What Happens When All We Have Left is the Pentagon? - Trump's Vision of a Militarized America

William D. Hartung TomDispatch
Last Friday, Donald Trump made his first visit to the Pentagon where he spoke of signing an order to begin "a great rebuilding of the armed services of the United States." This will mean a massive surge in federal dollars pouring into the abyss of the Pentagon, which has shown itself quite capable of absorbing such moneys in the past and seems to lack the slightest ability to account for what's done with them. (The Pentagon has never even managed to pass an audit.)

California Just Threatened To Stop Paying Taxes If Trump Cuts Federal Funding Over Sanctuary City Status

Grant Stern Occupy Democrats
The State of California's elected officials are exploring ways to combat President Trump's Executive Order cutting off funding to sanctuary cities. National legal experts say that Trump's sanctuary cities order is unconstitutional because, at its core, the order is an attempt to commandeer state and local officials in violation of the 10th Amendment.

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The History of U.S. Intervention and the 'Birth of The American Empire'

Terry Gross interviews author Stephen Kinzer NPR
A democratic foreign policy or empire building as central to U.S. action abroad? It's an old debate. Author Stephen Kinzer sees the alternatives set at the turn of the 20th century, when imperium boosters Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge and William Randolph Hearst squared off against Mark Twain and the Anti-Imperialist League. Here, Kinzer is queried about his analysis and his thinking on just where Trump and his malignant "America First" grandiloquence stand.

Why Millennials Aren't Afraid of Socialism

Julia Mead The Nation
It's an old idea, but the people who will make it happen are young - and tired of the unequal world they've inherited. I will come of age in the era of Trump. It's a bleak generational landmark, but ideological capitulation and despair are not the answer. In the 1930s and 1940s, many of the most dedicated antifascists were communists. The antidote to radical exploitation and exclusion is radical egalitarianism and inclusion.

Trump’s Threat to Investigate American Voters is a Danger to Democracy

Liz Kennedy and Danielle Root Center for American Progress
In a country where nearly 93 million eligible Americans did not vote in the 2016 presidential election, government officials should be investigating how to make the nation’s electoral process more inclusive, rather than searching for ways to place additional burdens on eligible Americans’ access to the polls.

Fact Checking Trump's Inaccurate Statements

Glenn Kessler The Boston Globe
Here’s an accounting of his public statements in the first seven days as president, not counting his error-plagued inauguration speech (which had eight problematic claims).

Friday Nite Videos -- January 27, 2017

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President Donald Trump's First Negotiation Was A Humiliation. Musical Internationalism | Groove in G. Radical Brownies. Russia Treason Arrest Seen as Tacit Corroboration of US Intel. Kellyanne Conway - SNL.

President Donald Trump's First Negotiation Was A Humiliation

Lawrence O'Donnell explains why Mexican President Peña Nieto's decision to not attend a scheduled meeting with Pres. Trump over the border wall is Trump's first humiliation on the global stage and sends a message to other world leaders about future negotiations.

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