We live in a fascist state

What I do care about is the fact that we bombed an entire apartment complex to kill one guy. THAT’S GODDAMN OUTRAGEOUS. The callous disregard for human life is sick, and Trump’s DUI-hires high-fiving themselves for their wanton murder of innocents is disgusting.

To me, this country’s continued use of terrorist tactics in the name of defeating terrorism is the story, not the fact that the current cabal of warmongers blabbed about their crimes against humanity on Signal.

• This video from WCVB-Boston shows Trump’s secret police arresting a Tufts student, Rumeysa Ozturk, and abducting her off of the street. It is believed that Ozturk was taken by our government for her speech in defense of Palestinian rights. She is being held as a political prisoner in Jena, Louisiana. We live in a fascist state.
• A federal judge blocked the attempted abduction of Yunseo Chung, a Columbia student and legal permanent resident whose parents immigrated here when she was 7 years old. The government attempted to detain her for her speech in defense of Palestinian rights. We live in a fascist state.
• Kristi Noem made a prisoner snuff film in El Salvador. We live in a fascist state.
• During oral arguments at the Supreme Court this week, John Roberts sounded likely to further eviscerate the Voting Rights Act, and take away a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana, because he didn’t like the district’s shape.
• The Supreme Court upheld a ban on ghost guns. This is actually good news. I mean sure, Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion is tortured goop wherein he goes out of the way to ignore the expertise of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms and impose his own, uneducated judgment on the matter. But still, he gets to the correct conclusion, and that is what counts as a victory these days.

• I keep telling liberals that John Roberts is not their friend, but for those who still don’t believe it, here is an entire feature by Christian Farias describing how Roberts has been the architect of the lawlessness we see from the Trump administration.
• In The Nation, Phyllis Bennis talks about the wanton destruction of Yemen by our government—which is the true heart of Signalgate.
• One thing about Signalgate that keeps bothering me (other than the unnecessary violence) is that people keep saying that they used Signal to avoid federal record-keeping requirements. I’m not sure about that. I agree with Keith Olberman here: The reason they used Signal was to keep their plans away from dictator in decline Donald Trump.
• Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern explain how the Republican Congress is aiding and abetting Trump’s attacks on the courts.

• Donald Trump signed an executive order this week, purporting to require proof of citizenship in order to vote in the United States. Trump says he needs to do this to combat voter fraud, but voter fraud doesn’t exist, and there is no evidence that we have noncitizens, who aren’t allowed to vote, voting. Trump is proposing a plan that will make it harder for eligible voters to participate in elections in order to stop a fantasy problem dreamed up by xenophobic Republicans.

  Trump, flatly, does not have the power to do this, but that doesn’t mean he can’t.

  Federal elections in this country are not run by the federal government but by state governments. Each state enjoys broad constitutional authority to make its own rules about elections, including who is eligible to vote (in accordance with the 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th amendments to the Constitution); who can register to vote; and what documentation voters are required to produce. I have long argued that this arrangement, where we have 50 federal election systems instead of just one, is stupid, and that we should have an act of Congress or even a constitutional amendment to federalize federal elections.

  Trump, however, cannot override the entire (dumb) electoral system in this country by executive fiat. He cannot force the states to add a restriction on voting rights by his say-so. (Trump also ordered DOGE to “review” the voter rolls of each state, but again, DOGE has no authority to kick people off of voter registration rolls.)

  Still, Trump’s illegal voter purge could have real consequences. While he and his MAGA junta don’t control the electoral system, they do control Congress—and Congress controls certifying the votes in federal elections. What that means is that Trump could order Congress to not count the votes submitted from states that do not follow Trump’s illegal requirements. That could land the 2028 MAGA presidential candidate (who could still be Trump) in office simply on the strength of votes from red states that implement Trump’s orders, while Congress refuses to certify votes from blue states.

  Is that constitutional or legal? No. But… we live in a fascist state.

• I didn’t write anything new this week (and probably won’t next week), because my book—Bad Law: 10 Popular Laws That Are Ruining America—launched on Tuesday. The Nation, however, did publish an excerpt—and I did get to go on Fresh Air and talk about.

• Ubisoft is a video game publisher run by French tech bro Yves Guillemot. Ubisoft makes very popular games, like the Assassin’s Creed series—but it also makes incredibly lazy, poorly written, mile-wide, inch-deep games, like the Assassin’s Creed series. I don’t like their games (except for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, which is still the best pirate game ever made), because every time I play one I think “this is almost good” and the unrealized potential ultimately makes me sad.

  The company is in a bit of financial trouble right now, thanks to some big bets it made on games that were bad and sold poorly. The company has been targeted by AJ Investments, a private-equity firm whose business model is to parachute into a company, force changes to make its stock price go up, then sell off those stocks for a healthy profit. In the case of Ubisoft, AJ Investments is trying to force Guillemot out—or force him to split up the company so it can be sold off for parts.

  What’s interesting is that AJ Investments is trying to gin up public pressure on Guillemot by turning the people who buy Guillemot’s products—video game players—against him. This is relatively easy to do because, again, Ubisoft’s games are generally popular but also generally bad. Many gamers feel like me—that Ubisoft’s games could be great if they were just made with a little more care and a little less nonsense.

  The problem is: AJ Investments doesn’t give a damn about making good games. They want the games to be more profitable, and, to them, that means that they should include more anti-player monetization schemes and be brought to market more quickly, even when doing so means releasing a buggy game that hasn’t had enough time in the development oven. AJ Investments flipped out when Ubisoft delayed its latest game, Assassin’s Creed Shadows, but critics largely agree that the delay was necessary to make it a better game.

  Here’s a really good video about the situation from Michael Bell, a fantastic video game reporter who runs Bellular News. The lesson, as always: Never trust the private-equity guys. They’re never motivated by the best interests of consumers; they only care about making a quick buck.

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