CARTOONS: Speak Up For Your Right To Free Speech, Or Be Complicit In Being Muzzeled
Those who surrender to Trump’s tyranny invite more of it.
Cartoons and photos by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
Join the nationwide ‘Hands Off’ protests this Saturday opposing Trump administration destruction of essential federal citizen support and services and theft of OUR federal funds by (F)Elon Musk and his freeloading billionaire leaches.
Check into a powerful handbook of resistance, Gene Sharp’s “From Dictatorship To Democracy”.
Resist
Persist
Don’t be complicit
COMPLICIT? — Americans Are Beginning To Fear Dissent & That’s Exactly Where Musk, Trump & Zionists Want You To Be
This moment calls for courage and collective action rather than capitulation – resolve by universities, researchers, journalists, the legal community, and the arts to stand up to Trump.
Anyone holding responsible positions in these five pillars of civil society must reject Trump’s attempts at intimidation and condemn what he is trying to do.
Those who surrender to Trump’s tyranny invite more of it.
By Robert Reich
The Guardian (3/31/25)
I was talking recently to a friend who’s a professor at Columbia University about what’s been happening there. He had a lot to say.
When he needed to run off to an appointment, I asked him if he’d text or email me the rest of his thoughts.
His response worried me. “No,” he said. “I better not. They may be reviewing it.”
“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked.
“They! The university. The government. Gotta go!” He was off.
My friend has never shown signs of paranoia.
I relay this to you because the Donald Trump regime is starting to have a chilling effect on what and how Americans communicate with each other. It is beginning to deter open dissent, which is exactly what the US president intends.
The chill affects all five major pillars of civil society – universities, science, the media, the law and the arts.
In Columbia University’s capitulation to Trump, it agreed to require demonstrators to identify themselves when asked and put its department of Middle Eastern studies under “receivership”, lest it lose $400m in government funding.
The agreement is already chilling dissent there, as my conversation with my friend revealed.
This moment calls for courage rather than capitulation – resolve by universities, researchers, journalists, the legal community, and the arts.
Photo: Jackson State University (2020)
The Trump regime also “detained” a Columbia University graduate student and green card holder who participated in protests at the school. The administration’s agents have also entered dorms with search warrants and targeted two other students who participated in such protests.
On Tuesday, an international student in a graduate program at Tufts University was taken into custody outside her off-campus apartment building by plainclothes homeland security agents, handcuffed and whisked away to a prison in Louisiana. She has a valid student visa. Her apparent offense? Putting her name to an opinion piece in the Tufts student newspaper that was critical of how the Tufts administration handled protests.
Scores of other major universities are on Trump’s target list.
Trump’s attack on science has involved threats to three of the largest funders of American science – the Centers for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation.
Tens of thousands of researchers are worried about how to continue their research. Many have decided to hunker down and not criticize the Trump administration for fear of losing their funding.
Punished for a negative “personal opinion”
Philippe Baptiste, the French minister for higher education, has charged that a French scientist traveling to a conference near Houston earlier this month was denied entry into the US because his phone contained message exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he gave a negative “personal opinion” about Trump’s scientific and research policies. The US Department of Homeland Security denies this was the reason the scientist wasn’t admitted into the country.
Meanwhile, America’s major media fear more lawsuits from Trump and his political allies in the wake of ABC’s surrender to Trump in December, agreeing to pay him $15m to settle a defamation suit he filed against the network.
Journalists who cover the White House are reeling from Trump’s decision to bar those he deems unfriendly from major events where space is limited.
The media chill is palpable. Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, has openly restricted the kinds of op-eds appearing in its editorial pages.
Cowardice & complicity of legal firms
The latest example of Trump’s use of executive orders to target powerful law firms that have challenged him came on Tuesday, against Jenner & Block.
The firm employed the attorney Andrew Weissmann after he worked as a prosecutor in the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump during his first term.
The White House charged that the firm “participated in the weaponization of the legal system against American principles and values”, and an official specifically called out Weissmann.
Last month, Trump removed the security clearances of lawyers at Covington & Burling who represented the former special counsel Jack Smith following his investigation of Trump’s role in the January 6 Capitol attack.
Trump has also targeted Perkins Coie, a firm linked to opposition research against Trump in 2016. His order banned Perkins Coie lawyers from federal buildings and halted its federal contracts.
Another executive order took aim at Paul Weiss, who employed the lawyer Mark Pomerantz before he helped prosecute Trump over hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.
Last Thursday, Trump withdrew the executive order against Paul Weiss because, he said, the firm had “acknowledged the wrongdoing” of Pomerantz and pledged $40m in free legal work to support the Trump administration.
Non-profits tell the Washington Post that law firms that once might have helped them fight Trump’s orders now fear Trump will pursue them if they do.
Blacking out the arts
Trump is even intimidating the arts by taking over the Kennedy Center, firing board members, ousting its president and making himself chairman.
The comedian Nikki Glaser, one of the few celebrities to walk the red carpet at this year’s Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prizes, now thinks twice before doing political jokes directed at Trump.
“Like, you just are scared that you’re gonna get doxxed and death threats or who knows where this leads, like, detained. Honestly, that’s not even like a joke. It’s like a real fear,” she told Deadline.
Every tyrant in history has sought to stifle criticism of himself and his regime.
But America was founded on criticism. American democracy was built on dissent. We conducted a revolution against tyranny.
This moment calls for courage and collective action rather than capitulation – resolve by universities, researchers, journalists, the legal community, and the arts to stand up to Trump.
Anyone holding responsible positions in these five pillars of civil society must reject Trump’s attempts at intimidation and condemn what he is trying to do.
Those who surrender to Trump’s tyranny invite more of it.
The US Establishment Is Torching Our Right Of Free Speech For Israel
The Grayzone (3/31/25)
The Grayzone's Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate on the surrender of US lawmakers and established institutions to the demands of a foreign country's omnipotent lobbying apparatus, and the consequences for everyone else.
14-minute video
“And it's not going to stop at permanent residents and visa holders. They don't want it to stop there. Everyone's going to have to be shut down. This live stream is going to have to be shut down, because Israel is not going to stop cranking up the gears of its Holocaust machine and pushing for endless regional war until it fully subjugates the entire region surrounding it and leaves it in ruins.
“How is that going to reverberate throughout American life? Can the Jewish establishment just rule through force and authoritarian power without the consent of even most Jews in the United States? That's what they think they can do, and so far they're getting away with it.”
— Max Blumenthal
ZIONIST PERVERSION: This Israeli Crime Will SICKEN YOU!
“i am not shocked by isreals actions anymore, i am shocked however by those in the rest of the world who defend it or deny it despite overwhelming evidence.”
— Online comment
Owen Jones (3/31/25)
10-minute video
Office Of Wisconsin Congress Critter Who Skitters From Meeting With Constituents Gets Picketed
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (4/1/25)
The Green Bay, Wisconsin chapter of Indivisible organized a two-hour protest at the local district office of Republican Rep. Tony Wied last Wednesday, over his unwillingness to personally attend town hall meetings with district constituents.
An energetic crowd of about 100 people showed up for the event with a crop of creative protest signs.
The tooting horns, waves, thumbs-up and cheers of support from passing car and semi-truck drivers far outweighed the middle fingers and dopey shouted single-syllable obscenities, which passes for MAGA political theory and debate.
Indivisible is a Democratic Party-friendly political action group that could have some strong influence on the party’s obsequious unconditional and unconstitutional support for the ongoing obscenity of the US/Israeli Gaza genocide.
When it comes to the giddy support for shredding the bodies of babies, toddlers and children in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Syria, there is absolutely no difference between the Republicans and Democrats, because both are owned by the corrupt Zionist lobby. Indivisible needs to begin showing up at Dem Party and politician offices on that issue.
Perhaps another day…
Demonstrators At Rep. Tony Wied's Office Protest His Lack Of Town Hall Meetings
By Jesse Lin
Green Bay Post Gazette (3/26/25)
LAWRENCE, WI ― About 50 people protested outside U.S. Rep. Tony Wied's local office Wednesday afternoon, in what the organizers characterized as "Tony Wied won't come to us, so we're going to him."
The protest along Scheuring Road in the town of Lawrence was organized by Indivisible Brown County, a local chapter of the national progressive advocacy group called Indivisible, "to demand accountability and visibility" from the Republican congressman.
It was the latest of several local demonstrations following the congressman's first town hall, which was held over the phone March 10. They protested what 12 demonstrators told the Press-Gazette was the congressman's unwillingness to engage in dialogue about their concerns that ranged widely from potential cuts to Medicaid and Social Security to privacy concerns over Elon Musk's role in government.
Many who the Press-Gazette talked to recounted contacting the congressman's staff in Washington or De Pere over email or the phone and being met with either no response or replies unspecific to the concern they brought up.
"I'll pass it along" was a common response to their questions or concerns, they said. Some said they reached out multiple times and received what they characterized as canned responses. … Link to story
“War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.”
— George Orwell (1937)
Fuck tRump and Israel
The message is that power rules, and power makes up the rules, because there are no rules, and anyone who sincerely believes in “democracy” and “democratic principles” is a sucker. The message is, “Fuck your rights. Shut the fuck up and follow orders, or we will punish you.” CJ Hopkins