For the 23rd Episode of the Progress Pondcast, Brendan and I tackle a long list of issues beginning with the viral protest singer Jesse Welles who reminds us of a combination of Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan and John Prine. For there we get into tariffs and their impact of the people who voted for Trump, including carmakers in South Carolina and farmers in Nebraksa.
Is anyone standing up to Trump? Well, yeah, actually some people are like Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawai’i, several Democratic governors, and the folks who turned out for the (very old and white) Hands Off protests. Others are not, like the Supreme Court, Republican members of Congress, several law firms, many universities, the Republican governors and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania. Why did Fetterman vote to confirm Mike Hukabee?
We also discuss the whole war on DEI and what it means for trans people and our schools. And there’s a discussion of the status of the budget reconciliation process and how it might still wind up on the rocks for the Republicans. Or not, and then we’re truly screwed.
And, of course, the biggest issue of all is that the Trump administration (which I usually refer to only as “the fascist regime”) is snatching people off the streets for violations of free speech and disappearing them, sending people with no due process to Salvadoran prisons, and threatening to start doing this to U.S. citizens, all while blowing off orders from federal judges. This is very reminiscent of Germany in the 1930’s, where they never formally ended their “Republic” but simply steamrolled it into submission and irrelevancy.
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