He's doing this a lot these days. A word that sounds like the right word but has a totally different meaning.

This is the lesson of 2025

Bray is a historian at Rutgers who received death threats after landing on Turning Points USA's Professor Watchlist. As a result, he announced he was moving to Europe. And then this happened.

This kind of harassment and abuse of scholars is Charlie Kirk's legacy and it's only getting worse.

Our authoritarianism is run on clichés borrowed from the Eastern Europe of twenty years ago. Paid protestors, disloyal cities, evil Soros, vast conspiracies — it was all tiresome then and there, and now it’s pathetic.

"power is a 'coordination game'...depends on what the public believes and does together. Even the most brutal tyrant does not have enough soldiers and police officers to compel everyone to obey at gunpoint. Authoritarian regimes need civil society...to acquiesce" www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...

[Trump made it all up] Before Trump Ordered In Troops, Federal Officers Called Portland Protests ‘Low Energy’ "reports...offered no indication of a dangerous escalation of tensions, or unusual levels of protest activity" consistent with Trump's "level of alarm" www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/u...

These [far-right and/or Christian nationalist] Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department- It could mean a new era of private and religious schools boosted by tax dollars. And the end of public schools as we know them. www.propublica.org/article/educ...

Are they that stupid, or think their cult is? DHS Secretary Noem "appeared in Portland" showing "government power responding to an 'army of Antifa' Pictures showed it "was approximately 12 photographers and protesters...including a man in a chicken costume" www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

Are they that stupid, or think their cult is? Sen Jim Banks (R-IN) asking "to review, and possibly re-do, the 2020 census, believing former President Joe Biden miscounted data to benefit Democrats" but "census was conducted under...rump’s first administration" www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

ICE is anti-Christian "Presbyterian minister in Chicago is suing...rump’s administration after ICE agents were captured in viral video firing pepper balls at his head....wearing a clerical collar...with demonstrators while... praying in front of an ICE facility" www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

ICE raid on apartment building in Chicago "What kind of monsters grab children and take them outside without clothes?...fascist regime...as it seeks to intimidate, stoke fear and do violence both physical and mental....brown shirts...jackbooted thugs"
www.americaamerica.news/p/snapshot-t...

Trump regime "blaming Democrats for the government shutdown in internal federal agency communications as well as public agency websites" eg "red banner and pop-up message" on HUD website and DOJ website; OMB email blaming Democrats for shut-down "could violate Hatch Act"
www.npr.org/2025/09/30/n...

Are they all fraudsters? "MAGA influencer and conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec-who helped spread election fraud rumors in PA in 2024-has been voting in PA for nearly a decade while living in MD....another addition to the now long history of MAGA hypocrisy" newrepublic.com/maz/post/201...

Perfect fascist raid in Chicago: In the middle of the night; all people in building detained; held on street wearing nightclothes or naked, including children; anonymous masked agents; no evidence or warrants; people required to show their "papers" luciantruscott.substack.com/p/the-perfec...

Schiff: "You were asked whether you were firing career prosecutors just because they worked on January 6 investigations. You refused to answer that question."

ICE is anti-Christian: "Rev. David Black [Presbyterian Church (USA)] stood in front of a Chicago-area US ICE facility and spread his arms wide....'I invited them to repentance'... agents responded...by firing pepper balls....'We could hear them laughing'"

religionnews.com/2025/10/07/i...

My Very Dear Ones,

I write to you from near the front lines of war ravaged Portland.

Is this what Republicans fear will happen if they cross Trump since "Gen. Kalugin, the former head of KGB operations in Russia, told me that... they had recruited roughly 300 assets and agents in the United States, and Trump was one of them"? www.vox.com/world/2018/9...

Textbook Putin Hit

[Next one bites the dust] The long time head of the Soviet newspaper Pravda has been found dead in Moscow "Vyacheslav Leontyev, 87, is suspected to have thrown himself from the window of his 5th-floor flat" Maybe what Republicans fear will happen if they cross Trump www.thetimes.com/world/russia...

Never before in American history has one state's military force been deployed in another state over its objection.

I say never because the Civil War involved states whose governments legally ceased to exist, their offices vacated by constructive resignation, with no legitimate governors to object.

exactly...

Instead of "illegal" or "unconstitutional," it's "tradition bucking."

Pete Hegseth is furiously screaming "I SAID NO FATTIES!"