Yep. Remember when we were freaked out about Project 2025? That was just a quaint feint. Wrong shell. He’s getting played by Musk, Thiel, Putin and Xi. Dangerous times.
Thank you Stuart. I have heard you saying this on "Live" shows but lifting it up in this article really helps. I have taken to heart to use these words Kidnapping! Betrayal! Criminal! Call the Attorney General! describing the situation, particularly in my very nice group. When I have these said the words out loud, and quite loudly I will add, I am hushed. And told lets hold "Know Your Rights" events. (Not that isn't good, but....) I was also asked by one member, "Were you a boxer?"...Said I needed a punching bag to calm down!!!!!! Well~~~anyway words and how we call this out are important. Thanks also to Garrett Graff. All helpful words in fighting this danger.
while we’re watching fascism consolidate power in real time.
This administration is not simply “a different ideology.”
It is a coordinated, authoritarian machine — with the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, and the executive pen all under its control.
And you?
You’re still asking for decorum and donations. WTF.
That won’t save us.
I don’t want to hear another polite floor speech.
I want strategy.
I want fire.
I want action so bold it shifts the damn news cycle — not fits inside one.
Every time I see something from the DNC, it’s asking me for funds.
Surprise.
Those of us who donate don’t want to keep sending money just to watch you stand frozen as the Constitution goes up in flames — shaking your heads and saying,
“Well, there’s not much we can do. He has the majority.”
I call bullshit.
If you don’t know how to think outside the box…
If you don’t know how to strategize…
If you don’t know how to fight fire with fire…
what the hell are we giving you money for?
Some of us have two or three advanced degrees.
Some of us have military training.
Some of us know what coordinated resistance looks like — and this ain’t it.
Yes, the tours around the country? Nice.
The speeches? Nice.
The clever congressional clapbacks? Nice.
That was great for giving hope.
Now we need action.
You have to stop acting like this is a normal presidency that will just time out in four years.
We’re not even at Day 90, and look at the chaos.
Look at the disappearances.
Look at the erosion of the judiciary, the press, and our rights.
If you do not stop this, we will not make it 1,460 days.
So here’s what I need from you — right now:
⸻
1. Form an independent, civilian-powered investigative coalition.
I love Stuart Stevens. He was once safely embedded in the Republican elite but was cleared-eyed about the danger of DJT and has been a beacon of light in these dark times. Thank you, Stuart!
Stuart, I just wanted to share my thanks to you. Your writings are exemplary, and I always learn so much - I read them all! We need to get loud and then louder. It is possible to do that while also being polite, my personal style is not to be rude and disrespectful, but I can be a polite pest!
I sent a note to my D Congressman (someone with a growing national name) a couple of days ago, he is being far too polite and genteel in his communications. One of my several questions to him was when he plans to do an in-person Town Hall in his District, to energize the fight back spirit in an area that sadly has a growing MAGA voice without good reason. It is difficult to say that you are disappointed with R representatives for not holding Town Halls when you yourself have not done so. There is so much more that can be done, but genteel will not redirect the train wreck that we are headed to.
Thanks again, the history is more important than many realize.
Civil War history is both relevant and preamble to our current situation. Two points of decision were made that allowed it to become the vast disaster that it was.
First, rebels were not rounded up and jailed. The Confederate military and political leadership were not assassinated by Union snipers early in the conflict. This was because of the gentlemanly code observed by the upper classes which later informed Sec. Stimson's bullshit.
Second, there was Reconstruction. A reconstruction would have been necessary, of course, but not the immediate re-placement of essentially the same power structure as before. Dispossession of the propertied class and resettlement and scattering of the Confederate citizenry would have been the rational thing to do. Stripping people of their citizenship, since they had already foresworn it prior, would have been appropriate in many cases. Executions on a wide-spread scale. A criminal ban on the symbols of the Confederacy out in perpetuity. Instead, the can was kicked down the road to us to handle. Thanks, assholes.
The Nation could have been destroyed. Lincoln knew that. Why the Union did not take all measures it could to end it and the perpetrators quickly will forever be a mystery to their descendants. The idiotic dithering that went on then was worst, if anything, than whatever we have now. The threat was existential to the entire enterprise, but the fools didn't act that way. If they had, we would not be having this conversation. This is because there is a through-line from then to now. The maniacs of that time are the forebears of the ones today, howling about their 'freedom' as they march us all into a prison camp.
So, here we are. If we managed to get ourselves out of this as a free republic (it's maybe even money at best), we had damn well better learn from the mistakes made in the 19th Century. We had better take a good, hard look at the whole idea of universal voting rights. Not, as they would like, along the lines of sex and race, but based on education and intelligence. Wail all you want about how "that isn't us", because we already aren't us. We are already in a fascist dictatorship where idiots can and will be manipulated into voting a madman into ultimate power.
To Mr. Stevens: The same urgent advice that your article title is giving to Democrats.
It may be that 'the cumulative weight and fury of outrage' will again be enough to drag our fat out of the fire. But with Trump's hands on all four of our levers of federal power, and with superstition grounded authoritarianism now internationally feeling our zeitgeist wind in its sails in much the same sense that our side did back in the 1760s and 70s, I don't believe that it is going to be enough. I don't think that anything less than our finally taking care of some vital unfinished business that we have been collectively sweeping under our carpet ever since the late 1700s is now going to be enough. For full development of that argument, and the slam dunk simple change that I think could still enable us to turn the tide against our rising Trump/Putin/Orban axis please try at least the few introductory pages of my own current article: at thelastbesthope.xyz
Thank you Stuart for your “shoot from the hip” style of journalism. It’s refreshing, real, and inspiring. I hope you can help us get this message across to our Democratic Congressional colleagues who seem to be having trouble parsing the present moment. With any luck your rhetoric will find a way to inspire more people who can actually take this fight seriously and show us all what “getting into some GOOD TROUBLE” is all about!!
Thank you, Stuart. We need this. I can't believe people are still dithering about doing something about this regime. Chuck Schumer has served the Democrats well until now, but it's time he and his fellow Democrats rethink their approach to the Republicans. The Republicans of today aren't the same party of 2016. Our world has shifted on its axis, and we all need to adjust to the new force of gravity, lest we be spun off into space never to recover. The marches on April 5th gave me hope that people are starting to pay attention (next march is April 29th). Please, Chuck, take a page from Bernie's and AOC's book. Get loud! We need everyone to get loud!
Thank you Stuart for a powerful description of the MAGA threat. I've never heard it said better. I'm very tempted to forward this to my ex-friends who I cut off 5 years ago when they were gearing up to support trump in 2020. I wonder if their brainwashing by Murdoch and company would withstand your lucid argument. I fear it would. How can we break through to the half of Americans in that predicament? Until we figure that out, reversing the MAGA damage will be incredibly difficult. Any thoughts you have on how to disrupt the right wing media sphere would be much appreciated.
I think the other half will be waking up soon. Many of the MAGA crowd depend on Social Security checks for their subsistence, and many others depend on their 401 (k). When the pain that Howard Lutnic speaks about comes home to them, they'll start to smell the coffee.
Can you somehow, give a shoutout to Sen. Elizabeth Warren and to Sen. Bernie Sanders and EOC. -patriots all. who speak for so many stunned Americans. How can Trump get away with this??unthinkable!
I think that the Democrats need to convince people they will fight for EVERYONE, and not just marginalized groups. Right now, I think part of the problem we have is that white men especially do not believe the government can help them or will help them. They view things as a zero-sum game and they are not the favored group of the Democrats. That is their view.
Some people will hold onto a position in a hierarchy over other considerations. Especially if they lose material wealth, some other way to assert their position at the top of a hierarchy is even more important. I think it explains why the GOP can destroy peoples' financial prospects, even ruin them, and yet get them to vote for GOP candidates -- take away their material means for asserting their position in the hierarchy, and other things become even more important.
At that point, cue the anti-trans ads we saw in the last campaign, and you can win an election by the most cynical means imaginable.
Thank you Stuart!
Yep. Remember when we were freaked out about Project 2025? That was just a quaint feint. Wrong shell. He’s getting played by Musk, Thiel, Putin and Xi. Dangerous times.
Thank you Stuart. I have heard you saying this on "Live" shows but lifting it up in this article really helps. I have taken to heart to use these words Kidnapping! Betrayal! Criminal! Call the Attorney General! describing the situation, particularly in my very nice group. When I have these said the words out loud, and quite loudly I will add, I am hushed. And told lets hold "Know Your Rights" events. (Not that isn't good, but....) I was also asked by one member, "Were you a boxer?"...Said I needed a punching bag to calm down!!!!!! Well~~~anyway words and how we call this out are important. Thanks also to Garrett Graff. All helpful words in fighting this danger.
By Liz Cheney
From Liz Cheney
Dear Democratic Party,
I need more from you.
You keep sending emails begging for $15,
while we’re watching fascism consolidate power in real time.
This administration is not simply “a different ideology.”
It is a coordinated, authoritarian machine — with the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, and the executive pen all under its control.
And you?
You’re still asking for decorum and donations. WTF.
That won’t save us.
I don’t want to hear another polite floor speech.
I want strategy.
I want fire.
I want action so bold it shifts the damn news cycle — not fits inside one.
Every time I see something from the DNC, it’s asking me for funds.
Surprise.
Those of us who donate don’t want to keep sending money just to watch you stand frozen as the Constitution goes up in flames — shaking your heads and saying,
“Well, there’s not much we can do. He has the majority.”
I call bullshit.
If you don’t know how to think outside the box…
If you don’t know how to strategize…
If you don’t know how to fight fire with fire…
what the hell are we giving you money for?
Some of us have two or three advanced degrees.
Some of us have military training.
Some of us know what coordinated resistance looks like — and this ain’t it.
Yes, the tours around the country? Nice.
The speeches? Nice.
The clever congressional clapbacks? Nice.
That was great for giving hope.
Now we need action.
You have to stop acting like this is a normal presidency that will just time out in four years.
We’re not even at Day 90, and look at the chaos.
Look at the disappearances.
Look at the erosion of the judiciary, the press, and our rights.
If you do not stop this, we will not make it 1,460 days.
So here’s what I need from you — right now:
⸻
1. Form an independent, civilian-powered investigative coalition.
I’m talking experts. Veterans. Whistleblowers. Journalists. Watchdog orgs.
Deputize the resistance. Build a real-time archive of corruption, overreach, and executive abuse.
Make it public. Make it unshakable.
Let the people drag the rot into the light.
If you can’t hold formal hearings, hold public ones.
If Congress won’t act, let the country act.
This isn’t about optics — it’s about receipts.
Because at some point, these people will be held accountable.
And when that day comes, we’ll need every name, every signature, every illegal order, every act of silence—documented.
You’re not just preserving truth — you’re preparing evidence for prosecution.
The more they vanish people and weaponize data, the more we need truth in the sunlight.
⸻
2. Join the International Criminal Court.
Yes, I said it. Call their bluff.
You cannot control what the other side does.
But you can control your own integrity.
So prove it. Prove that your party is still grounded in law, human rights, and ethical leadership.
Join.
If you’ve got nothing to hide — join.
Show the world who’s hiding bodies, bribes, and buried bank accounts.
Force the GOP to explain why they’d rather protect a war criminal than sign a treaty.
And while you’re at it, publicly invite ICC observers into U.S. borders.
Make this administration explain — on camera — why they’re terrified of international oversight.
⸻
3. Fund state-level resistance infrastructure.
Don’t just send postcards. Send resources.
Channel DNC funds into rapid-response teams, legal defense coalitions, sanctuary networks, and digital security training.
If the federal government is hijacked, build power underneath it.
If the laws become tools of oppression, help people resist them legally, locally, and boldly.
This is not campaign season — this is an authoritarian purge.
Stop campaigning.
Act like this is the end of democracy, because it is.
We WILL REMEMBER the warriors come primaries.
Fighting this regime should be your marketing strategy.
And let’s be clear:
The reason the other side always seems three steps ahead is because they ARE.
They prepared for this.
They infiltrated school boards, courts, local legislatures, and police unions.
They built a machine while you wrote press releases.
We’re reacting — they’ve been executing a plan for years.
It’s time to shift from panic to blueprint.
You should already be working with strategists and military minds on PROJECT 2029 —
a coordinated, long-term plan to rebuild this country when the smoke clears.
You should be publicly laying out:
• The laws and amendments you’ll pass to ensure this never happens again
• The systems you’ll tear down and the safeguards you’ll enshrine
• The plan to hold perpetrators of human atrocities accountable
• The urgent commitment to immediately bring home those sold into slavery in El Salvador
You say you’re the party of the people?
Then show the people the plan.
⸻
4. Use your platform to educate the public on rights and resistance tactics.
If they’re going to strip us of rights and lie about it — arm the people with truth.
Text campaigns. Mass trainings. Downloadable “Know Your Rights” kits. Multilingual legal guides. Encrypted phone trees.
Give people tools, not soundbites.
We don’t need more slogans.
We need survival manuals.
⸻
5. Leverage international media and watchdogs.
Stop hoping U.S. cable news will wake up.
They’re too busy playing both sides of fascism.
Feed the real stories to BBC, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Reuters, Der Spiegel — hell, leak them to anonymous dropboxes if you have to.
Make what’s happening in America a global scandal.
And stop relying on platforms that are actively suppressing truth.
Start leveraging Substack. Use Bluesky.
That’s where the resistance is migrating. That’s where censorship hasn’t caught up.
If the mainstream won’t carry the truth — outflank them.
Get creative. Go underground. Go global.
If our democracy is being dismantled in broad daylight, make sure the whole world sees it — and make sure we’re still able to say it.
⸻
6. Create a digital safe haven for whistleblowers and defectors.
Not everyone inside this regime is loyal.
Some are scared. Some want out.
Build the channels.
Encrypted. Anonymous. Protected.
Make it easy for the cracks in the system to become gaping holes.
And while you’re at it?
Stop ostracizing MAGA defectors.
Everyone makes mistakes — even glaring, critical ones.
We are not the bullies.
We are not the ones filled with hate.
And it is not your job to shame people who finally saw the fire and chose to step out of it.
They will have to deal with that internal struggle — the guilt of putting a very dangerous and callous regime in power.
But they’re already outnumbered. Don’t push them back into the crowd.
We don’t need purity.
We need numbers.
We need people willing to burn their red hats and testify against the machine they helped build.
⸻
7. Study the collapse—and the comeback.
You should be learning from South Korea and how they managed their brief rule under dictatorship.
They didn’t waste time chasing the one man with absolute immunity.
They went after the structure.
The aides. The enforcers. The loyalists. The architects.
They knocked out the foundation one pillar at a time —
until the “strongman” had no one left to stand on.
And his power crumbled beneath him.
You should be independently investigating every author of Project 2025,
every aide who defies court orders,
every communications director repeating lies,
every policy writer enabling cruelty,
every water boy who keeps this engine running.
You can’t stop a regime by asking the king to sit down.
You dismantle the throne he’s standing on — one coward at a time.
⸻
Stop being scared to fight dirty when the other side is fighting to erase the damn Constitution.
They are threatening to disappear AMERICANS.
A M E R I C A N S.
And your biggest move can’t be another strongly worded email.
We don’t want your urgently fundraising subject lines.
We want backbone.
We want action.
We want to know you’ll stand up before we’re all ordered to sit down — permanently.
We are watching.
And I don’t just mean your base.
I mean millions of us who see exactly what’s happening.
I’ve only got 6,000 followers — but the groups I’m in? The networks I touch? Over a quarter million.
Often when I speak, it echoes.
But when we ALL
speak, it ROARS with pressure that will cause change.
We need to be deafening.
You still have a chance to do something historic.
To be remembered for courage, not caution.
To go down as the party that didn’t just watch the fall — but fought the hell back with everything they had.
But the clock is ticking.
And the deportation buses are idling.
I love Stuart Stevens. He was once safely embedded in the Republican elite but was cleared-eyed about the danger of DJT and has been a beacon of light in these dark times. Thank you, Stuart!
Stuart, I just wanted to share my thanks to you. Your writings are exemplary, and I always learn so much - I read them all! We need to get loud and then louder. It is possible to do that while also being polite, my personal style is not to be rude and disrespectful, but I can be a polite pest!
I sent a note to my D Congressman (someone with a growing national name) a couple of days ago, he is being far too polite and genteel in his communications. One of my several questions to him was when he plans to do an in-person Town Hall in his District, to energize the fight back spirit in an area that sadly has a growing MAGA voice without good reason. It is difficult to say that you are disappointed with R representatives for not holding Town Halls when you yourself have not done so. There is so much more that can be done, but genteel will not redirect the train wreck that we are headed to.
Thanks again, the history is more important than many realize.
Civil War history is both relevant and preamble to our current situation. Two points of decision were made that allowed it to become the vast disaster that it was.
First, rebels were not rounded up and jailed. The Confederate military and political leadership were not assassinated by Union snipers early in the conflict. This was because of the gentlemanly code observed by the upper classes which later informed Sec. Stimson's bullshit.
Second, there was Reconstruction. A reconstruction would have been necessary, of course, but not the immediate re-placement of essentially the same power structure as before. Dispossession of the propertied class and resettlement and scattering of the Confederate citizenry would have been the rational thing to do. Stripping people of their citizenship, since they had already foresworn it prior, would have been appropriate in many cases. Executions on a wide-spread scale. A criminal ban on the symbols of the Confederacy out in perpetuity. Instead, the can was kicked down the road to us to handle. Thanks, assholes.
The Nation could have been destroyed. Lincoln knew that. Why the Union did not take all measures it could to end it and the perpetrators quickly will forever be a mystery to their descendants. The idiotic dithering that went on then was worst, if anything, than whatever we have now. The threat was existential to the entire enterprise, but the fools didn't act that way. If they had, we would not be having this conversation. This is because there is a through-line from then to now. The maniacs of that time are the forebears of the ones today, howling about their 'freedom' as they march us all into a prison camp.
So, here we are. If we managed to get ourselves out of this as a free republic (it's maybe even money at best), we had damn well better learn from the mistakes made in the 19th Century. We had better take a good, hard look at the whole idea of universal voting rights. Not, as they would like, along the lines of sex and race, but based on education and intelligence. Wail all you want about how "that isn't us", because we already aren't us. We are already in a fascist dictatorship where idiots can and will be manipulated into voting a madman into ultimate power.
On point! I love it.
To Mr. Stevens: The same urgent advice that your article title is giving to Democrats.
It may be that 'the cumulative weight and fury of outrage' will again be enough to drag our fat out of the fire. But with Trump's hands on all four of our levers of federal power, and with superstition grounded authoritarianism now internationally feeling our zeitgeist wind in its sails in much the same sense that our side did back in the 1760s and 70s, I don't believe that it is going to be enough. I don't think that anything less than our finally taking care of some vital unfinished business that we have been collectively sweeping under our carpet ever since the late 1700s is now going to be enough. For full development of that argument, and the slam dunk simple change that I think could still enable us to turn the tide against our rising Trump/Putin/Orban axis please try at least the few introductory pages of my own current article: at thelastbesthope.xyz
100% agree.
Thank you Stuart for your “shoot from the hip” style of journalism. It’s refreshing, real, and inspiring. I hope you can help us get this message across to our Democratic Congressional colleagues who seem to be having trouble parsing the present moment. With any luck your rhetoric will find a way to inspire more people who can actually take this fight seriously and show us all what “getting into some GOOD TROUBLE” is all about!!
Keep fighting the good fight!! ✊🏼😆
Thank you, Stuart. We need this. I can't believe people are still dithering about doing something about this regime. Chuck Schumer has served the Democrats well until now, but it's time he and his fellow Democrats rethink their approach to the Republicans. The Republicans of today aren't the same party of 2016. Our world has shifted on its axis, and we all need to adjust to the new force of gravity, lest we be spun off into space never to recover. The marches on April 5th gave me hope that people are starting to pay attention (next march is April 29th). Please, Chuck, take a page from Bernie's and AOC's book. Get loud! We need everyone to get loud!
Best explanation of what *should* be happening in response to this madness.
Now...how in the hell do we make it happen?!
Crickets.
Thank you Stuart for a powerful description of the MAGA threat. I've never heard it said better. I'm very tempted to forward this to my ex-friends who I cut off 5 years ago when they were gearing up to support trump in 2020. I wonder if their brainwashing by Murdoch and company would withstand your lucid argument. I fear it would. How can we break through to the half of Americans in that predicament? Until we figure that out, reversing the MAGA damage will be incredibly difficult. Any thoughts you have on how to disrupt the right wing media sphere would be much appreciated.
I think the other half will be waking up soon. Many of the MAGA crowd depend on Social Security checks for their subsistence, and many others depend on their 401 (k). When the pain that Howard Lutnic speaks about comes home to them, they'll start to smell the coffee.
I agree, Carol. In my mind I’ve searched for ideas about Trumper's pain points,
Can you somehow, give a shoutout to Sen. Elizabeth Warren and to Sen. Bernie Sanders and EOC. -patriots all. who speak for so many stunned Americans. How can Trump get away with this??unthinkable!
Good points.
I think that the Democrats need to convince people they will fight for EVERYONE, and not just marginalized groups. Right now, I think part of the problem we have is that white men especially do not believe the government can help them or will help them. They view things as a zero-sum game and they are not the favored group of the Democrats. That is their view.
Some people will hold onto a position in a hierarchy over other considerations. Especially if they lose material wealth, some other way to assert their position at the top of a hierarchy is even more important. I think it explains why the GOP can destroy peoples' financial prospects, even ruin them, and yet get them to vote for GOP candidates -- take away their material means for asserting their position in the hierarchy, and other things become even more important.
At that point, cue the anti-trans ads we saw in the last campaign, and you can win an election by the most cynical means imaginable.