Predators

What an administration filled with predators means for America

Donald Trump is a predator. Also, being a predator is apparently a prerequisite for working in his next administration. 

As I wrote last week, I don’t plan to focus too much on how much damage any of his nominees and hires can do individually. Remember, Trump tried to have his last Vice President killed. No one qualified for these jobs will take them, and while I think opposing each and every one of them is something Senate Democrats should be pushed to do, I have no illusions that their replacements would be any better. 

Trump’s choices here are deliberate. He’s not at all interested in a smooth confirmation process but in one that will cement his power and crush any dissent that might be left in the GOP ranks. Nominating the likes of Matt Gaetz, Pete Heseth, and Linda McMahon is a dare. One that Trump fully intended to win. (As it turns out, Trump didn’t win that dare, but we’ll get to that in a minute.)

There’s something so specific about choosing these predators. Obviously, the GOP has no qualms about supporting predators running for elected office, but looking over Trump’s picks creates the impression that everyone left in the MAGA-fied Republican party is, in fact, a predator. Collectively, they’re ready, willing, and able to prey on America’s government agencies for the boss’s gain and their own. We’re all their marks and their victims now.

Perhaps some Republicans are realizing that the optics of a cabinet full of predators is not great for them. As I was writing this, Matt Gaetz took himself out of contention for AG, a win I was not expecting and a potentially serious blow to Trump’s incoming administration. It’s a huge problem for Trump and a potential wedge we can drive between him and some Republican electeds in Congress.

But don’t expect the predatory behavior to stop anytime soon. Republican members of the House have decided to prey on Congresswoman-elect Sarah McBride, targeting the first openly transgender woman to serve in Congress with a transgender bathroom ban. It began with Rep. Nancy Mace calling for a ban and admitting that she was targeting her new colleague. Mace dared to frame her bullying as a way of protecting women, promising that “I will be there fighting you every step of the way.” But as Mace is fundraising aggressively off political theater of her own making, it’s obvious what her true motivation is. 

Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, responded by making the ban official. An act he’s framing as “We're not anti-anyone. We're pro-woman.” The fact that most American women would find Nancy Mace and Mike Johnson threatening for their war on our freedoms a more considerable danger than Rep. McBride simply existing doesn’t matter to them. In the MAGA Cinematic Universe, the people with the least power are threats, and the predators who do us all harm are encouraged to prey on whomever they like for the fun of it.

Here’s the thing about predators, though. They’re always looking for another victim, another mark, and eventually, they’ll turn on one another. We also know from the revolving door that was the last Trump administration that Donald Trump gets bored quickly and will humiliate most of these folks as he kicks them out the door. At the end of the day, there can only be one apex predator, and Trump will make sure it’s him. Trump values loyalty over competence (though, again, no one competent would work for him at this point), which I think offers a lot of opportunities to derail him and his thug army. 

We need to oppose the predators at every turn, especially since Matt Gaetz just showed us that we can win some of these fights. But it’s also crucial that we take care of one another. Most of us don’t know Sarah McBride, but we probably know someone in the LGBTQ+ community bearing witness to all of this and more worried about their personal safety because of it. We can and should show up for those folks in our lives and communities. Trump and his fellow predators seek to isolate their targets from their communities and make everyone feel disconnected, helpless, and alone. Showing solidarity with those currently under attack is a radical act of love and resistance. 

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ICYMI

New Indivisible Guide (Indivisible)

Indivisible remains one of my favorite things to come out of the last decade. A guide for organizing at all levels of government and an opportunity to build community with other politically active people in your neighborhood. The organization has updated its original guide for this next administration (I love that it’s still on a Google Doc!). For folks interested in ways to become more politically active, Indivisible is a good place to start. 

How to Survive the Broligarchy: 20 Lessons for the Post-Truth World (The Guardian)

Carole Cadwalladr, the reporter who first broke the Cambridge Analytica story, has some hard-won and valuable lessons to share with all of us.

An Eight-Year Struggle for Accountability in the US Ends in Defeat (Tech Policy Press)

A brutal but necessary read. Sample: “These results will leave many in philanthropy, academia, and advocacy grasping for a rationale to continue their focus on this challenge. Others will have to cease work because of the inevitable reshuffling of federal dollars away from counter-disinformation programs in and outside of the US and the fear of political or legal reprisal by the government and its political allies.”

Two-thirds of News Influencers Are Men — and Most Have Never Worked for a News Organization (Nieman Labs)

The bigger trend here isn’t necessarily new (I’m old enough to remember media outlets being concerned because people my age were all getting our news from the Daily Show) but if you’re thinking about media and how to reach young people and/or low information voters this data from Pew is helpful for understanding how and where news spreads.

Don't Call It a Substack (Anil Dash)

Anil is one of my favorite thinkers on tech, and I think this point on not giving platforms the ability to brand your work is so vital. He’s taking Substack specifically to task, but this is true of every platform, even the ones we like. Since I’m publishing this newsletter on Substack (a move I avoided for years but finally caved on) I’m the first to admit there are no easy answers here. But being clear about how much of our content, branding, and influence we’re giving to these platforms is a good place to start. 

Accused of Violating Worker Rights, Spacex and Amazon Go After Labor Board (NPR)

I keep starting and stopping a post about billionaires and why they came so hard for Biden and then Harris this election cycle. It’s a hard one to write because you start to feel like a conspiracy theorist and also, no one wants to read anything positive about Joe Biden right now, but I will always believe Biden’s NLRB and FTC appointments are what pushed these guys to decide fascism was better for their bottom line than regulation and giving slightly more organizing power to workers.

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A Decade of Ctrl Alt-Right Delete

Thanks to everyone who reads and supports Ctrl Alt-Right Delete, whether this is your first newsletter or you’ve been here from the start. This week, the newsletter turns 10 years old, and it is an anniversary that I’m both proud of and saddened by. I love writing the newsletter and connecting with you, but I also hate that it’s still necessary. 

Rest assured, I plan to keep going. CARD was one of the first newsletters covering the MAGA Right, and I intend to put that institutional memory to work. I plan to write more often than once a week, at least through Q1 of next year. I would like to give you as much information and analysis as possible to help us prepare for the next administration. 

If you’d like to support CARD financially, consider becoming a subscriber. Paid members receive bonus content early, and the funds give me space to write more, commission the occasional guest piece, and make the newsletter as good as it can possibly be. 

Want to continue the conversation? You can find me over at Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/melissaryan.bsky.social. If you’re just getting started on Bluesky or want to join the party, I have a Starter Pack set up especially for CARD readers. 

No newsletter next week as I’m taking off for the Thanksgiving holiday. Talk to you again in December!