Our Fascist Idiocracy: May 21, 2025

Fascist Idiocrat spotlight: Yale fascism expert Timothy Snyder puts Trump’s recently demoted U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia in the spotlight:
Ed Martin is a major actor in Trump’s attempted regime change to authoritarianism. His particular role is to transform the law into a tool to intimidate Americans. After a stint as interim US Attorney for DC which was marked by unprecedented weaponization of the position, Martin will now continue his work for Trump as the official “weaponization czar.”
This is a new position within the Justice Department, designed by the Trump administration, to punish people who have committed no crimes. Martin was originally placed on the “weaponization working group” seemingly ex officio when he was a US Attorney; he will now continue as its chairman. On Martin’s account, his assignment will be to publicly single out Americans who have not been found guilty of anything, or for that matter even indicted. He says there will be “no limit to the targets.”
Mixed Signals. Yet more confusion at the top. On Tuesday, as Republicans were arguing, not about whether to cut Medicaid, but rather how deeply to slash into the nation’s healthcare system, Dear Leader did an about face, warning his House MAGA minions: “Don’t fuck around with Medicaid.” It’s likely Trump saw the KFF Health Tracking Poll in April that found that a whopping 76 percent of voters disapprove of MAGA’s cuts to Medicaid. That includes 79 percent of Independents and 55 percent of Republicans.
Rubio goes rogue: Secretary of State Marco Rubio has gone all in on the new authoritarianism. Marco Rubio Says No Judge Has Authority Over Him in Alarming Testimony.
What is DOGE hiding? DOGE, the secretive federal department that Trump and Elon Musk have deployed to destroy the U.S. government from within, has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to to declare them exempt from compliance with the Freedom of Information Act. The appeal is a response to an order by a federal judge to comply with FOIA in March.