Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn) gave an excellent floor speech, setting out in plain language, the simple, easy to follow, well-considered and well-funded blueprint for the American fascist plan, which follows the same rules as every fascist takeover in history.

1]   After exhaustive investigations by Trump’s first, and second, DOJ, prosecutors found no grounds to indict and prosecute James Comey.  Trump-appointee US Attorney, given recent ultimatum to indict Comey anyway, resigned.  Trump inserted as acting US Attorney a loyal former beauty pageant contestant/insurance lawyer who promptly filed an inept one page indictment of Comey, two charges with no statement setting out the facts on which the charges are based [1].   This was applauded by the January 6 rioter lawyer, conspiracy theorist and election denier Ed Martin, now Weaponization Czar of the DOJ.  $50,000 cash bribe to border czar Tom Homan, recorded by the FBI?  Nothing to see there, no evidence, case closed, you’re corrupt, not Mr. Homan!   DOJ ignoring a Congressional subpoena by producing less than 1% of the demanded Epstein files?   Just politics, in a totalitarian way of thinking.  An elected Democratic Representative, jostled in the middle of the illegal arrest of the mayor of Newark?   LaMonica McIver is facing 17 years for the felony of assaulting an officer (pardon me, sir, is my eye hurting your elbow?), indicted by Alina Habba herself, so there!

2] Numerous (number I heard recently was 31) former FOX “personalities” are working in top positions in the Trump administration, including at least one cabinet member and acting US Attorney. Dan Bongino, in February 2025, became the 21st such “personality” given substantial power over a government agency. The symbiosis between the administration and Murdoch’s “news” network does not, technically, amount to state-run media, yet. The plan is (bring in the fucking FCC, yo! you laughing now, funnyman?) to eliminate all other voices in the media, defund PBS, NPR, Voice of America, etc. American mass media, as cravenly greedy (and lucrative) a corporate media as the world has ever known, has already made every concession to the unreasonable and vindictive Mr. Trump. What could go wrong, fellow citizen journalists?

3] If ten people at a peaceful protest in Portland, Oregon are tear-gassed, pepper sprayed and shot at with rubber bullets, by heavily armed masked ICE agents in body armor, a woman shot in Chicago by ICE, a man killed during a “stop”, Blackhawk helicopters brought in to execute five search warrants for nonviolent criminals, what do you think the reaction to 10,000 peaceful protesters at the same place would be? ICE is this madman’s workaround to the American law that prevents the use of military against citizens, absent a true breakdown in law and order, an actual emergency. Trump’s eight (and counting) “emergencies”, under which he does all sorts of otherwise illegal things, are all, frankly, pulled straight out of Stephen Miller’s ass. The second to last place the government is allowed to use force to disperse people is when they are exercising their constitutional right to assemble for redress of their grievances. The last place is on election day, which is their ultimate plan to suppress all but their own voters to steal another “rigged election”. State violence is the beating heart of fascism, a gun butt to the face is Fascism 101.

4] Congress, under Article I, has the sole power to tax and spend, allocate funds to implement policies and pay everybody. A bully with an insatiable taste for revenge has taken over the once diverse Republican party and remade it in his hideous image. None have the courage to oppose the president’s asserted (if unconstitutional, to use a quaint phrase) unilateral right to have the last word on on taxes, which he calls tariffs — paid for, like the wall, by Mexico and other countries used to sodomizing the US on trade deals– and withhold funds allocated by Congress like he illegally did when refusing to send approved military aid to Ukraine unless their new president announced a fake investigation into Joe Biden’s surviving son. You recall, that was the basis for the first impeachment witch hunt hoax. He was impeached over what he’s doing right now, openly and notoriously, as they say in the law, illegally usurping the power of Congress.

5] Having one set of permissive rules for the master and those loyal to the master, and another, brutal set for all who oppose the Leader, well, you can’t get more Nazi than that, boys and girls. One gets to violate the Espionage Act with impunity, or take a bag full of cash in an FBI sting, on camera, gouge out the eyeball of a Capitol policeman, shove a Congresswoman during an illegal arrest of her colleague, throw a senator to the ground and handcuff him — the other gets investigated for “mortgage fraud”, “lying to Congress”, “taking classified documents”, “assaulting an armed agent engaged in a scuffle over an illegal arrest” “jay walking”, using the f-word, etc.

That said, Chris Murphy says it better, and more memorably. Worth watching, if you have any doubts about what Charles Koch’s ultimate plan is here.