CNN: The next media organization to bend the knee to Trump

— What’s your survival plan for the next 4 years? For Monday, January 20th? How are we all going to make sense of and survive the next 4 years of of the Trump Oligarchy? Tracking social media and sites like Kos and DU I’m seeing a whole spectrum of responses to Trump becoming president again, ranging from “I’m energized to fight!” to “I’m checking out and going back to doing art and listening to music; call me again in 4 years.” While it’s vital to protect our mental health, this is also going to be a time of extraordinary polarization and crisis for our nation, perhaps the worst since the Civil War or the two world wars. Louise and I are in the fight for the long haul, although we’re also going to get more rigorous starting this year about taking a week’s vacation every three or four months just to recharge and re-calibrate our perspective. We’re also giving more money to activist groups (ACLU, CREW, Indivisible, Public Citizen, PFAW, etc.) and progressive politicians than ever before, as we believe they’re going to be pivotal to saving our republic from the looming fascist takeover that Trump and so many of his billionaire colleagues have all but promised. Feel free to offer your thoughts on the best way to make it through what’s sure to be a tough four years (we have to limit comments to paid subscribers to prevent spam, scams, Russian trolls, bots, and the predators that flood Substack sites when they open comments up to people who haven’t submitted a credit card for identity verification).

— Will the TikTok ban stick? Four years ago, Trump was all-in on a ban on TikTok, although that all apparently came to a screeching halt when an American billionaire with a reported $15 billion invested in the platform traveled to Mar-a-Largo and said some magic words in his ear. Now that the Supreme Court has said that the bipartisan law requiring TikTok to be picked up by an American-based company, the stakes have been upped. On the other hand, Trump reportedly had a phone conversation with China’s President Xi and reassured him that his spy app won’t be taken away from the Chinese military’s intelligence service. Did Xi offer Ivanka a whole new round of trademarks and patents? Another billion for Jared? Nobody knows yet if Trump’s been paid off by either Yass or Xi, but you’ll never go broke betting on his figuring out a way to monetize the power he’ll have starting Monday…

— Is CNN the next media operation to bend knee to Trump? Mediaite is reporting that Jim Acosta — one of the few CNN hosts who doesn’t hesitate to call BS when Republicans come on his show and try to lie about GOP plans or what Trump’s — is going to be bumped from his popular morning show position to the midnight-2AM graveyard shift as a way of CNN’s executives kissing Trump’s ass. One by one, the major media outlets are falling before his threats and demands, just like happened 24 years ago in Russia, 15 years ago in Hungary, and generations ago in German, Italy, and Spain. By contrast, the editorial board of The New York Times just published an explicit warning against media and others bending the knee to Trump. Maybe there will be some active resistance. Stay tuned…

— Republican legislators in five Red states want to prosecute women for murder if they get abortions or use certain types of birth control. Jessica Valenti reports, at her excellent Abortion Every Day newsletter, that Republicans in South Carolina, Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, and North Dakota are pushing legislation that would define abortion as murder and, in four of the five states, make women who get abortions eligible for the death penalty. Jessica has been warning us about this for some time and, while these particular bills are unlikely to pass in the next few months, by repeatedly proposing them these Republicans are “normalizing” the legislation and getting it closer to passage with each try. Men who want absolute control over women’s bodies have teamed up with Catholic and Evangelical rightwingers (who generally have the same goal) to bring this into law. My personal bet is that the Trump administration will try to enforce the Comstock Act before the states get this far, and that alone can pretty much end all abortion in the United States. If you want the background on that 19th century bill that’s still on the books, you can read a short article I wrote about it here.

— Trump’s pick for Treasury Secretary warns there will be an “economic calamity” if Trump’s billionaire tax cuts are not extended....really?! Multimillionaire investment banker Scott Bessent told senators this week that if Trump’s tax cuts aren’t renewed this year there will be a disaster. It’s astonishing that anybody is still buying this bullshit, but the message is now out and being repeated across the billionaire-owned and controlled rightwing media ecosystem. This will be a major project for the new Trump administration, but in all probability they’ll try to focus the attention on the country on something vivid and grotesque like mass deportations (with their right hand) so they can again pick our pockets with their left hands by passing the tax cuts. Vigilance!

— Putin just sent Alexei Navalny’s lawyers to prison. This is how the guy Trump appears to view as a role model runs his country, as Sarah Hurst documents at Russia Reports. ’Nuf said…

— The Costs of Treating Healthcare as a Business Alert! Doctors and dentists are pushing medical 26% credit cards on patients. In and of itself, offering quick credit to people to cover medical expenses isn’t terrible; what is terrible, though, is that anybody in America needs credit to cover such costs. We’re the only developed country in the world that doesn’t consider healthcare a right instead of a privilege. That said, it appears that some docs are using shady practices to get their patients to sign up for the cards. Whether that’s because they’re getting kickbacks or just to get more quickly paid is uncertain, but something doesn’t smell right here, as reported by TIME Magazine.

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