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maga extremists
Beware the Rise of JD 'Just-as-Dangerous' Vance
With Trump a distinct question mark and while the Trumpian current ebbs and flows, one wave is pushing the 2028 candidacy of Vice President JD Vance, but this shouldn't be a relief.
Jan 18, 2026
Donald Trump may, of course, be the Republican candidate for president in 2028, the US Constitution notwithstanding. Although it is clearly written in the 22nd Amendment that “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,” it may well be a majority vote of the Supreme Court that determines whether that applies to Trump.
In the past, that court has gotten around the Constitution without a single word of it being changed. Rather, its judges have let an innovative interpretation prevail. In 1896, for instance, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the court ignored the unambiguous language of the 14th Amendment that demanded “equal protection” and so upheld racial segregation by creating the fiction of “separate but equal.” It would take 58 years before that lie would be overturned.
Harvard law professor and Trump legal whisperer Alan Dershowitz has told the president that “it’s not clear” if it is constitutionally settled whether he can serve another term, even if elected. Reportedly, Jeffrey Epstein’s former lawyer is working on a book on the subject to be published in March 2026. And MAGA world—from the White House to members of Congress to far-right media figures—is stirring the pot on Donald Trump’s potential fourth bid for president.
Trump is also clearly worried about his legacy. Branding federal buildings and institutions with his name, building an outrageous ballroom, pimping out the Oval Office in gold, and constructing an unnecessary “Triumphal Arch” are all desperate attempts to be remembered as “great” at any cost. Yet, he has to know that the next Democratic president will be under tremendous pressure to remove most, if not all, Trump-brand edifices as quickly as possible. In the end, his real memorials will undoubtedly be the authoritarian policies and conduct that will label him as one of the worst, if not the worst, presidents in American history.
Keep in mind that Trump will be 83 by the time of the 2028 election and he’s already exhibiting so many of the behaviors generally attributed to the fabled “crazy old man” down the street.
That said, Trump remains a question mark when it comes to a third term. There are a number of reasons he might not try for one, not the least being his deteriorating mental and physical health. It didn’t take the New York Times to question his capabilities, not when anyone watching him could hear him slurring his words, dozing off in front of the cameras, barely moving even on a golf course, and sounding more incoherent than ever.
His manic putting up of sometimes hundreds of posts a day or in the wee hours of the night—although his staff may be responsible for some of it—should be considered a cry for help, if ever there was one. And it’s not just the volume of his postings, but their increasing extremity. The hate has become more hateful, the taunts more vicious and racist, and the fabrications more outlandish and divorced from reality. And keep in mind that Trump will be 83 by the time of the 2028 election and he’s already exhibiting so many of the behaviors generally attributed to the fabled “crazy old man” down the street.
Finally (should it get to that point), a majority of the Supreme Court—I certainly don’t think all of them, no matter the situation—could follow the Constitution and rule against a third term. It should be considered ironic at this point that the 22nd Amendment was proposed and passed in response to a Democratic president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, winning his fourth consecutive presidential race.
The Vance Option
With Trump a distinct question mark and while the Trumpian current ebbs and flows, another wave is pushing the 2028 candidacy of Vice President JD Vance. Trump found his avatar in 2024 when the junior senator from Ohio and former harsh Trump critic joined the crew of Republican senators fighting to be the most sycophantic to the party’s new Führer. Like his compatriots Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio, there were no morals or principles that superseded Vance’s ambition and lust for power. Under the circumstances, that “JD” could easily have stood for “just as dangerous.”
As Vance confirmed at the recent Turning Point USA gathering, not only are White nationalists like Nick Fuentes and unrepentant conspiracists like Candace Owens not denounced, but they are welcomed and embraced. Tucker Carlson’s friendly interview with Fuentes roiled MAGA, but before that he was interviewed by Owens on her podcast. Again, there are no discernible objections from GOP leaders, including Vance.
While Vance opportunistically inserted himself into the Charlie Kirk martyr-building project—he was a pallbearer and spoke at his memorial—he has yet to call out Owens for her wild and unfounded claims that Turning Point USA staff, Israel, the French Foreign Legion, and God knows who else were somehow involved in Kirk’s assassination.
If Trump doesn’t manage to run a fourth time and Vance wants to be president, he’ll be more dependent than ever on the MAGA base and the far-right, especially since he has little to no chance of winning over many Democrats or independents.
Vance’s most eye-raising statement at the TPUSA event was when he said, “You don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.” First, it is a pretty sure bet that no one at the event (or in MAGA) ever apologized for being white. Second, Vance reinforced the view that white supremacy will not be a barrier to any future campaign of his.
Vance’s message is clear: Every imaginable far-right extremist, from white supremacists and technofascists to offensive fabulists, is welcome in his coming 2028 campaign. And he will assumedly have Trump’s blessing (if the president doesn’t indeed decide to try to run again himself).
Poor Secretary of State Marco Rubio has as much chance of getting Trump’s support as Black GOP Congressional Representative Byron Donalds did of becoming his vice-presidential candidate in 2024. Trump 2.0 is wholly built on racial profiling, especially of Latinos, and asserting White power. Merely “looking” Latino is enough in these Trumpist times to attract armed masked men and a trip to an immigration hellhole. Rubio has vigorously defended such illegal arrests and detentions and the racist demonization of immigrants of color that’s gone with it, but he’s rolling the dice if he thinks the MAGA base will see him as the exception to their rule.
Just ask Vance. As hillbilly-centric and pro-white working class as he has tried to portray himself, despite being a millionaire many times over, the fact that he is married to Usha Vance, a woman of color and a non-Christian, has generated lots of racist blowback. Fuentes, for example, called Vance a “race traitor” for marrying Usha. Many MAGA adherents were shocked to discover Usha was not white. One report found that, between January and August 2024, there were at least 1,800 racist, gender, or religious-based attacks on Usha that reached an audience of an estimated 216 million.
While Vance has pushed back against such threats and insults, he’s ignored any possible relationship between Trump’s and his racism against Haitian and other immigrants of color and the blowback he’s experienced against Usha. His default position (rather than directly challenging MAGA bigotry): Usha is “tough enough to handle it.” In addition, instead of defending Usha’s right to practice whatever religion she chooses, he pandered to the religious extremist crowd by stating that he hoped she would convert to Catholicism and “eventually that she is somehow moved by the same thing that I was moved by in church.” He then added, “I honestly do wish that because I believe in the Christian Gospel, and I hope eventually my wife comes to see it the same way.”
Vance Courts the Extremists
If Trump doesn’t manage to run a fourth time and Vance wants to be president, he’ll be more dependent than ever on the MAGA base and the far-right, especially since he has little to no chance of winning over many Democrats or independents. Few will forget that he personally led the outlandish racist claims that Haitian immigrants were stealing pets and eating them in Springfield, Ohio. When busted on that fabrication, he admitted that he had known the truth, but didn’t care as long as it served his interests. He stated in an interview during the 2024 election campaign, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.”
Vance’s “stories” were blatant lies about immigrants (of color) and their role in US society. According to him, undocumented (and perhaps, maybe, kinda legal) immigrants are to blame for high medical prices, rising housing costs, education crises, crime, antisemitism, and illegal voting. In other words, there isn’t a problem in the United States that can’t be linked to undocumented aliens.
A Time When Vance Was Truthful
The next time around, Democrats would be wise to highlight Vance’s past criticism of Donald Trump. After all, he referred to Trump as “Hitler” and as a “morally reprehensible human being” in emails that plausibly were not supposed to be publicly seen. However, he did publish an article in The Atlantic only weeks before the 2016 election that he clearly wanted to be on the record. In a piece entitled “Opioid of the Masses,” he called Trump “cultural heroin.” He argued that, while Trump’s blather might make people feel good, he was anything but the answer to the deeply rooted causes of the multiple crises facing poor whites, particularly and ironically, opioid drug addiction. Like heroin, he wrote, its poison “enters minds, not through lungs or veins, but through eyes and ears, and its name is Donald Trump.” Vance’s own mother, as he noted in the article, abused heroin and prescription opioids, giving him a highly personal stake in the issue.
What he wrote then is no less true today: “Trump offers an easy escape from the pain… Trump’s promises are the needle in America’s collective vein.” Continuing with that addiction metaphor, he added, “Perhaps the nation will trade the quick high of ‘Make America Great Again’ for real medicine.” That Vance is long gone.
It’s a maxim of today’s politics that all relationships with Trump end badly.
Of course, his most important pre-Trumpian links weren’t to his largely made-up hillbilly upbringing—he was born and raised in Ohio—but his ties to far-right billionaires in Silicon Valley. They have been dubbed “techno fascists” for their reactionary, racist, misogynist, and anti-democratic views. His bids for the Senate and then the vice presidency weren’t just supported by Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other big names in the billionaire tech world, but opened the door to their increasing role in shaping policy, especially but not exclusively in relation to the artificial intelligence and technology industries.
Vance has, of course, also been in lockstep with Trump’s imperialist and self-serving foreign policy. He crudely sided with the president when he attempted to browbeat Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in their infamous Oval Office meeting on February 28, 2025. He also defended, and even cruelly joked about, the deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean by the US military. He justified Trump’s illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, echoing all the false claims of Trump, Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about drug trafficking and stolen oil.
It’s a maxim of today’s politics that all relationships with Trump end badly. Will Vance abandon Trump as he deteriorates yet more? The main lesson Trump learned from his late lawyer, the notorious Roy Cohn (of McCarthy-era fame), was to use people until they are no longer useful. Cohn counseled Trump in his early years and introduced him to influential and important people who facilitated his rise in New York City. They became “friends” until Trump (of course!) abandoned Cohn in his time of need once he contracted AIDS and was dying. Trump simply brushed him aside when he was no longer useful and reportedly did not even attend his funeral. Can Trump expect the same treatment from Vance?
Or will the vice president be like Kamala Harris and, as she did with President Joe Biden, pretend Trump is well when he clearly is not? As Trump struggles to make it for three more years, Vance will be questioned about his cognitive state and physical health. Will he gaslight the public and hope for the best?
Given what we have seen and that Vance has demonstrated no loyalty to principles or ethics, no one should be surprised if he turns on Trump at some point, should he determine that it is in his interest to do so.
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Totalitarian Rule Is Here: Project 2025 9 Months Along
MAGA is devotion to a single-party system, a charismatic leader, closed political culture, and war on civic society.
Sep 10, 2025
I had the opportunity to engage the author of the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” Paul Dans, this Saturday on BBC World News Radio. The essential question was whether Project 2025 was a document of totalitarian rule. Dans, who was fired from the Heritage Foundation during the presidential campaign for linking Donald Trump to the fascist playbook, has returned in full force as a MAGA senate candidate in South Carolina. He is a conservative committed to attacking democratic institutions, although he would claim that Project 2025 centers on returning the federal government to the hands of the people.
According to various trackers, the Project 2025 agenda has been nearly 50% completed. The assault on the federal system is well in hand. But is this totalitarianism?
Yes, it is.
I have written earlier about totalitarianism in the science policy of the White House. The totalitarian model extends further, up and down from the White House to the reactionary Supreme Court and especially to MAGAlytes in Congress. MAGA is devotion to a single-party system, a charismatic leader, closed political culture, and war on civic society.
First, recall that Project 2025 is a 900-page cornucopia of conservative delights. It calls for the replacement of merit-based federal civil service workers with people loyal to Trump and for taking partisan control of such critical law-enforcement agencies as the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). It promotes the closing of the Department of Education and the restructuring of museums, foundations, and even private universities to challenge fact-based institutions in their primary missions. In the economy, Project 2025 institutionalizes trickle-down economics: It reduces taxes on corporations, cuts social welfare and medical programs, draws financial and communications firms into the totalitarian fold, and rewards wealthy collaborators and industrialists as Hitler did in Nazi Germany with access to the halls of power. It promotes anti-LGBT discrimination; it ends Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. In fact, Project 2025 does not rein in the administrative state, its major stated goal, but gives additional tools to weaponize the corrupt Trump presidency.
Hence, Project 2025 reflects totalitarian political culture, in particular the persistence of a one-party system with an authoritarian leader who uses extra-legislative means to achieve his goals. For example, Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to root out “inefficiency” in government, but he in fact directed the faux department to emasculate agencies he and Project 2025 adherents disliked. In subservience to the president, MAGA republicans in Congress allowed DOGE to usurp their oversight. Further, while railing against executive orders (EO) of past presidents, Trump has used them in fact to replace policy making. Trump averaged 55 EO annually his first term; by mid-2025 he was averaging 330 per year with the goal to drown the courts and Congress in executive branch power.
Like in Hitler or Stalin who created a cult of personality, Trump has bullied MAGA to ensure allegiance to him as the all-powerful leader. This leader is the promoter of disorder, the arbitrator of conflict, the omniscient problem solver, the stager of domestic military sweeps and other Epstein flyovers to distract the populace, the organizer of state dinners and cabinet meetings in which his magalytes sickeningly faun for him. He is the Department of War lobbyist for the Nobel Peace Prize and the UFC organizer for a wrestling event on the White House Lawn. One senses he is jealous that Russian President Vladimir Putin miraculously scored eight goals in a charity hockey exhibition game (no one checked him, strangely). He is certainly angry that Kim Jong-Il shot a 38 will 11 holes-in-one, while the president must cheat at his golf game at his courses to win trophies.
Totalitarian states claim to give individual rights priority, but they seek control over private morality.
Totalitarian governments bathe the public sphere with propaganda; the Soviets were masters at misinformation. Putin has reestablished state control of all media. For his totalitarian push, Trump promotes branded presidential newspeak on his own channel, Truth Social. Such loyal media outlets as Fox help him spread false claims. Indeed, totalitarians want to control the medium and the message, not educate the public; destroy expert independence in government agencies, not encourage it; and in general to sully data, not analyze them. The complete weaponization of government comes in the selective assault of academic and intellectual freedom in the Trump administration attack on universities, law firms, and other private businesses.
The totalitarian state embraces the veneer of legality, but engages extrajudicial confiscation of power. Like the Stalin Constitution of 1936 or Nazi laws of the 1930s, magalytes treat the US Constitution as vaguely important when its language fits their plans. Otherwise, they rely on executive branch overreach and on specious interpretation of congressional laws (the Enemy Aliens Act 1798; Posse Comitatus Act of 1878) to end due process and deploy military troops in blue states. Partnering with such mega-maga-communications magnates as Peter Thiel, they deploy AI to create a surveillance state. DOGE sought personal information of US citizens to build a surveillance regime.
A signal action of totalitarian regimes is the identification of external and internal enemies, heavily colored with homophobia and xenophobia. AG Pam Bondi and FBI Director Patel are aggressively prosecuting people who crossed the president: former adviser John Bolton, prosecutors, judges, and even congresspeople. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other unidentified government police, their faces covered, their uniforms obscured, their racism barely concealed, resemble Stalin’s NKVD in their black overcoats as they round up, subdue, and cart enemies away to secret facilities. The major enemies are undocumented immigrants, which SCOPUS has now okayed to arrest on the basis of skin color alone. Recall that so fearful are the Trumpisti of immigrants that they have separated children from their parents to secret them out of the country; Putin, another authoritarian ruler, approves the kidnapping of Ukrainian children.
Project 2025 harps on the fear of internal enemies over alleged supposed additional rights given to individuals based on gender and color (“DEI”). In fact, like the Nazi prosecution of homosexuals or the Putinite illegalization of LGBTQ public existence, so the Trump administration has set forth a litany of enemies to be deprived of rights. They include Venezuelan gangs, lesbians, gays, people of color, Democrats, and trans individuals, the last who may be denied the Second Amendment right to bear arms by a finding that they are insane (“mentally ill”).
Totalitarian states claim to give individual rights priority, but they seek control over private morality. Women’s rights are anathema to the conservatives of Project 2025 who mention abortion over 200 times in the 900-page document. They claim to be pro-life and pro-family, but they pursue regressive natalism and forced pregnancy such as that imposed on women in socialist Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu. More and more gerrymandered states are following the examples of Texas and Florida to criminalize women and their personal physicians for not carrying fetuses full term—no matter the circumstances (rape, insist, mortal risk to the mother).
It's all there in Program 2025. And it’s all there in the White House.
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The Trump Coalition Wants to End Democracy as We Know It
Four groups aim to degrade our one-person-one-vote election system so a few billionaires and certain religious zealots can consolidate their political power.
May 14, 2025
The Trump coalition includes four groups of people:
- The MAGA (“make America great again”) base, mostly rural white men and women;
- A group of Silicon Valley billionaires known as the Paypal Mafia;
- A separate political movement called “religious nationalists”; and
- The Trump crime family itself.
All four groups share one basic aim: to degrade our one-person-one-vote election system so a few billionaires and certain religious zealots can consolidate their political power to eliminate free and fair elections to become even more controlling and richer than they already are.
Here are brief descriptions of the four groups.
1: The MAGA Base: Who Are They?
The hardcore, mostly-rural MAGA base can be understood as an echo of the Confederacy. Philosophically, many of them are the same people who tried to destroy the United States to preserve slavery via the Civil War (1861-1865). In their view, the basic ideas that inspired the founding of the U.S. (1776-1788) are wrong: All humans are not created equal and should not have equal rights under law. In 2022, MAGA believers included about 15% of the U.S. adult population, or about 39 million out of 258 million adults.
The MAGA Base: What Do They Want?
For many MAGA believers, President Donald Trump has been sent by God to make American great again, restoring white power. To many of them, white men naturally should dominate all people of color and all women. To varying degrees, many of them scorn foreigners, the poor, the disabled, the elderly, LGBTQIA people, and anyone they think looks down upon them (the mainstream media, Hollywood, and college types, among others).
White MAGA confederates share a seething resentment that they are losing the power and privilege that they have always taken for granted. Trump is their retribution, and many of them find community by rejoicing in his sadistic cruelty.
Of course, they want to restrict the vote. To achieve that goal, they are working to limit or eliminate the right to “due process” guaranteed in the Constitution, which is a step toward their goal of curbing the authority of the judicial branch of government. They seek freedom—freedom to do whatever they want to whomever they please, and they have made real progress.
2: The Paypal Mafia: Who Are They?
The Paypal Mafia is a loosely-affiliated group of billionaires in California’s Silicon Valley with roots in apartheid South Africa. Nazi-saluting Elon Musk is the most famous of them, though Peter Thiel is likely more influential. Many have become devotees of a man named Curtis Yarvin, a racist and avowed monarchist who believes democracy is unworkable and has failed. Yarvin is friends with Vice President JD Vance, whose political career was launched and funded by Peter Thiel.
The Paypal Mafia: What Do They Want?
The Paypal Mafia wants the U.S. to be run by a king, whom they would call a “CEO” (but which Curtis Yarvin has bluntly called “a dictator”). Seriously. They want the nation run like a corporation because corporations are “efficient” (meaning tightly controlled). Another term for what they want is “techno-fascism.”
This “tech broligarchy” (which reveres unlimited male power) wants to “get government off its back” as it continues to create and sustain gigantic monopolies of dubious legality like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Paypal, Palantir, and so forth—while they freely explore the profit potential of crypto currencies and artificial intelligence, among other dangerous wild-west technologies. Obviously, they oppose one-person one-vote democracy, which might eventually break up their monopolies and curb their dangerous tech gambles.
3: Religious Nationalists: Who Are They?
Religious nationalism includes a large group of people who share an overwhelming desire for political power to eliminate democracy and who are exploiting religion to achieve that goal.
As Katherine Stewart has shown in two well-researched books, The Power Worshippers and Money, Lies, and God, this is not a religious movement. It is a radical anti-democracy political movement dressed up in religious disguise.
About one-third of U.S. adults (roughly 78 million people) either strongly support (26 million) or partially or moderately support (52 million) religious nationalism. Although they are often called Christian nationalists, their actions and goals have little to do with the teachings of Jesus—feed the hungry, house the homeless, welcome the stranger. None of that.
Christian nationalists are Donald Trump’s largest group of devoted supporters. Two out of three completely or mostly agree that God ordained Trump to win the 2024 election. Without religious nationalist support, Trump would never have become president. So, their wish is his command.
Religious Nationalists: What Do They Want?
As Katherine Stewart has shown, religious nationalists want political power so they can eliminate democracy from the United States. They want to end the separation of church and state; eliminate public education and, in its place, substitute particular religious teachings; ban abortion nationwide and restrict access to birth control; deprive gay people of the right to marry and rescind laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation; eliminate no-fault divorce and restore “traditional” family roles in which men dominate; pack the federal judiciary with religious nationalists; allow corporations to discriminate openly against female employees (denying them access to birth control); declare “war” on progressive social policies and on “critical race theory;” end all restrictions on corporate monopolies; cut funding for science; get rid of governmental social safety nets (for example, social security, Medicaid, and food programs) so people will become dependent on churches for their survival; promote a Christian Nation identity in which conservative Christians have a right and a duty to enforce their values, sometimes by force; and of course make it hard or impossible for most people to vote.
Their core mission is to take over America and end democracy. Some of them are well on their way.
4. The Trump Crime Family: Who Are They?
Over the years, many people have compared Donald Trump’s family to a “crime family” and Trump himself to a Mafia godfather, demanding unquestioned loyalty from underbosses, enforcers, and associates.
Trump is always looking for ways to keep his soldiers and associates (in the three groups described above) loyal by giving them some of what they want. Meanwhile his sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, are roaming across the planet making lucrative deals with people who seek privileged access to the President of the United States. Cryptocurrency has made such access simple and secret.
The Trump Crime Family: What Do They Want?
So long as Donald Trump can use his office to acquire gobs of money, push people around, receive endless praise and adoration from his subordinates, and inflict cruel revenge on those who stand in his way, he seems happy. His sons seem satisfied to score a few billion dollars here and there, based on their family ties to the president. At bottom, the family wants to retain power so they and their soldiers and associates can make boatloads more money. This requires modifying election systems so Republicans can win despite the odds against them.
Conclusion
So that, in a nutshell, is the Trump coalition. They all share one goal: to end one-person one-vote democracy. To do that, they first want to disempower the federal judiciary and eliminate the expectation of “due process.” Then, by making it difficult or impossible for large numbers of Americans to vote, they intend to remain in power forever.
It is up to the rest of us to make sure they don’t.
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