At the end of 2025, Public Citizen sent out a ridiculously long email detailing its efforts to fight Trumpism.
A subsequent post summarized their activities:
- We filed 23 lawsuits against the administration’s illegal actions — on everything from the assault on the Treasury Department by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to the regime’s petty and heartless attempt to shut down the National Hunger Hotline. There will be more lawsuits to come.
- We helped lead historic mass mobilizations against authoritarianism, including the largest day of protest in American history (so far).
- We are leading a massive coalition of thousands of organizations to resist the regime’s efforts to clamp down on nonprofit groups.
- We filed dozens of ethics complaints over administration conflicts of interest and wrongful behavior.
- We issued numerous deep-dive investigative reports into matters ranging from the corporations sponsoring his “Billionaire Ballroom” monstrosity to the torrent of dropped investigations into flagrant lawbreaking by Big Business.
Here’s the thing: fighting is better than capitulation. When you give the schoolyard bully your lunch money, he doesn’t stop because he’s never satisfied. (See C BS, who was threatened with another lawsuit.)
Psalm 10
Someone online posted the entire Psalm 10 from the New International Version.
In his arrogance, the wicked man hunts down the weak,
who are caught in the schemes he devises.
3 He boasts about the cravings of his heart;
He blesses the greedy and reviles the Lord.
4 In his pride, the wicked man does not seek him;
In all his thoughts, there is no room for God.
5 His ways are always prosperous;
Your laws are rejected by him.
He sneers at all his enemies.
6 He says to himself, “Nothing will ever shake me.”
He swears, “No one will ever do me harm.”
7 His mouth is full of lies and threats.
Push back
Here’s a list tracking the lawsuits against the FOTUS agenda.
I’m pleased that several musicians have refused to play at the Kennedy Center. Will they be sued, the usual FOTUS solution? Maybe. I hope they countersue, saying that the entity at which they had agreed to perform was illegally altered.
The ACLU posted How to Push Back on Abuses of Power. Among the strategies: “It is the leadership of local and state leaders who uphold our civil rights and liberties. That’s why we have the mandate to meet this moment by standing with them and by partnering with them to pass responsive policies that protect all of our communities.”
I was pleased to see that Democratic attorneys general are preparing for the return of court battles against FOTUS. Europeans are responding to his threat over Greenland.
But I’ve been most encouraged by the activities of the local Indivisible branch. It’s very much in the spirit of MLK Jr.
Understanding it
Gal Beckerman wrote in The Atlantic (Paywall likely) What Stephen Miller Gets Wrong About Human Nature. It’s an old poli sci lesson.
“The 17th-century philosophers John Locke and Thomas Hobbes each offered a picture of human nature in its rawest form, and they came to different conclusions. Locke, whose ideas were central to the birth of modern democracy, thought that people were capable of reason and moral judgment. Hobbes, on the other hand, believed that we were vicious creatures who needed to be protected from ourselves by a powerful king. Whether a leader is Lockean or Hobbesian really does set the table for the kind of government they want…
“Miller might have been Hobbes in a skinny tie as he confidently articulated what he understood to be the ‘iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.’ His monologue was like something out of the English philosopher’s 1651 political treatise, Leviathan: ‘We live in a world, in the real world,’ he said, ‘that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.'”
We are living in a Dual State. “It’s the continued existence of the normative state” which gives him a 41% positive rating, rather than a much lower score. “Meanwhile, the prerogative state grows. Maybe it hasn’t arrived in your city yet. Maybe the friends you know who are affected by it did something to draw its attention. But your life goes on normally, until it doesn’t.”
DHS Used Neo-Nazi Anthem for Recruitment After Fatal Minneapolis ICE Shooting
It is important to understand the enemy. Only three more years of FOTUS? We can survive it. (I hope.)
Psalm 10
12 Arise, Lord! Lift up your hand, O God.
Do not forget the helpless.
13 Why does the wicked man revile God?
Why does he say to himself,
“He won’t call me to account”?
14 But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted;
You consider their grief and take it in hand.
The victims commit themselves to you;
You are the helper of the fatherless.
15 Break the arm of the wicked man;
Call the evildoer to account for his wickedness
that would not otherwise be found out.
In the discussion of immigration in the United States, the Brookings Institution published an 
Welcome to 
These are the 1981 #1 Top Rock Tracks. I purchased the book Joel Whitburn Presents Rock Tracks last year. It is “compiled from Billboard’s alternative Rock and Mainstream Rock charts.” The mainstream rock chart was first published on March 21, 1981.
In a bit of a hyperenergetic