Andrea Pitzer (0:00)

You're listening to. Next comes what from Degenerate Art. This is Andrea Pitzer. Each week we'll look at one aspect of authoritarianism to figure out how we got where we are and how to fight back. Be sure to stay to the end for concrete things that you can do. And subscribe@Andreapitzer.com so that this podcast can remain free for everyone. Elon Musk's Incel Clown Posse has gained illegal access to our personal information this week while their patron rejoices over sentencing people to death around the globe and threatening grandmothers to be turned out on the street here at home. And this is only one part of what Musk is doing. In week two of the new administration, Donald Trump and his billionaire buddies are determined to take over this government to make it work better for themselves and worse for everyone else. And this is just the start. The day that the U.S. agency for International Development was shut down this week, I went down to its main building to have a look around myself to try to get a better sense of what was going on. But I'll talk more about that in a minute. Nope, Nothing is normal at this point. Decent Americans are horrified. I have certain hatreds of people, too. I won't even pause to imagine what the rest of the world is thinking at this moment. I have a little hard time understanding you. Where are you from? Actually? It's a beautiful voice and a beautiful accent. Most people I have the sense, are waiting for someone to act. Breaking news. Musk dismantling the government. We are witnessing this open attempt to destroy the institutions that do the most to protect the nation. By the way, Elon Musk's role is an advisory role, correct? Let's be clear about that. He is not going to be slashing. We're going to be making that final determination as members of Congress. And I should also just say Elon doesn't think that that's the case because he's been saying pretty point blank, this is going away. We've gotten rid of this, we've gotten rid of that, and the money has stopped flowing. As writer Tom Skoca wrote just the other day, we are functionally in a dictatorship at the moment. Make no mistake, this is a major coup for Musk. There's a great deal that we can and should do to resist that dynamic. But right now, as Skoka said, Donald Trump has claimed powers that systematically violate the law and the Constitution, and he has delegated much of the work of carrying out his unlawful orders to the unelected Elon Musk. And a group of likewise unelected subordinates. All of our reporting indicates they are between the ages of 19 and 24. They are either recent high school or recent college graduates. High school. High school graduates in at least one case, all with ties to either Musk owned companies or Peter Thiel owned companies. So one is a former Palantir intern, another interned at SpaceX. There's just no way to put the lipstick on that pig. Even right wing think tanks that would like to see the US social safety net and foreign aid programs demolished are shocked at what's happening and they're calling it a constitutional crisis. I think we can't minimize what's happening before our eyes. What I see are all the telltale signs of a coup. A coup is a seizure of state power by unelected actors who work to take over the critical infrastructure of government outside of the rule of law. The President definitely has people with evil intentions installed in Washington, D.C. right now. With more coming, tonight's Senate Democrats are holding an all night session in an effort to stall a vote on Russell Vaught, President Trump's nominee for the Office of Management and Budget. Vaught is one of the authors of Project 2025. He's now nominated the very people who wrote the playbook for reshaping our entire democratic republic into their dystopian image. This is radical, this is extreme, this is undemocratic. But among the general public, the simple truth is that most people aren't evil, they're cowards. And even people who don't necessarily approve of Trump aren't likely to stand against these kinds of operations if it feels safer to keep their heads down, if they feel isolated and vulnerable. In the 1950s, Hannah Arendt identified that there is but one thing necessary for a totalitarian regime to have success. Dr. Arendt explains that this thing was a dynamic of isolation and loneliness. Today I want to talk about what happened at USAID on Monday and why it's critical for us to build communities right now, today to show up and take hold of a storyline that will let us reestablish a democracy. In public. I want to talk about what role elected officials might have in that and what role the public could take. The good news is that it's very possible to do. It can be done, but we have to do it ourselves right now. What happened on Monday in D.C. was a start. A group of U.S. representatives, including Jamie Raskin, Gerry Connolly, Ilhan Omar, Johnny Ashensky, Jim McGovern, Suhas Subramanyam, Sarah Elfreth and Dawn Beyer, my congressman, were there, as well as Senators Chris Van Hollen and Brian Schatz and Chris Murphy. Let's make it very clear that every single day America is safer because of what happens at usaid. They held a press event in front of the main USAID building condemning the role that Musk has taken on and the President's obvious disregard for the law. We're here today to shine a light on a crime that is unfolding before our eyes and support our tremendous U.S. civil servants and USAID. They talked about the outrages that were being perpetrated. I'm hearing from my constituents who work for USAID and USAID contractors in Maryland, in Washington, all over the world. And they're telling us that this is a killer in terms of their cutoff of HIV and AIDS preemption. It's a killer. They talked about what is happening with the courts in terms of fighting back. Since we don't have many Republican colleagues who want to help us, we. We are doing everything we can with our colleagues through the courts to make sure that we uphold the rule of law, stop this illegal shutdown of aid and stop the other illegal actions around the around the government. After that, they tried to enter the building to get answers. I caught Congressman Beyer afterward, and he talked about how showing up and calling attention to the damage caused by Trump's policies can help make them unpopular. Attention to public opinion. You change public opinion, you change the way he acts. He noted the examples of the tariffs that was unfolding as we spoke. Good example today is the stock market went down 700 points and he put a pause on the tariffs. Well, we need public opinion to say this is outrageous. Don't do this. And maybe he'll reign Elon Musk in. If we can let people know what's happening, if we can make things unpopular, he said, Trump will back down. Mexican president did what? Did you blink this morning? There was no blanking. Even though the officials had been turned away just inside the entrance of the building. Them going in made an important point. Well, according to President Claudia Scheinbaum, she brought up the. Can we have a pause? President Trump said to her, well, how long do you want? And she said, well, how about forever? And there was some laughing about that. They came to bear witness to a building of the US Government shut down illegally and barring US Officials from entering to do oversight for the people. The crowd there was galvanized and had a place to focus. There was coverage that would let other people see visuals of participation, public speech and Protest against government action. What I was able to piece together from dozens of conversations around the world. We know malaria vaccines in Africa, some of those programs have stopped. There's concern in Africa also as an Ebola outbreak is beginning there. We also know the international system to monitor famine, which is called the Famine Early Warning System. Let's look at that website, what that looks like right now. Also down. So those trying to monitor famine around the world on this US Program cannot access it. People have been looking for answers everywhere. And the crowd that I talked to on Monday was no exception. I spoke with several who were, not surprisingly, former USAID employees or workers with NonProfit Partners of USAID. And I may do a separate piece, sort of more focused on policy at a later point. But just in summary, they were calling what happened an atrocity. They were worrying over the lives that would be affected and perhaps even ended around the world. It wasn't just the tremendous food aid that's given out, but seeds for farming programs on everything from violence prevention to civic education. The list just went on and on. And the narrative that Musk is spinning about the agency was not just wrong, they were saying it was the opposite of what they were actually doing. What would the impact of a major reduction in US International aid mean for HIV care globally? When it comes to how many lives could be at stake, just this would be a catastrophic impact. And overall, over 20 million lives have been saved because of the work that USCID and PEPFA does. They lamented the lack of any understanding of soft power by Trump and Musk and worried whether the public would even understand what was going on. And just last year, 2023, over half a million people died of HIV. So HIV is not over. The global AIDS response has relied on upon USAID has relied upon pepfar. This will be a catastrophic impact that it will have on babies and on mothers, on people, but also on America's national security. Every person I talked to spoke first about the people around the world and in the US that would be jeopardized by Musk's actions. Because again, this is really crucial. If USCID was to get canceled, the US Government has invested billions of dollars in the HIV response will become nothing. But they were of course later also mentioning their concern about their own well being. They wanted more done. They wanted answers. They wanted some kind of accountability. And by creating a press event, those people themselves were able to get the word out. Many of them indicated that elected officials showing up at least felt like someone was acknowledging what was going on in a more substantial way. Than just criticizing the president online. I personally have a long history of being suspicious of simple narratives, particularly in politics. Trump deploys them relentlessly. They tend to be inane. The numbers. Some of the numbers are horrible. What he's found 100. Think of it. $100 million on condoms to Hamas. Condoms to Hamas. They're often deliberately used to manipulate people as shortcuts to actual thinking or to provoke cheap sentiment. But in this case, it is a terrible weakness in this moment that those who oppose Trump and Musk haven't established a narrative of opposition and hope. Something both expansive enough to capture the imagination of different political and social demographics, yet specific enough to point to clear and common goals. Privileged billionaires who don't give a damn about America and Americans should not be making decisions that put Americans at harm. In my head I think of that narrative as a more perfect union, the opposite of exclusionary billionaire run money grabs that aim to end self government. But I'm sure somebody can come up with a better name than that. The main point is that we need something. What kind of country are we becoming? It is embarrassing to read the headlines about free America where one man is walking around like he is the boss of all of us and we don't know who put him in charge. And it is time for us to put an end to that. The president's policies are unpopular and will only become more so as people see their effects. We have to seize this window in which we can still act freely and give people something to identify with. We are living a nightmare created by Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and we need to wake up. We need to use every every tool we have to fight back. Establishing that narrative is something that we can help with by demanding our elected officials lead, by leading ourselves and by supporting one another. That is work that we are going to have to do ourselves through local projects and independent media and by creating stories that will get in front of people at a grassroots level. Right now, our national media is divided into two groups. One group that traditionally doing actual reporting is in chaos. Make no mistake, this is a major coup for Musk. They are enthralled to the delusion of finding a magic formula of reporting that will reach and please Trump's followers, who want a very specific narrative while keeping their existing readership base. In some cases, they're jettisoning all reporting or any editorial legitimacy by censoring staff or courting Trump directly. Settlement discussions between representatives of CBS News parent company Paramount and President Donald Trump have begun. At the time, Trump sued The network media experts dismissed the case as a last ditch effort to sue a network Trump and his allies do not like. But now that Trump is back in the White House, he has far more power over the network's future. Even if the lawsuit has no merit, the Trump administration could toy with CBS News broadcast license. Paramount and Skydance Media are additionally trying to merge to create new Paramount in a deal valued at $8 billion at best. They are reporting on this power grab as if it were standard electoral politics or sporting event, because that's what they've evolved to cover. USAID is a big organization. They do spend money on a whole lot of things. And I'm not blaming individual reporters here. I'm talking about the broader phenomenon of what's going on. There's a lot of great people doing great work and it's not working right now. Nope, nothing is normal. The other group of national outlets in the information zone specifically evolved as political propaganda and Musk is Trump's hammer. What he's done in two weeks has shocked everyone. Musk is loving it. He had an office in the West Wing, but he thought it was too small, so he's reportedly moved to the much bigger Secretary of War suite in the Executive Office building. I guess that's appropriate because he has declared war on wasteful government spending, which means two thirds of country is either not getting any information at all because they're disconnected, or they're not getting any true information about what's happening because they only see propaganda. Instead of understanding that effectively with the settlement of the Canadian and Mexican tariff question for the next month, that nothing has effectively changed. But instead of seeing that story, they're going to be seeing stories about how Mexico and Canada caved to Trump and that he is protecting Americans from criminal immigrants. President Trump unleashing an immigration enforcement machine, carrying out his promise to secure our southern border and the northern one. The podcasts and shows that this part of the country sees, if they see anything, are never going to show them that Trump's policies are the opposite of what many of them actually want when they're asked. The United states imports roughly 70% of its crude oil from Canada and Mexico. And though Trump has indicated that there may be a 10% tariff on petroleum products instead of the 25% tariff being applied to the other sectors, the Council on Foreign Relations suggests that American consumers can expect to see gas prices gas prices rise at least 50 cents per gallon. We need to find the language that can share a spare clear narrative and get it out in public so that people know what's really happening. I just want to be clear about what's going on here. The system that makes sure that your granddad gets his Social Security check, the system that makes sure that your mom's doctor gets Medicare payment to cover her medical appointment, and the system that makes sure that you get the tax refund that you're owed has been taken over by Elon Musk. That involves some risk sometimes, and I can't analyze for you how risk proof you are, but there are different levels of exposure and responsibility and different ways to interfere with the Project 2025 agenda that's been unleashed on us so far. It's critical for people to know that a majority of Americans don't support Trump or Musk. And people make fun of virtue signaling, of putting lawn signs out about supporting immigrants, about publicly pointing out one's own actions done to help others. And everybody knows somebody, maybe a lot of somebody's, who do this in a really empty way, who in fact use this just as a front for social acceptance. But this very dynamic is why virtue signaling is critical. You all have most popular options. You all have most popular choices. You all have most popular payment plans. Simply telling people that they are most popular reduces their uncertainty. They get off the fence, they get off the sidelines, and they get into the game without social pressure to respect one another or to acknowledge harms done, without the expectation that people will curb their most selfish impulses and paranoid thoughts about people who are different than them. People can be more easily prodded to embrace their most destructive, antisocial selves. Democracy happens in public, and we need to enact the rituals of the rights that we have and then put meaning into them so that they aren't empty. That's an important part of what happened Monday at usaid. It was by no means an endpoint, but it was a start. The same kind of beginning happened again later that day, around dinner time, when my phone rang. My congressman, Don Beyer, had set up a robocall that checking with neighbors appears to have gone out to all his constituents. Bayer spoke about what was happening and allowed people to hit a button to join a call that would address it. And he was there, along with Rob Shriver, who is the former acting director of the Office of Personal Management. And he had worked in OPM under both Biden and Obama. So a lot of experience in exactly some of the concerns that many people have right now. And Shriver is currently with Democracy Forward, which is a legal organization that is focused on litigation and public education around democracy. And they have started a project called Civil Service Strong that is intended to help support and protect the government workers whose performance keeps the country running and getting us services that we need. Around the nation, more than 90% of the American people believe that government employees should be hired and promoted based on merit and not political or ideological loyalty. The two talked about the specific events that had happened in case people weren't aware. And Bayer actually brought up the planning that had been happening among senators and among congressmen over the weekend. And Shriver addressed Democracy Forward's strong focus on the courts right now, particularly because of the successes that are happening that indicate judges are willing to stand in sometimes in some cases, against the new administration. Breaking news. A second federal judge has now blocked President Trump's federal funding freeze. Today, a Rhode island judge granted a request to block the freeze by attorneys general from 22 states. The idea that that's not the end strategy, but it is an important one to keep going. And so they are trying to rush to get those cases to court. And then they took questions from callers on the line. They offered numbers to punch on the phones at home if people wanted to be added to information lists and updates that would be sent out going forward from the congressman's office. And I wouldn't say it was a fully formed strategy. They didn't have great answers to every question, but it was a huge start that my congressman took pretty much that entire day to be out in public, on camera and with constituents on the phone in the evening, answering questions directly from people who were on the line like me, expressing what was happening, how it was dangerous and illegal, and saying what he was doing about it. And he had reached out to everybody in my neighborhood. And so we need to do this not only in terms of, I think right now, we think so much about the national news and things happening in the nation's capital. And there's a lot to cover, and it needs to be covered right now, right where I am. But we also need to be doing this with our local representatives in our towns and our communities. There's also plainly a political miscalculation here, a miscalculation that we the people are also stupid and we're also mean, and we won't get it right and we won't care. That's why they went after USAID and foreign aid first. They were clearly wrong about that. I mean, this was the huge, basically spontaneous protests that broke out at the USAID building on Monday when Trump ordered the building shut overnight on Sunday night. And look at this. This was today. This was today in the shadow of the U.S. capitol, in the cold again on zero notice, as Americans protested simultaneously in 50 state capitols, in cities all over the country. It won't always be a protest. It can be as simple as a community fair. It can be something just geared toward social engagement. Anything that brings us together to constructive activity in public bolsters democracy and raises awareness of our common stakes in the country. Anything that does that helps. And the more people that we draw in, the more the actual state of the crisis can become apparent to everyone. So this is a first step toward what we need to do. And because honestly, if it were enough to speak in the places that we've always spoken, to write in the newspapers and magazines, where those of us who have written about these things before have written, then we wouldn't be where we are. All this may not be the fault of the people who understand the jeopardy we're in at this moment and who want a democratic future for the country. But it's become our problem to solve. You can't build a house online. You can't build a house out of regulations and blueprints. Somebody has to go outside and pile up the bricks and mortar, put nails into the wood, lay the pipe, put in the wires, and we need to do something similar close to home. We need to connect in groups, and I don't mean this as a sentimental idea at all. It's work. It's a way to assert power. We need to gather in public to make connections and assert control right now, before it becomes any harder to do that. I don't want to say that this is a simple thing to do, but we need to network our own small communities into larger communities and we need to do it in public. We need to have a presence outside to demand our representatives join us there and that people in power show up where the threat is. We need to contemplate what would drive each of us and what might drive other people to be part of a coalition to preserve democracy. Because I guarantee you that if people understand what is actually going on, just how directly they themselves are threatened, and that there's a social price, that there's public accountability for vice signaling a clear majority will reject it. And that's it. Thanks for listening to Next comes what? Please share this with anyone who's looking for ways to help each other survive this mess. To support this podcast, Please subscribe@Andreapitzer.com and consider giving Next Comes what? A five star review where you get your podcasts.