Hello All – Today in Washington federal agencies are being shut down. A gang under control of billionaire Elon Musk has occupied government buildings and gained access to massive computer systems containing millions of names and/or handling billions of dollars. What is going on, and why is this happening?
All is this is illegal. Unconstitutional. Lawless and unprecedented. Many countries have experienced illegal seizures of state power – usually by all or part of a military establishment – and it described as a “coup.” This is the first such coup in US history, and the first anywhere that “seizes power” by taking over computer networks and then controlling the agencies of the state.
Timothy Snyder, a historian of fascist takeovers, writes: “In gaining the ability to stop payments by the Department of the Treasury, Musk would also make democracy meaningless. We vote for representatives in Congress, who pass laws that determine how our tax money is spent. If Musk has the power to halt this process at the level of payment, he can make laws meaningless. Which means, in turn, that Congress is meaningless, and our votes are meaningless, as is our citizenship.”
Late last week, attention focused (rightly) on the apparent shuttering of the Agency for International Development, whose ten thousand employees manage relief programs that are life-sustaining for millions in many countries. An article linked below examines what the ending of AID and similar programs means for people with HIV; dozens of similar examples could be cited for the ways in which the Musk/Trump cruel sadism will affect peoples’ lives. Nobody voted for this.
President Trump is aiding Musk’s coup. He is running his own “administrative coup,” ignoring laws passed by Congress. His actions are not only illegal, but threaten the well-being of millions of people in the USA and around the world. He and Musk must be stopped. This is not a time to be nice: it is a time to put our bodies and energies into the struggle. As a British statesman put it during a tough moment during World War II, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
SOME ESSAYS ABOUT THE WOULD-BE DICTATORSHIOP
America’s Dangerous Movement toward Oligarchy, Authoritarianism and Kleptocracy
By Senator Bernie Sanders [February 4, 2025]
----- Today, we find ourselves in a pivotal moment in American history and millions of Americans, by their actions or lack of action, will determine the future of this country for decades. In my view, the Trump administration is moving this country very aggressively into an oligarchic form of society where extraordinary power rests in the hands of a small number of unelected multi-billionaires. The Trump administration is moving this country very aggressively into an authoritarian society where the rule of law and our Constitution are being ignored and undermined in order to give more power to the White House and the billionaires who now control our government. In my view, the Trump administration is moving this country very rapidly toward a kleptocracy – where the function of government is not to serve the people of America, but to enrich those who are in power. [Read More]
The Courts Can’t Stop the Trump-Musk Coup
By Elie Mystal, The Nation [February 7, 2025]
---- But the courts will not save us. Even a friendly court is not designed to save democracy from a democratically elected president, and most courts are not our friends to begin with. The American people gave Trump and Musk the power they now lord over us. (Even though I’m aware that nobody voted for Musk, everybody who voted for Trump knew or should have known that they were handing the keys to all of our data to a billionaire white South African with an apartheid complex). Only the American people can take that power away. … As long as the public approves of what Trump is doing, he will keep doing it. He will most likely keep doing it even should the public disapprove, but that will be a different problem. A court order cannot enforce itself. It cannot change a mind. It cannot make white folks less racist. It cannot recapture things that have been lost, or stolen. The only thing that can save us is us. [Read More]
Erasing History, Erasing Democracy: Trump’s Authoritarian Assault on Education
By Henry A. Giroux, Truthout [February 6, 2025]
---- In the initial days of his second term, President Donald Trump issued several executive orders “seeking to control how schools teach about race and gender, direct more tax dollars to private schools, and deport pro-Palestinian protesters.” … What we are witnessing is not just an educational crisis but a full-scale war on institutions that not only defend democracy but enable it. What is under siege in this attack is not only the critical function of education but the very notion that it should be defined through its vision of creating a central feature of democracy, educating informed and critically engaged citizens. … In truth, this is not about the pursuit of freedom or open inquiry, nor is it about fostering an education that cultivates informed, critically engaged citizens. At its core, this agenda is a deliberate attack on education as a public good — one that threatens to dismantle not only public institutions, but the very essence of public and higher education and its culture of criticism and democracy. The urgency of this moment cannot be overstated: The future of education itself is at stake. [Read More]
NEWS NOTES
Many of our friends are enthusiastic about the film “No Other Land,” playing now (and until Thursday) at the Jacob Burns Film Center. The documentary film is about a community of Palestinian villages in Israeli-occupied southern West Bank, which is being bulldozed by the Israeli military to make room for a tank training ground. For more about this Oscar-nominated film, read this report from NPR..
Today’s lead article in The New York Times focuses on federal courts “as the last bulwark against Trump,” citing a “compliant Congress” and “mostly quiet streets.” There has actually been quite a lot of noise on our streets, as described in this useful article, “Anti-Trump Protests Break Out at State Capitols across the Country” from The New Republic. Just because The Times doesn’t cover action “in the streets” doesn’t mean it’s not happening. The Times (and all stalwarts) should pay attention to the reporting on Democracy Now!, ZNet, Common Dreams, Portside, and many other sites regularly linked in the CFOW Newsletter if they/we want to know what’s going down.
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) Our newsletter is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com, and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook page. Another Facebook page focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
(Video) Peter Beinart on “Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza” & Trump’s Call for Ethnic Cleansing
From Democracy Now! [February 6, 2025]
---- We speak to Jewish Currents editor-at-large Peter Beinart about his new book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, which is “addressed to my fellow Jews” and criticizes what he characterizes as the increasing privileging of Zionism as a part of Jewish identity. “The Jewish community is structured to basically make the existence of a Jewish state, a state that privileges Jews over Palestinians, sacred, …elevating ethnonationalism — a Jewish state — over Judaism itself,” Beinart says. In response, he challenges the erasure of Zionism’s explicitly colonial roots and political myths about majoritarian rule, arguing for the acceptance of more critical stances toward the state of Israel within Jewish communities. [See the Program]
Moving from a Doomsday Clock to a Peace Clock
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, Code Pink [February 6, 2025]
---- This year’s Doomsday Clock Statement landed like a damp squib in a Trump-swamped corporate news cycle on January 28th. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists only moved the hands of the Clock forward by one second, from 90 seconds up to 89 seconds to midnight, which must have come as a relief to the few members of the public who heard about it. But this minimal advance in the hands of the Clock was a strange and misleading top-line for the Bulletin’s actual Doomsday Clock Statement, which was brimming with extremely dire warnings that deserve far greater official and public attention. … As the fate of the world teeters in the hands of an unpredictable U.S. president and the enfeebled Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists muffles the powerful symbolism of its Doomsday Clock, CODEPINK has created an alternative for the precarious times we live in: the Peace Clock. Instead of counting down the minutes and seconds to our extinction, the Peace Clock calls on the U.S. government to take a series of specific, concrete steps toward nuclear disarmament. That starts with agreeing to Russian and Chinese proposals for a ban on weapons in space and reinstating the 1972 ABM Treaty with Russia, including the removal of formerly prohibited U.S. anti-ballistic-missile installations in Poland and Romania. By such concrete, practical steps, the Peace Clock would, step by step, make the world safer and safer, leading sooner rather than later to its sixth and final step: the complete nuclear disarmament of all the nuclear weapons powers. [Read More]
Global HIV Care Thrown Into Chaos by Trump: “I Will Be Sick and Maybe Die”
By Afeef Nessouli and Steven W. Thrasher, The Intercept [February 7, 2025],
---- In his first week back in office, President Donald Trump’s administration announced it would exit the World Health Organization and implemented, via an executive order on “Reevaluating and Realigning United States Foreign Aid,” a 90-day pause on the disbursement of all foreign aid. This included pausing all funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. PEPFAR, according to the State Department, has saved the lives of approximately 20 million people since it was created by George W. Bush in 2003. The $6.5 billion annual program has historically enjoyed wide bipartisan support and the praise of public health professionals and AIDS service organizations. But Republicans in Congress have been targeting it for the last several years, as part of a domestic and international campaign against the health of LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV. [Read More]
THE WAR IN GAZA
The Great March of Hope: Gaza’s Defiance Against Erasure
By RamzyBaroud, Middle East Monitor [February 3, 2025]
----The return of one million Palestinians from southern Gaza to the north on 27 January felt as if history was choreographing one of its most earth-shattering events in recent memory. Hundreds of thousands of people marched along a single street, the coastal Rashid Street, at the furthest western stretch of Gaza. Though these displaced masses were cut off from each other in massive displacement camps in central Gaza and the Mawasi region further south, they sang the same songs, chanted the same chants and used the same talking points. During their forced displacement, they had no electricity and no means of communication, let alone coordination. They were ordinary people, hauling a few items of clothing and whatever survival tools they had, following the unprecedented Israeli genocide. They headed north to homes they knew were likely destroyed by the Israeli army. Yet, they remained committed to their march back to their annihilated cities and refugee camps. Many smiled, others sang religious hymns and some recited national songs and poems. [Read More]
Trump Must Not Be Allowed to Torpedo the Palestinian Right to Remain
By Naama Blatman and Neve Gordon, Aljazeera [February 5, 2025]
---- Before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, United States President Donald Trump said Palestinians have “no alternative” but to leave Gaza. When the two leaders met in the Oval Office, Trump declared that after Palestinians from the Gaza Strip are moved elsewhere, the US will “take over”. The president also expressed his desire to transform the Israeli-occupied territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East”. These surrealistic statements were uttered on Tuesday as Palestinians across the Gaza Strip are facing unprecedented destruction left behind by the Israeli army. Many of those who have been displaced and have managed to go back to their homes in the past two weeks have found only ruins. According to the United Nations, the Israeli army has bombed 90 percent of all housing units in the Gaza Strip, leaving 160,000 units destroyed and 276,000 severely or partially damaged. As the dust settles and images of the extent of the devastation circulate on mainstream media, it has become clear that the genocidal violence Israel unleashed in Gaza was not only used to kill, displace and destroy but also to undercut the Palestinian population’s right to remain. … . Israel has denied Palestinians their right to remain for more than 75 years. It is high time to set things straight. Any discussion about the future of Gaza must be guided by the claims and aspirations of the Palestinian people. Promises of reconstruction and economic prosperity by foreign countries are irrelevant unless explicitly tied to Palestinian self-determination. The right to remain can be guaranteed only through decolonization and Palestinian liberation. [Read More]
The damage of Trump’s Gaza plan has already been done
By Meron Rapoport, +972 Magazine, [February 7, 2025]
---- In September 2020, toward the end of his first term as president, Donald Trump oversaw the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain on the White House lawn. The four and a half years that followed have been the bloodiest in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. … Whether or not Trump understands this, his new approach essentially says: if we can’t bypass the Palestinians, let’s expel them. This plan is worse than the sum of its parts. Even if it does not advance even by an inch, it has already had a profound impact on Jewish-Israeli political discourse. Indeed, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that Trump’s proposal has tapped into a deep undercurrent in Jewish-Israeli society. … Even without American boots on the ground, the feeling that Israel has stumbled upon a historic opportunity to empty the Gaza Strip of its Palestinian inhabitants will give enormous momentum to the demands of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, who are urging Netanyahu to blow up the ceasefire before it reaches its second phase, conquer Gaza, and rebuild Jewish settlements in the Strip. [Read More]
WAR WITH IRAN?
Can Trump Make a Deal With Iran?
By Bob Dreyfuss, The Nation [February 3, 2025]
---- In 2025, President Trump will unavoidably be forced to confront a multilayered crisis in US-Iran relations. Around himself he’s assembled a foreign policy team of cabinet members, second-tier officials, ambassadors, and freelance envoys that includes hawks, America First–style doves, and know-nothings, though virtually every expert Iran-watcher believes that Trump will be the ultimate decision-maker. The president himself has signaled in several interviews and remarks that he’d like to make a deal with Iran. “We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible,” he said at a September press conference in New York. “We have to make a deal.” But so far, neither he nor his aides have said anything about the framework that a deal might involve, and Iranian officials have said that they’ve had no contacts with the new administration. Overall, based on his track record from 2017 to 2021, it’s safe to say that things will probably not go smoothly. “Anything can happen,” Trump said, cryptically, to Time magazine for his 2024 Person of the Year cover. “It’s a very volatile situation.” [Read More]
IMMIGRATION AND DEPORTATION
‘Frankly Insane’: Trump’s Plan to Ship Migrants to Guantanamo Could Quickly Collapse
By Ben Fox, Politico [February 5, 2025]
[FB – an interview with Harold Hongju Koh, a Yale University law professor and former senior State Department official whose career has been deeply intertwined with Guantanamo.]
----- Donald Trump doesn’t make long-range plans, and he doesn’t stick with his plans when faced with concerted opposition, so I think he wants to use shock-and-awe methods to scare people, and that’s what he’s doing across the board. It’s already stimulated a large amount of resistance. … I think the net result is they will start to find that this is not the easy solution that they thought. And then they will quietly slow it down and stop doing it. But don’t be surprised if Trump claims that he got some kind of symbolic victory out of it, and that maybe nobody will look behind to see that the emperor has no clothes. [Read More]
Media Fail to Inform About Disastrous Economic Effects of Mass Deportations
By Conor Smyth, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) [February 5, 2025]
---- As of 2022, undocumented immigrants constituted approximately 5% of the US workforce. Deporting all or a large number of them would substantially reduce the supply of labor in the US economy and would concurrently reduce aggregate demand by eliminating the spending of anyone deported. GDP could, as a result, drop as much as 7.4% below a baseline forecast by the end of 2028, per the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Rather than opening up more job opportunities for American workers, past research tells us that the opposite will occur. … Rather than sound unfamiliar or strange, as it may to readers of corporate media, this sort of expert analysis of the economic effects of deportation could become conventional wisdom if outlets ran headlines like those above. After all, those are the type of headlines you run if you are dedicated to objectivity in reporting, to informing your audience of what the research says, no matter whether it might offend their sensibilities. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
A Plan for the Resistance
By Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect [February 6, 2025]
[FB – Lexington, my hometown. By third grade, children were familiar with the whys and hows of resisting invasion. Don’t wear red coats, get behind a stone wall, etc.]
---- This April 19th marks the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, which began the American Revolution and its war against monarchial power. It comes at a time when those who oppose President Trump’s exercise of powers that go well beyond those the Constitution allots to presidents are stunned by the speed and scope of his actions, and uncertain about how they can even begin to counter them. But a mobilization that celebrates America’s founding revolt against arbitrary authority presents them with a stellar opportunity to show just how profoundly un-American Trump truly is. … The anniversary of our revolution presents today’s small-d democrats, whose ranks are by no means limited to capital-D Democrats, with an opportunity to renew the fight against royalist presumption. Donald Trump was elected to be president, not an emperor who rules unchecked at home and seizes new retro-colonies abroad. [Read More]
