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freddydeknatel.bsky.social
Executive Editor, Democracy in Exile, the journal of DAWN @dawnmenaorg.bsky.social | Previously @ World Politics Review @wpr.bsky.social & Foreign Affairs @foreignaffairs.com | https://dawnmena.org/about/who-we-are-2/frederick-deknatel/
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How it started. How it’s going

“Somewhere behind it all is a political program, like the agenda of the Second Ku Klux Klan refracted through tech supremacy and meme-space.” @tomscocca.bsky.social defector.com/the-country-...

Trump’s attacks on DEI are part of a neo-segregationist agenda to restore a “past where racial and ethnic minorities were the occasional token presence” in a white America—to “repeal the gains of the civil-rights era in their entirety.” @adamserwer.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

“The way that it’s often framed is: ‘Tell me, on a scale of 1 to 10, how worried you are that H5N1 is going to go pandemic.’ I think the more important question is, if it does, how screwed are we? And the answer is: really.” 😐 @edyong209.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/m...

New poetry in Democracy in Exile: "Civilian Targets," by Vaheed Ramazani. @dawnmenaorg.bsky.social “Some forty-five civilians had been residing in the three-story house in Rafah when it was destroyed by an Israeli air strike at 11:45am on December 14, 2023.” dawnmena.org/civilian-tar...

This isn’t just rooting out “diversity initiatives” but diversity itself. A Trump purge to ensure the senior ranks are all white.

“Lawmakers should consider how they will explain in the coming years why America could no longer stop a disease outbreak overseas from reaching the homeland. Or why thousands of children who depended on lifesaving nutritional supplies made in American plants were left to die.”

A “halt spending flowchart” sent to the USDA “flatly declared that certain spending Congress had approved, including through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, should be frozen.” So, defying courts and subverting Article I. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/u...

“They’re scared shitless about death threats and Gestapo-like stuff” - a former member of Trump’s first administration www.vanityfair.com/news/story/t...

"They're putting persecuted Christian refugees in camps in the jungle" sounds like something Glenn Beck would accuse the Obama administration of doing and yet now it's a pillar of the Republican agenda.

Ok, maybe Hochul gets it.

"Trump Might Have a Case on Being King"

This is a wildly reckless headline and summary. No, “savings” are something Congress and the President do together. This is Elon deciding personally to *illegally* turn off Congressionally mandated funding.

Some rare goods news, despite the situation Bensedrine is still in. As Eric Goldstein wrote in Democracy in Exile last year, her detention aimed "to silence one of Tunisia's most steadfast critics of human rights abuses and of Saied's descent into authoritarianism." dawnmena.org/tunisia-appo...

"Like many villages closest to the Israeli border, the level of destruction in Khiam has rendered it uninhabitable. With Israeli forces finally gone, the town is free but its residents homeless." Alex Martin Astley reports from south Lebanon for Democracy in Exile: dawnmena.org/there-are-no...

So is Ken Klippenstein going to call this a "good thing" too?

When you want to abolish the administrative state but replace it with an omnipotent executive who is above any court:

It’s almost like the “cost-cutting” is a smokescreen for hijacking federal agencies Trump and Musk don’t like, and then passing trillions in tax cuts for the ultra-rich.

“Among the records the federal government keeps at the I.R.S. and elsewhere is corporate information, including about companies that Musk competes with.“ www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/u...

Confirmation hearings in which Democratic senators ask Trump nominees to pledge this or that are a farce. And the Republican senators who claim they got assurances that swayed their supposedly reluctant vote, well, that was also a lie. apnews.com/article/chil...

@gideonrachman.bsky.social on the aftermath of Vance in Munich: “A prominent German politician told me: ‘That was a direct assault on European democracy.’ A senior diplomat said: ‘It’s very clear now, Europe is alone.’ When I asked him if he now regarded the US as an adversary, he replied: ‘Yes.’”

Compare this clear statement of journalist principles with the quick capitulation of Axios to Trump’s dictate.

Tired: Asking the Supreme Court to overrule Humphrey's Executor Wired: Deeming the Supreme Court irrelevant and simply ignoring Humphrey's Executor (and plenty of other things)

SCOOP: Trump administration has been evaluating the costs of destroying or disposing of tens of millions of coronavirus tests that would otherwise be provided free to Americans. My story w/ Carolyn Y. Johnson. www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/...

Compare this clear statement of journalist principles with the quick capitulation of Axios to Trump’s dictate.

New AP statement responding to Trump's comment that "we are going to keep them out:" "This is about the government telling the public and press what words to use and retaliating if they do not follow government orders." (1/2)

"American democracy ceased to move forward as a living force in the 1980s. Given the impetus of what was billed as the Reagan Revolution, old-line Tory republicanism has grown into the petrified forest of a selfish and frightened plutocracy distilled in the essence of Trump." -Lewis Lapham, 2020

I think we all remember "The Trouble with Trillions," right?

DOGE in practice: Disabled Army veteran who has 4 kids and did 3 tours overseas is fired from his job at Bronx VA hospital

FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: "Wikipedia defines the New Deal as...."

Playbook, the must-read morning newsletter for writers copying and pasting from Wikipedia.

"Musk’s apparent political goal is to convert the US state into Donald Trump’s personal instrument. That can only be accomplished through fear and strict loyalty tests." @edwardluce.bsky.social This is state capture by executive order. www.ft.com/content/9ac3...

This is Lavrov laughing to himself, still trying to understand the Kremlin's luck: “We weren’t just listening to each other, but we heard each other,” Lavrov said afterward. “I have reason to believe that the American side started to better understand our positions.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/w...

“There is no way to overstate how serious a breach this is.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/u...

Annexation will not be like flipping a switch. It will be like this.