61 Comments
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Mo Khan's avatar

The Microsoft news dropping the bad law firm was absolutely super

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Wendy Shelley's avatar

The Democracy Index is right on the mark every time! Love getting this update every week. Thanks, Everyone!

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Kathy Stone's avatar

The NYT article about lawyers joining the protest Thursday linked to an article about Georgetown law students creating a spreadsheet showing which firms had caved and which had held firm. From my cursory scroll-through it looks like a lot more are resisting than not, which is very encouraging.

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Richard Graham's avatar

Let us put together Project2025 writers and the publishers --who are they, their background and current position in this administration. The name "Heritage Foundation" has gotten off way to easy the last 100 days. Expose them.

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Louise's avatar

Thanks for this link. BTW, to Richard Graham: You'll find what you're looking for right here in the link!

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Catherine Cate's avatar

We need more focus on Project 2025 and its authors. In many ways, Trump is just a facilitator with a megaphone for Project 2025's agenda. I believe this is the biggest, most serious, danger. We need to keep Project 2025, its authors and supporters, (including Vought & Miller, the Heritage Foundation, etc.) In the spotlight.

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Judy Davis's avatar

I agree, Catherine. Several voices are popping up with “impeachment”, but in the past, Trump has taken advantage of these efforts claiming to be a victim, and his popularity and support grew. We need to resist this until we can actually get a guilty verdict. And to the actual strength of the Heritage Foundation Project 2025, Trump is a mouthpiece for the group that has actually taken control of the levers. Stephen Miller, Tom Holman, Steve Bannon, JD Vance, Thiel, Leo, Musk and others will not be weakened by a Trump removal. Saving our democracy, our economy, our institutions and maintaining the separation of church and state demands a much longer game plan than simply removing Trump.

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Christine's avatar

Who in their right mind would want a law firm that caved without even a wimper.i would be concerned if they would be able to really defend me, put up a good fight.

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Wendy horgan's avatar

Microsoft!

Thanks Contrarian, I hadn't know until I read this column.

Courage is Contagious!!!

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Catherine Cate's avatar

A followup: after hearing Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, on NPR, i realize that Project 2025 is the definition of "the deep state." "Attention must be paid!"

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Jules R's avatar

I heard that too, he’s delusional and extremely scary. The interviewer did well in an impossible task but too much of what he said went unchallenged.

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Jane Carlson's avatar

As of this week, I think the corruption index has to be higher. NYT and New Yorker reporting demonstrates that the Trump family’s involvement with crypto currencies is (to use an overworked term) unprecedented. Surely we need more in-depth, widely shared reporting about this.

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Richard Brody's avatar

One should suspect crypto currency businesses to be sketchy. But with the involvement of Trump’s “boys” in that mess we should have no doubt that big boy has involvement and it cannot be tolerated. It if looks like s..t and smells like s..t it must be s..t.

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Susan Stone's avatar

Thank you for simplifying the mess we're in so it's easy to understand.

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Nancy Sheridan's avatar

Another clearly written, rock solid assessment! Really looking forward to the new interactive graphic! Thanks for all your hard work.

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Judith Swink (CA)'s avatar

Love ❤️ "lickspittle Olympics".

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RRiveter's avatar

Yep, pretty much describes Bondi's slavish devotion to the inept crook. Guess she thinks her future will rise with being in tandem with this louse. Her comments are so ridiculous, that they cannot even be discussed. What on earth is she going on about? She simply needs to be jailed for illegal activities, inept running of the DOJ, lying, etc etc. What a mess of a woman she is. And don't get me started on Noem.

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Bonnie MacEvoy's avatar

Is the graphic of Democracy Index meant to reflect anything? What do the white and colored bars represent? Or is this to show the six areas of focus? Great discussion.

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Lee Johnson's avatar

Bonnie -- to put it as a (quasi-)medical analogy, consider the vertical white symbols to be equivalent to an old-fashioned mercury thermometer.

--The height of the colored shading represents an assessment of the patient's "temperature" related to the particular characteristic (symptom), for example, "Corruption". As the colored bar gets higher, the "temperature" is higher.

--As the color at the top of the bar shifts more and more to "Red" the severity of that symptom's threat to the patient's survival is assessed to be greater and greater.

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Bonnie MacEvoy's avatar

Makes sense. I love visuals and kept looking for the code. Feeding my OCD...

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RRiveter's avatar

Me too! I didn't get it either.

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Polly Parrish's avatar

Love the Democracy Index. It is so needed.

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Catherine Cate's avatar

O.k., another thought: how about a Project 2025 Index. And a Seven Mountains of Influence Index? From what I have heard and read, we have 2 challenges. The first is the deconstruction of the current pillars of our democracy. But the second challenge is less well publicised: what is planned to replace it. And from what I have read and heard, the answers to both questions lie in the details of Project 2025 AND the Seven Mountains Mandate, or the Seven Mountains of Influence. Never heard of them? Nor had I until NPR/PBS started hosting far-right spokespersons this week. And the information I gleaned made me very glad they were opening these conversations because I met what many are striving to make the future of our "democracy." We gotta understand more not only about what we are losing, but what is planned to replace it!

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Valerie Rushanan's avatar

Thank you for doing all you do. I think we need the graphic, and it's good! I look forward to seeing it represent qualitative data. If we get to yellow or orange, what examples does that equate to in other countries / in history?

I think a table is needed as well, since it's so hard to keep track of not only what happened this week, but the status of so many items since last week or last month. Maybe with columns such as Action (of the régime) | Response (of the public, courts, Congress, etc.) | Current Status | Consequences So Far. Then each cell has a very short (10 words?) description of each item, with links so people can drill down for more info. TIA.

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