🧵Make America 1933 Again
The Rise of American Fascism

It can happen here. It already is.

Fascism doesn’t need to show up looking like the History Channel: swastikas, stiff-armed salutes, and jackboots marching down Main Street.

(Learn more 👇and RT so your friends can too!) Contemporary fascism, here and abroad, wears their Sunday best and clutches a Trump Bible. Fascism in Germany didn’t start with deportations and gas chambers,—it started with the elimination of civil rights and a Big Gov surveillance system focused on “thought crimes.”

Did you check out all week on vacation?

Update 👇

The Cycle Monday Memo
Live Free. Die fast. Get Digested Slowly

Let’s begin with a quick vibe check. Are you breathing air with an AQI over 300 today? Wearing Crocs in public because it’s too hot for socks but too dangerous to go barefoot? Great. Then you’re ready for this week’s news. The Elon Musk Civil War: America Party Edition

First up, our favorite discount Bond villain, Elon Musk, declared civil war on the Republican Party this week by suggesting he’s launching the “America Party,” a political vehicle so inspiring it was conceived during a Twitter poll with as much methodological rigor as your drunk uncle asking, “Who wants to go to Waffle House?” at 3am.

🚨🚨🚨BREAKING: Elon Musk Announces a New Party.

Democrats Should Throw Him a Parade.

Elon Musk has decided America needs a new political party. And not just any party – the America Party, founded on the deeply inspiring and universally unifying mission of… eliminating the national debt??

(Please RT this!) Don’t get me wrong, there is always decent public support for lowering the debt, theoretically.

What has happened to the girls at Camp Mystic is EXACTLY what one of the country's best meteorologists
@JohnMoralesTV warned would happen.

Learn how Trump's cuts to @NOAA & @NWS have critically impacted storm prediction nationwide. x.com/rachelbitecofe… x.com/rachelbitecofe…

🧵🚨🧨🎇🎆U.S. Blues
States Once Ruled Your Mind, Body, and Bedroom.

They Want to Do It Again

Tomorrow is July 4th. Independence Day. Almost 250 years since America went to war to declare itself free from being ruled by a king and created government for the people, by the people.

For the love of democracy, please RT👇 But for the first time since the Civil War, the survival of American democracy is at stake.

100 years ago, Americans were not all that free, and certainly not free in the modern sense.

Most Americans had almost no protection from government overreach – not just from the federal government, but from their state governments.

🧵🚨🚨🚨The Cycle's Monday Memo:

Yes the Senate just passed the Big Ugly Bill but actually, Republicans have a Really Big Problem

Want to know more?

This 🧵is for you!!

(please RT) BUT Elon Musk has once again declared open war on any Republican who voted for this bill:

And is reminding everyone that the results of his “very scientific” twitter poll DEMANDS a new party he wants to call The America Party.

🧵
Something Wicked This Way Comes

Folks,

Shit has hit the fan in LA and other Blue cities as the realities of rounding up millions of people, many of whom have lived in the U.S. for years or came as children and have grown up American begin to take root.
thecycle.substack.com/p/the-cycle-mo… For those of us who’ve spent the last 6 months discussing how Trump would use mass deportations to create chaos is the Blue states and then use that chaos as an excuse to declare a national emergency and seize total power, things are right on schedule.

🧵There are serious implications to the end of Elon and Trump’s partnership.

I have mentioned before, even having Elon exit stage left was great news for us, but having him kill off Trump’s Big “Beautiful” Bill.

Well, that could change everything. Not only may we end up in a 2026 scenario where a major player (and his money) have removed themselves from the game, now we might even see Elon actively undermine Republicans up and down the ballot.

🧵Trump's Executive Orders Serve One Sinister Purpose:

Inside Team Trump's Shrewd Strategy to Kill Democracy

Many times I’ve asked you to imagine what it would be like, what your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about contemporary America would be like, if you were one of the 100 million plus Americans who can’t name their own state’s senators. Vox dropped a recent piece that is firewalled, but I want you to read this short excerpt from their reporting:

🧵STAT of the Week
Voters Have No Idea What Democrats Stand For

I want to show you something very important.

You know I talk non-stop about how Republicans have intentionally trashed the Democratic Party’s brand, but today I want to focus on how Democrats help them get away with it. Last week David Shor from Blue Rose Research released their election autopsy. You can find the entire presentation this slide comes from here in a conversation between Ezra Klein and David Shor.

🧵What is the Overton Window and Why Is Elon Musk Breaking It?

Elon Musk Bought Twitter to Make the Unacceptable Acceptable. And It's Working. So many political science terms, so little time.

As I meet with more and more people from the upper tiers of Democratic Party politics it is becoming clear to me that there are key findings from peer-reviewed political science research that simply never trickled down to the general public.

🧵STAT(S) Of the Week:
Never Interrupt Your Enemy When They Are Making a Mistake

I think, and I believe many of you must agree, it is best to live and strategize in the world we actually live in and not the one we wished we lived in. Unfortunately, in the real world, even after two months of the terrible headlines we have been reading, the average public still likes Donald Trump way more than Democrats.

He still beats us by 20 points!

🧵Here's Why Democrats Can't Meet This Moment
And How We Can Fix It

Folks, for a long time I’ve wanted to introduce you to a book that came out a year or two ago by a journalist named Tina Nguyen called The MAGA Dairies.

There are a lot of reasons to read this book and for a long time I’ve held out hoping to get the author onto the podcast to talk about it with me, but I can’t afford to wait any longer. Why?

Because this book is the perfect illustration of how and why the Republican Party has managed to radicalize 50 million people into wanting autocracy AND also the perfect explanation of why Democrats seem completely lost in response.

🧵Living History:

Plenty of Parallels between MAGA and the NAZI Movement

Folks, sometimes when I’m waging war against the MAGA Nazis on the twitter machine I come across something I read and then want you to read too.

This is why I am going to copy and paste this short piece from someone who would prefer to remain anonymous (with their permission!) This analysis shows the parallels between MAGA and another fascists movement from 100 years ago who you know as the Nazis.

Here it is:

The comparison to Nazi Germany isn’t just a stretch—it’s a direct historical parallel unfolding in real time. Trump’s playbook is eerily similar to Hitler’s rise to power, and the signs are all there for those willing to see them.

🧵The Tipping Point Is Upon Us:
Will MAGA Simply Ignore the Courts?

Ok folks, we’re three weeks in and have already entered the “constitutional crisis” phase of things.

I want to draw your attention to something critically important in the coming week. The federal courts have started to respond to Elon Musk’s illegal attack on federal agencies and programs like USAID. This is going to create a real litmus test for the survival of our democracy.

Much of what Trump and Elon are doing is so flagrantly illegal, it is hard to imagine much of it surviving judicial review, even at the Supreme Court level.

Yes, the Federalist Society controls the Court, but on occasion at least three of their justices, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Roberts have ruled on the side of the Constitution against Trump. There is one major exception and that is the immunity case where they not only did their best to create an untouchable presidency, but also did it in a way to drag the case out of being tried before the election. So we know they have it in them.

American Idiot:
Voters Know Nothing, Jon Snow.

This 🧵 is about the effects of partisanship on public opinion.
Please RT & share it! #TheMoreYouKnow This book, The American Voter, first published in 1960, is the Bible of my subfield in political science: political behavior.

Political behavior is the study of the way people think, feel, and act with regard to politics and includes everyone from political office holders and candidates (elites) to your average man on the street voters.

🚨🧵New from The Cycle 👇

Trump, MAGA, and the Breaking of the American Mind:

A Majority of Republicans Say They are A-OK With Trump Suspending the Constitution

Have you ever had a random conversation with someone that just sort of stays with you over time?

I had one such conversation back in 2019 or so participating in an event. The conversation was with a graduate student assistant from Rwanda who was working the event. That evening a few of us gathered under the Virginia summer sky to night gaze and hang out.

Always eager to talk with people from other cultures, and especially from places with a political history like Rwanda’s, I was eager to ask about Rwanda’s recovery from the genocide that ripped the country apart in a 100 day blood bath during the Rwandan civil war in 1994.

🧵Welcome to the Crusades 2.0

An Interview with Matthew Taylor, author of The Violent Take it by Force: The Christian Movement that is Threatening our Democracy. If you’ve been following the transition of the Republican Party from the party of Reagan into whatever the hell it is now you’ll know that the once “useful idiots” of the Republican Party, the Christian Right, now rule the party and they have big plans for Trump 2.0.

🧵How to be Sand in the Gears of Tyranny

A Guest Essay by @GalvinAlmanza

Friends,

I’m aware many of you want/need actionable advice on things you can do to help thwart what is coming so you don’t marinate in hopelessness. As Dr. DOOM, I’m not well-positioned for this role! That’s why when I came across Emily Galvin-Almanza's threaded tweet offering tangible, actionable ideas for real resistance that can really matter I knew I needed to get it to you.

So, I reached out to Emily and offered her the opportunity to write up her ideas to share with The Cycle’s audience and I am delighted she agreed.

What follows is Emily’s article.

🧵Why Democrats Failed to Save Democracy
Identity Politics and Microtargeting Killed The Party's Brand

Once upon a time the Democratic Party, with its regional base in the Southern U.S. was the party of slavery, and then of segregation.

If you spend much time on social media you already know this because of the many times Trump voters have told you, “but Democrats are the party of segregation!”

Back in the 1950s and 1960s during the Jim Crow Era, the Democratic Party had morphed into an unholy alliance merging a party of liberal Whites and racist White Southerners into one big coalition that by staying together, dominated Congress for decades. By the 1960s, the activism of MLK. Jr and thousands of other largely unnamed civil rights activists finally forced the Democratic Party to choose: preserve their large coalition or end segregation. In part due to the assassination of JFK, then-President Lyndon Johnson sided with civil rights for Blacks signing both the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 and in doing so, set off the realignment that would lead to total domination of the South by the Republican Party just a few decades later.

Welcome to the Upside Down:
It's Gonna Be a Long, Strange Trip Into Autocracy

Folks, if you subscribe to the Cycle you know I like to give you reality straight, with no chaser. If you think your mental health isn’t up to that, please flee. There will be little feel-good content coming from me. Instead, I plan on bringing you a weekly blow-by -blow documenting the decline of democracy loosely based on William Shirer’s work as a foreign correspondent reporting from Berlin in the early years of the Third Reich.