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Sunday Dose of Democracy:

Donald Trump posts bizarre AI video of himself in a "King Trump" fighter jet bombing NYC protestors with streams of brown liquid
In the ultimate pronouncement that "subtlety is dead," Donald Trump responded to the 7 million Americans who marched against him yesterday by posting an AI video of himself wearing a crown, flying a fighter jet and literally shitting on America. Way to tell us how you really feel, Donny! While this is a disgusting and immensely childish response, it proves that the rallies worked — Trump is shook by the outpouring of public fury and knows now just how many people oppose him and his despotic regime.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: Brian Tyler Cohen gives FIERY speech at No Kings rally
Our main man BTC himself gives a powerful, must-see address to the crowd at a No Kings rally in Los Angeles.

America scores a huge win with No Kings rallies — but the fight is only just beginning
No Kings: Yesterday's rallies saw 7 million Americans marching against Trump and his authoritarianism. It was an overwhelming success, and it's critical that we carry that momentum forward and keep up the fight. Indivisible is hosting a follow-up mass call on Tuesday, October 21 at 8PM ET / 5PM PT to discuss where we go from here — click here to RSVP and keep up the pressure on Trump!

Republicans should be afraid— just look at who joined No Kings protests
Malcolm Ferguson, The New Republic: "Listening to anyone from the Trump administration talk about the No Kings protest would have had you expecting complete anarchy. Masked men with Molotov cocktails, smoke in the air, American flags burning, police and National Guard in full riot gear—something more akin to January 6. 'This crazy No Kings rally this weekend, which is gonna be the farthest left, the hardest core, the most unhinged in the Democratic Party, which is a big title,' Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, claiming that the Democrats were for some reason waiting for the rally to happen before negotiating to end the government shutdown. 'No Kings equal no paychecks.' But much to the chagrin of the GOP, the No Kings rally in Washington, D.C., was not unhinged, not very far left, and entirely peaceful. The atmosphere was extremely energetic and family friendly for both young and old. People walked slowly, often with kids in tow. Countless attendees wore large inflatable costumes, inspired by the Portland frog. There was live music, tabling, and speeches by Bill Nye, Mehdi Hasan, and Senators Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy, among others. And while the event was massive, the vibe was closer to that of a lively farmer’s market on a nice Sunday morning than it was to whatever the right was trying so desperately to convince people it would be. But perhaps equally upsetting for Republicans: The 200,000 people who are estimated to have shown up in D.C.—of the roughly seven million protesters nationwide—represented an expansive contingent of Americans. Many of them seemed to care quite a bit about those 'foundational truths' Johnson pretended to be so worried about. One of those people was a 49-year-old woman wearing a massive inflatable costume of a bald eagle dressed as Uncle Sam. 'It’s absurd. This is everyday Americans who are looking at … every day there’s something new that is illegal or anti-constitutional,' the eagle said when I asked her about the GOP’s antifa and Hamas allegations. 'The most American thing I think we can do is vote, and then the second most American thing you can do is peaceful protest.... I am proud to be an American, and I am proud to be part of this country, and I am an incredible supporter of the United States Constitution.' It took maybe about five minutes among this solidly liberal, 'protest the right way' No Kings crowd to completely shatter the Republican facade. These were retirees, public school teachers, college students, and quite a few former government workers who’d been fired or took the buy out in the DOGE culling. It’s obvious that Republican proselytizing and fearmongering about violence and agitators at this rally was strategic, but it’s even more obvious that it was a piss poor strategy. You can’t plug your ears and yell 'antifa' while hundreds of thousands of Americans march through the streets. It’s laughable that an event co-signed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris would even serve as a sleeper cell for antifa, and yet Republicans told that lie over, and over, and over again, even as their policies—and their president—become increasingly less popular.

Trump: No money for healthcare, plenty for Argentina
Branko Marcetic, Jacobin: "Last November, Americans voted for a president who said he would put 'America First.' They’re getting 'Argentina First' instead. Earlier this week, the Donald Trump administration announced it was doubling its planned bailout of Argentina, which, under President Javier Milei’s harsh austerity program, has seen its economy stagnate and the country scramble to sell $1 billion of its foreign reserves to stabilize its collapsing currency. The Trump team’s plan is to scrounge around for another $20 billion from the private sector to send to the crisis-stricken country, on top of the $20 billion of US taxpayer money Trump already pledged he would use to buy up pesos, which would supposedly be a loan. The $40 billion Trump is sending the country is roughly on par with the $41.8 billion it owes the International Monetary Fund — by far the largest debt on the organization’s books, half of which was taken out under Milei earlier this year. There is no benefit to working Americans from this, and the president isn’t even pretending there is. As he explained, 'it’s just helping a great philosophy take over a great country,' because 'Argentina is one of the most beautiful countries that I’ve ever seen, and we want to see it succeed. It’s very simple.' That 'great philosophy' is Argentinian president Milei’s 'anarcho-capitalism,' or libertarianism, which holds that government should be radically shrunk and its role in society limited to the barest essentials, while letting private, corporate interests run free. Seriously pursued, turning that philosophy into concrete reality necessitates the dismantling of safety net programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and Social Security; the gutting of useful agencies like PBS or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and a massive culling of the public workforce that leaves hundreds of thousands jobless. You might notice that this 'philosophy' sounds eerily similar to the one that’s been guiding Trump’s own domestic policy for the past nine months. In other words, Trump is sending billions of Americans’ dollars to a foreign country to prop up a failing president who has run his country into the ground by following Trump’s own policy preferences. If Milei fails, Trump’s own, very similar austerity program will take a major blow too."

Trump’s NSPM-7 is a threat to every American
Ken Klippenstein, Current Affairs: "NSPM-7. It stands for National Security Presidential Memorandum 7. There have only been seven of them this term. This is completely distinct from executive orders, of which there have been over 200 at this point. But the media conflated the two, and you can find several articles that still haven’t been corrected where they describe it as an executive order. And my guess is that that’s why this got overlooked. They were like, 'It’s another one of these 200 things.' So in the case of executive orders, some of them can be significant, but in many cases, it’s narrow day-to-day operations of government stuff, whereas a presidential memorandum is a sweeping strategy statement that tasks the entire federal government, saying, 'These are our priorities for the rest of the administration; focus on that and carry it out.' That’s what the chief executive says. And just to run down what NSPM-7 is, it’s tasking all of federal law enforcement to prioritize domestic terrorism, and the way that you go after terrorism is different from normal crime fighting. Since a crime has not been committed in the case of terror, you’re trying to prevent a terrorist attack. How do you go after it? Well, you need something called indicators—again, pre-crime. Indications of the likelihood of a future crime. It lists those indicators very explicitly. I’ll give you just several examples, or maybe a dozen or so: anti-Christianity, anti-Americanism, and I think one was anti-traditional family values. So sweeping categories that I imagine would cover millions and millions of people. And I was honestly shocked when I saw it, because I knew this wasn’t an executive order. I knew this was telling the Justice Department and the FBI field offices—again, in all 50 states—to prioritize this. That means they can open up cases with this very light predicate that I just described, these so-called indicators. So that is what the terrorism charge allows them to do. Maybe you won’t face charges for it in court, but the FBI can look at you and then find other charges that they could actually bring against you. The question is, to what extent will they go after these indicators and investigate terrorism through this network of thousands of what are called Joint Terrorism Task Forces established after 9/11 and existing in every single state? To what extent are they going to send those after people? And that’s what we don’t yet know."

Freshman Democrat under ATTACK for standing up to the GOP
Nellie Pou for Congress: Nellie Pou has only been in Congress a few months, but she’s already facing a barrage of GOP attacks for voting against their destructive budget bill that would hand out huge tax breaks to the wealthy while RAISING taxes on working families. Just a few days ago, the NRCC issued an error-filled press release written by Big Business lobbyists that falsely smeared her with lies. She’s one of the few Democrats to win her seat in a county that voted for Trump; she’s going to need all the help she can get if we want to protect the MUST-HOLD seat and retake Congress. Will you chip in to thank her for doing the right thing and helping her weather the storm against GOP attacks?