VIDEO OF THE DAY: Trump pulls dreaded illegal move
Brian Tyler Cohen sits down with legal expert Marc Elias to discuss Trump's mass firing of all the FBI agents involved in the prosecution of the January 6 rioters and the massive repercussions of this shocking act.
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In Trump’s fantasy politics, he can accomplish anything – but reality will prevail
Andy Beckett, The Guardian: "Trump’s presidency, and particularly his second term, is a deeply paradoxical project. In some ways, it’s an epic political fantasy, a promise that every dream of US reactionaries and nationalists can be rapidly fulfilled. But in other ways, it’s a frightening intrusion of reality – into the rose-tinted picture many liberals still have of how America works and how America relates to the rest of the world. In short, the Trump fantasy promises that in an anti-political age his brand of politics can nevertheless solve everything. Yet at the same time, the opening days of his second term have revealed truths about the US that were previously half hidden. Its alliance with western Europe is not permanent. It is still an imperial power in the traditional sense, with territorial ambitions. And much of corporate America is happy to have an authoritarian government, as long as it is good for profits. “History’s greatest civilization,” as Trump described his country at the inauguration, is really a brutally competitive, aggressively nationalistic place – at least for large stretches – rather than the essentially benign society and superpower believed in for so long by so many liberals. It’s taken Trump’s unfiltered presidency to finally make that obvious. Yet soon he will be just another incumbent, in an anti-incumbent world. The problem then, for those who don’t support him, won’t be his dominance of the discourse, which may be slipping, but how much of the American state he controls."
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BTC leads collective of progressive creators with plan to take back the internet from Joe Rogan and the right-wing machine
Chorus: This election has made it painfully clear that Democrats' messages are just not getting through the tsunami of right-wing propaganda and lies flooding through social media, and we have no real answer to a Joe Rogan or a Ben Shapiro...until now! Chorus Collective is a new collaborative founded by creators like Brian Tyler Cohen, Leigh McGowan (Politics Girl), Roland Martin, David Pakman, Elizabeth Booker Houston, and Adam Mockler, who are bringing their audience of 40 million people together to create a new infrastructure to scale their voices and build support for more creators like them. Chorus aims to not only amplify progressive voices but also uplift new creators and build a left-wing social media ecosystem that supports its voices ALL the time, not just in the months leading up to an election. Will you chip in to help Chorus get off the ground and help break the right-wing stranglehold on social media?
Trump’s first big fiasco triggers Stephen Miller’s rage—take note Dems
Greg Sargent, The New Republic: "Admitting failure is anathema to the authoritarian leader, who is perpetually in danger of being diminished only by those who are resentful of his glory—which is why White House adviser Stephen Miller is frantically searching for scapegoats to blame for the unfolding disaster around President Donald Trump’s massive freeze on federal spending. 'Welcome to the first dumb media hoax of 2025,' Miller angrily tweeted on Tuesday night. 'Leftwing media outright lied, and some people fell for the hoax.' What Miller is actually angry about is that the media covered this fiasco aggressively and fairly. Miller insists that the press glossed over the funding pause’s supposed exemption for “aid and benefit programs.” But this is rank misdirection: The funding freeze, which is likely illegal, was indeed confusingly drafted and recklessly rolled out. This is in part what prompted the national outcry over the huge swath of programs that it threatened, Medicaid benefits included—and the media coverage that angered Miller. All of which carries a lesson for Democrats: This is what it looks like when the opposition stirs and uses its power in a unified way to make a lot of what you might call sheer political noise. That can help set the media agenda, throw Trump and his allies on the defensive, and deliver defeats to Trump that deflate his cultish aura of invincibility."
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How Democrats can win back the working class
Georgia State Senator Nabilah Islam, Let's Address This with Qasim Rashid: "Kamala Harris’s loss this past November showed that millions of working class and middle class American families — including in Gwinnett County, which I represent in the State Senate — have lost trust in the Democratic Party. It was a wakeup call. Democrats need to win those voters back. And the election of a new DNC chair on February 1st is an opportunity for us to set a new course, and remind those working families that it’s the Democrats who are fighting for them every day.Never mind getting ahead; many of my constituents can barely keep from falling behind, in an economy rigged in favor of CEOs and billionaires. Maybe you’re one of them: from nurses to teachers to restaurant and retail workers to receptionists to delivery drivers, Georgians are watching their healthcare and childcare costs continue their decades-long increase, paying more for gas and groceries, seeing their rent go up. Over the last decade, the median rent in my local Gwinnett County went up more than 40 percent, compared to 17 percent nationwide. Neither of these are acceptable given the minimum wage has remained stagnant and wealth and income inequality continues to increase.Voters are telling us they’re hurting, and our party needs to do a better job of listening. We need to be taking our policy, strategy, and messaging cues from working class people, not from big donors and Wall Street. That’s the only way we’ll rebuild trust – and reinvigorate our communities."
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Automation in retail Is even worse than you thought
Ann Larson, The Nation: "From self-checkout machines to payment by app, technology is rapidly changing the way we buy groceries. Progressive members of Congress are sounding the alarm: Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and 13 colleagues wrote to the CEO of the supermarket behemoth Kroger in November about electronic price tags (often called electronic shelf labels or ESLs). These digital displays allow companies to change prices automatically from a mobile app. Tlaib warned that this so-called 'dynamic pricing' permits retailers to adjust prices based on their whims. Just as Uber raises prices during storms or rush hour, retailers like Kroger use ESLs to adjust prices based on factors like time of day or the weather. Supermarkets could conceivably mine a shopper’s personal data to set prices as high as possible. 'My concern is that these tools will be abused in the pursuit of profit, surging prices on essential goods in areas with fewer and fewer grocery stores,' Tlaib wrote. [Senators] Warren and Casey also voiced concern about Kroger’s partnership with Microsoft to install facial-recognition technology in stores, which could be used to identify individual customers: When a shopper approaches the shelf, she would see a price calibrated specifically for her. The next shopper might pay a different amount based on their profile. Retailers could use shopper data to charge higher prices to those who can afford to pay more, but since stores do not have to disclose who is making pricing decisions or why, the senators worry that shoppers on a budget are particularly vulnerable."
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Begun, the trade war has
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