What the well-dressed MAGAnut is wearing

10 Reasons for Modest Optimism in the Fight Against the Trump-Vance-Musk Regime

Don't lose hope

Robert Reich for Inequality Media

If you are experiencing rage and despair about what is happening in America and the world right now because of the Trump-Vance-Musk regime, you are hardly alone. A groundswell of opposition is growing—not as loud and boisterous as the resistance to Tump 1.0, but just as, if not more, committed to ending the scourge.

Here’s a partial summary—10 reasons for modest optimism.

1. Boycotts Are Taking Hold

Americans are changing shopping habits in a backlash against corporations that have shifted their public policies to align with Trump.

Millions are pledging to halt discretionary spending for 24 hours on February 28 in protest against major retailers—chiefly Amazon, Walmart, and Best Buy—for scaling back diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in response to President Donald Trump.

Four out of 10 Americans have already shifted their spending over the last few months to be more consistent with their moral views, according to the Harris poll. (Far more Democrats—50%—are changing their spending habits compared with Republicans—41%.)

Calls to boycott Tesla apparently are having an effect. After a disappointing 2024, Tesla sales declined further in January. In California, a key market for Tesla, nearly 12% fewer Teslas were registered in January 2025 than in January 2024. An analysis by Electrek points to even more trouble for Tesla in Europe, where Tesla sales have dropped in every market.

X users are shifting over to Bluesky at a rapid rate, even as Musk adds more advertisers to his ongoing lawsuit against those that have justifiably boycotted X after he turned it into a cesspool of lies and hate (this week, he added Lego, Nestle, Tyson Foods, and Shell).

2. International Resistance Is Rising

Canada has helped lead the way: A grassroots boycott of American products and tourism is underway there. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has in effect become a “wartime prime minister” as he stands up to Trump’s bullying.

Jean Chrétien, who served as prime minister of Canada from 1993 to 2003, is urging Canada to join with leaders in Denmark, Panama, and Mexico, as well as with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, to fight back against Trump’s threats.

Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum is standing up to Trump. She has defended not just Mexico but also the sovereignty of Latin American countries Trump has threatened and insulted.

In the wake of JD Vance’s offensive speech at the Munich security conference last week, European democracies are standing together—condemning his speech and making it clear they will support Ukraine and never capitulate to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as Trump has done.

Ten ways to resist Trump II

What you can do

Robert Reich

In light of Trump II’s predictably cruel and bonkers beginning, many people are asking: “What can I do now?” Here are 10 recommendations.

1. Protect the decent and hardworking members of your communities who are undocumented or whose parents are undocumented.

This is an urgent moral call to action. As Trump’s ICE begins roundups and deportations, many good people are endangered and understandably frightened.

One of Trump’s new executive orders allows ICE to arrest undocumented immigrants at or near schools, places of worship, health care sites, shelters, and relief centers — thereby deterring them from sending their kids to school or getting help they need.

So-called “sanctuary” cities and states have laws prohibiting their schools, public hospitals, and police from turning over undocumented individuals to the federal government or providing information about them. These are sensible policies. Otherwise undocumented people who are ill, including those with communicable diseases, won’t go to public hospitals for treatment. Parents will be reluctant to send their children to school. Crime victims who are undocumented will hesitate before reporting crimes for fear that they could then face being deported.

If you trust your mayor or city manager, check in with their offices to see what they are doing to protect vulnerable families in your community. Join others in voluntary efforts to keep ICE away from hospitals, schools, and shelters.

Organize and mobilize your community to support it as a sanctuary city, and to support your state as a sanctuary state. Trump’s Justice Department is already launching investigations of cities and states that go against federal immigration orders, laying the groundwork for legal challenges to local laws and forcing compliance with the executive branch. Your voice and organizing could be helpful in fighting back.

Influential far-right think tank plots out its agenda for America

What Harm Did ALEC Plot at Its 2nd Big 2023 Summit?

DAVID ARMIAK, Center For Media & Democracy

State lawmakers, corporate lobbyists, and right-wing operatives got together in Scottsdale, Arizona, last week for the 2023 States and Nation Policy Summit hosted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. The summit—one of the largest annual gatherings of the ALEC faithful, along with the summer meeting—caps off ALEC’s 50th anniversary year.

Following its 50th Annual Meeting in July, ALEC held a formal gala on October 4 at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., where attendees were met with protests highlighting the pay-to-play group’s “50 Years of Harm.” 

ALEC also organized a “50th Anniversary Policy Day” at the U.S. Capitol that featured discussions on artificial intelligence; environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) investment strategies; school privatization; and the “state tax cut revolution,” as an agenda obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) details.

Meeting at the four-star Westin Kierland Resort & Spa in Scottsdale, ALEC politicians considered model policies and resolutions related to an Article V constitutional convention, so-called “woke” capitalism, school curricula, the environment, gutting regulations, and more.

Not worth a nickel

By Drew Sheneman

Time to bust Starbucks

 

Take that, Libtards

 

Welcome to Mar-A-Lago

Don't go to Florida

By Will Collette

Ron DeSantis relaunches Presidential campaign from
inside a burning Tesla (The Onion)

Since Florida politicians ranging from Gov. Ron "Meatball" DeSantis to Sen. Rick Scott have declared blocks of the public as "unwelcome" in Florida, let's see who that leaves.

DeSantis is hostile to teachers, people who read, members of the LGBT community, immigrants, people of color, people who believe in science, feminists and anyone who believes in a woman's right to control her own body, anyone visiting Disney World and probably more. 

DeSantis wants to become President of the United States vowing to "Make America Florida."

After a number of civil rights groups issued travel warnings about DeSantis's fetishes, Sen. Rick Scott (very R) expanded the warning, declaring that the people of Florida are hostile to socialists, progressives, liberals and anyone who approves of Joe Biden.

When you ban all these populations that are distasteful to Florida, here's what you have left:

Shame on CNN!

Trump Uses CNN Town Hall To Insult a Woman He Assaulted

By MEL LENOR BARCLAY

Originally published by The 19th

On a national broadcast bolstered by audience laughter, former President Donald Trump launched a broadside attack against a woman whom a jury found he sexually assaulted and repeated vulgar comments about using his fame to sexually assault women made in the infamous 2005 “Access Hollywood” clip.

The town hall comes less than 36 hours after a jury in New York found that Trump sexually abused and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused Trump of raping her in the 1990s and of defaming her after she made public allegations in 2019. While the jury did not find sufficient evidence to validate her rape claim, she was awarded $5 million in damages stemming from sexual battery and defamation.

Asked whether the verdict against him disqualifies him from the presidency, Trump claimed he has “no idea who [E. Jean Carroll] is.” He went on to mock Carroll’s description of the events — that the pair went into a dressing room and that Trump then assaulted her without consent. 

He implied that Carroll was not a victim and instead derided her, employing a sexist line of attack in asking “what kind of a woman” would meet a man and take him to a dressing room.

It was a stunning scene as the room of likely Republican and undecided voters at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire followed Trump’s comments about Carroll with laughter. In other moments during the broadcast, Trump called CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins a “nasty person” and twice called former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “crazy.” Trump also said he was “honored” to pave the way for the end of the abortion protections in the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

More reasons to boycott WJAR Channel 10

How Lawmakers Are Helping Sinclair Broadcast Group Destroy Local News

TIM KARR for Common Dreams

Sometimes lawmakers write legislation that would do the opposite of its stated goal. Nowhere is this more evident than in two recent bills—one introduced at the state level and another in the U.S. Congress—that are supposedly designed to “save local news.”

Both the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA) and the federal Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) would allow news publishers—including broadcast companies—to extract payments from large social-media enterprises like Alphabet and Meta in exchange for linking to their content. This would apply to any content regardless of its accuracy or news value.

One of the bigger beneficiaries of California’s CJPA and the U.S. Senate’s JCPA is a conglomerate that seems determined to get rid of local news and replace it with right-wing spin produced at a “National Desk” far from the communities this broadcast company is legally obligated to serve.

That conglomerate, Sinclair Broadcast Group, recently announced plans to eliminate entire local newsrooms at local-television stations in five broadcast areas. Sinclair is also drastically cutting newsroom staff at an additional five local stations, pushing all of these stations to fill the resulting news hole with National Desk boilerplate. That means zero local coverage—and lots of the cookie-cutter conservatism that Sinclair has pumped out via the public airwaves for decades.

Another reason to boycott McDonalds

At a McDonald’s, 10-year-olds worked past midnight, Department of Labor finds

by Ariana Figueroa, Rhode Island Current

Children as young as 10 were found working past midnight at a McDonald’s restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, the U.S. Department of Labor said in announcing numerous civil penalties levied on fast-food franchises.

As part of an investigation into federal child labor law violations in the Southeast, the Department of Labor said that three separate franchises that operate a total of 62 McDonald’s restaurants across Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio “employed 305 children to work more than the legally permitted hours and perform tasks prohibited by law for young workers,” the agency wrote in a Tuesday press release.

All together, those franchises, Bauer Food LLC, Archways Richwood LLC and Bell Restaurant Group I LLC, were fined $212,744 in civil penalties, the agency said. The Department of Labor listed the franchise locations but did not specify which violations occurred where, other than saying the 10-year-olds were found working in Louisville. 

McDonald’s corporate office as well as the three employers who were fined did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday from States Newsroom.

Starbucks: fact vs. b.s.

 

Boycott Trump

 

Lobsters versus right whales

The latest chapter in a long quest to make fishing more sustainable

Blake Earle, Texas A&M University

Lobster fishing uses a lot of rope, and whales can die after
becoming entangled in it.
 MyLoupe/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Maine lobster fishermen received a Christmas gift from Congress at the end of 2022: A six-year delay on new federal regulations designed to protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The rules would have required lobstermen to create new seasonal nonfishing zones and further reduce their use of vertical ropes to retrieve lobster traps from the seafloor. Entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with many types of ships are the leading causes of right whale deaths.

Maine’s congressional delegation amended a federal spending bill to delay the new regulations until 2028 and called for more research on whale entanglements and ropeless fishing gear. Conservationists argue that the delay could drive North Atlantic right whales, which number about 340 today, to extinction.

This is the latest chapter in an ongoing and sometimes fraught debate over fishing gear and bycatch – unintentionally caught species that fishermen don’t want and can’t sell. My research as a maritime historian, focusing on disputes tied to industrial fishing, shows the profound impacts that particular fishing gear can have on marine species.

Disputes over fishing gear and bycatch have involved consumers, commercial fishermen, recreational anglers and environmentalists. With conservation pitted against economic livelihoods, emotions often run high. And these controversies aren’t resolved quickly, which bodes poorly for species on the brink.

Do boycotts work?

Impact? A New Study Sheds Light

By INSTITUTE FOR OPERATIONS RESEARCH AND THE MANAGEMENT SCIENCES 

ACLU

A boycott is a form of protest in which individuals or groups refuse to buy or use a particular product or service in order to show their opposition to a company or entity.

 Boycotts are often organized as a way to apply pressure on companies or governments to change their policies or practices. They can be motivated by a wide range of issues, such as human rights violations, environmental concerns, or political beliefs.

The political controversy surrounding Goya CEO’s political statements in 2020 has shed light on the question.

The CEO of Goya, a well-known Latin food brand, publicly endorsed then-president Donald Trump during a campaign event in the 2020 US presidential election. This sparked a boycott and a counter “buycott” movement in support of the brand. 

Do such boycotts or “buycotts” have any impact on brand sales? 

Boycott!

 

Koch supports Putin's war so don't buy Koch products

 

Corporations and the Ukraine Crisis

Pullout of western companies has been surprising and fast

By Phil Mattera Dirt Diggers Digest

Western companies that have pulled out of Russia

After the invasion of Ukraine brought sanctions against the Russian economy, the parent company of Japanese apparel retailer Uniqlo insisted it would continue to operate its 50 stores in the country. 

CEO Tadashi Yanai stated: “Clothing is a necessity of life. The people of Russia have the same right to live as we do.” A few days later, Uniqlo did an about-face, announcing it would suspend its Russian operations and contribute $10 million to the United Nations refugee agency.

Uniqlo is one of many corporations that have bowed to pressure to stop doing business in Russia. Oil majors BP, Shell and ExxonMobil are giving up multi-billion-dollar investments in the country. McDonald’s is temporarily closing hundreds of fast-food restaurants. 

Big accounting firms such as KPMG and PwC are abandoning the country, as are large law firms such as Cleary Gottlieb. Mastercard and Visa are no longer supporting credit cards issued by Russian banks.

A compilation by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and others at the Yale School of Management lists more than 300 Western firms that have announced curtailments of their Russian operations. The number is up from several dozen when Sonnenfeld first published the list on February 28. There are still some holdouts. Sonnenfeld lists about three dozen mostly U.S.-based corporations that are still doing business in the country.

Corporations that funded Trumplican efforts to overturn the 2020 election

 

Our local Trump channel hit by COVID

Turn Off Ten And Keep Far Far Away

By BETH COMERY in Providence Daily Dose 

Surprise, surprise. There’s been a Covid outbreak at local NBC affiliate, WJAR-TV, the station owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, a.k.a. Trump TV.

According to the ProJo, anonymous sources are reporting that at least six people have tested positive in the last two weeks.

One person who would go on the record was Fletcher Fischer, the business manager for a union representing WJAR employees.