ANS -- The Manhood Trap: From Epstein’s Island to Musk’s Baby Farm — How the Right Redefined Masculinity as Control

Another one from Thom Hartmann.  This is about toxic masculinity and how the Republicans are encouraging it. 

Find it here: https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-manhood-trap-from-epsteins-island-b7c?fbclid=IwY2xjawLm7_NleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHoG4iquJvkofrfVFptwyZkGhKQ10FpYbSXc1ktl9Adn9W7XSB9jMZ_2aAllH_aem_3BGBMNfGyEem59_0stXzsg    

--Kim

Daily Take

The Manhood Trap: From Epstein's Island to Musk's Baby Farm — How the Right Redefined Masculinity as Control

Underneath the memes, podcasts, and tradwife fantasies lies a dangerous agenda: train young men to reject equality, fear women's power, and embrace authoritarianism disguised as masculinity…

Thom Hartmann

Jul 17, 2025

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James Carville recently suggested that Democrats need to do more to reach out to young men, as though pandering to testosterone-fueled grievance and entitlement is the key to winning elections. Let's be blunt: that's a bullshit, dead-end strategy that risks ratifying the very worst elements of a crisis in masculinity that's corroding our politics, poisoning our culture, and endangering our democracy.

And it's coming from the top, down.

Donald Trump is an adjudicated rapist, according to the judge in his case. A New York jury found him liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll in a civil case, and he's remained unapologetic. Then he moved straight to pardoning other men in his orbit, even convicted ones like Roger Stone and a rapper with a history of alleged sexual assault. And now he's telling us to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein wasn't an outlier: he was a prototype. A predator who operated in plain sight, protected by the powerful, and normalized by the elite. His crimes weren't hidden; they were ignored, downplayed, and rationalized until they became impossible to deny.

The recent revelations about the scope of his network, and the prominent men it touched, show how deeply entrenched rape culture is not just at the fringes of politics, but at its very core.

Trump pardoned multiple anti-abortion criminals as well as Ross Ulrich, who ran the world's most notorious market for illicit drugs (that some allege could also have been used for human trafficking); his administration apparently helped free Andrew and Tristan Tate, rightwing influencers accused of rape in Romania, from prison in that country so they could return to America to help promote the GOP to their young male followers.

Rape culture isn't just at the top; it's everywhere, especially in the digital spaces young men inhabit. Pornography has become the de facto sex education for millions of boys. A ten‑year‑old with a smartphone has unfettered access to violent, misogynistic content that normalizes coercion and degradation.

This isn't just a parental issue, it's a cultural emergency. This content is shaping how an entire generation understands sex, power, and consent.

And Trump's "best friend" Epstein was an avatar of that twisted worldview.

Trump and Epstein were reportedly best buds for years, partying together, traveling together on Epstein's private jet, enjoying the same grotesque perks of unchecked wealth.

Both political parties have brushed shoulders with predators, but only one is building a platform that protects them by law. Virtually every Republican in the House of Representatives just voted to conceal the information about Epstein our government currently has.

And now, Elon Musk echoes that same ideology with a techno-eugenic twist, building a brood while normalizing control over women's bodies in the name of "saving civilization."

Musk is openly using white women as baby incubators. Musk has fathered at least 14 children with four different women. He's talked openly about a global "underpopulation crisis" and described his mission to produce a "legion-level" brood of children before the apocalypse. He's recruited mothers via X, and allegedly dangled millions in hush-money deals. This isn't family values: it's eugenic breeding with a Big Daddy tint.

That's also largely what the so‑called "Tradwife" movement is selling. On social media and in right-wing circles, we're seeing a resurgence of the Traditional Wife persona; it's not really about choice or liberty as they try to sell it, but hierarchy. White women are expected to go "back to the kitchen and bedroom," producing more white babies in a panic about the "browning" of America.

This fixation on race and reproduction mirrors the same "Great Replacement Theory" rhetoric promoted on Fox "News" and other rightwing outlets that fed the Charlottesville rally and inspired mass murderers in Las Vegas, Buffalo, and El Paso.

From Trump saying, "If Hillary Clinton can't satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?" to telling Esquire Magazine that "arm candy" is essential for a successful businessman ("You know, it doesn't really matter what [the media] write as long as you've got a young and beautiful piece of ass") to sarcastically calling Kamala Harris "a beautiful woman," our president has long made clear his thoughts on the role of women.

JD Vance has similarly pushed the tradwife meme, arguing that:

"I think that we should fight for the right of every American to live a good life in the country they call their own, to raise a family and dignity on a single middle-class job."

That "single" job is the key; he's not talking about economic advancement in the middle class but, rather, pitching the idea that dad should work and mom should stay home to cook, clean, and attend to the kids.

And, like in the 1950s and before, it's all undergirded by state violence. Jessica Valenti writes with clarity and horror at her Abortion Every Day Substack, documenting how Red states are now arresting women for miscarriages and far, far worse is on the horizon.

Law enforcement officers in Red states are now interrogating women who seek care for pregnancy complications, Republican Attorneys General are demanding records of miscarriages and abortions even from Blue states, and doctors are afraid to treat women in crisis, leading to a doubling in the use of blood transfusions (women almost bleeding to death) in Texas since they passed their draconian abortion ban. It's deliberate, and it's escalating.

And now Republicans in Congress and the states are openly talking about bringing back enforcement of the Comstock Act of 1873, the Victorian-era law banning not just abortion but contraception and obscene materials, as I wrote about in The Cold Dead Hand of Anthony Comstock.

Meanwhile, the fetal personhood movement backed by Trump and Vance is becoming mainstream. As vice president, J.D. Vance spoke at the 2025 March for Life rally, declaring "I want more babies in the United States of America" and aligned himself with the GOP's agenda of fetal personhood, a policy that could make IVF, contraception, and even most miscarriage treatment illegal.

This is a deliberate, systemic reinforcement of toxic masculinity, an ideology of power, control, and domination.

It shows up in incel forums, Proud Boys gatherings, Andrew Tate videos, and in the halls of Congress. It's being sold to young men as an antidote to their anxieties, be they economic, social, or existential.

From Mar-a-Lago to Manhattan's Upper East Side, rape culture isn't fringe: it's the foundation. And it's a lie.

Some Republicans will pretend to claim that they just want to return America to the Leave It To Beaver world of June Cleaver, the happy homemaker of 1960s TV. What they don't like to point out, though, is that in the 1960s most women didn't have much of a choice.

When Republicans say that your grandmother stayed with your grandfather and should be your role model, they fail to point out that women three generations ago really had few choices unless they were independently wealthy.

Employers could refuse to hire women because of their gender as recently as 1964; home sellers and real estate agents could refuse to sell a house to women up until 1974; it wasn't until 1988 that the law said landlords could no longer refuse to rent to women. Spousal rape wasn't criminalized until 1993.

When Louise and I got married in 1972, she couldn't get a credit card or sign a mortgage without the signature of me, her brother, or her father. She couldn't serve on a jury, get a no-fault divorce, or enroll in an Ivy League college. And if she'd had an unwanted pregnancy, she'd be out of luck until 1973's Roe v Wade decision.

In twenty states, Republicans have succeeded in removing from women one of the most important options that allow them to stay in the workplace: abortion of an accidental or unwanted pregnancy. Now they're going after birth control. And their war on DEI is just another aspect of their war on their own women, as white women are the main beneficiaries of the DEI programs Republicans are demanding corporations and government agencies end.

Republicans are even working hard on ending no-fault divorce: as JD Vance said, women should stay home and serve their husbands even when those men are physically or emotionally abusive.

They ignore the reality of an 8 to 16% decrease in female suicides after states enacted no-fault divorce laws, a roughly 30% decrease in intimate partner violence, and a 10% drop in women murdered by their partners. Or maybe they just don't care.

Republican legislators are also pushing back hard against equal-pay-for-equal-work laws, calling such efforts DEI, again arguing that women shouldn't be on the job in the first place.

These are all aspects of a crisis of masculinity and rape culture that Republicans are exploiting to the detriment of both women and the men who're buying their perverted siren song.

Thus, Democratic consultants' calls to "reach out" to young men without challenging these ideas are dangerous. They can be interpreted as code for validation, not transformation.

What we need instead is a redefinition of masculinity: strength defined by compassion, power defined by service, leadership defined by respect.

And there are real exemplars out there.

Look at Senator Jon Tester, Montana farmer and Marine vet, who fights for working families without preening bravado. Look at President Biden — yes, him — who has comforted grieving mothers and lent moral clarity and empathy where so many others have failed. Look at single fathers, teachers, firefighters, nurses, community organizers: men who show up because they care, not to conquer.

True masculinity uplifts. It nurtures. It protects without demeaning. It leads with humility. It affirms the full humanity of women.

That's the kind of man worth celebrating and inviting young men to be. Not the guy who calls himself a "legion" builder, or hustles violent porn on the internet and brags of his conquests on YouTube, or thinks women exclusively belong at home to "raise the babies."

Democrats shouldn't pander to wounded pride. They shouldn't validate grievance or reinforce entitlement. They should, instead, challenge men to grow up; to become allies in a fight for justice, equality, and democracy.

Redefining masculinity isn't a side project: it's central to reclaiming our national soul.

Let Republicans hold up Trump, Musk, and Tate as their sick, twisted role models. Democrats should amplify the real men: the compassionate, the just, the fierce protectors of freedom and equality.

Let's reject the calls coming from multiple corners to "reach out" to codes of rape culture. Instead, let's lead the way to a future where strength means service, power means accountability, and freedom means equality for everyone.

ANS -- How Norway Became Freer Than America

Here is an article from Thom Hartmann. It compares our democracy to Norway's.  Read it.

Find it here: (and if you go to the page, you will be able to play a short song inspired by the article.) 

https://hartmannreport.com/p/how-norway-became-freer-than-america-39b?fbclid=IwY2xjawLltxZleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHpNA5ZMajkfrmuVUrb11V8rYHLE-2bGwc91b6K0XbbpPBZiM4mjNPP_CQN8z_aem_sUIl3yyvHzIMKtUAb1cVsQ   

--Kim

How Norway Became Freer Than America

If we want a country that looks more like Norway and less like the feudal state Trump and his bought-off justices envision, we must fight for it…

Thom Hartmann

Jul 16, 2025

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Earlier this month, Louise and I vacationed across several different cities and rural areas in Norway, the country from which my grandfather emigrated to the United States in 1917. The place was immaculate, modern, and, astonishingly, seemed entirely free of homelessness. Official stats say around 3,000 people lack housing across the entire country. That's about the number you'll see sleeping on sidewalks in a single Los Angeles neighborhood.

Depending on the city, it looked like half or more of the cars on the road were electric. Norway has mandated that, starting this coming January, all new cars sold in that nation must be zero-emission. Charging stations are everywhere. Already, 89 percent of all new cars sold there last year were fully electric.

But the real eye-opener wasn't the electric cars or tidy sidewalks; it was the democracy. Norway is a functioning democratic republic, but not in the American sense where billionaires run the show to their own benefit.

It's a country that practices democratic socialism, a term that causes conniptions among Fox "News" anchors and libertarian think tanks but simply means this: The people vote for leaders who actually implement policies the majority wants.

Sadly, that's not the case here pretty much at all, at least since the Reagan Revolution. Back here in the United States, six billionaire-corrupted Supreme Court justices just told us that democracy doesn't matter anymore. That the desires of millions of Americans can be rendered meaningless, especially if billionaires and their puppets want it that way.

Yesterday, this Trump-packed Supreme Court quietly — in an unsigned ruling on their badly-abused so-called "shadow docket" with no public debate and no explanation — handed down one of the most destructive rulings in modern history.

In a 6–3 decision, the justices greenlit Trump's plan to gut the Department of Education, firing 1,400 people, freezing $6.8 billion in funding, and throwing the constitutional guarantee of equal access to education under the proverbial bus. It also flies in the face of the constitutional requirement that the president "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" by spending money Congress appropriates and keeping open agencies Congress created.

Justice Sotomayor's dissent was scathing, calling the ruling "indefensible" and warning it would "cripple the federal government's ability to ensure civil rights are enforced in education."

The highest court in our land just sided with a twice-impeached, sexual-assaulting, insurrection-inciting president to dismantle the very agency responsible for making sure children with disabilities get accommodations. That Black and Brown, Jewish and Muslim students aren't systematically discriminated against. That poor children in poor neighborhoods can still get a good education. That people with massive student debt can get some small breaks. That schools have at least some federal oversight.

Compare that to Norway.

While American billionaires are buying legislators and court decisions to keep their taxes low, their subsidies for the fossil fuel industry flowing, and to crush unions, Norwegians are investing in their people.

Nobody in Norway ever goes bankrupt from medical bills. College and trade schools are free. Unions are everywhere, wages are high, and stiff taxes on the morbidly rich ensure that public services like education and healthcare are publicly funded rather than run by greedy corporations and billionaire CEOs.

How do they do it? Why is it so different there compared to here?

Because in Norway, and across most of Europe, democracy is real. Citizens are automatically registered to vote. Elections are free of voter suppression, and dark money is illegal. Politicians are answerable to the people, not to fossil fuel barons or Wall Street banksters.

And so, people can vote for legislators who can actually give them what they want:

— Universal healthcare
— Free higher education
— Robust public transit
— Workers' rights and living wages
— Climate action, not climate denial

Meanwhile, in America, six corrupt Republicans on our Supreme Court have become an unelected, billionaire-funded wrecking crew that's gleefully tearing down every public institution that threatens plutocratic rule.

This disparity, this tragedy, is no accident here in our country.

As I've written about for years and most recently detailed in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, it began in the modern era with Lewis Powell's 1971 Memo, a blueprint for corporate America to seize the courts, media, education, and politics. Nixon rewarded Powell by putting him on the Supreme Court the following year, and the rest is tragic history.

From Buckley v. Valeo to Citizens United, this Court and its billionaire benefactors have redefined bribery as "free speech" and legalized the wholesale purchase of politicians. And, of course, Supreme Court justices.

This week's shadow docket ruling is just the latest in that decades-long march toward oligarchy and, now, dictatorship.

The irony? The majority of Americans want a Norway-style system.

— 66% support Medicare for All
— 58% support free college and student debt cancellation
— 64% support taxing the ultra-rich more heavily
— 60% of workers say they'd join a union if they could

So why don't we have it?

Because six corrupt Republican Supreme Court justices, and the corrupt rightwing billionaires who bought them and support their lavish lifestyles, won't let us.

They've legalized voter suppression, gutted campaign finance laws, blessed gerrymandering, and are now attacking public education, the very foundation of a functioning democracy.

The lesson of Norway isn't that the people there are somehow better. It's that they've built institutions that respect the will of the majority and block the power of the morbidly rich. And when their democratic institutions are under threat, they act.

In America, we must do the same.

— End lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court and put in term limits.
— Ban dark money in politics.
— Rebuild public education, not dismantle it.
— Tax the morbidly rich.
— Expand and protect voting rights.

This isn't a left-right issue; it's a democracy-versus-oligarchy issue. And this week's Supreme Court ruling should be a five-alarm fire.

If we want a country that looks more like Norway and less like the feudal state Trump and his bought-off justices envision, we've got to fight for it.

The billionaires may have the Supreme Court, the White House, and Congress, at least for now. But we still have the numbers.

And in a democracy, that still means something, if we make it mean something.

The Hartmann Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my daily work to rescue America from the greedy psychopaths trying to take us down, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

ANS -- The Authoritarian Test

This has some facts in it I have not heard before.  I don't know if they are true, but I believe Thom Hartmann is trustworthy.  It's a good overview of what Trump is doing.  

--Kim

PS -- I have been enlarging the typeface on most of these.  Does it help? Should I bother?

Thom Hartmann 

doenrstopS3c1hi9h9i3a2gum981la05g1ft66f682t590iu7003t51467m1  · 

Trump's threat to strip Rosie O'Donnell of her citizenship is a "test."

Kids do it all the time. Throw a tantrum in the store demanding cookies and if the parents don't remove them from the store right away, every visit will see the tantrums escalate. Testing the boundaries. When the test succeeds, the boundaries get moved and a new boundary gets tested, on and on until finally the child's behavior is so egregious he's stopped. Or he always gets away with everything and grows up to be Donald Trump.

We learn this early.

We've seen a series of these tests coming from the Trump administration, following the very specific and consistently repeated pattern that history tells us played out in the regimes of Mussolini, Hitler, Pinochet, Putin, Orbán, Erdoğon, el Sisi, and pretty much every other person who took over a democracy and then, step-by-step turned it into a dictatorship.

Trump started testing racism as a political weapon when he came down the elevator at Trump Tower and spoke about "Mexican murderers and rapists" in front of what media reports said was a crowd he'd hired for $50/person from a company that provides extras to movie and TV production companies.

While his initial goal was reportedly to get NBC to renew Apprentice and pay him more than Gwen Stefani, his racism test work out shockingly well; suddenly he was a serious contender for the party that had inherited the KKK vote when Democrats abandoned the South with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts in the 1960s.

Another test was whether the exaggerations, distortions, and outright lies that he and his family had used to hustle real estate could work in politics.

He quickly discovered that GOP base voters — after decades of having uncritically (slavishly, even) swallowed lies about trickle-down economics, "evil union bosses," and the "importance of small government" — were more than happy to embrace or ignore, as the occasion demanded, his prevarications.

From there, Trump tested exactly how gullible his most fervent supporters — and the media that fed them a daily diet of very profitable outrage and hate — would buy into a lie so audacious, so in defiance of both the law and common sense, so outside the bounds of normal patriotism, that they could be whipped into a murderous frenzy and kill three police officers while trying to overthrow the government of the United States of America.

The nation and our press reacted as if he'd failed that test, but when he was able to cow enough senators to avoid being convicted in his impeachment trial, he knew he'd won.

Now he's again testing how far he can go.

George Retes is a 25-year-old Hispanic natural-born American citizen and disabled Army veteran working as a security guard at a legal marijuana operation in California. When it was raided by ICE, he got in his car and tried to drive away to avoid getting in the middle of what he saw as trouble.

Masked agents chased him down, smashed the window of his car and pepper-sprayed him in the face, dragged him out of his car, and disappeared him.

Testing.

Will Democrats make a stink? Will the media make it more than a one-day story? Will any Republicans break rank and stand against his excesses? Was it even mentioned on any of the Sunday shows? How far can he go next time?

So far, Trump thinks he's winning these tests. The outrages are coming so fast and furious that it's becoming impossible to keep track of them, just like in Germany in 1933 and Chile in 1973.

Retes wasn't the only US citizen who's been arrested or detained by ICE; they've gone after a mayor, a member of Congress, and even assaulted a United States senator.

A 71-year-old grandmother was assaulted and handcuffed by masked agents. Axios documents others; as the CNN headline on the story about other US citizens being snatched notes: "'We are not safe in America today:' These American citizens say they were detained by ICE."

Testing.

After years of hysteria on the billionaire-owned sewer of Fox "News" about our nation's first Black president deploying "FEMA Camps" to detain white conservatives, Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and wounded hundreds of others in Las Vegas, ranting that FEMA Camps set up after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were "a dry run for law enforcement and military to start kickin' down doors and...confiscating guns."

He murdered those innocent concert-goers, he said, to "wake up the American public and get them to arm themselves," saying, "Sometimes sacrifices have to be made."

Now those detention facilities conservatives feared has come into being, as Republicans in Congress just funded concentration camps like "Alligator Auschwitz" in multiple states across America.

Visiting congress members claim inmates are packed over 30 to a cage, with Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz reporting her horror when she was shown that, "They get their drinking water, and they brush their teeth, where they poop, in the same unit."

Testing.

We recently learned via CBS News from a whistleblower and now-released texts that Trump's former lawyer and now-nominee for a lifetime federal judgeship, Emil Bove, then working in the Justice Department, advised the administration officials to tell federal courts "fuck you" when they ordered the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from an El Salvadoran hellhole concentration camp.

For months, the administration appears to have followed his obviously unconstitutional and illegal advice. Republicans want him on the federal bench anyway.

Testing.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia — who Trump official Erez Reuveni said had been deported "in error" — described how he was treated in that El Salvadoran concentration camp, telling his attorneys and the court that he'd been repeatedly beaten, then forced to kneel from 9 pm to 6 am "with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion."

He had committed no crime and was deported in open violation of a federal judge who demanded the plane either not take off or return before landing in El Salvador. The Trump administration simply and contemptibly ignored the court's order.

Testing.

In a White House visit, Trump told the El Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele (who refers to himself as "the world's coolest dictator"), that he wants to send American citizens to that country's torture centers.

"The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns," Trump said as the two men laughed. "You've got to build about five more places."

Testing.

Meanwhile, ICE detention facilities are also holding US citizens like Andrea Velez, 32, who was snatched by masked agents during a raid in Los Angeles. As LA's ABC News affiliate Channel 7 reported:

"Velez, a marketing designer and Cal Poly Pomona graduate, was arrested Tuesday morning after her family dropped her off at work. According to her attorneys, Velez's sister and mother saw her being approached and grabbed by masked men with guns, so they called the Los Angeles Police Department to report a kidnapping.

"Police responded to the scene near Ninth and Spring streets and realized the kidnapping call was actually a federal immigration-enforcement operation."

She's out of the detention facility now, but on $5000 bond; ICE apparently has plans for her future.

Testing.

And now Trump is telling us he wants to strip a natural-born US citizen comedienne — who's made jokes about him that pissed him off — of her US citizenship, "Because," he says, "of the fact that Rosie O'Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship."

If he can do it to Rosie — if there isn't furious pushback (and so far, there isn't) against this latest test — he can do it to me or you.

Hitler gained the chancellorship of Germany in January 1933; by July of that same year, a mere six months later, he'd revoked the citizenship of thousands for the crimes of being "socialists," "communists," Jews, or journalists and commentators who'd written or spoken ill of him. Trump appears to be just a bit behind him on that timeline.

Testing.

Trump wants NPR and PBS defunded as soon as possible, having issued an Executive Order to that effect, and has ordered his FCC to launch investigations that could strip major TV networks of their broadcast licenses if they continue to report on him and his activities in ways that offend him. He shut down the Voice Of America, ending America's promotion of democracy across the world. He kicked the Associated Press out of the White House press pool.

Testing.

Trump has declared large strips of land along the southern border to be federalized territory and put the American military in charge of policing the area, in clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. That law prohibits the military from performing any sort of police function against civilians.

Testing.

When students spoke out on campus against Trump ally and longtime Kushner family friend Bibi Netanyahu's murderous assault of Gaza and support for settlers stealing West Bank land from Palestinians, armed and masked federal agents began arresting those students, imprisoning them for their First Amendment-protected speech.

Then Trump went after their universities, bringing several to heel just as Orbán has in Hungary and Putin has in Russia.

Testing.

Yesterday, six Republicans on the Supreme Court said that Trump could wholesale mass-fire employees of the Department of Education, essentially shutting down an agency created and funded by Congress in defiance of the constitutional requirement that the president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Justice Sotomayor wrote the dissent, flaming in extreme alarm at her colleagues:

"[This decision] hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. … The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution's separation of powers is grave."

Or maybe the six Republican justices on the Court are just scared? After all, judges across the country are being threatened, having pizzas delivered to their homes in the middle of the night by way of saying, "We know where you live." This after U.S. District Judge Esther Salas's son, Daniel Anderl, was fatally shot at their New Jersey home by a gunman disguised as a pizza delivery driver. Her husband was also shot, but survived.

A few months ago, after one of Trump's rants against judges who rule against him, Judge Salas told the press:

"Hundreds of pizzas have been delivered to judges all over this country in the last few months. And in the last few weeks — judges' children. And now Daniel's name was being weaponized to bring fear to judges and their children. You're saying to those judges — 'You want to end up like Judge Salas? You want to end up like Judge Salas' son?'"

Testing.

What's next? Will we see Americans who've spoken poorly of Trump on social media arrested like both Orbán and Putin do?

Will more students end up on the ground or in jail?

Will more judges be charged with the crime of running their own courtrooms in ways Trump and ICE dislike?

More mayors arrested?

More Democratic Senators taken to the ground and handcuffed?

Will Americans start being disappeared in numbers that can't be ignored? Deported to El Salvador and South Sudan?

Will journalists be destroyed by massive libel suits or imprisoned for what they write?

Will more judges bend to Trump's will because they're either terrified or, like Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, have apparently become radicalized by Fox "News" or other rightwing propaganda outlets?

The way we all react to these tests will determine Trump's and the GOP's next steps. So, what do we do?

President Obama says Democrats need to "toughen up." While true, it would have been nice to hear "tough" words of outrage, warning, and leadership from him and Kamala Harris over the past six months. And Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

But now — as it was in South Korea when their president tried to end democracy there last year and people poured into the streets and forced the government to act — it's apparently going to be pretty much exclusively up to us.

See you on June 17th — this Thursday — for some "good trouble."

The Hartmann Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my daily work to rescue our democracy from the GOP's slide toward naked fascism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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The Authoritarian Test: From Rosie to Retes, Who's Next?

Each escalation — from ICE kidnappings to threats against critics — is a measure of how much authoritarianism we'll tolerate before we push back.