’s hope they only get that desperate later.

Either way, with Congress and the courts a dead end for America’s Fascism Makeover, Trump’s puppeteers have to abuse the power of the executive branch as much as possible. That’s what we’re about to witness today and for the next four years.

Again: Do. Not. Panic. Panic is unproductive and will accomplish nothing but help the fascists. Do not help the fascists. Spend the day sobbing if you have to and then get your shit together and make them pay for every bloody inch.

There are 287 days until the first Blue Wave and it starts in Virginia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

I hope you feel better informed about the world and ready to kick fascists in the teeth to protect it. This newsletter exists because of you, so please consider becoming a supporting subscriber today for only $5 a month or just $50 a year. Thank you for everything!

1. Watch for the alt-left’s demands you only pay attention to their outrage and how that outrage will be curiously directed at “both sides.” They will be frantically trying to redirect your anger away from Trump.