Ah, the little people have power!

I have so many newsletters coming into my email, it sometimes means I skip a few for a day or so.

But today I just watched The Contrarian's live coffee report of 3 judicial decisions that were against the executive and doge orders. (I didn't take notes, but they said they all happened within 90 minutes of each other.

I read about the disgraceful US statements at the UN, to side with lying Putin about the Ukrainian war.

Then I read about people getting together in the UU church groups across the US to have a sense of spirituality and power against the forces that are hampering so many good actions.

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From Choose Democracy  dated Feb. 26, 2025 8:44 am

Cracks are showing.  And while the news reports on Musk's cruelty and incompetence, they miss a lot of the resistance that's making the cracks. And with it, a chance to understand how power works.

Over the weekend, unelected Elon Musk and his rogue crew sent out messages to federal workers asking: "What did you do last week?" in 5 bullet points (even from folks on vacation!).

On social media, Musk wrote, "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation." 

...Across the country, thousands of courageous federal workers wrote and advised each other to REFUSE to reply to those emails.

Soon the unions — NTEU, AFGE, CFPB — followed suit and told workers they should ignore the email completely. NTEU's advisory had a huge headline: "DO NOT RESPOND TO ELON!" The ball was rolling.

By now the Department of Defense joined in and told its people to ignore the memo. Finally, even some of Trump's own people — sycophants like Kash Patel (FBI), Marco Rubio (Secretary of State) and Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence) — told their staff to not comply.

This is how noncompliance works. It's a chain reaction of smaller to bigger dominos — the smaller ones knock down the bigger ones and on and on until the bigger dominos fall.

What we just saw is the largest mass noncompliance with Elon Musk (so far!).

This is the general direction we need to go. Musk says jump — and we all say "nope" and return to our lives.

Notably, traditional press mostly only caught the story once Patel and Rubio joined in. The resistance starting from workers and unions went unnoticed and largely unreported.

...But there are signs of cracking everywhere. On this situation, lawsuits against this whole charade and the 21 DOGE workers who quit in protest ("We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services. We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions.")

Hopefully others who haven't quit learn the art of digital sabotage against DOGE.

 Meanwhile, protests continue at town halls and outside legislative offices. Find actions nearby from Build the Resistance.

And then there's the debt ceiling and government funding bill. For folks having trouble assessing what's proposed, we find this chart very telling — an assessment from the Institute on Taxation and Economy Policy:

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Hurricane Helene didn't only reshape our landscapes in western North Carolina (WNC), it continues to impact many lives!

Local people are helping each other as best they can. Swannanoa Communities Together just reported this (which we already knew.)

In January, 5000 people in WNC lost temporary shelter from FEMA TSA (hotel vouchers). Many people still have nowhere to go. Many are sleeping in cars. We are working hard to support families in stabilizing and finding new homes, but it is a long, hard process for people who don't have a safety net.

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Ok, I've still got more newsletters to read, and haven't even opened Bluesky yet! But I need to go wash my car. Since it's getting warmer as I sit here, today is the day! It's 65 outside already and due to get close to 70!