Yesterday, Downmarket Mussolini signed an almost certainly unlawful executive order to restrict voting access in a made up quest to combat nonexistent "voter fraud." Although the order will definitely be challenged in court, its existence is an ominous portent for US elections whether Trump succeeds in enacting it or not.

aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/26/t…

Trump signs new executive order to change election rules: What we know

"Trump’s order is likely to face legal challenges, given that the Constitution gives authority over elections to the states.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said he and state Attorney General Kris Mayes are already in discussions about a possible lawsuit, describing the executive order as “an attempt to federalise elections”.

Fontes said that the order appears aimed at creating the illusion of misconduct in the electoral process, potentially to justify “cancelling the election later”.

“It’s very methodical, and very, very dangerous,” he said in an interview with Votebeat , a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom focused specifically on US elections, on Tuesday. “You have to pay attention not to what the executive order says, but what the end game may be. I believe the end game may be that Donald Trump wants to stay in office in perpetuity.”

Much like a lot of Der Führer's executive orders, this is a brazen attempt by Trump to usurp powers from other governing bodies (Congress, and individual state governments), based on false accusations he's trying to sign into existence, through the end-around mechanism of federal funding - except this time he's trying to effectively rig elections for the fascist Republican Party. While many experts have opined that the order is unlikely to survive legal challenges, it's still important to look at what Trump is trying to do here, to understand why many observers believe there's a darker long-term strategy to justify preventing an election to remove Trump at all.

First he wants voters to submit proof of US citizenship to cast a ballot. This demand is part of a longstanding GOP crusade to rig elections through voter suppression because as the article notes, it would disqualify millions of US citizens who legally have the right to vote, simply because they don't have acceptable documents; as one observer noted, roughly 146 million Americans do not have a passport, and advocacy groups have estimated that millions of poor, marginalized, and underserved Americans struggle to maintain documentation, particularly if they've experienced periods of homelessness. Furthermore, this order opens up the possibility of married women being denied the right to vote (intentionally, or otherwise) because their names no longer match their identity on a birth certificate. Would you care to guess whether or not poor people, marginalized people, and women are more important parts of the Republican, or Democratic base? Right.

“This would prevent only a tiny amount of noncitizen voter registration but stop millions of eligible voters, who do not have easy access to documents such as passports, from registering to vote,” Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a blog post."

Trump's order would also restrict mail in voters by requiring ballots to be *received* by election day to be counted; currently 18 states allow mail in ballots to be counted so long as they're postmarked on or before election day. Want to guess which party traditionally wins in most of those states? Would you like to guess whether or not by mail absentee voting traditionally favors Democrat or GOP candidates? Right.

Finally, and most importantly for the rest of our discussion, Trump's order empowers the Department of Homeland Security and the Elon Musk-led DOGE, to "review state voter registration lists – and, if needed, use subpoenas – to ensure compliance with federal standards." Can you think of any *good* reasons why two of the departments most loyal to Trump and most enthusiastic about the regime's fascist agenda, would be put in charge of investigating voter registration rolls to solve a "voter fraud" problem that doesn't exist? Yeah me neither; unless you wanted to lie about non-existent voter fraud schemes to generate support for say, cancelling a Presidential Election entirely.

Of course, it's entirely possible that none of this survives legal challenges, but I think leaving it at that might miss the point of Trump's strategy here. He's going to use states fighting back against his attempts to rig elections, to argue that they're the ones who want to rig elections in a type of fascist jujitsu. For what purpose is as of yet unclear, but this is a man who is already talking about ignoring the constitution to serve a 3rd term, has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to potentially suspend elections in the past, and behaves as if he sees himself as the King of America; so what exactly can we rule out?

#Trump #Fascism #Elections #GOP

Over the past nine or so years, I've repeatedly gone on record to describe my frustrating with the way corporate media covers the unhinged fascist shit Trump says as if he's your just drunk uncle who talks about Fox News anti-migrant propaganda over Thanksgiving dinner, and not a guy running for, or serving as, President of the United States. Trump, a man devoid of a sense of humor, will muse about some flatly illegal dictator policies he wants to do in the future, corporate media will report his statements as if they're mere political gaffes, point out that Trump's plan is illegal or otherwise against the rules, and then sit around waiting for him to actually try the horrible nazi crap he is openly saying he wants to do.

There is little to no analysis connecting Trump's stated plans to the actions the regime is taking, and this style of coverage doesn't change much whether he's out of office, or legally enshrined with the powers of the imperial presidency to make his nazi dreams come true. If and when Trump *does* actually try to do the awful fascist nonsense he's been openly promising to do, a media that has all but memory holed his promises to do so acts shocked that Trump's team of nazi rules lawyers have found a Calvinball way to plausibly accomplish their fascist program.

I mention this because even before he was elected president a second time, Trump has been musing about staying on as President after his second (and final, as mandated by the constitution) term is up in 2028. Often this is framed as "running for a third term" but there have been enough ominous hints from Trumpworld that Downmarket Mussolini is not married to the idea of having another election at all, that it's pretty clear the plan is to simply have Trump refuse to leave office, one way or another. Is a mainstream corporate media that has watched Trump try to enact almost every authoritarian policy he promised or even hinted at on the campaign trail, taking this seriously enough? No, it is not; and I'm not sure I expect them to start doing so even now that Trump has directly told an NBC monitor on Meet the Press that he's "not joking" about remaining in office beyond his second term.

motherjones.com/politics/2025/…

“I’m Not Joking”: Trump Again Floats Running for Anti-Constitutional Third Term

"Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said in a post on X that there may be three ways Trump could attempt to “grab” an illegal 3rd term: 1) Ignore the Constitution and dare anyone to stop him. 2) Have GOP-run states just appoint Trump electors since any state not voting Trump is by definition ‘corrupt’. 3) Military coup and martial law—i.e., a successful January 6.”

As I've mentioned before, there seems to be a definite process by which Trump, the regime, and the larger political movement surrounding him manufacture consent and transform ideological propaganda, into state enforced (un)reality, under a presumed mandate that their actions would be legitimate if what Trump says is true, and everything Trump says *is* true because he's president. Typically this involves Trump and his propagandists (like Steve Bannon) repeatedly injecting the idea of a fascist plan, like say to ignore the constitution and remain president after 2028, into the discourse as a hypothetical option, slowly transitioning that musing into the outlines of a plan "we're working on," before ultimately transforming that idea into policy, often via executive order.

Given that Trump has mentioned this in passing multiple times, guys like Bannon have openly talked about the plan to make it a reality going on behind the scenes, and now Trump is telling his base that he's dead serious about doing it, it's probably safe (even for corporate media muppets) to say Trump is actively in the process of trying to make himself president for life, by hook or by crook. And I dunno about you, but to me that sounds like big news it's important to share with the American people in detail, and with an appropriate degree of alarm.

#Trump #Fascism #Dictatorship #2028 #Elections #TermLimits #22ndAmendment #Autocracy #USPol

Whether it's acceptable to mention it in polite discourse or not, the fascist GOP's plan to formalize national targeted voter suppression based on fascist conspiracy theories designed to explain why a bloviating reality TV show nazi lost the 2020 US presidential election, is a form of election rigging. We've already discussed Der Führer's recent (blatantly illegal) executive order to do just that, but the Republican plan to fuck elections and create their own permanent Pork Reich is a multi-pronged assault. One of the key spearheads in this quest to, again, rig elections by disenfranchising millions of voters who are statistically more likely to support the opposition party, is the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or Save Act, currently being cooked up in a GOP fascist-controlled Congress.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Republicans are quietly trying to disenfranchise millions of voters

"According to research by the Brennan Center for Justice, more than 21 million US citizens of voting age don’t have easy access to proof of citizenship documents, and only about half of American adults have a passport, while millions do not have access to paper copies of their birth certificates. Married women whose legal names do not match their birth certificates could be disenfranchised by the Save Act, and folks looking to obtain lost or misplaced birth certificates would face financial and logistical hurdles.

The Save Act would restrict voters’ ability to register to vote online and through the mail while also severely limiting the ability of non-partisan civic organizations to conduct voter registration drives, which have been crucial to civic engagement for more than a century. That’s because, despite voters’ ability to register to vote at the DMV and registration efforts by political parties, data shows that voter registration drives from non-partisan organizations can account for about one-fifth of voter registration applicants – roughly equal to the political power of California, Florida and Texas combined. We simply cannot sit back and allow Congress or the White House to destroy the infrastructure of our elections by disenfranchising so many voters."

Look, I know Trump's unhinged fascist conspiracy theories about the 2020 election make most liberals very leery about uttering the words "rigging elections" but at some point you have to accept that you can't stop reality from being real, just because naming the beast makes you squeamish. Targeted voter suppression by the GOP has become so normalized that in a recent(ish) battle over election maps that clearly sought to minimize the political power of African American voters, GOP operatives defended themselves from charges of racial bias by saying they weren't restricting voters because they're Black, but rather because they vote Democrat. This is election rigging, by a fascist regime, headed up by a would-be King who keeps musing about violating the Constitution to seek a third term, and it's probably time to be honest with ourselves about what that actually means - an attempt to permanently install the US Republican brand of fascism in our society by preventing free and fair elections (such as those exist, in America.)

I mean let's cut the crap here for a second okay? The Save Act specifically targets voter registrations drives because the fascist GOP is openly arguing that registering people to vote, is somehow rigging elections. Let that sink in for a minute folks; a fascist regime is trying to rig elections through nationalized voter suppression because, and they essentially admit this, if everyone gets to vote they might lose power. The fact that this type of thinking and rhetoric is considered "normal" for the right wing party in America doesn't prove these guys aren't fascist, just that America has been embracing, normalizing, and ignoring fascism for a very long time before Donald Trump ran for office.

#Fascism #Trump #Elections #GOP #RepublicanParty #MikeJohnson #SaveAct #Rigged #OnePartyRule #VoterSuppression #USPol #USCongress

This is a short (14 minute) segment from The Humanist Report that covers a lot of the same ground I was writing about concerning Trump's very serious plan to violate the US Constitution and serve a 3rd term as president, and also his executive order designed, quite obviously, to rig elections. I've always been a person who needs to read words on a page or screen to really absorb analysis, but I know some of you learn better with the videos, so that's why I periodically share the good ones.

Like myself, the host is adamant that the mainstream establishment is fooling itself and engaging in wishcasting when it ignores the obvious reality that Trump, who just admitted he wasn't joking, fully means to do this. What he adds that I was trying to get at in my analysis but might not have made explicit enough if the pedantic pushback I heard from weird liberals is any indication, is that if Trump is working on illegally violating the constitution to run again, in an election he intends to rig, that means the regime is *already* attempting another insurrection (although technically, I think it would be another autogolpe.) Furthermore, if the regime were to hold such an election under those circumstances, it would obviously not be an election at all, but the consolidation of fascist regime change in the United States of America.

The Humanist Report: Trump is Dead Serious About Becoming a Dictator

youtube.com/watch?v=I-Hcygb30Y…

#Fascism #Trump #Elections #GOP #SteveBannon #Rigged #Video #OnePartyRule #VoterFraudIsntReal
#MikeFigueredo #Dictatorship #TheHumanistReport #USPol

Unsurprisingly, our GOP-controlled Congress has passed an election rigging (voter suppression *is* election rigging) bill that mimics much of Trump's previous fascist election rigging executive order; the disingenuously named "Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act."

theguardian.com/us-news/2025/a…

US House passes bill requiring people to prove citizenship in order to vote

"About half of US citizens do not have a passport, eliminating one of the main ways to show their ability to vote under the bill. Passport fees are currently $165. Joe Morelle, a Democrat from New York, responded to Republicans who spoke in support of the bill with estimates of how much money constituents would have to pay if they all had to get passports.

“Y’all, that’s a poll tax, plain and simple, and it’s blatant voter suppression,” said Nikema Williams, a Democrat from Georgia.

Some potential voters no longer have their birth certificates, or their birth certificates don’t match their current names if they changed their names in marriage or for other reasons, Democrats have pointed out. The bill directs states to come up with a process to address those who have changed their names, though Democrats contend this could be handled differently state by state, creating confusion, and it’s not clear how long it would take for rules to be put in place."

This is mostly just a "heads up" post because we've already looked at the Save Act and the GOP's quest to use fascist conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud and the 2020 election to justify blatant voter suppression in the thread above; the bill still has to pass the Senate before it becomes law. What's important to understand in the here and now, is that a national voter suppression bill that disproportionately (to a massive degree) targets folks who are highly unlikely to vote Republican, is in fact a law designed to rig elections for the fascist GOP.

"Research from the Brennan Center, VoteRiders and other groups in 2024 found that more than 9% of voting-age citizens, about 21 million people, don’t have readily available proof of citizenship. These requirements have disproportionate impacts on people of color, young voters, rural residents, tribal citizens, people who are unhoused, people born in US territories and people who have experienced natural disasters.

Other elements of the bill have raised alarms among voting rights advocates and elections officials. It would upend online and mail registration, a particular burden on people in rural areas. States would be required to purge their voter rolls based on incomplete data and potentially start the deportation process for people who unlawfully registered to vote. It also installs criminal penalties for election officials who register people without the required documentation, even if the person turns out to be a citizen eligible to vote."

#USPol #VoterSuppression #Fascism #GOP #SaveAct

One of the problems with explaining America's descent into a fascist dictatorship to people who aren't particularly familiar with how fascist movements in history have operated, is that because the only frame of reference most folks who haven't studied fascism have to operate from are fully-realized fascist dictatorships like the one Hitler constructed in Nazi Germany, they often can't equate what they're seeing, with what they understand fascism to be. They don't realize that the erosion of our rights, and the establishment of one party authoritarian rule are almost invariably a process, and as such when you view an obviously fascist regime enacting that process in the same way fascists before them have done so, it's a pretty good sign that they're planning on reaching the same destination other politically-empowered fascist movements have arrived at.

I mention this because it is very clear to me that the Trump regime is working towards both rigging American elections permanently, and criminalizing its political opposition in any way possible. A good example of the latter situation might be Trump's corrupt Department of Justice promising to prosecute Democratic Party elected officials who don't cooperate with his mass deportation plot by letting ICE run roughshod over the cities and states they administer. A more subtle, but equally revealing example would be the announcement that Trump is ordering Attorney General Pam Bondi to drum up an investigation into ActBlue, a fundraising platform used to support liberal and progressive political causes; which for the most part means getting Democrats elected to office.

commondreams.org/news/donald-t…

'Authoritarianism in Action': Trump Orders DOJ Probe of Democratic Donation Platform ActBlue

"U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday launched his latest attack on political opponents by directing the Justice Department to investigate ActBlue, a critical fundraising platform for Democrats and progressive organizations.

The order came in the form of a memorandum that the president signed shortly before heading to his Virginia golf course for a $1 million-per-plate fundraiser for MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC that has been accused of receiving illegal straw-donor contributions.

In his memorandum, Trump raised "concerns" about straw donations—when a donor makes a contribution through another person or entity—and directed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to "investigate allegations regarding the unlawful use of online fundraising platforms to make 'straw' or 'dummy' contributions or foreign contributions to political candidates and committees, and to take all appropriate actions to enforce the law."

Trump's memorandum cites a recent report from House Republicans accusing ActBlue of "a lack of commitment to stopping fraud." ActBlue and House Democrats rejected the GOP findings at the time, calling the document "less of a report and more of a desperate effort to change the subject."

Frankly most people who know about ActBlue are probably only aware of them because of the incessant emails they'll send you once you've donated to any other fundraising campaign on their platform, but the reality that it's the premier fundraising arm for both Trump's liberal and progressive political opposition is pretty much the point here. As such I think Democrat leaders calling this another "distraction" need to take a walk outside and touch some grass, because this is clearly the Trump regime targeting its political enemies as part of an overall plan to essentially rig American politics.

We can talk till we're all blue in the face about getting money out of politics, but when the fascist GOP can take full advantage of billionaire money because of Citizen's United, and the Klepto Kaiser is simultaneously trying to shut down the political opposition's small dollar donation apparatus because of a fake corruption scandal cooked up by the regime's allies in Congress, you are looking at an obvious way for the nazis to put their thumb on the scale and thereby pre-determine the outcome of American elections. The fascists' attempts to excuse all of this by pretending they're trying to stop foreign straw donations, while celebrating the lawless rule of a man whose family is up to their eyebrows in Saudi bribe money, is just the crassly hypocritical cherry on top of this nazi shit-cake.

#Fascism #Trump #ActBlue #DoJ #PamBondi #Rigged #OnePartyRule #Authoritarianism #GOP #DemocraticParty #Republicans #USPol #Elections

A few days ago I wrote about Trump's authoritarian investigation into ActBlue in the context of rigging American politics, now the AP is reporting that Democratic Party-aligned activist groups like Indivisible are also preparing for the possibility Downmarket Mussolini and the Republican Party will come for them next.

apnews.com/article/democrats-t…

Core Democratic groups are preparing to be targeted by the Trump administration

"The Democrats’ dominant national fundraising platform, ActBlue, and the party’s largest protest group, Indivisible, are working with their attorneys for just such a scenario, according to officials within both organizations. Trump’s top political allies have suggested both groups should face prosecution.

Other Democratic allies are planning for Trump-backed legal crackdowns as well. Wary of antagonizing the Republican president, most prefer to stay anonymous for now.

“Every one of our clients is concerned about being arbitrarily targeted by the Trump administration. We are going to great lengths to help clients prepare for or defend themselves,” said Ezra Reese, political law chair at Elias Law Group, which represents Democratic groups and candidates and is chaired by Marc Elias, the lawyer who has himself been a Trump target."

I generally don't have time to talk about speculative write ups like this one, but given that Trump has already ordered an investigation into ActBlue, and appears to be governing by fascist conspiracy theories embraced by the GOP at large, I think this one is worth keeping an eye on. In particular, any authoritarian repression directed at Indivisible would represent "crossing the streams" of the various fascist interests operating within the Trump administration because that group has intimately been involved in the anti-Trump, anti-Musk "Hands Off" protests; Musk in particular has publicly described them as "criminal."

Obviously I can't predict the future, but targeting activist groups aligned with his political opposition would definitely fit the pattern of building a patchwork Enabling Act that Trump has adopted so far. The regime is already creating the ideological justification to criminalize a key funding apparatus for the Democratic Party, and given that both DHS and the DoJ have directly implied that protesting the regime amounts to "domestic terrorism," I think it would be foolish to assume the Trumpenreich *isn't* coming for groups like Indivisible in time; and clearly Democratic Party-aligned groups of all stripes agree with me or they wouldn't be lawyering up in preparation.

#Fascism #Trump #GOP #USPol #RepublicanParty #ActBlue #Indivisible #IdeologicalPolicing #DoJ #DemocraticParty #EnablingAct