
Friends and AFP readers are in shock and awe over the pace of the efforts to dismantle American democracy coming from the Trump/Musk/MAGA team, and all I can say is, buckle in.
I’m going to explain what is going on right now in D.C. by telling you a story about the ongoing political battle behind the scenes at the University of Virginia, and how one of the Youngkin appointees to the UVA Board of Visitors tells me it’s going to play out.
Trust me, it’ll make sense in a sec.
The way it was presented to me, the Youngkin BOV appointees are assuming that Abigail Spanberger will win the governor election in November, and even though it’s tradition that the new governor waits until the following June to begin making appointments to boards of visitors at schools across the Commonwealth, that’s just tradition, not state law, and the Youngkin appointees are working under the assumption that Spanberger will fire them all and start over with a clean slate of her appointees.
ICYMI
Ergo, and this is what I was told, the Youngkin appointees to the UVA Board of Visitors are working under the presumption that they have until next January to do what they think they need to do to reverse the policy direction instituted by the appointees from the McAuliffe and Northam years.
You might already see what I’m getting at here, but let me spell it out anyway.

Trump/Musk has a little longer to plunder the federal government than the folks in Virginia do – the 2026 midterms are 22 months away, and it’s almost certain that Republicans are going to lose, big; it wouldn’t surprise me to see Democrats approach a veto-proof majority in the Senate, is how much of a bloodbath it’s going to be for the Rs.
OK, so, the lesson MAGA World learned from Trump 1.0 was, if we’re going to dismantle government, we’ve got to work fast; first time through, the Trumpers were so disorganized that they got almost nothing done before Democrats took control of Congress back in the 2018 midterms.
Ergo, we have this ongoing flurry of overreaching executive orders disguised as attempts to rewrite federal laws and the U.S. Constitution, the effort to close down a federal agency that should get the people involved in it locked up, the attempt to halt trillions of dollars in congressionally-authorized federal funding that would lead to impeachment and removal, if we had a functioning Republican Party.
The last two weeks have felt like an escalating game of Whack-a-Mole to a lot of us, exacerbated by the fecklessness of congressional Democrats, who have largely been playing the go-along-to-get-along game that is the reason we are where we are in the first place.
ICYMI
- Trump, Musk, trying to shut down USAID, breaking federal law: Warner focused on guac
- Trump backs off Mexico tariffs: Countries agree to one-month pause
- Tim Kaine, Mark Warner helped Elon Musk take over the federal treasury
- Ben Cline breaks silence: Says Trump can change the Constitution by himself
Which is why it’s up to we, the people, to tell the Neville Chamberlains in D.C. afraid of the sound of their own footsteps that they either need to get off their asses, or get out of the goddamn way.
MAGA Republicans wrote the playbook for gumming up the works – procedural things, like, senators blocking unanimous consent of presidential nominees, using the filibuster to hold up legislation, filing lawsuits in courts overseen by friendly judges to use the court system to put a hold on executive actions and new laws.
More from the MAGA playbook: we deluge congressional offices with calls, gather in the hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands outside their offices and the steps of the U.S. Capitol, block roadways, airports and train stations in and around D.C., protest outside their damn houses.
We put economic pressure on the people who write checks to keep politicians in power – in essence, you choose: are those tax breaks and government contracts worth more to you than the revenues from what you sell in the marketplace?
And on an interpersonal level: the people in your lives who continue to stand on the side of the wannabe oligarchy need to be confronted with the reality of what they’re doing to the others in your life whose lives are being threatened by the restrictions on abortion, by the mass roundups of legal immigrants without criminal histories, by the executive orders putting funding for mental healthcare and the social safety net on pause.
ICYMI
I get the shock and awe; I feel your pain.
Just know, it’s not over until we say it’s over, and if you ask me, it ain’t even started yet.
Trump/Musk assumes that the other side will let it get away with murder because theirs is the only side willing to break the rules to get what it wants.
What I’m telling you is, the gloves need to come off.
You want America back? It’s time to start kicking some MAGA ass.