23 SKIDOO

The 27 Club isn’t true, but it is real − a sociologist explains why myths endure

The Conversation
November 8, 2024 1

Many members of the 27 Club are outsize in their cultural influence. 

Psychology Forever/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

There’s a certain allure to the notion that some of the world’s brightest stars burn out at the age of 27. The so-called 27 Club has captivated the public imagination for half a century. Its members include legendary musicians Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse. The idea is as seductive as it is tragic: a convergence of talent, fame and untimely death at a singular age.

But is there any truth to this phenomenon, or is it merely a story we tell ourselves and each other about fame and youth?

In our newly published research, my colleague Patrick Kaminski and I explore why the 27 Club persists in culture. We didn’t set out to debunk the myth. After all, there is no reason to think that 27 is an especially dangerous age beyond superstition.

Rather, we wanted to explore the 27 Club to understand how such a myth gains traction and affects people’s perception of reality.

Is the 27 Club real?

The origin of the 27 Club dates back to the early 1970s, following the deaths of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison – all at age 27, within a span of two years.


This uncanny coincidence left its mark on collective memory. It wasn’t just their age. It was the common thread of musical genius, countercultural influence and the tragic allure of lives cut short by a cocktail of fame, drug use and the struggle of being human. The narrative is not just compelling but almost mystical in its synchronicity.

Analyzing data from 344,156 notable deceased individuals listed on Wikipedia, we found that while there’s no increased risk of dying at 27, those who do die at that age receive significantly more public attention. Using Wikipedia page views as a proxy for fame, our study revealed that the legacies of these 27-year-olds are amplified, garnering more visibility than those who die at adjacent ages.

This increased visibility has a strange effect: People are more likely to encounter those who died at 27 than other young ages, even if they are not aware of the myth. This in turn creates the appearance of greater risk of mortality at 27. The myth of the 27 Club is a self-fulfilling prophecy: It became “real” because we believed it.

Why is the 27 Club a thing?

We believe this phenomenon can be understood through three interrelated concepts: path dependence, stigmergy and memetic reification.

Path dependence refers to how random events can set a precedent that influences future outcomes. The initial cluster of high-profile deaths at age 27 was statistically improbable – we estimate that one in 100,000 timelines would have four such famous deaths at age 27 – but it established a narrative pathway that has persisted and shaped collective reality.

Stigmergy describes how traces of an event or action left in the environment can indirectly coordinate future events or actions. In the digital age, platforms such as Wikipedia serve as repositories of collective memory. The existence of a dedicated 27 Club page, with links to its members’ pages, increases the visibility of those who die at 27. This creates a feedback loop: The more we click, the more prominent these figures become, and the more the myth is reinforced.

Finally, what we call memetic reification captures how beliefs can shape reality. We draw from a sociological concept called the Thomas theorem, which states that if you “define a situation as real, they are real in their consequences.” The 27 Club myth has tangible effects on cultural memory and fame. By imbuing significance into the age of 27, society elevates the legacies of those who die at that age, making the myth materially consequential.

Why do myths endure?

Why do such myths endure? At their core, myths are not about factual accuracy but about narratives that resonate with people. They thrive on mystery, tragedy and the human penchant for finding patterns even in randomness. The story of the 27 Club is poetic, encapsulating the fleeting nature of genius and the fragility of life. It’s a story that begs to be told and retold, regardless of its veracity.

This isn’t an isolated phenomenon. Cultural patterns often arise from chance events that, through collective commitment and storytelling, become embedded in our understanding of the world.

Your social world shapes what you value and how you behave.

Consider the evolution of language – why do we call a dog a “dog”? There is nothing doggy about the word. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein observed that nearly all symbols are arbitrary. Some countries drive on the left side of the road while others on the right. While the choice to adopt left- or right-side traffic is influenced by neighboring countries or car producers, ultimately these followed from an arbitrary resolution to the need to pick one side or the other. These conventions began as random occurrences that, over time, became standardized and meaningful through social reinforcement.

The 27 Club serves as a lens through which you can examine the power of mythmaking in shaping perceptions of history and reality. It highlights how collective beliefs can have real-world consequences, influencing who becomes immortalized in cultural memory. It’s a testament to the complex interplay between chance events, storytelling and the mechanisms by which myths are perpetuated.

Though we may appear to dispel the myth of the 27 Club, let’s not abandon the story. We’re myth trusters, not myth busters. In unraveling the myth, we’re acknowledging the profound ways in which narratives influence our collective consciousness. By understanding the processes behind myth formation, we can better appreciate the richness of culture and the stories people choose to tell.

Zackary Okun Dunivin, Postdoctoral Fellow in Communication, University of California, Davis

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

New giant particle collider 'right option for science': next CERN chief

Agence France-Presse
November 7, 2024 

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN can be used to study many kinds of fundamental particles, including mysterious and rare tau particles. Oxygen/Moment via Getty Imag

The next head of Europe's CERN physics laboratory said Thursday that he favored moving forward with plans for a giant particle collider far more powerful than the collider that discovered the famous "God particle".

"Scientifically, I am convinced it is the right option," Mark Thomson, whom CERN has tapped to be its next director-general, said of preliminary plans for the Future Circular Collider (FCC).

It is "the right option for CERN, the right option for science", the British physicist said during an online press conference a day after CERN said he would take the helm for a five-year term starting in January 2026.


"Absolutely I wish to pursue that route," he said.

The CERN lab, which straddles the border between France and Switzerland, seeks to unravel what the universe is made of and how it works.

Its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) -- a 27-kilometer (17-mile) proton-smashing ring running about 100 meters (330 feet) below ground -- has among other things been used to prove the existence of the Higgs boson.


Dubbed the God particle, its discovery broadened science's understanding of how particles acquire mass.

The LHC is expected to have fully run its course by around 2040, and CERN is considering building a far larger collider to allow scientists to keep pushing the envelope.

- Hunt for dark matter -

A feasibility study is under way for the 91-kilometer FCC, which CERN estimated earlier this year will cost around $17 billion.

Thomson, an experimental particle physics professor at Cambridge University and the executive chair of Britain's Science and Technology Facilities Council, hailed the efforts to fully grasp the costs involved, saying a final decision was still several years off.

"There is time to build a very, very strong consensus around the project based on the clear scientific argument" for it, he said.

At CERN, Thomson will replace Italian physicist Fabiola Gianotti, who a decade ago was chosen as the first woman to lead the lab. She has also expressed support for the FCC project.

"We are confronted with many crucial outstanding questions in fundamental physics and in our understanding of the structure and evolution of the universe," she told reporters.

Both Gianotti and Thomson said the search for answers was not waiting for the FCC to be built, with so-called dark matter and dark energy among the issues being explored.


Scientists believe that ordinary matter -- such as stars, gases, dust, planets and everything on them -- accounts for just five percent of the universe.

But dark matter and dark energy account for the rest, and scientists have yet to directly observe either.

"We know dark matter is out there, (but) we don't know the nature of dark matter," Thomson said.


"I'm optimistic that some of the experiments that have been constructed and operated at the moment have an opportunity to actually discover what dark matter really is," he said.

© Agence France-Presse

2024 'virtually certain' to be hottest year on record: EU climate agency

Julia Conley, 

Common Dreams
November 7, 2024 1

The most serious fire raging in northern California is the Kincade Fire 

(USTIN SULLIVAN/AFP)

A day after U.S. voters elected climate-denying Republican Donald Trump in the presidential race, soon ushering in an administration that is sure to expand fossil fuel drilling, the European Union's Earth observation agency announced that 2024 is "virtually certain" to be the hottest year on record and to hit a worrying temperature milestone.

The year is expected to be the first on record in which the temperature is more than 1.5°C hotter than before the Industrial Revolution, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service (CCCS). The Paris climate agreement of 2015 urged countries to curb greenhouse gas emissions with the goal of limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C by the end of the century.

Over the past 12 months, said CCCS, global temperatures were 1.6°C warmer than the yearly average from 1850-1900.

"The average temperature anomaly for the rest of 2024 would have to drop to almost zero for 2024 to not be the warmest year," said CCCS.

Last month was the second-hottest October ever recorded, with temperatures 1.65°C higher than preindustrial levels. It was the 15th month in the past 16 to be hotter than 1.5°C over preindustrial temperatures.

While a single year above the 1.5°C mark does not necessarily indicate that the Paris climate goal is out of reach, CCCS director Carlo Buontempo said the planet has "never had to cope with a climate as warm as the current one."

"This inevitably pushes our ability to respond to extreme events—and adapt to a warmer world—to the absolute limit," he told The Guardian.

Climate scientist Bill McGuire called the Copernicus report "the bleakest news possible, especially with a climate denier U.S. president in office for the next four years."

Trump has pledged to expand fossil fuel extraction and do away with climate regulations introduced by the Biden administration, telling oil executives he would do so if they contributed $1 billion to his campaign in what was described as a quid pro quo.

The CCCS—which based its analysis on billions of measurements from satellites, ships, aircraft, and weather stations—noted in its report that October saw numerous extreme weather events tied to the warming planet. Heavy rains led to severe flash flooding in Spain, killing more than 200 people. Above average precipitation was also seen in Norway, France, China, southern Brazil, and parts of Australia, while Florida faced Hurricane Milton just two weeks after Hurricane Helene killed more than 230 people.

The World Meteorological Organization last week announced that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are accumulating faster than at any other time in human history, rising more than 10% in the last two decades.

"The most effective solution to address the climate challenges is a global commitment on emissions," Buontempo told The Guardian.

BBC journalist Navin Singh Khadka said on the news network that if the 1.5°C breach continues "in the long term, then we are warned there will be catastrophic consequences."

"In the meantime we're told this could be a temporary overshoot because of factors like El Niño, for instance, but even then... the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report has warned us that there might be some irreversible impacts," said Khadka. "What are those irreversible impacts? Can we live with them? That's the question now."

AMERIKA

The resistance starts now

Robert Reich
November 8, 2024


Photo by visuals on Unsplash

I won’t try to hide it. I’m heartbroken. Heartbroken and scared, to tell you the truth. I’m sure many of you are, too.

Donald Trump has decisively won the presidency, the Senate, and possibly the House of Representatives and the popular vote, too.

I still have faith in America. But right now, that’s little comfort to the people who are most at risk.

Millions of people must now live in fear of being swept up by Trump’s cruel mass deportation plan – documented immigrants, as he has threatened before, as well as undocumented, and millions of American citizens with undocumented parents or spouses.

Women and girls must now fear that they’ll be forced to give birth or be denied life-saving care during an ectopic pregnancy or miscarriage.

America has become less safe for trans people – including trans kids – who were already at risk of violence and discrimination.


Anyone who has already faced prejudice and marginalization is now in greater danger than before.

Also in danger are people who have stood up to Trump, who has promised to seek revenge against his political opponents.

Countless people are now endangered on a scale and intensity almost unheard of in modern America.

Our first responsibility is to protect all those who are in harm’s way.

We will do that by resisting Trump’s attempts to suppress women’s freedoms. We will fight for the rights of women and girls to determine when and whether they have children. No one will force a woman to give birth.

We will block Trump’s cruel efforts at mass deportation. We will fight to give sanctuary to productive, law-abiding members of our communities, including young people who arrived here as babies or children.


We will not allow mass arrests and mass detention of anyone in America. We will not permit families to be separated. We will not allow the military to be used to intimidate and subjugate anyone in this country.

We will protect trans people and everyone else who is scapegoated because of how they look or what they believe. No one should have to be ashamed of who they are.

We will stop Trump’s efforts to retaliate against his perceived enemies. A free nation protects political dissent. A democracy needs people willing to stand up to tyranny.

How will we conduct this resistance?

By organizing our communities. By fighting through the courts. By arguing our cause through the media.

We will ask other Americans to join us – left and right, progressive and conservative, white people and people of color. It will be the largest and most powerful resistance since the American revolution.


But it will be peaceful. We will not succumb to violence, which would only give Trump and his regime an excuse to use organized violence against us.

We will keep alive the flames of freedom and the common good, and we will preserve our democracy. We will fight for the same things Americans have fought for since the founding of our nation – rights enshrined in the constitution and Bill of Rights.

The preamble to the Constitution of the United States opens with the phrase “We the people”, conveying a sense of shared interest and a desire “to promote the general welfare”, as the preamble goes on to say.


We the people will fight for the general welfare.

We the people will resist tyranny. We will preserve the common good. We will protect our democracy.

This will not be easy, but if the American experiment in self-government is to continue, it is essential.

I know you’re scared and stressed. So am I.

If you are grieving or frightened, you are not alone. Tens of millions of Americans feel the way you do.

All I can say to reassure you is that time and again, Americans have opted for the common good. Time and again, we have come to each other’s aid. We have resisted cruelty.

We supported one another during the Great Depression. We were victorious over Hitler’s fascism and Soviet communism. We survived Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunts, Richard Nixon’s crimes, Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam war, the horrors of 9/11, and George W Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.


We will resist Donald Trump’s tyranny.

Although peaceful and non-violent, the resistance will nonetheless be committed and determined.

It will encompass every community in America. It will endure as long as necessary.


We will never give up on America.

The resistance starts now.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

The real reason behind Trump's surprise win

John Stoehr
November 8, 2024

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the press at Trump Tower in New York City, U.S., September 26, 2024. REUTERS/David Dee Delgado

I was wrong about this election. I was wrong about a bunch of things. Maybe I erred largely on the side of hoping too much. I hoped that most people in America understood that Donald Trump was the worst candidate of our lifetimes. And as a consequence of understanding that, I hoped that most people would make the right decision for themselves, their children and their country. How wrong I was

I don’t blame Kamala Harris. I don’t think anyone should. The vice president ran pretty much the perfect campaign, according to people who have worked with presidential nominees. In terms of policy, in terms of messaging, in terms of get-out-the-vote – it was as good as anyone could expect from a candidate who started in July. Her campaign was “all gas, no brakes.” I think she did everything she could. So did all the pro-democracy people out there. It just wasn’t enough.

We can and will argue about why this happened. Some will say that Joe Biden should have decided sooner against running for reelection. Some say that Harris didn’t take this or that policy position to appeal to this or that voting bloc. Some say that a woman, especially a biracial woman, was never going to win anyway. Some say that the Washington press corps failed to inform the electorate properly. And so on.

While all of these complaints have merit in and of themselves, I think none of them explains what happened on their own. Bottom line: most people, which is to say, most white people in this still majority-white country, wanted what Trump was offering them, even though what he was actually offering was little more than machismo and vengeance.

Trump is, as a shrewd observer put it, the whitest white man we have ever seen. That can erase a multitude of sins. “So am I to understand that leading a coup, promoting the Big Lie, being found liable for rape and guilt of fraud, growing more extreme, threatening to be a dictator and suffering dementia actually strengthened Trump politically?” David Rothkopf said. “It does not compute.” But it kinda sorta does.

If it was hard for my liberal and Democratic brethren to hear before the election, it shouldn’t be now. Lots of Americans do not believe in democracy in any universal sense. They believe in democracy that is exclusive, indeed that is punitive. Trump has promised retribution against his enemies and lots of Americans liked the sound of that.

My hope was that there were more people who wanted our democracy to be inclusive than there were those who wanted it to be exclusive. My hope was that the story of progress in America, with expanding rights and opportunities for all, would continue the way it seemed to after Joe Biden’s election. It’s moments like this, in the aftermath of a shocking election, when I find myself second-guessing such hopes.

Some are already saying that the Democrat Party needs to soul-search. The election, said Connecticut’s Democratic Governor Ned Lamont, “was a real wake up call for Democrats. It was overwhelming. We can point to Trump’s personality, whatever you want to say, but Democrats lost a lot of the working families. We lost a lot of males — lost males of different races, color and creed. And it ought to be a wake up call, and we’ve got to be fighting for the middle class and fighting for them every day. And I think they feel like we lost sight of that.”

But I don’t think the Democrats need to change who they are and what they stand for to reach just enough white people in just enough swing states. The Biden presidency put the federal government on the side of the working and middle classes. Indeed, Biden talked endlessly about the dignity of work, a clear signal to “a lot of males.” The Harris campaign aimed to build on that by expanding Medicare, cutting taxes for families, helping small businesses grow, fighting for labor rights and so on. The Democratic Party as it stands is a multiracial party oriented economically toward everyone who works for a living.

In other words, the Democratic Party is populist in that it stands for and advances policies that are popular. The Republicans know and fear that. Otherwise, they would not have taken credit for infrastructure projects nationwide that Biden and the Democrats enacted and that nearly every congressional Republican voted against. Moreover, when pollsters ask respondents which policies they like best, majorities usually favor Democratic policies over policies that the GOP offers.

What the Democrats do not do, but that the Republicans do do, is single out to ridicule a subgroup or subculture for the purpose of making just enough white people in just enough swing states feel better about themselves. To be precise, the Democrats do not tear down immigrants or trans people or anyone to give the impression of justice being served to voters who believe that minorities are taking something from them. They do not dance around that gray area between bigotry and “the economy.” They don’t do that and never should. If they do, they will collapse, as a party, from the inside out.

But what should the Democrats do?

For now, I’ll say this: whatever they do, it had better be with the understanding that we are now living in a new age of fear, ignorance and superstition to such a staggering degree that we will go back, to paraphrase Harris, if the Democratic Party doesn’t take it seriously. Lies, propaganda and disinformation are coming from all corners of the globe, including from places like Russia, China and Iran, but the clearinghouse here is the GOP and the rightwing media apparatus.

Joe Biden and the Democrats saved the economy and made it the envy of the world. They pulled us out of a pandemic that killed a million of us. They brought prosperity back to every one of the so-called “left behind” counties. They tamed inflation post-covid without triggering a ruinous recession. But none of that mattered to swing-state voters awash in lies. The Forward’s Alex Zeldin put it this way: “If your media consumption is a Fox morning show, Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, Jordan Peterson, Prager, Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, rightwing memes on reddit, Twitter and Instagram, and your nightly consumption is Fox, you will have no way of knowing anything good Democrats do.”

Jon Stewart’s election postmortem: Trump 'used our electoral system as it is designed'

Alex Henderson, AlterNet
November 8, 2024

Actor turned activist Jon Stewart gives remarks at a PACT Act rally to support funding veterans who are victims of burn pit related illnesses. (Shutterstock.com)

Donald Trump's critics on both the left and the right were hoping that Election Night 2024 would bring a repudiation of the former president.

Instead, Trump's detractors — from Democratic strategist James Carville to author Mary Trump (his niece) to conservative attorney George Conway — were horrified when Trump enjoyed a decisive victory over Vice President Kamala Harris despite awaiting sentencing on 34 criminal charges and promising to rule like an autocrat if given a second term.

Comedian/late-night television host Jon Stewart weighed in as well, expressing shock that Trump is returning to the White House without engaging in the type of election denial that characterized his 2020 loss to now-President Joe Biden.

On his podcast "The Weekly Show," Stewart explained, "Each one of those scenarios, it was, 'How is Donald Trump going to finagle his way back into the White House? How is he going to use undemocratic principles? What measure of intimidation and underhanded shenaniganery will this man use to worm his way back into the Oval Office?' And it turned out, he used our electoral system as it is designed."

Stewart compared Trump's 2024 victory to "vertigo" (the physical condition, not the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock film).

"I'd love to sit back and think about the autopsy and where you move from there, but I think I still feel as though I'm in that moment of vertigo to some extent," Stewart told "Weekly Show" listeners. "In the same way that I, when I decided to stop drinking I didn't do it while the room was still spinning. I didn't stop doing booze and drugs in that moment of lying on the floor facedown trying to wonder if I just move my hand here, will the room stop. And I think that’s a wise way of looking at it."

Stewart went on to say, "I think you have to be more clear-eyed, have your balance, and your feet underneath you before you can start really thinking about what it was that made what you think your worldview is, and the things that you were certain about, not certain."

Why millions of Americans just voted against their own self-interest

Michaelangelo Signorile, The Signorile Report
November 7, 2024 

Photo by Nicholas Green on Unsplash

In 2016, when Pennsylvania was called for Trump and he won the election in the early hours of the morning, I had tears in my eyes as I lay in bed and posted on social media that we would fight. It was a complete aberration, I remember thinking, a jarring anomaly.

Last night, as the returns were coming in, again stunning so many of us, I felt differently.

I didn’t see it as some fluke in the making, as in 2016. Then, Hillary Clinton was hounded by the exaggerated email story, which surfaced again, thanks to FBI Director James Comey, days before the election, only to be a nothingburger. Clinton had not campaigned in Wisconsin at all. There was deep Russian interference from early on in the election.

Trump was a celebrity who had no political record, and a lot of people just voted for him without knowing much about his positions. Many people didn’t vote at all, thinking Clinton would win, because the polling was so out of whack. Third parties took just enough of the vote to pull from Clinton. Clinton won the popular vote, but the injustice of the Electoral College brought Trump to victory.

This time, however, Donald Trump won a majority of American voters in the popular vote. He won after having been a dangerous, brutal president who harmed many people, stripped the rights of Americans, put extremists on the Supreme Court, and mismanaged a pandemic, allowing millions to die. I could go on, but the bottom line: we can’t say people didn’t know him.

So last night, I didn’t cry. I felt anger and outrage, more than anything else, at those millions of Americans who willingly voted for someone who would harm this country and hurt others and even themselves. And I’m still feeling that anger right now.

Trump was even more cruel, racist, and misogynistic in his 2024 campaign than in any prior campaign. And yet, he won the majority of voters expanding his rural vote but also cutting into some of the suburban counties and urban counties just enough.

Exit polls are to be taken with a grain of salt, as they're always off and often revised later. But we can look at them directionally rather than precisely. According to those polls, Trump improved upon his 2020 results with Black voters, just a little, and with Latino voters—particularly Latino men—by a more substantial amount, in both rural areas and urban areas. And he improved quite a bit with young voters and people voting for the first time.

That was all enough to put him over the top. He started with his floor, his base of support. Unlike losing presidents of the past, who just faded away, very unpopular with their parties, Trump had used the Big Lie to make his base see Democrats, not him, as the losers and, more nefariously, as degenerates who stole the election. This kept his base with him for four years, even after first being jarred by January 6th. They pushed aside the attempt to overturn the election and the violence, already predisposed to forgive him. And stuck with him. Then it just became about adding a few more people here and there.


As a con man, he was able to do that. But we can’t overlook that his base and any new voters backed him knowing 100% what Trump was about. They backed him even though the Democrats had a very good candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris who ran a pretty flawless campaign—and no, I’m not going to get into the blame game I’m already seeing some Democrats engage in—a candidate who spoke to their needs at the moment regarding the economy, offering actual, detailed plans.

Trump’s misogyny, his cruelty, his racism, and his history of hate were embraced by those voters. You can say many overlooked them, but that’s still an embrace. Some may have liked his bigotry more than others—getting off on his attacks on the left, on his perceived enemies in Congress, on marginalized groups—but that doesn’t make those who didn’t like it any less responsible for their actions.

Much of what happened last night can be traced back to the COVID pandemic and how our whole world was turned upside down. The isolation and then the economic turmoil caused real shockwaves for many Americans. President Biden did an enormous, historic job at passing legislation to bring this economy back to a juggernaut, the envy of the world. GDP is surging; unemployment is 4%. Wages are up.


But for too many voters, the jolt of inflation—and the fact that prices would never come down even if the inflation rate itself slowed dramatically—was heavy. This election split along education lines, even as it cut across racial ones—non-college educated vs. college-educated—and obviously then across income brackets and those who could buffer the shock of inflation better than others.

Those most affected just didn’t grasp how inflation soared as a result of the economic turmoil of the pandemic and supply chain shortages and just blamed Biden—with the help of Republicans fanning exaggerations about spending and falsehoods, and a corporate media that was complicit. And they didn’t see how Biden was revitalizing the economy as Trump and Republicans played into their unease and promised to make things better.

Too many of them believed that because their own finances were in a better place before the pandemic it was somehow due to Trump—who, in reality, did nothing to make their lives better and, in fact, caused more economic inequality with his tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. The fond memories of the economy in the pre-pandemic Trump years were actually because of the rebuilt economy that President Obama left Trump.

Republicans and Trump exploited these voters’ short memories—many of the youngest voters today, don’t forget, were 15 or 16 years old during Trump’s presidency, and, like most teenagers, weren’t paying much attention to national news. Republicans exploited the lack of awareness among many about how the economy works, how Covid shocked it, and what Biden was doing.

Again, we could blame the media for this too, as I have many times, but it still doesn’t absolve these voters of their responsibility. They were warned many times in this campaign, and the truth was laid out for them. Many simply got caught up in the cult and became unreachable.

Millions of Americans voted for a man who will cause prices to spike dramatically when he imposes his 20% tariffs across the board on foreign goods. They will see members of their families, their colleagues, their neighbors and their friends, taken from their homes and sent off to camps to be deported. They will themselves experience the horrors of the Dobbs decision on women’s health, either personally or with regard to women in their lives. They will see their transgender family members or friends demonized and harmed.

They will watch discrimination against minorities—Muslims, LGBTQ people, and people of color—play out before their eyes, and sometimes it will affect them personally, as members of those groups themselves. They will see marriage equality weakened and may see entire departments of the government abolished—like the Department of Education—as Project 2025 is put into action.

Part of me wants many of those who voted for Trump to experience this as punishment—particularly those who voted on the economy and now will see prices soar from the tariffs. That’s how angry I am.

But I realize we have to fight to protect the vulnerable, no matter how uninformed they are. And the truth is, millions more among the groups that will be affected by a Trump presidency—the majority of most of the groups I mentioned—voted against him and for a new future with Kamala Harris. Many of them worked day in and day out to get her elected, worried about their own rights and the threat to democracy.


So, we have to realize that, while also realizing that the country has changed, that through a few votes here and a few votes there, Trump has remade his coalition and willingly got people to vote for his authoritarian agenda even as it will hurt many of them. We have to face that we’re in a different landscape, and our duty now is to protect people who will be hurt, stand for the truth, and still fight for democracy, as painful as this will be to do.

Grieving is important—and the anger I’m feeling is part of that—but in a short time we have to get beyond it because transformations will happen rapidly. As in other countries that faced authoritarians, we’ll need to be the pro-democracy movement. And we have to steel ourselves for the fight ahead.

Detroit’s young Black men embrace Trump, their older brothers understand

ON THE GROUND

A generational divide saw many young African American men, a traditional Democratic voter base, persuaded by Donald Trump's promise of a brighter economic future. Older Black men were willing to give Kamala Harris a chance, but they understand the shift in stance of their younger counterparts. The question now is whether Trump can deliver.


Issued on: 08/11/2024 - 
By: Leela JACINTO

An election flyer dumped in a garbage can in Detroit's West Side district on November 7, 2024. © Barbara Gabel, FRANCE 24


On the last Sunday before Election Day, the area around Detroit’s Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ was packed with onlookers dodging secret service and city police cars as they tried to catch a glimpse of the star guest arriving for the service.

US Vice President Kamala Harris had picked the historic Black church at the corner of Schaefer and Seven Mile roads to worship just days before polls opened on November 5 – and the neighbourhood couldn’t seem to get enough of her.

That was before the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket took a drubbing in the 2024 elections.

On a crisp, sunny morning just days after the resounding Democratic defeat, the pre-election carnival in this predominantly African American neighbourhood had given way to desolation row.

03:42A Harris/Walz sign on a bin in Detroit, Michigan, on November 7, 2024. © Barbara Gabel/France 24

A crushed “Harris-Walz” flyer sat drunkenly on a garbage can outside the church parking lot. Traffic lights changed colours for a handful of vehicles zipping down the wide empty streets. The diner around the corner fluttered an “Open” sign for no takers.

The corner of Schaefer and Seven Mile roads in Detroit, USA, is mostly empty on November 7, 2024. © Leela Jacinto, FRANCE 24

Standing at a bus stop, waiting for the No. 7 to take him to work, Danny Taylor sounded resigned over Harris’s defeat. “I’m disappointed she lost, ain’t nothin’ you can do about it,” said the 65-year-old labourer at a local hardware store.

Christopher Evans was also on his way to work just days after casting his ballot at a local school. But unlike Taylor, the 36-year-old cook at a Detroit luxury hotel said he wasn’t dismayed by Donald Trump’s victory. “I'm not upset about it, you know. I'm just hoping that President Trump can do what he needs to do to help us improve our system and improve our economy.”

Chistropher Evans on his way to work in Detroit's West Side district on November 7, 2024. © Tahar Hani, FRANCE 24

While Evans declined to divulge who he voted for, the young Black man made it amply clear that he was ready for a change after four years of the Biden-Harris administration.

“I just wanted to see different people in the position. I don't want to see the same people that did the last four years. I want to see somebody different,” he said.

‘Left out and forgotten by Democrats’

When President Joe Biden made way for Harris as the Democratic presidential candidate, many assumed a half-Black, half-Indian woman would clinch the African American vote.

The Democratic party has a decades-long commitment to racial equality. It gave the US its first Black president, Barack Obama, and it was viewed as the antithesis of the white male-dominated Republican party.

But in the lead-up to the November 5 vote, opinion polls showed an erosion of Black support for Harris, particularly among young African American males.

While some experts disputed the polling methodology, others put it down to misogyny. Obama tried a tough love approach, speaking “some truth” to “the brothers” in Pennsylvania last month.

“I'm speaking to men directly – part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren't feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you're coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” said Obama.

His comments sparked a backlash among many African American men, who accused the first Black president of “lecturing” and “belittling” them.

Black men have voted at higher rates for reproductive rights than men from other racial groups, noted Rashawn Ray and Keon Gilbert, fellows at the Washington DC-based Brookings Institute, in their report, “Why are Black men mad at Obama”.

The “biggest” reason for the disenchantment is because “many Black men feel left out and forgotten by the Democratic Party. They are tired of feeling as if their voice is not heard or that they only matter on issues of policing and criminal justice reform”, said Ray and Gilbert.
‘The reason why I voted for Trump’

Early analysis of the 2024 vote shows the opinion polls had it right all along.

The percentage of the white vote for the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates did not register a significant change between the 2020 and 2024 elections, according to the AP VoteCast.

But among African American voters, Trump in 2024 was able to double his vote share of young Black men. About three in 10 Black men under the age of 45 went for Trump, roughly double the number he got in 2020.

The success of the Trump campaign’s outreach to Latino and Black voters has been one of the biggest surprises of the 2024 elections. It came despite the Republican candidate’s record of anti-immigrant and racist insults.

But at a time of soaring high costs, Trump’s message resonated with unemployed and low-paid Black and Latino workers.

“I'm neither a Republican nor Democrat, but I go by common sense. And that's the reason why I voted for Trump,” said Shawn Harris.

An unemployed security guard, Harris suffered a medical crisis in January that left him unable to work. But he’s still waiting for a disability compensation. “When I see people who can come [to the US] from anywhere with no documentation got it better off than me and my ethnic group, and my ethnic group historically has built this country … I got a problem with it. That's something that doesn't work for me at all,” he said.

Shawn Harris, an unemployed security guard, is still awaiting disability compensation after a medical crisis suffered 11 months ago. © Barbara Gabel, FRANCE 24

'We'll be able to work together'

Some of the older Black men who own shops and run small businesses appeared to understand the frustrations of their younger “brothers” in the neighbourhood.

“As an entrepreneur, we have to make every dollar that is brought through the business,” said F-Alan Young, 52, who shares his printing business office with an auto insurance salesman.

“So, it looks a little bit different for entrepreneurs. Here in Detroit, you have two different types of people. You got the factory people, the professionals. And you have the entrepreneurs, very micro-businesses. And so, you know, we get along just fine,” said Young, who voted for Harris.

F-Alan Young in his office in Detroit on November 7, 2024. © Leela Jacinto, FRANCE 24

While Young voted for Harris, he said he’s not unduly worried about a second Trump presidency.

“Eight years ago, we thought the world was going to come down when Trump was elected president. It didn't,” he said. “We as a people, we are the people. We're bigger than the presidency as a whole, together. I think there are ways that we'll be able to work together and figure it out. So I'm not overly concerned.”

At “God’s World”, a religious books and supplies shop opposite the Greater Emmanuel church, Larry Robinson, 76, said he voted for Harris. “I was hoping she would win, but now that it did not happen, I embrace the new president. I embrace and try to pray for him, that he'll be a good president,” he said.

Over the course of seven decades, Robinson has seen this neighbourhood in happier times before Detroit turned into a metaphor for urban blight, earning the infamous title of “murder capital” in the 1970s and ‘80s.

In recent years, the Motor City has turned the economic corner by stabilising its finances, improving services and reviving several neighbourhoods. “It’s starting to change back,” said Robinson. “I see more and more people coming back to Detroit and I see people working together more, and I see people tolerate each other’s differences more.”

While the world worries about what another four years of a Trump presidency will bring, Robinson’s faith, in his country and church, remain unshaken.

“I have a T-shirt here that says, ‘No matter who's president. Jesus is Lord’,” he said, whipping around his shop to display his favourite merchandise these days.

Larry Robinson displays his favourite merchandise in his West Side, Detroit shop. 

© Leela Jacinto, FRANCE 24

“I’ve come to realise, in my old age, now that me and my family, my network, we have to look out for ourselves,” he said. “You've had Republicans get in office. Some did a great job, some didn't. You have Democrats that got in office, some did a great job, some didn’t. But the bottom line is what you and your people do for yourself. I have to focus on that. If they line up, I work with them. If they don't, I pray for them. And keep going. That's my philosophy."

Comment

Arab-American and Latinx voters are facing racism online over Trump’s election victory

Calls to deport people of colour who didn't vote Democrat are resounding on X, and they're pretty racist, if you ask us.

Images Staff
09 Nov, 2024
DAWN


The 2024 US election results have left Democratic party supporters in the US looking for someone to blame and of course, Arabs, Latinxs (a gender-neutral term to refer to men and women of Latin American heritage) and immigrants are easy targets. Kamala Harris’ loss — and Donald Trump’s victory — led to a storm of anger, blame, and xenophobia aimed largely at minorities and immigrant communities on social media.

These groups are being accused of ‘gifting’ Trump the presidency by not voting for Harris, and as a result, are being subjected to heated, often vitriolic reactions. From calls for mass deportation to wishes that minorities lose their citizenship, the comments have crossed into racist and Islamophobic territory.










“I hope every f****** Muslim who voted Trump gets to watch Bibi turn Gaza into a glass parking lot,” one X user wrote.

Others echoed similar sentiments, directing hate toward Muslim and Arab communities in Michigan, where Trump won a surprising portion of the vote in the traditionally Democratic Dearborn. Another comment added, “I hope they are all deported. And I can’t wait until Netanyahu gets the green light to turn Gaza into a parking lot.”






“Netanyahu bombs and obliterates a school in Gaza. He did this because we just elected Trump, who told him ‘finish it off’ — and this is what he meant. To the Arab voters in Michigan who voted for Trump — this is on YOU,” Cheri Jacobus, a political strategist, pundit and writer, tweeted.






Many in her replies rightly took jabs at her for “being asleep for a year” given Netanyahu has been bombing schools in Gaza since way before the elections.

But the hate kept coming. “Arabs think Trump will save Gazzans, well he will pour more gasoline to ignite ongoing genocide,” a user wrote. “And now they deserve what’s coming to them. No pity from me this time. I’II pack their bags myself,” another commented.






Some reactions were outright vicious, such as: “I HOPE HE DEPORTS THEM ALL TO THE GULFS (Arab and Muslim Trump voters) coming from one.” Another user piled on, “I hope they all get deported” in response to black immigrants voting for the Republican candidate. The racist rhetoric continued to rear its head in tweets such as, “F*** Latinos and Arabs. There. I said it. Hope you all get deported and banned.”





















“Trump promised religious extremism and white supremacy and American Arabs flocked to him like a fly to s*** like their white counterparts,” wrote one user.





What happened?

Trump gained massive support in communities of colour — including a 5.5-point shift in majority-Black counties and a 6.8-point increase in Latino-majority counties. Particularly in Dearborn, where Harris secured only 36.26 per cent of the vote compared to Trump’s 42.48pc.

A significant share of voters—18.37pc—opted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who campaigned on ending US support for Israeli military actions in Gaza. In contrast, Harris maintained a staunchly pro-Israel stance, alienating Muslim voters.

A major factor behind Harris’ loss in places like Dearborn was her foreign policy, including her wavering support of Israel. Her refusal to acknowledge growing frustrations within the Democratic base over US support for Israel’s actions in Gaza left many Muslim voters disillusioned.

During her campaign, Harris’s dismissive approach toward pro-Palestinian demonstrators who interrupted her rallies only heightened this frustration.

The political-frustration-turned-racism has raised questions about the way immigrants and minorities are viewed in the US. That these communities are being demonised not only for casting their ballots for the candidate of their choice but for ‘betraying’ the Democratic Party is a reflection of a deeper issue within the party. But rather than introspect on their candidate’s own failings, Democratic supporters are choosing to lay the blame squarely on people of colour who didn’t align with Harris’ policies.

‘Handmaid’s Tale’ sales skyrocket on bestseller charts after Trump win: report

Erik De La Garza

RAW STORY
November 8, 2024

"The Handmaid's Tale" has become a feminist rallying point for the #MeToo generation AFP/File / ALEJANDRO PAGNI

Sales of the futuristic dystopian novel "The Handmaid’s Tale" – along with other books with themes revolving around democracy, dystopia, feminism and far-right politics – shot up best-seller charts in the days following Donald Trump’s stunning election night victory, according to media reports.

As of Friday, the novel by Margaret Atwood, published in 1985, soared more than 400 spots to land as the third best-selling book on Amazon’s best-sellers chart, the Guardian reported. The novel later reached a new audience when it was adapted into a popular streaming series for Hulu.

Also on Amazon’s top 10 list include Sen. J.D. Vance’s novel “Hillbilly Elegy,” Timothy Snyder’s non-fiction book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century” and Melania Trump’s self-titled “Melania," which took the No. 1 spot.

Snyder's title saw a dramatic rise in sales, according to the Guardian, which noted that the book climbed "hundreds of places over the past day" to the No. 8 spot.” George Orwell’s “1984” currently sits at No. 13, while Fahrenheit 451 surged to Amazon's No. 17 spot.

“The sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments, has also experienced a spike in sales,” according to the Guardian, which noted that Atwood wrote in an Election Day social media post: “Despair is not an option. It helps no one.”


The publication added that Kamala Harris’ memoir, “The Truths We Hold,” rose nearly 2,000 places over the past day to No. 345 in the best-sellers chart.

QUACKS THERE GOES U$ HEALTHCARE

Climate crusader to vaccine skeptic RFK Jr to ‘Make America Healthy Again’

AS BAD AS IT IS, IT'S GOING TO GET WORSE


By AFP
November 8, 2024

Robert F. Kennedy Jr and President-elect Donald Trump, campaigning in Georgia in October -

 Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File Anna Moneymaker

Lucie AUBOURG

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime conspiracy theorist and opponent of vaccines, now has the ear of President-elect Donald Trump to promote what he’s calling the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.

It’s something of an unlikely alliance between the Kennedy family scion, once a celebrated environmental champion who called for prosecuting climate change deniers, and the returning Republican leader.

What they share, however, is a profound distrust of institutions. In the final stretch of the campaign, Trump announced that RFK Jr. would “have a big role in health care” if he won.

The announcement immediately raised alarm, given Kennedy’s reputation as a notorious vaccine skeptic.

Not long ago, though, Kennedy was a high-powered climate attorney and was even in the mix to become former president Barack Obama’s environment chief.

This makes him a complex figure, some experts say, who brings some valuable ideas to the table.

In recent days, he’s tried to reassure critics, telling NPR, “We’re not going to take vaccines away from anybody,” while adding, ominously, “We are going to make sure that Americans have good information.”

Kennedy has spent two decades promoting vaccine conspiracy theories, especially around Covid-19 shots — ironically, the very vaccines developed in record time under Trump’s first administration.

The nephew of the assassinated president John F. Kennedy, he was polling at around five percent of the popular vote before he withdrew to endorse Trump, to the dismay of his own family.



– MAHA –



Since then, the duo have been promoting the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement, a play on Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) slogan — having reportedly approached Vice President Kamala Harris for a role, without success.

His mission: “to transform our nation’s food, fitness, air, water, soil, and medicine,” he said in a video, his voice unsteady due to a neurological condition.

“Our big priority will be to clean up the public health agencies,” he declared, naming the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and more.

“Those agencies have become sock puppets for the industries that they’re supposed to regulate,” said the 70-year-old, echoing common progressive criticisms.

On X, he wrote: “If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”

He has also stirred controversy by suggesting he would stop the addition of fluoride to tap water — a practice aimed at preventing cavities that the CDC considers one of the top 10 health achievements of the 20th century.



– Cabinet position? –



Will he serve as an advisor or even health secretary? With a Republican Senate majority, a cabinet confirmation is now possible.

At a recent rally, Trump said that Kennedy — once arrested for protesting the Keystone XL pipeline — won’t be involved in his “Drill, baby, drill” agenda.

But he will be responsible for “women’s health”, Trump said in an announcement that angered Democrats already frustrated by Republican-led abortion restrictions.

Yet RFK Jr.’s stance on reproductive rights defies easy categorization. This spring, he defended a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy at any stage, saying, “Ultimately, I don’t trust government to have jurisdiction over people’s bodies.”

He later revised his position, favoring a ban after fetal viability, around 24 weeks — the limit set by a Supreme Court ruling that held sway for half a century before it was overturned in 2022, thanks to Trump-appointed justices.

– Healthy eating –

Kennedy will also tackle the nation’s food health, a curious task considering Trump’s well-known affection for McDonald’s.

America must end its chronic disease epidemic, says Kennedy, focusing in particular on obesity. But he’s also a fan of raw milk, a practice health experts strongly discourage.

In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Kennedy called for bringing prescription drug prices significantly down, citing the diabetes medication Ozempic — an issue championed by left wing Senator Bernie Sanders.

He also proposes preventing food stamp recipients from purchasing soda and ultra-processed foods, a policy “which I have advocated for the past 15 years,” Tom Frieden, CDC director under Obama, said in Stat News.

While agreeing with Kennedy’s focus on chronic disease, Frieden remains wary. “The MAHA combination of sound science, pseudo-science, and profiteering by so-called ‘wellness’ companies isn’t the answer.”

'A dangerous moment': Public health expert raises red flag about Trump's planned pick

Travis Gettys
November 8, 2024 

RAW STORY

CNN

Donald Trump has promised to give Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a major role overseeing public health, and an expert shuddered at what that could mean for Americans.

The president-elect has said he would allow Kennedy to “go wild” on health, food and medicine in some unspecified role in his second administration, and public health expert Dr. Paul Offit appeared Friday morning on CNN to discuss the dangers posed by the vaccine opponent's plans.

"To be honest, I can't believe we are having this conversation," said Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital, Philadelphia. "If you do know the science and technological advances have allowed us to live 30 years longer than we did 100 years ago. Now you have this man, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a science denialist, a virulent anti-vaccine activist and a conspiracy theorist, who will have some sway over public health."

"Nothing good can come of that," the physician added. "He denies those advances, he simply declares his own scientific truths. It's a dangerous moment."

Kennedy told a reporter that he would not ban vaccines but would instead allow people to make that choice for themselves, and Offit lambasted his reasoning.

"He said 'if vaccines are working for some people,'" said Offit, who helped develop an effective vaccine for rotavirus. "The polio vaccine has virtually eliminated a virus that caused 30,000 cases of paralysis and 1,500 deaths a year. [Other vaccines] virtually eliminated the 20,000 to 25,000 cases of meningitis and bloodstream infections. The diphtheria vaccine has eliminated what was the most common killer of teenagers. The pertussis or whooping cough vaccine has virtually eliminated 8,000 deaths. If vaccines are working? That doesn't make a bit of sense."

"I mean, he is a conspiracy theorist," Offit added. "You labeled him a vaccine skeptic. He's not a vaccine skeptic, I'm a vaccine skeptic. Everybody who sits around the table at the FDA advisory committee is a skeptic. Show us the data, show us the data – prove it is safe and effective. He's not a skeptic, he's a cynic who doesn't believe those data. He thinks there's a conspiracy to hide the truth, making him a dangerous man."

Watch below or click the link here

Why young men turned out in droves for Donald Trump

HETEROSEXIST TOXIC MASCULINITY

By AFP
November 8, 2024


US President-elect Donald Trump won male voters under 29, with some 49 percent of the vote compared to Kamala Harris's 47 percent -- shattering the image of young people as generally left-leaning - Copyright AFP Punit PARANJPE
Marion THIBAUT

Putting abortion rights front and center in her campaign, Kamala Harris thought she found a winning formula in courting women voters.

But it was Donald Trump who found victory, running up the margins on American men — particularly young men.

That young people as a whole tend to be more liberal was no deterrent to a US presidential campaign that capitalized on youth masculinity — tapping into interests such as fighting sports and cryptocurrency, as well as making appearances on male-dominated podcasts.

“If you are a man in this country and you don’t vote for Donald Trump, you’re not a man,” said Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist long focused on the youth vote.

Donald Trump won the presidency with 54 percent of men voting for the Republican, up slightly from the 51 percent that supported him in 2020, according to exit polling by NBC.

But what raised eyebrows was among younger voters aged 18-29, where 49 percent of men voted Trump — shattering previous images of young people generally leaning left.

As Elon Musk — tech bro, wealthy businessman and major Trump backer — put it on Election Day: “the cavalry has arrived.”

Trump’s gains come as a gender divide makes itself felt among young people at-large: women under 29 had a massive 61-37 Harris-Trump split.

“There is a lot of latent sexism in the US electorate, male and female members alike,” Tammy Vigil, an associate professor of media science at the University of Boston, told AFP.

“Trump’s campaign gave people permission to indulge their worst impulses and embrace divisiveness of many sorts.”



– ‘Tough’ Trump seen as a ‘leader’ –



Spencer Thomas, who voted for Harris, said the economy was on the mind of many of his peers who voted for Trump.

“They focused more on the economic policies and different things of that nature, rather than abortion rights,” said the student at Howard University, a historically Black college in Washington.

The macho energy of the Trump presidential run — eschewing political correctness, “wokeness” or other forms of liberal handwringing — won over plenty of Black men, despite the campaign’s outright racism at times.

Among Black men under 45, about three out of 10 voted for Trump — double the rate of the 2020 vote and blowing yet another hole in the Democrats’ traditional base.

As Democrats embark on their postmortem, trying to figure out what went wrong, there won’t be one simple explanation.

But “Black and Latino men could possibly overlook the racism of the Trump campaign because Trump appealed to their sense of machismo,” Vigil offered.

Trump going on the “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, where listeners overwhelmingly skew young and male, “was about trying to motivate young men to turn out,” said Kathleen Dolan, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

“The rest of his performance of masculinity was to appeal to his base, women and men, who like him because they think he is ‘tough’ and a ‘leader’ and clearly aren’t offended by the things he says,” she told AFP.

Whatever Trump’s x-factor was, it scratched an itch.

According to exit polling from Edison Research, some 54 percent of Latino men voted for Trump on Tuesday — a whopping 18 percentage point gain for Republicans compared to 2020.

New Trump admin to deliver 'body blow' to unions after courting union workers: report

Brad Reed

RAW STORY
November 8, 2024 

President-elect Donald Trump courted union voters during his successful 2024 presidential bid, and now Bloomberg reports that his incoming administration is poised to deliver a "body blow" to organized labor that has enjoyed a significant renaissance under President Joe Biden's administration.

While Biden's administration has helped multiple unions score big new contracts and organizing victories, as well as eliminating noncompete clauses that hold workers back, Trump's last National Labor Relations Board was far more hostile to organized labor and his next one could be even more so.

"The last time Trump ran the government, however, he filled key enforcement roles with management-side attorneys who pushed for companies to have more control over workers’ tips, more time to run anti-union campaigns and more discretion over who gets paid overtime," writes Bloomberg, before adding, "Now that he’s had some practice, he’s likely to do more, faster."

What's more, Bloomberg notes that the GOP blueprint Project 2025 "calls for the loosening of laws governing safety, nondiscrimination and child labor, and floats eliminating public-sector unions" all together.

Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California at Santa Barbara, tells Bloomberg that he expects a second Trump administration will deliver "a warrant for employers to do whatever they want."

But Jennifer Abruzzo, the general counsel for Biden's NLRB, warns that Trump could be playing with fire if he undercuts the work she and her colleagues have done in making life easier for unions.

"I think workers are going to take matters into their own hands," she said.

Expect 'mini-crusades' as government crumbles under Trump: analyst

Matthew Chapman
November 8, 2024 

  RAW STORY


Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump makes a campaign speech at the Johnny Mercer Theatre Civic Center in Savannah, Georgia, U.S. September 24, 2024. REUTERS/Megan Varner/File Photo


Former President Donald Trump and his allies have no plans to fix anything in government, and instead, they'll make a big show out of purging enemies from the civil service while shirking any responsibility for the ill consequences.

That's according to Marc Fisher who wrote in The Washington Post,"The rapscallions of the right are salivating over the scrumptious smorgasbord of opportunities for mischief that the District of Columbia represents."

"The pirates aboard the 'Trump Revenge Tour' need not pack an overnight bag because Washington has it all: a plump platoon of public servants ready to be sacked; a sad downtown emptied out by federal workers still enjoying covid-era downtime at home; a tax-happy city government struggling to improve troubled schools, provide safe streets and build decent housing," he wrote.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's plan to reshape the government for the GOP, calls for mass purges of the civil service and transformation of the federal workforce into a partisan army. Trump will do all this in spades, wrote Fisher — but don't expect him to care about what any of it does to the government or to people's daily lives.

"Sure, there’ll be some ritual firings, and every GOP administration loves to smack D.C. around," wrote Fisher — indeed, even Democratic presidents sometimes overturn D.C.'s decisions. "But does anyone think Trump will be eager to take on the challenge of addressing the 20 percent math proficiency rate among D.C. middle-schoolers? Will the middle managers of the Project 2025 Brigade really want to run D.C.’s sprawling bureaucracies and take the heat when the sewers back up, shoplifting worsens and school attendance remains shockingly low?"

None of that will be on the agenda, he continued, because Trump wants "credit, not responsibility."

"He will, as ever, look for showy ways to spotlight any lefty lunacies his foot soldiers find in the bloated federal workforce or in the region’s many woke institutions," he wrote. "They’ll mount mini-crusades against diversity, equity and inclusion departments, heavy-handed curriculums, and Maoist campus radicals. But actually run stuff? Make things better? Sorry, wrong channel."

And the reason is simple, he concluded: "Here on the Grievance Network, the show is about complaints, not solutions."

Pentagon preps for possible Trump order to deploy troops on Americans: report

Daniel Hampton
November 8, 2024 

The Pentagon is bracing for "major upheaval" ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's second term, according to CNN, with officials already holding informal talks about how the Defense Department will respond if Trump orders to deploy active-duty military troops on his own citizens and makes good on promises to boot large swaths of workers. (Screengrab via CNN)

The Pentagon is bracing for "major upheaval" ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's second term, according to CNN, with officials already holding informal talks about how the Defense Department will respond if Trump orders it to deploy active-duty military troops on his own citizens and makes good on promises to boot large swaths of workers.

Trump insinuated during his campaign he could use the military as a law enforcement mechanism to carry out his plan for mass deportations, and that he would replace government workers with loyalists.

CNN reported Friday that the Pentagon is preparing for an overhaul and is mapping out scenarios ahead of time.

“We are all preparing and planning for the worst-case scenario, but the reality is that we don’t know how this is going to play out yet,” one defense official told CNN.

The department is also preparing for Trump and his appointees to issue illegal directives.

“Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders,” another defense official told CNN. “But the question is what happens then – do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?”

CNN's Kristen Holmes told anchor Jake Tapper on Friday the top contenders for several Cabinet positions have met with the Trump team's transition leaders. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Bill Haggert (R-TN) are in the running for se
More names could be unveiled Friday, said Holmes, and Trump has been taking calls at Mar-a-Lago and going over a list of names.


The administration picked Susie Wiles for chief of staff to set a "no-nonsense" tone, Holmes reported.

Watch the clip below or at this link.