Category: story-current

The Shadow President

How Russell Vought became Trump's Shadow President

by Andy Kroll

Publisher: ProPublica

From the wholesale gutting of federal agencies to the ongoing government shutdown, Russell Vought has drawn the road map for Trump’s second term. Vought has consolidated power to an extent that insiders say they feel like “he is the commander in chief.”

What Vought has done in the nine months since Trump took office goes much further than slashing foreign aid. Relying on an expansive theory of presidential power and a willingness to test the rule of law, he has frozen vast sums of federal spending, terminated tens of thousands of federal workers and, in a few cases, brought entire agencies to a standstill. In early October, after Senate Democrats refused to vote for a budget resolution without additional health care protections, effectively shutting down the government, Vought became the face of the White House’s response. On the second day of the closure, Trump shared an AI-generated video that depicted his budget director — who, by then, had threatened mass firings across the federal workforce and paused or canceled $26 billion in funding for infrastructure and clean-­energy projects in blue states — as the Grim Reaper of Washington, D.C. “We work for the president of the United States,” a senior agency official who regularly deals with the OMB told me. But right now “it feels like we work for Russ Vought. He has centralized decision-­making power to an extent that he is the commander in chief.”

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(Archive)

Watch: “We Want the Bureaucrats to Be Traumatically Affected”

IndyBay.org

https://www.indybay.org

This is a good independent source for news around the SF Bay area. It lists some upcoming events. Mostly, it has current news and past events.

Scroll to the bottom of any page to see the selections for defining the different interest areas: Regions, Topics, International, and More.

For example, the “Peninsula” region will show you events and articles for the Peninsula area. https://www.indybay.org/peninsula/

From “What is Indybay?”

Indybay is an open-publishing website for social justice news. That means you can directly Publish your own stories in your own words, unfiltered by the corporate media. You are encouraged to include your own photographs, video, audio, and/or PDFs in your posts. We do not require that you have any formal writing, multimedia, or reporting experience, only that you have a story to tell.

Indybay maintains a popular Calendar, too, so if you are organizing an upcoming event, feel free to Add Your Event to Indybay’s calendar.

Indybay news stories primarily focus on issues facing Northern California, specifically the San Francisco Bay and Monterey Bay areas, however we accept stories published from across the U.S. and all over the world.

Latest Articles

In Trump’s Alternate Reality, Lies and Distortions Drive Change

Condoms for Gaza? Ukraine started the war with Russia? The president’s manipulations of the truth lay the groundwork for radical change.

by Peter Baker

Publisher: The New York Times

Mr. Trump has long been unfettered by truth when it comes to boasting about his record and tearing down his enemies. But what were dubbed “alternative facts” in his first term have quickly become a whole alternative reality in his second to lay the groundwork for radical change as he moves to aggressively reshape America and the world.

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How to Organize Our Way Out of the Trump-Musk Putsch

A plan to harness grassroots energy—and to hold Democratic leaders accountable.

by Ezra Levin, Leah Greenberg

Summary

Indivisible founders, Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, wrote this inspiring article for The Nation. Reviewed by Rachael Maddow.

Continue reading How to Organize Our Way Out of the Trump-Musk Putsch

Yes, Republicans really believe in starving kids

By: L O L G O P

Republican governors in 15 red states have refused to participate in this summer’s federal free lunch program, denying food to approximately 8 million kids. 

Frame Lab advises responding without mentioning welfare states or calling Republicans scrooges. Say instead,  “Tate Reeves [Republican Governor of Mississippi] doesn’t want these kids to succeed. He doesn’t want them to have the same freedom as his kids enjoy. This isn’t just about punishing poor kids for being poor. It’s about taking away their opportunities.”

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Heather Cox Richardson

Letters from an American

Historians are fond of saying that the past doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes.

To understand the present, we have to understand how we got here.

That’s where this newsletter comes in.

I’m a professor of American history. This is a chronicle of today’s political landscape, but because you can’t get a grip on today’s politics without an outline of America’s Constitution, and laws, and the economy, and social customs, this newsletter explores what it means, and what it has meant, to be an American.

These were the same questions a famous observer asked in a book of letters he published in 1782, the year before the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War.

Hector St. John de Crevecoeur called his book “Letters from an American Farmer.”

Like I say, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure rhymes.

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Latest Posts

  • December 4, 2025
  • December 4, 2025
    “What I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” Representative Jim Himes (D-CT), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee, said.
  • December 3, 2025
  • December 3, 2025
    Republican Matt Van Epps won yesterday’s special election in Tennessee’s seventh congressional district, but Republicans aren’t celebrating triumphantly.
  • December 2, 2025
  • December 2, 2025
    The news of last Friday, November 28, that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Joint Special Operations commander overseeing an attack on a small vessel carrying 11 people on September 2 to “kill everybody” is shaping up to be a fight over control of the United States government.
  • December 1, 2025
  • December 1, 2025
    President Donald J.
  • November 30, 2025
  • November 30, 2025
    On Friday evening, the Wall Street Journal published an article about the Trump administration’s negotiations with Russia over Ukraine that illuminated the administration’s approach to the world at home, as well as overseas.
  • November 29, 2025
  • November 29, 2025
    In the wake of yesterday’s report from Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered Special Operations to kill the survivors of a September 2 strike on a small boat off Venezuela, the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees have announced they intend to conduct “vigorous oversight” and “gather a full accounting” of the operation.
  • November 28, 2025
  • November 28, 2025
    As Trump’s popularity continues to drop, the MAGA coalition shows signs of cracking, and Trump’s mental acuity slips, there is a frantic feel to the administration, as if Trump’s people are trying to grab all they can, while they can.
  • November 27, 2025
    Happy Thanksgiving.

Muffle MAGA’s Megaphone

SWING LEFT PENINSULA created these engaging videos to help spread the word effectively that things are better when Democrats are in office AND to counter MAGA Republicans’ anti-democracy messages. 

To Muffle the MAGAphone:

  1. Avoid amplifying MAGA messages.
  2. Amplify pro-Democracy messages. 
  • Don’t Repeat Disinformation – What’s the best thing to do when encountering MAGA disinformation? NOTHING!
  • Ignore DogWhistles – Ever wonder why MAGA Republicans repeat certain words and phrases? Hint: Dog whistles
  • Stay United! – Why do MAGA Republicans spend so much time attacking an ever-growing list of others?
  • Frame It Our Way! – We need to avoid repeating MAGA GOP frames, even to refute them. Talk about the good stuff – what we need for all Americans to thrive.
  • Share Effectively – What makes an effective message? Lead with shared values. Identify who stands in the way of those values and why. End with your vision for a better future.

Words that Win – The 3V Messaging Framework

VALUES, VILLAINS, and VISION

Communications consultant Anat Shenker-Osorio developed the 3V messaging framework. Effective 3V messages: 

  1. lead with shared values, 
  2. name the villains and their motives for opposing those values,
  3. present your vision for a better future. 

As linguist George Lakoff says, “People vote based on values, connection, authenticity, trust and identity” – not lists of policies and facts.

BAC’s 3V Messaging Library

The Bay Area Coalition offers 3V statements on the critical issues of our time.

go to Messaging Library

January 6th Committee Report

by Select Committee

“The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack has succeeded in bringing clarity and demonstrating with painstaking detail the fragility of our Democracy. Above all, the work of the Select Committee underscores that our democratic institutions are only as strong as the commitment of those who are entrusted with their care.

As the Select Committee concludes its work, their words must be a clarion call to all Americans: to vigilantly guard our Democracy and to give our vote only to those dutiful in their defense of our Constitution.”

Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House

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Why We Did It

A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell

by Tim Miller

Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers

Recommended by: Cindi Sears

In a bracingly honest reflection on both his own past work for the Republican Party and the contortions of his former peers in the GOP establishment, Tim Miller draws a straight line between the actions of the 2000s GOP to the Republican political class’s Trumpian takeover, including the horrors of January 6th.

From ruminations on the mental jujitsu that allowed him as a gay man to justify becoming a hitman for homophobes, to astonishingly raw interviews with former colleagues who jumped on the Trump Train, Miller diagrams the flattering and delusional stories GOP operatives tell themselves so they can sleep at night. With a humorous touch he reveals Reince Priebus’ neediness, Sean Spicer’s desperation, Elise Stefanik and Chris Christie’s raw ambition, and his close friends’ submission to a MAGA psychosis.

Why We Did It is a vital, darkly satirical warning that all the narcissistic justifications that got us to this place still thrive within the Republican party, which means they will continue to make the same mistakes and political calculations that got us here, with disastrous consequences for the nation

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After The Fall

The rise of Authoritarianism in the world we've made

by Bden Rhodes

Publisher: Random House

At a time when democracy in the United States is endangered as never before, Ben Rhodes spent years traveling the world to understand why. He visited dozens of countries, meeting with politicians and activists confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that are tearing America apart. Along the way, he discusses the growing authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin, and his aggression towards Ukraine, with the foremost opposition leader in Russia, who was subsequently poisoned and imprisoned; he profiled Hong Kong protesters who saw their movement snuffed out by China under Xi Jinping; and America itself reached the precipice of losing democracy before giving itself a fragile second chance.

The Election Sabotage Scheme and How Congress Can Stop It

The Freedom to Vote Act can halt this growing antidemocratic threat.

by Will Wilder, Derek Tisler, Wendy R. Weiser

Publisher: Brennan Center for Justice

Essentially this article addresses laws and proposed legislation enabling partisan interference in election administration as part of a broader “election sabotage” or “election subversion” campaign, a national push to enable partisans to distort democratic outcomes.

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There’s Nothing For You Here

Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century

by Fiona Hill

Publisher: Mariner Books

A celebrated foreign-policy expert and key impeachment witness reveals how declining opportunity has set America on the grim path of modern Russia – and draws on her personal journey out of poverty, and her unique perspectives as a historian and policy maker, to show how we can return hope to our forgotten places.

Fiona Hill grew up in a world of terminal decay. The last of the local mines had closed, businesses were shuttering, and despair was etched in the faces around her. Her father urged her to get out of their blighted corner of northern England: “There is nothing for you here, pet,” he said.

The coal-miner’s daughter managed to go further than he ever could have dreamed. She studied in Moscow and at Harvard, became an American citizen, and served three U.S. Presidents. But in the heartlands of both Russia and the United States, she saw troubling reflections of her hometown and similar populist impulses. By the time she offered her brave testimony in the first impeachment inquiry of President Trump, Hill knew that the desperation of forgotten people was driving American politics over the brink—and that we were running out of time to save ourselves from Russia’s fate. In this powerful, deeply personal account, she shares what she has learned, and shows why expanding opportunity is the only long-term hope for our democracy.

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It Was All a Lie

How The Republican Party Became Donald Trump

by Stuart Stevens

Publisher: Knopf

Recommended by: Cindi S. and Steve G.

Written by Republican political consultant Stuart Stevens, this is a tell-all book about how the party he’s stood with for years spiraled out of control and lost the moral and political standpoints that once made it great. Unlike other books about Donald Trump, Stevens presents the 45th president of the United States as the inevitable result of the Republican Party’s failings, not its instigator.

Stuart Stevens spent decades electing Republicans at every level, from presidents to senators to local officials. He knows the GOP as intimately as anyone in America, and in this new book he offers a devastating portrait of a party that has lost its moral and political compass.

This is not a book about how Donald J. Trump hijacked the Republican Party and changed it into something else. Stevens shows how Trump is in fact the natural outcome of five decades of hypocrisy and self-delusion, dating all the way back to the civil rights legislation of the early 1960s. Stevens shows how racism has always lurked in the modern GOP’s DNA, from Goldwater’s opposition to desegregation to Ronald Reagan’s welfare queens and states’ rights rhetoric. He gives an insider’s account of the rank hypocrisy of the party’s claims to embody “family values,” and shows how the party’s vaunted commitment to fiscal responsibility has been a charade since the 1980s. When a party stands for nothing, he argues, it is only natural that it will be taken over by the loudest and angriest voices in the room.

It Was All a Lie is not just an indictment of the Republican Party, but a candid and often lacerating mea culpa. Stevens is not asking for pity or forgiveness; he is simply telling us what he has seen firsthand. He helped to create the modern party that kneels before a morally bankrupt con man and now he wants nothing more than to see what it has become burned to the ground.

Listen to Stuart Steven’s interview on NPR

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