Who knew a font could be woke? U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has asked diplomats to ditch Calibri and return to using Times New Roman in official communications. The State Department adopted Calibri in 2023 because it's considered a more accessible font for people with disabilities. A cable sent to diplomats yesterday read: “To restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program, the Department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface." Here's more from @.
Here's the official #StateDepartment notice about requiring #visa applicants (and soon holders) to the United States saying you MUST turn all your social media accounts to PUBLIC.
This is absolute madness. Do not comply. Do Not Come to the United States. The government will attack you. We have gulags. Literally, concentration camps where the living conditions are beyond horrific.
Please, there are thousands of fantastic universities everywhere else. Canada, Europe, Asia...anywhere but here. Please, for your own safety, and the safety of everyone you have ever talked to online, DO NOT COMPLY.
Sign taped to a mirror in a State Department bathroom, with 2 stalls and a window in its reflection. Sign reads, "Colleagues, if you remain: RESIST FASCISM Remember the oath you vowed to uphold."
"Fascist movements have been "draining swamps" for generations. Publicizing false charges of corruption while engaging in corrupt practices is typical of fascist politics, and anticorruption campaigns are frequently at the heart of fascist political movements. Fascist politicians characteristically decry corruption in the state they seek to take over, which is bizarre, given that fascist politicians themselves are invariably vastly more corrupt than those they seek to supplant or defeat."
Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them
So at this point in the Keltpo Kaiser's funhouse mirror presidency, is anyone surprised to learn the regime is using ongoing trade negotiations under Trump's tariff framework to pressure other countries to greenlight Elon Musk's Starlink satellite company in their nations? I'd guess it's not, but given how terrible everything about Trump's scheme to leverage tariffs for trade concessions have been for the American people, it's worth pointing out that at least part of why the regime is conducting a global trade war is to make Elon richer and more powerful, with no real benefit to the United States at all.
'The Corruption Is Staggering': Trump Officials Push Tariffed Nations to Approve Musk's Starlink
"Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the U.S.-based consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said in response to the Post's reporting that "the glaring conflict of interest inherent in this pressure to preference a Musk-owned company is disgusting."
"The bottom line here is that tools of trade and government should be utilized for the benefit of the American public, not abused for personal tech bro profiteering," Gilbert added.
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called the revelations "a huge new scandal."
"Trump and Musk are using tariffs as leverage to get other countries to buy from Musk's companies. Working families pay $4,000+ more a year so Musk gets new deals," Casar wrote on social media. "They get richer. Everyone else gets screwed."
There's something strange about the way the the fascist activities of the Trump regime, and the anti-human apocalyptic futurism of Musk himself, render stories about mere obscene levels of corruption between the regime and the world's richest nazi something of a side note. The fact is however that cratering the entire American economy so Elon Musk can get Starlkink deals around the world is a grotesque level of corruption and criminality that would, under other circumstances, sink entire US administrations. As American storeshelves start to empty over the next month, folks have a right to know that they can't buy everyday goods at normal prices because Elon needs more toys and international influence, and Trump owes him his seat in the White House.
Finally, while I honestly break out in hives every time I hear the words "national security," I'm absolutely baffled that foreign governments would even consider giving Elon Musk control over their communications apparatus through Starlink, to any degree, at all. I mean we're talking about an unhinged Nazi who thinks we're in a race war for the future of human civilization and our destiny as a species is to create an AI god and/or colonize Mars; no matter how many bodies it takes. Even setting aside that he's a comic book villain, he's also working directly with a fascist Trump regime that's openly talking about bombing Mexico, annexing Canada, and occupying Greenland; these are not the kinda people you want to trust with critical communications in a crisis or heaven forbid, a war. Welcoming Musk into your most sensitive operations, at this point in human history, might be one of the dumbest ideas ever proposed.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is rolling out the first stage of overhauling the department he runs by cutting 132 domestic offices, around 700 positions in Washington, DC, and closing offices focused on war crimes and global conflict. Read more from @CNN https://flip.it/O5imnp #StateDepartment#US#Rubio#MarcoRubio#Trump
“Border controls are most severely deployed by those Western regimes that create mass displacement, and are most severely deployed against those whose very recourse to migration results from the ravages of capital and military occupations. . . We are all, therefore, simultaneously separated by and bound together by the violences of border imperialism.”
Even as the Trump regime appears poised to ultimately lose a number of cases revolving around instant visa revocations for anti-genocide foreign student protestors, Downmarket Mussolini's purse dog at State, Marco Rubio, is looking to expand the tactic to target Chinese foreign students; and the ominous context of this move suggests to me that we might be in for a bumpy ride if this really is going in the direction I think it's headed.
'This Will Hurt Us As Much As It Hurts Them': Trump Admin Says It Will Revoke Visas of Chinese Students
"The U.S. State Department announced on Wednesday that it is working with the Department of Homeland Security to "aggressively revoke" visas that have been issued to Chinese students—sparking a rebuke from China's government and anxiety among Chinese students.
The Trump administration is endeavoring to revoke visas for students that hail from China, "including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields," according to a short statement from the State Department. "We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong."
Even taken at face value, this policy shift is authoritarian, racist, and alarming. The power Rubio is attempting to exert here is about protecting American national security in the event of a crisis on par with an impeding war; it's not intended as a method for the Trump regime to get back at China for criticism over Downmarket Mussolini's unhinged trade policies. Even under the most benign interpretation of Rubio's actions here, this is still Trump repurposing the apparatus of the American state to prosecute his personal grievances.
Of course, we as observers who just watched the Pork Reich use this exact same process to justify kidnapping and attempting to deport foreign student anti-genocide protestors as part of a larger authoritarian plot to use "fighting antisemitism" as a justification for installing a new McCarthyism, have no reason to assume the most benign scenario here. Are we to expect the US government to begin kidnapping Chinese students and shipping them to ICE private detention hellholes now? If that happens, how do you figure the Chinese government is going to feel about it? Regardless of what you think about Palestine and Hamas, they don't have nukes and international economic power; China does. Does anyone know what the phrase "critical fields," means in this context and does it bother you that it's so vague? Are we worried about Chinese students stealing our crappier AI technology or some bullshit? Does it seem rational to anyone who isn't a Sinophobe nazi to kick a hornet's nest like this one, because Trump had some feel bads about social media posts from Chinese officials?
While I wish I could stop there, in a Project Esther world every bit of repressive policy based on foreign relations and winger anticommunism is a possible vector for ideological policing and the elimination of what the nazis classify broadly as "the radical American left" - a group that includes Democrat politicians and apparently, the hosts of The View. The sleight of hand the regime is employing to conflate anti-Zinonism and opposition to a genocide with anti-Americanism and material support for our "enemies," can be just as easily applied to China and a very broad, Bircher definition of "communism." In fact, I'd argue decades of American anticommunist rhetoric would make that application even easier and more effective in the public discourse. If you take a look at what the folks behind the 1776 Commission, and Project 2025 define as "communism" there's an unreasonable argument that anyone advocating for racial, gender, or social equality is a communist. Ditto for folks advocating for regulations on capitalism, labor rights, or even the separation of church and state; the possibilities are pretty endless given what these folks call "communism." From there it's only a short little hop to "China is communism, therefore communism is China" and you've got a whole new application of Project Esther techniques to work with in your quest to crush all political opposition to the Trump regime.
Are these nazis really prepared to repurpose a global trade struggle with China to install a martial law-style police state? Who knows; but if you listen to guys like Stephen Miller talk for about five minutes, you'll realize why I think assuming they don't intend to go the full nine yards, is a very bad idea indeed.
So uh, what stage of "you can't call it fascism!"TM is it when Downmarket Mussolini sends the immigration Gestapo that pretty much answers to only him, to unlawfully arrest student protest leaders who legally in the country, and disappear them into the labyrinth of the American migrant carceral complex?
Ice arrests Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia protests, lawyer says
"Mahmoud Khalil was at his university-owned apartment, blocks from the private Ivy League university’s main campus in New York when several Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents entered the building and took him into custody, his attorney, Amy Greer, told the Associated Press.
One of the agents told Greer by phone that they were executing a state department order to revoke Khalil’s student visa. Informed by the attorney that Khalil, who graduated last December, was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking that too, according to the lawyer.
The arrest comes as Donald Trump vows to deport foreign students and imprison “agitators” involved in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza."
As the story goes on to mention, Khalil, who is Palestinian, is in the United States on a legally-issued Green Card, which cannot be revoked by either ICE Gestapo pigs or our fascist State Department without the order of an immigration judge; which makes this an unlawful arrest and detention. What the story doesn't discuss however is that Khalil's wife, who is eight months pregnant, is an American citizen. I mention these things not because it would somehow be "okay" for the fascist Trump regime to snatch up a student leader for the (not illegal) "crime" of protesting a genocide if he only had a student visa, or his wife wasn't a U.S. Citizen, but to point out that clearly the administration and its security forces do not give a flying fuck about any of the rules they're violating or laws they're breaking to punish dissent. Furthermore, reports posted on social media by a person identifying themselves as Khalil's lawyer, indicate that the Department of Homeland Security has already moved Mahmoud, possibly as far as Georgia, and thus he does not have access to legal representation. If this were Middle Eastern country with oil reserves, our establishment would rightfully note that the regime has thus effectively "disappeared" what amounts to a political prisoner.
Folks, I don't want to sound like a broken record here, but like I've been telling you (even long before Trump was re-elected) the fact is that fascists don't give a fuck the about laws, rules, or standard operating procedures. If the law can be used to justify seizing power, eliminating civil rights, and punishing enemies they're happy to employ it. But if not, they'll replace or simply ignore any rule that gets in the way of the attempts to purge the opposition and transform society into the full on fascist dictatorship of their dreams. You don't get to let this one slide because "he's not an American," you don't care about Gaza, or you've been taught to hate student protestors by your media and the larger ruling class establishment. If Americans (including the nominal opposition in the US establishment) stand by and watch this happen to folks like Mahmoud Khalil, then it is an absolute historical certainty that it is only a matter of time before Trump is sending jackbooted thugs after anyone who won't goosestep along with the fascist order - and that includes figures in our complicit media and political classes. A whole bunch of affluent liberals have spent the past couple of years tossing around historical warnings about how Nazism and the Holocaust happened in Germany; now its time to prove you understand the lessons those words were trying to teach you about resisting the slide into overt fascism before it goes far enough that you can no longer stop it - because I assure you, if you tolerate this then (you and) your children will be next.
In that same vein, I'd like to talk a little more about the regime's pattern of identifying the "criminal" they want to target, before determining what "crime" they're being charged with, in regards to its targeting of foreign students who expressed anti-genocide sentiments while legally studying in the United States. Nowhere is the authoritarian inversion of the process of legal enforcement more apparent than in the abduction, detainment, and attempted deportation of Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University student targeted by the regime for writing an op-ed calling for the school to divest from its financial relationships with companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel, as it commits a genocide in Gaza.
What makes Öztürk's case so revealing is that we have access to a State Department memo that shows Foggy Bottom knew the regime had no case against her, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio was advised to use his (presumed) authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act to accomplish the desired goal - attempting to deport Öztürk for her completely legal exercise of free speech rights to criticize her school and its support for a genocide.
State Department Found No Evidence of DHS’s Reasons for Abducting Tufts Student
"The Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing a State Department memo, that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had not provided any evidence of Öztürk engaging in activity labelled antisemitic or “terrorist” supporting. Additionally, searches of government databases did not turn up any evidence of Öztürk participating in terrorism-related activity.
As a result, Secretary of State Marco Rubio lacked grounds to revoke her visa under certain immigration provisions allowing him to do so. Instead, the department recommended a different authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act that legal experts cited by the Post say allow Rubio to revoke immigration status that does not require “a rationale and explanation and evidence.”
The agency recommended a “silent” revocation of Öztürk’s visa as part of that authority, the memo reportedly says, meaning that the administration would not notify her of the action.
Days later, immigration agents “disappeared” Öztürk, with footage showing that they swarmed her on the street outside of her home and forced her into an unmarked car."
Folks, this is literally the smoking gun that proves what anyone who isn't a disingenuous apologist already knows in their heart; the Trump regime is transforming the law into a weapon to punish protestors, intimidate dissidents, and suppress the free speech of folks who oppose Israel's ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. These fascist jackanapes are literally so incompetent that their own memos prove they're inverting the legal process to target portions of their political opposition in a very visible type of fascist ideological policing. Anyone still arguing that this isn't a fascist government while the Trump regime itself is more or less shouting "yes we're doing fascism" in its internal memos, is either a fool, or thinks you are.
@w7voa
Juan Guaidó was the recognized by the US leader of #Venezuela 6 years ago without a single vote cast for him. I saw him getting applause in the State of the Union. The #StateDepartment is obviously gaslighting the American people and once a liar shows themselves to be liars trust in their shameless ability to bald face lie again and again.
The #Biden admin paused the shipment of thousands of weapons to #Israel, including controversial 2k-pound bombs, amid mounting concern about the country’s plan to expand a military operation in southern #Gaza that could dramatically increase the conflict’s death toll, U.S. ofcls said Tues.
When asked about the delays earlier Tues, #StateDepartment spox Matthew Miller declined to offer a rationale but said that US support for Israel’s right to defend itself against #Hamas remains intact.
[nonanswer answer]
In Washington, #US military support for #Israel receives overwhelming support from #Republicans & #Democrats in #Congress…