Rise of Fascism in the United States [SPLIT]

[Araucaria]

They're renaming my hometown airport after the orange bastard, and I'm hopping mad!

Ron DeSantis signs a bill to rename Palm Beach International Airport after Donald Trump

The West Palm Beach, Florida, airport will now be called “President Donald J. Trump International Airport.”

www.wmnf.org

 

[KaraBulut]

The Department of Justice has decided that they, not the Federal Courts, decide what is unconstitutional. This "decision" by the DOJ lays the groundwork for Trump to escape from his theft of classified materials in 2021.

Justice Dept. Says Trump Doesn’t Need to Hand Over Presidential Records After Office

The opinion could set the stage for President Trump to refuse to give the National Archives many of his own official documents when he leaves office.

www.nytimes.com

Justice Dept. Says Trump Doesn’t Need to Hand Over Presidential Records After Office

The opinion could set the stage for President Trump to refuse to give the National Archives many of his own official documents when he leaves office.

A memo from the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department asserts that the Presidential Records Act is unconstitutional because it is an example of lawmakers trying to wield too much authority over the president.

Legal experts inside the Justice Department have issued an unusual opinion claiming that a nearly 50-year-old federal law requiring presidential records to be handed over to the government when a president leaves office is unconstitutional.

The opinion by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel attacking the law, the Presidential Records Act, could set the stage for President Trump to refuse to give the National Archives and Records Administration many of his own official documents when he leaves office after his second term in the White House is over.

Congress enacted the Presidential Records Act in 1978 after the Watergate scandal, when control of former President Richard M. Nixon’s White House files became a subject of intense dispute. It says that the government “shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession and control of presidential records,” and also set rules for how the National Archives should handle the material when a president departs.

https://www.justice.gov/olc/media/1434131/dl

 

[NotHardUp1]

And the court rules "and the AG whore you rode in on!" STOP persecuting the Fed Chair!

https://www.axios.com/2026/04/03/judge-powell-doj-subpoena-trump

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-reserve-subpoenas-justice-department/

 

[NotHardUp1]

The boy's got the Midas Touch. Request sweet raises for the gendarmes, while punishing the rank and file public servants.

Maybe someone should explain the math to the Administration. Piss off the workers, and you're alienating a far larger pool of voters, plus the military was already voting GOP, so you didn't gain anything by giving them the civilians' raises.

Idiots.

White House budget proposal silent on civilian federal pay raise | Federal News Network

The White House proposed up to a 7% pay raise for military members, but made no mention of a pay raise for civilian federal employees in 2027.

federalnewsnetwork.com

 

[KaraBulut]

During the 2024 campaign, Trump went to Pennsylvania and stood in front of audiences and said that he was going to ensure that American steel was supreme again. He was going to tariff foreign steel! He would get American steelworkers back to work!

First he approved Japan buying 100% of US Steel (making it part of Nippon Steel):

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/18/business/nippon-steel-finalizes-deal-to-buy-100-of-us-steel

US Steel, once America’s biggest company, is now under foreign ownership

Nippon Steel has finalized its deal to buy 100% of US Steel, the iconic steelmaker that was once the world’s most valuable company and a cornerstone of American industrial might.

The companies announced Wednesday that the two had completed the partnership. Under the terms of the deal first announced in December 2023, Nippon will buy US steel for $55 per share, or $14.1 billion. The company will also retain its name and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania headquarters.

But while Nippon is buying the entirety of US Steel, under the final deal the US government will gain a say in many key decisions on how the company is run. That includes giving President Donald Trump veto power over any decision to idle plants, reduce production or staffing levels.

Then Trump announced that his Big Buttugly Ballroom would be built with steel from a Luxembourg company:

White House blasted for reportedly using donated foreign steel for ballroom

California Governor Gavin Newsom and actor Henry Winkler were among those criticizing the move.

www.newsweek.com

The White House has come under fire over the latest development in the much-discussed and publicized construction of a new ballroom.

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that the White House had secured tens of millions of dollars of donated foreign steel for the project. As President Donald Trump has championed and promised to strengthen the U.S. steel industry, the project's reported use of foreign steel has raised questions and sparked mockery among the president's critics.

Then the media discovered that the Luxembourg company had donated $37 million in steel for the ballroom. Shortly before this was announced, Trump cut in half his tariffs on imported steel.

White House Secures Foreign Steel for Trump’s Ballroom Project

ArcelorMittal, a European steel maker, is donating tens of millions of dollars of foreign steel for President Trump’s new ballroom.

www.nytimes.com

ArcelorMittal, a Luxembourg-based firm that is the world’s second-largest steel maker, is providing steel for the structure of the ballroom project, the people said. They said the steel was produced in Europe, where the bulk of ArcelorMittal’s production is concentrated.

The White House has not disclosed details of the donation, but Mr. Trump said last October that he had been offered a donation of steel for the ballroom valued at $37 million.

The president’s comments came just days before the White House made adjustments to its tariffs that could benefit ArcelorMittal, by cutting in half the tariffs applied to exports of automotive steel from its Canadian plant.

 

[rareboy]

US steelworkers bought his lies though.

The question is whether this will blow back during the mid-terms.

 

[Alistair]

US steelworkers bought his lies though.

The question is whether this will blow back during the mid-terms.

No. Just like nothing he does matters to farmers.

 

[rareboy]

I suppose their racism tops everything.

 

[KaraBulut]

Another brilliant piece from Anne Applebaum, writing in The Atlantic (unfortunately, firewalled).

Illiberalism Is Not Inevitable

If Viktor Orbán can lose, then his Russian and American admirers can lose too.

www.theatlantic.com

Illiberalism Is Not Inevitable

If Viktor Orbán can lose, then his Russian and American admirers can lose too.

Orbán’s loss brings to an end the assumption of inevitability that has pervaded the MAGA movement, as well as the belief—also present in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric—that illiberal parties are somehow destined not just to win but to hold power forever, because they have the support of the “real” people. As it turns out, history doesn’t work like that. “Real” people grow tired of their rulers. Old ideas become stale. Younger people question orthodoxy. Illiberalism leads to corruption. And if Orbán can lose, then his Russian and American admirers can lose too...

Those stories resonated, especially with younger Hungarians. At a rock concert in Heroes’ Square in central Budapest on Friday, tens of thousands of them started chanting “Russians, go home”—the same chant that their grandparents used when Soviet soldiers invaded their country in 1956.

But whatever happens next, this election represents a real turning point. For most European governments, this result is a relief: We can’t know yet what kind of government Tisza will create, but it won’t be one that functions as Russia’s puppet in Europe, blocking EU funding for Ukraine or European sanctions on Russia. Nor will it be a regime that serves as a model for Americans or Europeans who want to capture their own states, or take apart their own checks and balances, or impose their own illiberal ideologies on people who don’t accept them.

 

[rareboy]

Hungary was a litmus test for democracy over illiberalism.

What I haven't seen though, is much about how this is playing back in rrrZZZia.

While I suspect that it has shaken the Kremlin and politburo PutinCo. hacks, I don't sense that it has ignited an anti-imperialist liberal movement in the Rus.

But I am taking the win this week and enjoying the damage that has been done to the xenophobic, nativist, racist and sterile politics of the far right wing.

I am enjoying Tucker Carlson's loss...and his father's loss of proximity and influence to Hungary's mob boss and his cadre.

I am enjoying that CPAC Hungary is likely badly damaged and that Hungary will no longer be the poster child for CPAC USA.

In Canada, I suspect that even more air has gone out of the Alberta separatist movement.

And I ma particularly heartened that while I was 100% sure that ORban and the Kremlin had rigged the election to win...it turns out thatthey didn't and the people of Hungary still have self-determination.

 

[KaraBulut]

Hungary was a litmus test for democracy over illiberalism.

Yesterday, when I was reading articles about Orbán, it was shocking how close it was to what is happening in the second Trump reich. The difference is that it took Orbán a decade and a half to use democracy against itself, installing his loyalists in the courts, into lifetime appointments on boards and committees and into the military. He also took all of the assets of the public university system and transferred them to foundations that were under the control of his loyalists.

Add to this the standard Putin/Erdoğan strategy of selling the free press to his millionaire cronies and granting government contracts to his cronies. And the anti-immigrant xenophobia. And the partnership with faux-religiosity. And the anti-DEI and anti-feminist social promotions. All of it is exactly what Trump and his Project 2025 henchmen have been doing for the past 12 months.

I'd like to think that this is the end of the creepy relationship between CPAC and Hungary. I would like to think that it is the end of all of those American political hacks working in Hungarian think tanks. I suspect it is not. If Democrats and old-guard Republicans want to keep America from going down the Orbán authoritarian route, they need to figure out where the money behind all of these things is coming from. We know Bannon and Musk are big funding sources but there's too much money supporting what Trump has been up to. There's other funding sources that are behind the 501(c)(3) organizations that have orchestrated take-over of the Federal Courts, behind think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, CPAC, behind far right media like Breitbar, NewsMax, OAN and who are funding all of Trump's "projects" like the big ugly ballroom project.

It is just shock the US has gone down this path, if for no other reason that the US has always been a leader in expansion of human rights and promotion of liberal democracy. There was a minority in MAGA that knew that this was the plan but the majority were voting for improvement to their lives, not for the personal enrichment of the Trump family and the billionaire class.

For the Federal government of the US to be mimicking declining countries like Hungary and Russia is just shocking to comprehend.