Mona Eltahawy has witnessed the dictatorship in Egypt, so she has some expertise in diagnosing what’s happening in the US. She says that the US has become a fascist state. She’s right.

I moved to the United States from Egypt in 2000 and I have spent the past 25 years watching the US turn into Egypt – from encroaching state power to the increasingly unchecked role of religion in politics.

After each travesty – the lies used to invade Iraq, the zealotry that destroyed abortion rights, the arming and financing of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza – I thought: “Any minute now, there’ll be a revolution, they’ll burn things down.”

And here is Trump, finessing that state power into a regime that, as with the regime in Egypt, is targeting culture, education, media, judges, students and any group or entity that poses a threat or even the potential of dissent to the regime. And I’m still waiting for the revolution.

Me, too. I was deluded, as were so many of my peers, into thinking it couldn’t get this bad, that the rule of law and our revered state institutions would put the brakes on the excesses of a tyrant. Boy, was I wrong. The Republicans undermined the judiciary, wrapped themselves in flags and waved a Bible, and took over congress. They just needed a president who would ride that power straight into hell, and they got one. Aided by the quislings who thought students shouldn’t allowed to protest and that DEI was a conspiracy to take away their privilege, academia and the education system as a whole are being trashed by a president who loves the uneducated and believes in a mythical genetic superiority of the white race.

The DEI-hatred was the hint to what this whole fascist movement was rooted in — it’s racism. It’s an inescapable observation. The Republicans have come to power by harnessing the resentment of millions of bigots, and they’re having a grand time using that power to do great harm to everyone who isn’t a white man. That’s all it is. That’s the key to understanding what they are doing. They’ve got God’s permission to oppress everyone who doesn’t look like them, think like them.

Mona Eltahawy sees it clearly.

White Americans are the largest voting bloc and the group most responsible for bringing Trump to power both times – and they are the least enraged. The privilege of whiteness means that for many in the US, the loss of rights only happens to people who aren’t white, far away somewhere, in places such as Egypt. Only Black and brown people in faraway countries end up with an authoritarian ruler. But, if anything, where the Trump regime is taking the US is infinitely worse than what is happening in Egypt, because Egypt’s footprint on the world is not nearly as damaging as that of the US. This is why I’m enraged at the lack of rage.

White people in the US have a delusional amount of confidence in their government and institutions. They are childishly naive in believing that institutions will save them from autocratic power. That stubborn belief in their exceptionalism undergirds the refusal to see the fascism that Trump brought when he was first elected and that he is now cementing. Black and Indigenous people and people of colour have no such delusions. They do not expect institutions to protect them because they are so often hurt by those institutions. To people like me and others who have lived in and survived autocracies, white state power and its institutions have always functioned like a regime – so we are well versed in scepticism of anything that politicians say.

No matter how often those of us from authoritarian countries, who know to be suspicious of state power, and those of us who have fought fascism – whether implemented through military rule or the rule of religious fundamentalists – warned and warned, white people in the US arrogantly shook their heads and said it couldn’t happen here. Because the US is like a teenager who is stubbornly determined in their own self-destruction.

As a white American man, I have finally moved into a state of rage. It took me a while, I tried to be complacent, and dream that this too shall pass, that we’d wake up and restore normality in the next election…always we’ll get it right next time.

I no longer believe there will be a next election. There will be martial law, and a state of emergency, and the appointment of MAGA party masters to guarantee total control of the state. Before that, there will be rising protests at the incompetence of the MAGA government, but those will just be used as the pretext for cracking down on the citizenry.

WAKE UP.

I had to change the title because there is no reason to think we’ve reached the bottom yet.

Commencement is coming up in a couple of weeks. I’ve been encouraging all these students to go into science careers, and now I feel like I’ve been throwing them into a shark tank.

Rise up, America. I’ve been to Bucharest, and strolled through the Palace of Parliament — there are ways for a country to rid itself of a tyrant like Nicolae Ceaușescu. Donald Trump and his sycophants next?

Recall that I sneered at this new book coming out, The War on Science, edited by Lawrence Krauss. It’s a strangely focused book, given that it’s quite clear that it is the Republicans who have accelerated their attacks on education and science, yet Krauss is trying to blame any problems on DEI, the Woke, Leftists, and everyone but MAGA, Trump, RFK jr, Musk, etc. He has rounded up a real rogues gallery of awful and disreputable people to contribute articles to his patently bogus book.

Dorian Abbot, John Armstrong, Peter Boghossian, Maarten Boudry, Alex Byrne, Nicholas Christakis, Roger Cohen, Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, Niall Ferguson, Janice Fiamengo, Solveig Gold, Moti Gorin, Karleen Gribble, Carole Hooven, Geoff Horsman, Joshua Katz, Sergiu Klainerman, Lawrence M. Krauss, Anna Krylov, Luana Maroja, Christian Ott, Bruce Pardy, Jordan Peterson, Steven Pinker, Richard Redding, Arthur Rousseau, Gad Saad, Sally Satel, Lauren Schwartz, Alan Sokal, Allesandro Strumia, Judith Suissa, Alice Sullivan, Jay Tanzman, Abigail Thompson, Amy Wax, Elizabeth Weiss, Frances Widdowson

The one virtue of Krauss attempting to step out of the shadows of his shame is that Rebecca Watson was roused to bring receipts and stomp this guy right down into the ground. I mean, really, if there were any justice in the world, Larry would be crumpled into a puddle, wheezing and begging for mercy through broken teeth, and would be crawling into a snake hole to bleed out and fade from public attention forevermore.

I recommend that everyone try to stay on Rebecca’s good side.

I was going to express amazement that Krauss can even find a publisher for this drivel…but it’s being published by Post Hill Press, a company that specializes in right-wing conspiracy theories. Krauss is now rubbing elbows with Tyrus and Dan Bongino and Kirk Cameron. His peers!

The federal government (innocently, I’m sure) checking on college faculty to identify which ones are Jewish.

Most professors at Barnard College received text messages on Monday notifying them that a federal agency was reviewing the college’s employment practices, according to copies of the messages reviewed by The Intercept.

The messages, sent to most Barnard professors’ personal cellphones, asked them to complete a voluntary survey about their employment.

“Please select all that apply,” said the second question in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, survey.

“The federal government reaching out to our personal cellphones to identify who is Jewish is incredibly sinister.”
The choices followed: “I am Jewish”; “I am Israeli”; “I have shared Jewish/Israeli ancestry”; “I practice Judaism”; and “Other.”

I’m “other,” so I guess I’m safe. Nothing to worry about here, folks, move along, move along…unless you’re Jewish, and then we would like to see your papers, please.

It always begins with mild impositions for your own good, doesn’t it?

I’ve been hearing this word “warfighter” a lot lately, often coming out of the mouths of macho assholes like Pete Hegseth. It implies that the role of the military is simply fighting, fighting, fighting — and I’d rather see the military as a stabilizing force, less about fighting and acting more as resilient response to threats, and also as a practical investment in a region that would be squandered if they were actually fighting.

I’m not alone in feeling as if the term misrepresents what our soldiers (what’s wrong with that fine, familiar word?) actually do.

someone binged on YouTube videos of old recruiting commercials or watched “Top Gun” too many times in a row. He (or she) birthed the term “warfighter,” which quickly took root in all the government circles and is spreading slowly into conventional media as well.

“Warfighter” is perfect. It’s dripping in red, white, and blue at a time when the military has never been more popular, or more lionized.

I hate it. “Warfighter” is the rhetorical equivalent of a “Support the troops” bumper sticker or an American flag lapel pin. It reduces the complexity and ambiguity of modern national security, dragging it back to an imagined era of good wars, bad guys, and clear-cut victory. It’s hard not to hear the phrase and picture a G.I Joe lookalike waving an American flag.

Using “warfighter” destroys our capacity for reason at a time when it’s desperately needed. With strategic flops in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s clear that the U.S. needs to take another stab at the national security paradigm. We should be thinking objectively about how to stabilize the international system, promote free enterprise, and share that burden across the full range of our allies. We need a clear strategy that Americans understand, but as well as our friends and, most importantly, our actual or potential enemies.

I have a son in the army. He’s never fought in a war. What he seems to do is plant his men into a place, build up infrastructure and facilities just in case a war breaks out, and then come home, or get transferred to another place that needs maintenance or upgrading. I would never call him a “warfighter,” because being a “warfighter” means you’ve actually failed.

Can we please get rid of Hegseth?

---

Speaking of Hegseth:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently ordered modifications to a room next to the Pentagon press briefing room to retrofit it with a makeup studio that can be used to prepare for television appearances, multiple sources told CBS News.

The price tag for the project was several thousand dollars, according to two of the sources, at a time when the administration is searching for cost-cutting measures.

I’m not qualified to use the term as a hard-core civilian, but my uncles who served in WWII did teach me what a “REMF” was, and I’ve also read Catch-22 a few times.

Law? We don’t need no stinkin’ law. We’re trying to banish children here. Kids are being hauled into court and told by a judge that they are trying to decide whether to kick them out of the country.

“The reason we’re here is because the government of the United States wants you to leave the United States,” Judge Ubaid ul-Haq, presiding from a courtroom on Varick Street, told a group of about a dozen children on a recent morning on Webex.

“It’s my job to figure out if you have to leave,” ul-Haq continued. “It’s also my job to figure out if you should stay.”

The parties included a 7-year-old boy, wearing a shirt emblazoned with a pizza cartoon, who spun a toy windmill while the judge spoke. There was an 8-year-old girl and her 4-year-old sister, in a tie-dye shirt, who squeezed a pink plushy toy and stuffed it into her sleeve. None of the children were accompanied by parents or attorneys, only shelter workers who helped them log on to the hearing.

Enough. Enough. Shut down ICE, arrest every fucking member of the Trump administration, and give them some toys to play with while a humane judge decides what to do with them. How can that judge preside over a kangaroo court to decide on the fate of children?

Do they suspect those dozen kids are members of MS-13? Do they have tattoos?

Well, hello there, Minnesota Republicans. You just had to pop your little heads up and prove to the world that you are ignorant, stupid, or insane. Behold, HF 3219, the mRNA Bioweapons Prohibition Act:

A bill for an act
relating to public safety; designating mRNA injections and products as weapons
of mass destruction; prohibiting mRNA injections and products; proposing coding
for new law in Minnesota Statutes, chapter 609.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA:

Section 1. SHORT TITLE.
This act may be known as the “mRNA Bioweapons Prohibition Act.”

Sec. 2. [609.7121] MRNA BIOWEAPONS PROHIBITION.
Subdivision 1. Legislative intent. It is the intent of the legislature to designate mRNA
injections and products as weapons of mass destruction according to section 609.712 and
to prohibit possession or distribution of the mRNA injections and products in the state.
Subd. 2. Definitions. (a) For purposes of this section, the following terms have the
meanings given.
(b) “mRNA injections and products” means:

(1) with regards to the COVID injections, mRNA or “modified” messenger RNA as
related to the gene altering agents. The structure was altered by substituting two
N-methyl-pseudouridine amino acids for the usual uridine components so as to elude immune
destruction of the mRNA, which then allows the mRNA that produces the pathogenic Spike
protein to exist within cells for a longer period of time;

(2) all injections or products containing mRNA or “modified” messenger RNA;

(3) any human gene therapy product for any infectious disease indication, regardless of
whether the administration is termed an immunization, vaccine, or any other term; or

(4) nanotechnology or nanoparticles that alter genes and create a biosynthetic cell
replication.

For the purposes of this section, mRNA does not mean naturally occurring mRNA defined
as messenger ribonucleic acid that is a single-stranded molecule of RNA that corresponds
to the genetic sequence of a gene.

(c) “State or local government official” means the governor, attorney general, state
attorneys, county sheriffs, and other state and local law enforcement.

Subd. 3. Crime. Whoever knowingly manufactures, acquires, possesses, or makes readily
accessible to another mRNA injections and products is guilty of a crime and may be
sentenced as provided under section 609.712.
Subd. 5. State or local government official. A state or local government official must
use all lawful means necessary to enforce this section. A state or local government official
who does not enforce or investigate a violation under subdivision 3 when provided with
reasonable evidence of a violation is guilty of a crime and subject to the same penalties as
a person violating that subdivision.
Subd. 6. Civil action. A resident of the state may seek injunctive relief, declaratory
relief, and monetary damages from the state or a state and local government official for lack
of enforcement of this section.

Yep, they are designating mRNA vaccines as bioweapons, bioweapons of mass destruction, no less, and you can get up to 20 years in prison for manufacturing, possessing, distributing, or administering mRNA vaccines. This nonsense legislation has been peddled to legislatures all around the country by a guy named Joseph Sansone, a psychotherapist with a bug up his butt about vaccines.

You don’t believe me? Perhaps you will trust a far-right MAGA site that has all the assertions.

Minnesota Statutes § 609.712 criminalizes the development, possession, or use of weapons of mass destruction, including biological agents, recombinant or synthetic nucleic acids, and delivery systems that may cause widespread death, serious injury, or disruption to public safety. The statute defines “biological agents” broadly to include any virus or genetically engineered element capable of causing disease or biological malfunction in humans.

By referencing this statute, the legislature affirms that mRNA-based injections—particularly those using modified nucleosides to produce synthetic Spike proteins or alter gene expression—fit the statutory definition of a biological agent capable of mass harm. This bill, therefore, applies the existing legal framework of § 609.712 to classify and prohibit such products under criminal law within the state of Minnesota.

According to the peer-reviewed literature and the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the COVID-19 mRNA injections have caused widespread harm and death. In fact, they are estimated to have killed more people than 121 Hiroshima nuclear bombings:

Filing this bill would not have been possible without the critical work of Dr. Joseph Sansone, who originally drafted the model legislation on which this bill is based. His tireless advocacy and early legal framework helped pave the way for states like Minnesota to take bold action against experimental gene-based technologies.

WHO estimates about 15 million excess deaths worldwide from the COVID epidemic, so according to this quack, there were more people killed by the vaccine than by the virus, as determined by abuse of VAERS statistics.

That’s enough for a bevy of state politicians, every one of them a Republican, to propose criminalizing a useful and successful vaccine.

There have been no hearings on this bill yet, and it hasn’t passed beyond the demented MAGA masturbation stage. Let’s hope the stupidity dies a quick and painful death.

In the big cities, crosswalks are equipped with those little buttons pedestrians can press to request a light change, and that also have speakers to announce which direction is safe to cross, a safety feature for blind people. Even little Morris has a set of these at one intersection, at 4th and Atlantic, if you’re ever in the area and want to gawk at our advanced technology.

It turns out that some nefarious people have figured out how to hack the message that comes out of the speakers.

On April 12, 2025 the top story on the Palo Alto (California) online news site was “Silicon Valley Crosswalk Buttons Apparently Hacked to Imitate Musk, Zuckerberg Voices” It told the story, covered by other media too, of how someone hacked into audible pedestrian signals so they broadcast messages such as “From undermining democracy, to cooking our grandparents’ brains with AI slop, to making the world less safe for trans people, nobody does it better than us – and I think that’s pretty neat..”

The Palo Alto Online story continued by sharing that “City employees determined that 12 downtown intersections were impacted and have disabled the voice announcement feature on the crosswalks until repairs can be made.”

There’s a glaring hole in this story and in all the reporting I’ve seen about this “hack.” The missing piece is this: Those signals have a voice announcements (and capability for audible output) because they are accessible signals that the blind community across the country have advocated and fought for for decades.

Can you tell which street is safe to cross from that message?

I’m ashamed that that sounds like an anti-Zuckerberg message that a Leftist might make. Don’t do that, people. It’s insensitive and hurts the innocent.

Elon Musk does not dream of colonizing distant worlds. His dream is to milk the federal government of every penny he can get, and his real goal is about tapping into lucrative defense contracts.

• SpaceX is leading a bid to build Golden Dome with startups Anduril and Palantir, six people said
• The SpaceX-led group is pitching the Pentagon on a ‘subscription model’ for missile defense, sources said
• SpaceX proposes a constellation of 400 to more than 1,000 missile defense satellites, sources said

“Golden Dome” is just another Trump boondoggle, an excuse to throw away more money. It’s in contradiction to his claim to be improving government efficiency, which is code speak for starving the poor and throwing more money to the top 1% and to defense contractors. He’s going to pick who those contractors get to be.

One of the sources familiar with the talks described them as “a departure from the usual acquisition process. There’s an attitude that the national security and defense community has to be sensitive and deferential to Elon Musk because of his role in the government.”
SpaceX and Musk have declined to comment on whether Musk is involved in any of the discussions or negotiations involving federal contracts with his businesses.

I bet the defense industry is deferential — they want more money.

Because he’s actually an evil villain, Musk has another devious plan to unfold.

In an unusual twist, SpaceX has proposed setting up its role in Golden Dome as a “subscription service” in which the government would pay for access to the technology, rather than own the system outright.
The subscription model, which has not been previously reported, could skirt some Pentagon procurement protocols allowing the system to be rolled out faster, the two sources said. While the approach would not violate any rules, the government may then be locked into a subscription and lose control over its ongoing development and pricing, they added.

He’ll be an obscenely wealthy man who possesses total control of a thousand military satellites floating above the United States! This sounds like the plot to a James Bond movie.

This is also how Nazis talk.

In a press conference Wednesday morning that surely delighted his allies in the anti-vaccine movement, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to a report about apparent rising autism rates with a vow to look at “environmental factors” as a possible cause. While Kennedy didn’t explicitly discuss vaccines, his remarks made it clear, again, that he’ll likely use the power and money of the federal government to prop up the long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. He also repeatedly made crude and stigmatizing references to people with profound autism (which he calls “severe” autism, an outdated term) painting a picture of such people as a burden on society and to their families.

“These are kids who will never pay taxes,” Kennedy declared. “They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. We have to recognize we are doing this to our children.”

“The epidemic,” Kennedy said at another point, “is real.” Autism, he added, “destroys families and more importantly it destroys our greatest resource, our children.” Many children, he claimed, were “fully functional” and “regressed.”

Vaccines do not cause autism. I repeat, vaccines do not cause autism — this bogus claim has been tested repeatedly and in depth. This is a red herring, one that RFK jr will pursue at great cost to our country and to the health of our children. He does not actually care about children, his priority is defending his delusions.

The world has gone down this road before. This talk is a prelude to first institutionalizing autistic children, then sterilizing them, and then quietly, and no doubt painlessly at first, exterminating them. They’re useless, a drain on society, so why not get rid of them?

Furthermore, look at this chilling gem from the CDC report: white kids aren’t afflicted as much as black and hispanic kids. We already know this administration is racist as fuck, so here’s more fodder for the white nationalists.

RFK Jr. called today’s press conference to discuss new findings published this week in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, which found an increase in apparent autism rates, from 1 in 36 children to 1 in 31. The report, based on 2022 data, found that the prevalence of autism spectrum disorder was higher in 8-year-old children than in previous years, and higher in Black, Hispanic and Asian Pacific Islander children than in white children.

I’ve mentioned before that my grandson is autistic. He has learning and language disabilities, but he’s going to a special school and his language is getting much better.

He loves playing with his father’s phone — he has figured out how to call me, so every once in a while I’ll get a surprise FaceTime call, and he’ll say “Hi, grandpa,” and then be at loss for words for a while, and he’ll close by saying “I love you, grandpa,” and go back to playing. He likes playing music on the phone, and has somehow figured out how to send his playlist in a text message to me. He seems to be on an Elton John kick right now, and he’s a fan of the Bee Gees.

He’s a human being, and his family loves him. How dare this incompetent, over-privileged fantasist dehumanize him?