I fear white supremacy has raised its ugly head again.

 I fear white supremacy has raised its ugly head again. From my Muftic Forum facebook posting today edited a bit. 

Some personal musings and hand-wringing in the marching orders to the Department of Justice, to focus instead on White rights instead of the civil rights of minorities. https://www.cbsnews.com/.../justice-department-reverse...

Except for eggs (the bird flu epidemic seems to be over), the price of groceries has either stayed the same since Trump promised to lower the prices or has risen dramatically in beef and pork. And, no, gas for my car is not under $2 per gal. AAA says it is averaging well over $2 per gal.

Now I am seeing some shifting in polls, with focus instead on groceries and gas is now on the cost of health care, housing, and retirement, which are big-ticket items that even the middle class is feeling the pain about. Other evaluators and opinion writers watch to see if the MAGA devotees are losing their love of TruImp. Still, his MAGA base, by any estimmates comprise 30 to 35% of the total vote, and the majority of the GOP are holding firm. Any shifts recently to blue have come mostly from independents and Hispanics.

I have always felt the cost of living was not the real concern for MAGA, but it was the stand-in issue for other issues still not politically correct to be so open about. Outweighing the cost of living and affordability of modern life is what I would most kindly identify as "cultural". This umbrella term includes racist attitudes. and that the "again" part of the MAGA slogan most likely refers to pre-civil rights legislation of the 1950's. Anti-DEI removal from every government standard in the past year is just fine for Trump's base, and now the DOJ, under Trump's direction, is to protect the rights of White people who have been so discriminated against, even though they are the majority.

The recent 'Monkey flap depicting the Obamas as monkeys' is revealing, given the silence coming from the right with a few exceptions. Trump blames it on a staffer, but has not apologized. Update: 2/14/2026, Trump has even attacked members of the GOP who have criticized the monkey business as disloyal to him. What that says to me is that he himself believes his MAGA base is as racist as he is, and who also believe that black people are directly descended from apes and are still inferior to White people. Trump privately lashes out at GOP lawmakers over racist video blowback, sources say

That view of Black people was in my most racist Jim Crow eastern Oklahoma birth place and what I experienced and heard until I went off to college in 1956." Negroes were inherently descended from a branch of apes, so it went ,who were therefore inferior and incapable of governing (good at sports and music, however), either to be treated, like children paternalistically, andalso to keep them separate from us White folks. (The Obamas, intellectually, behaviorally, and oratorically, were a slap in the face of the old trope.)

There appears to be still a large segment of Americans stuck in the attitudes of the 1950's, even though there are subsequent generations in leadership. The silence from all but a few to the monkey posting on Trump's media on the right is incriminating. While being called "racist" by those on the left as an insult hurled at MAGA, I fear there are many in MAGA who look in the mirror and are OK with being called one and who are comfortable with a president who has a lifetime history of racist dog whistles and policies that resemble their own feelings.

The icing on the cake, in case you are still upset or sceptical of my view is what happened this past week: While DEI is now removed as a standard for government behavior, the orders from above to the DOJ are now to protect the majority racial groups in power, us White people, who have been so discriminated against by DEI and civil rights legislation. White supremacy has now come out of the closet and into the light as official public policy.

Trump refuses to apologize after posting meme condemned as racist | Watch. Would it be because he would turn off part of this MAGA base who agrees with the belief that the Obamas are descended from apes so they are lesser.

Modern anthropology and science have found the following, per a Goog;e AI search of the question if White people are also descended from apes. The answer:

•  Early hominid species (human ancestors) diverged from the ancestors of chimpanzees and gorillas in Africa
• Race and Evolution: All modern human populations (white, Black, Asian, etc.) share a common ancestor that lived around 200,000 years ago in Africa.
• Light Skin Development: The development of white skin in Europeans is a relatively recent evolutionary adaptation (roughly 8,000–12,000 years ago) as populations moved into higher latitudes. 

Russell Vought and Trump: pulling the Project 2025 schedule F trigger

Trump administration plans to reclassify 50,000 federal workers, making them easier to fire | CNN Politics

Russell Vought and Trump are pulling the Project 2025 schedule F trigger

 Trump tried it before and failed. He is trying it again. In the name of ending the deep state, Project 2025, the blueprint for the authoritarian takeover of the federal government, proposed once again to eliminate civil service protection from political pressure, and instead, to make civil service employees subject to loyalty tests to the President in the Oval Office by reclassifying their positions. Vought was one of the authors of Project 2025, and Trump appointed him to manage the federal government personnel office known as the Office of Management and Budget.

That is the most destabilizing, power-grabbing, corruption-spawning act one can imagine.  Since early in the last century, when the good government reform movement gained steam,  state and local governments have tried to reform corrupt practices of big bosses by removing government bureaucrats from judgment call pressures based on political control. It makes them subject to appointment and removal actions that do not consider job performance and qualifications for their positions.  Appointment to government positions has always been a power play tool for the mayor, the government, and now the presidency, to have as many political positions to fill as they can. It subverts 50 years' worth of good government reforms, and some see it at the Trumpist level, a threat to democracy itself.The Schedule F Threat to Democracy: A Project 2025 Explainer - Kettering Foundation

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Chainsaw 1 and Chainsaw 2 : Fulfilling Russell Vought's Project 2025 dreams

What Trump may try in November 2026 midterms even fascists and communists did not do

 Edited and updated  Feb 5,2026 post.Also published on Substack Feb. 7, 2026 

Senior Trump advisor Steve Bannon announced on right-wing network Real America’s Voice on Wednesday that ICE agents will be present at polling locations for the 2026 midterm elections. Bannon said the purpose of ICE’s presence is to ensure that everyone voting is a citizen. I can’t recall any fascist or communist dictatorships even trying this armed force vote control. They at least try to look like they are democratic, and the guaranteed 80% of the vote for their dear leader is legitimate. Appearances still mean something, even if the fox is guarding the henhouse door.

In Colorado, we have mail-in ballots ...but also a small number of ballots are cast in polling places on election day. This attempt to frighten voters away from a polling place will not work very well in my state. But for others, imagine you have darker skin or look like you are not a white Anglo-Saxon type, and you are confronted by one of these ICE paramilitary masked men in front of your polling place. This is one fear of how the ICE private militia of Trump will try to suppress votes.. eyes appearing over a mask, garbed for war, armed to the teeth, are demanding to see your papers. That is what the GOP is trying to set up today in Congress. (Got a certified birth certificate, a tribal card membership, a passport in your back pocket?No papers? Aww, too bad. Better luck next time proving you are a citizen.) All driver’s licenses do is verify it is you, but it is not proof that you are a citizen. We have no national ID card for citizens. The other way Trumpists tried in the past and are trying now is to let the GOP give the codes to the ballots and tabulating machines to a political buddy, just like Tina Peters did in Colorado. She is still sitting in a state penitentiary after losing in jury trials and appeals.

Now, Trump would like only the GOP to run elections. We are supposed to trust Trumpists to be fair? Oh, wait, Peters was a Republican, wasn’t she? What? No evidence blue voters did anything like that in 2020 either? The only violent perpetrators were followers of Donald Trump on January 6 (oh, wait, he was a Republican, too, and they were waving Trump banners as they peacefully injured 150 police, broke a lot glass, and broke into the sacred halls hunting for Nancy and Pence for the noose waiting outside?) Who is going to protect the rest of us from this kind of partisan behavior?

What we can expect is for the Trumpists to try once again what failed in 2020: to challenge every swing county and state-by-state vote in the US in the courts to keep the results up in the air for as long as he can keep his party in power in the House or tie that body up in knots. He will fabricate every pretext and pretense he can, and like 2020, lose in court when courts in every instance demanded actual evidence. His fake elector scheme also failed in 2020. Pence didn’t play along. Of course, when the Trumpists win, as they did in 2024, then, yes indeed, the elections were fair. Right? That November 2026 would be fair to him, and if his partisans did pull off a win and still control Congress, of course, that would be due to his extreme measures of keeping those phantom migrants still on the voter lists from voting. Wait, in 2024, both the White House turned red, and all of those phantom migrants voted anyway then?” Now that was a fair election”. Could it be that only fair elections are when Trump and MAGA win?. Oh, for heaven’s sake. Give me a break. Obviously, evidence and logic have little meaning to his true believers.

So why begin now, 8 months ahead, to use this unconstitutional display of force and raid Fulton County, GA., to hone his tactics and see how much Trump can get away with? States, per the Constitution control the vote and it is the power of each of their separate states. It is really hard to control who can vote, and how the vote is counted if there are over 51 states/DC, and thousands of county clerks. It would be so much easier for a dictator to hack and control all of vote if the feds were in charge of elections across the entire ballot everywhere, from the lowest position to the highest.

Why is Trump trying to federalize the vote, and even using the threats of armed force? Changing the Constitution will not happen in time for either Nov. 2026 or Nov. 2028. Using the threat of ICE and the fabricated lie that those brown and black voting is a pretext is a to destroy a democracy de facto by destroying the faith that elections are free and fair.

It also has to do with keeping up appearances. It looks like to me it is the use of theater to make a political power play point and to justify eliminating fair and free elections, the other 70% of us once trusted. To give his unthinking base, a good portion who still believe 2020 was stolen, will feel soooo secure this time around because if Trumpists paramilitary act like this, it must be true that all of those illegals are trying to vote, so acting like it is true is proof it is true and “thank you, DJT, for protecting us. You are the greatest.”

The most extreme fear I have is still worth red flagging, because of Trump’s use of a violent coup attempt he either planned or invited others to do on his behalf on Jan. 6. It is even more likely he could use violence now with his newly minted ICE paramilitary loyal to him. It is not out of the question for Trump to use the pretext of unevidenced election fraud on election night and to declare a national emergency, suspend the Constitution, direct ICE strong arms or call out active and guard military, and take over the vote and the outcome, grabbing every ballot box they can and lord over its recount. That is how other wannabe dictators have done it, and they also destroyed democracy for future decades to keep themselves or their ideological successors in dictatorial control. It usually works.

Felicia Muftic is a former elections official for Denver, Colorado

https://www.msn.com/.../bannon-says-ice.../ar-AA1VJne1...

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Trump wants to GOP nationalize elections and control the vote count: that’s what dictators do

https://www.msn.com/.../bannon-says-ice.../ar-AA1VJne1...

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Trump wants to GOP nationalize elections and control the vote count: that's what dictators do

Trump wants to GOP nationalize elections and control the vote count: that's what dictators do

Trump wants to GOP nationalize elections and control the vote count: that's what fascists and communist dictators do. 

Trump urges Republicans to 'take over' and 'nationalize' voting - ABC News

Trump wants the GOP to take over the vote in blue states. It is very difficult for a dictator to control the vote when there are 51  different states and the District of Columbia. He tried something like that in 2020. His minions asked all local clerks to secure the voting and tabulating machines. One clerk in Colorado took the orders seriously, gave access codes to a Trump-loyal volunteer, and locked away the machinery. Tina Peters has become the poster child of the violation of state laws and rules to protect faith by the public in fair and free elections. The voter system, laws, and rules were set up by a Republican administration in Colorado years ago. Peters still sits in a state jail after conviction. Now Trump wants the GOP to become Tina Peters.

Trump's false pretense of such dirty tricks is that the 2020 election was stolen because all of those illegals voted and mail-in votes are all a fraud, their propagandists and a delusional Trump claim. In over 6 years, over 60 court decisions, such attempts to prove these claims have failed.

 Trumpists must think that if they can get voters' personal information, they can prove their pretext, the Constitution provisions delegating election controls to states be hanged. That strategy has met some speed bumps as many Secretaries of State have put up a vigorous pushback. There are methods in Trump's madness because controlling access to the details of voters also gives the holderthe ability to target voter suppression techniques to specific voters and voter blocks. The DOJ has demanded Colorado’s and more than 19 other states'voter rolls information, including driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, and is attempting to change the post office delivery terms for mail-in ballots so they are counted by local officials.  There may be hope as a federal judge blocked the DOJ request for Oregon on 1/27/26. Federal judge blocks Trump DOJ access to Oregon voter rolls    Trump Administration Has Sued More than 20 States for Refusing to Turn Over Voter Files | Brennan Center for Justice

 In six years, no evidence has emerged that had evidence of that or that the 2020 vote was stolen. Of course, the election in 2024 must have had all the integrity in the world when Trump won, and MAGA did, too, up and down the ballots. That pretext to seize ballots has not died, and just last week it was once again dredged up. This Trumpian raid and the snatching of Georgia 2020 ballots smells like a pretext to keep the House in GOP hands by throwing the 2026 midterms into chaos.  This could explain the strange raid last week and the presence of national security officials trying to reinvent that one state election to concoct a pretext for federal takeover of the vote in selected blue states..  If Trump and his administration can't win one way (the predictions are he will lose control of the House), they will find another way, and this one is ugly.  

There are suspicions, rumors, and theories circulating that Trump wants to call in the National Guard to "secure" the machines. He advocated that in his first term. Even more disquieting is the fear that he will use his personal paramilitary militia, ICE, to use the pretext that illegal migrants are voting. Of course, the election in 2024 must have had all the integrity in the world when Trump won, and MAGA did, too, up and down the ballots. 

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: If the Trump regime tries destroy Colorado's vote integrity in 2026 a buzz saw awaits

Voting in Authoritarian Elections | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Why does Trump seem not to care he facing plunging polls and a loss of the House in November?

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: What Trump may try in November 2026 midterms even fascists and communists did not do

Being an agitator is now a crime worthy of an ICE takedown with guns drawn?

 Being an agitator is now a crime worthy of an ICE takedown with guns drawn? Right up there with migrants with criminal records are new targets of ICE: They will take down those they call agitators with no evidence that a person was doing any more than surveying ICE activities from her car  and that was "interfering" with ICE .. She was driving around tracking ICE activity. DHS itself called her an agitator.  This is the kind of stuff that happens in dictatorships, communist or fascist. Those demonstrating or protesting peacefully are considered enemies of the state and often are just "disappeared" with no trace or put on the docket with judges appointed by the State. In this case, technology, a dashcam, was a citizen's record. So here we have similar actions by a government paramilitary whose job is not to take down "agitators", but who do it anyway..First Amendment be damned. .St. Peter police chief intervened and got federal agents to release resident, sources say | MPR News

Concerns grow over federal agencies' use of facial recognition technology on protesters | Watch

 

 

Why is it some verbal slings and arrows do not bother Trump or MAGA?

  MAGA seems to dismiss certain verbal attacks on them by the libs as not just hot air, but they  ignore and sometimes even embrace what others call slurs and insults like the words fascists and dictators.  The most stunning recent development has been the millions participating in peaceful marches under the banner of "No Kings", a polite way of calling Trump a wannabe dictator who is destroying the democracy we have had for 250 years.  Trump just brushed that off before the entire world by not being offended by being called a dictator, but embracing it in Davos with "sometimes you need a dictator.. There is evidence that many in the MAGA movement agree, given CPAC and the implementing documents of  Project 2025 and actions unfolding before our very eyes on amateur and professional videos. They are either silent or in denial.

Is it time to call Trump a fascist kind of dictator? Dictators are not confined to specific ideologies. They can just as easily be communists as those on the farthest right. A recent case was made in the Atlantic that it was time to call Trump a fascist, despite the negative reaction it would inflame. My answer is to call specific actions the same as what fascists once did, instead of calling people or a group fascists. Fascist is still an insulting label, and hurling insults never was a good way to make friends and influence people. Yes, there are those within the MAGA movement who are there for reasons other than ideology or hero worship, are fearful, or have political and business ambitions. who would not like to be called fascists. Applebaum at the Atlantic, Maddow at MSNOW, and a bevy of historians and political scientists have doing a yeoman's job in educating what fascists in the last century did, but there needs to be more explicit linking the specific act to being similar to fascism,  similar to what the fascists once did.

The implicit message is, if you do not want to be called a fascist, then do not act like one. 

There is plenty of evidence that some in MAGA have already decided it would take a dictator to accomplish what they want to happen. What they want to happen sums it up in Make America Again, back to an era that resembles the 1950's, I suspect, though the "again" is never dated by  MAGA interviewees, but resembles their attitudes that look like before the civil rights legislation and DEI.  As evidence, CPAC(the conservative political action committee) began holding meetings in Hungary, whose dictator, Viktor Orbán, epitomized the kind of strong leadership that was their ideal. If that was not enough of a clue of what kind of America MAGA wanted to have govern us, they gave us another clue: Project 2025, which was a publicly printed blueprint of how to remove the checks and balances that kept a King, a tyrant, a despot, a dictator from becmiing "president", and used the placid term: unitary government. It would make the "president" be both the legislative and judicial branches, by subjugating those branches to his/her power. In his second term, the writers of that document were put in key positions to carry out the methods of achieving Project 2025 to replace all decision-making positions,  civil service protected, and appointee positions with appointees who were screened to ideological loyalty to the White Nationalist agenda. It was done under the banner of getting rid of the deep state. Laced throughout that document was the destruction of DEI in all matters. Trump appointed the Project 2025 architect as the person in charge of personnel and then proceeded to use the DOJ to threaten and to prosecute those who put up resistance or who did not resign.   Their weapon and tool was Donald Trump, who seems to have never enough absolute power to suit his appetite, even after his appointees on the Supreme Court gifted him immunity from criminal prosecution. Trump himself touted his lack of moral standards (he'll use his own version of what is moral, he told Davos) "transactional.. another polite term that means right is whatever favors him and his advantage and power, which he believes, and said so, in a recent interview that he has the power to do whatever he wants.

The other element in the MAGA equation, not openly expressed because there is still an element of political correctness, is, in my opinion, the belief that white people were superior to those of other colors and races, and they deserved to be the ones governing the country. The evidence is that they support a president whose racism ranges from calling brown migrants, legal or not, those who are "poisoning the blood of our country", sometimes referring to them bringing diseases", or who mostly were rapists and murderers as he descdended his golden escalator, and then to even call neo Nazis some fine people in the Charlottesville demonstrations. .  MAGA's silence when being called racists or supporters of the white race is as good as consent. They are supportive, or silent, of ICE targeting only those of color for their drag net, a racial profiling, mass deportation policy that not only got the murderers and rapists, but also deported far more who were only guilty of a misdemeanor by not having documents showing legal status. Even some who flashed proof of birth, passports, green cards, said they were citizens, were caught and sent to detention camps if they looked or had accents like migrants.

What has unnerved the MAGAs is that millions of white, middle-class people objected to the tactics of ICE by marching in every big city and red and blue hamlets in America.  They do not share the MAGA values. What word the citizens of Minneapolis coined was to call migrants of color their neighbors, in the spirit of the words spoken by Christ or some other moral standards.  They backed up their attitudes by helping those afraid to be snatched by ICE agents in danger because of their color, accent or language, even if they had proof of legal status. 

 The final straw that may put a dent in MAGA itself (maybe) or further inspired more protesters (for sure) was the suppression of white protesters whistling, shouting slurs, and videoing ICE take down atrocities and the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, white, middle-class protesters. Calling them immediately "domestic terrorists" has been a hard sell to most Americans as videos and backgrounds became more known and reported in more media. The "don't believe your very eyes" is the MAGA response that is wearing thin. Now, the arrest and prosecution of journalists like Don Lemon is a further attempt to suppress inconvenient revelations to the world of ICE's inhumane and unconstitutional tactics.  Trump has always called journalists the enemy of the people (meaning him?). The truths they reveal are not always convenient.

For those of us who have had personal experiences with both communist dictators and fascist dictators and/or who remember history lessons of the 1930s, or knew refugees from fascist Latin American dictators, the term describing how history is repeating itself, using the word fascism, is appropriate. What the Trumpists are doing is similar to what those we called fascists in the previous century also did. Calling a person or a group of people fascist is still too inflammatory, but accusing them of acting like one in specific ways has historical validity. 

 My response as a political opinion writer/journalist is to call whatever actions are the same employed by fascists and dictators in the recent past, as that. It is when the tactics and actions are the same used by these villains of the past, we should call out those acts as fascist. Such acts are what we once called evil.

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: My nagging question: why does fascism keep raising its ugly 

Yes, It’s Fascism - The Atlantic

Comments attributed to Trump:

Sometimes we need a dictator: it is common sense  President Trump at the World Economic Forum: “Sometimes you need a dictator.” #news #trump

July 23, 2019: At a Turning Point USA summit,, "Then I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president." He made this claim while criticizing the Mueller investigation.

• August 2025: During a White House Cabinet meeting in his second term, when asked about potentially using the military domestically, he asserted, "I have the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the president of the United States".
• January 2026: In a New York Times interview, he refined this idea by stating that international law does not limit him, only his "own morality" and "own mind"   
• October 2023: In an interview with The National Pulse, Trump stated: "It's poisoning the blood of our country. It's so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have".
• December 2023: At a campaign rally in Durham, New Hampshire, he repeated the claim, telling supporters that migrants from Africa, Asia, and South America are "poisoning the blood of our country".
• December 2023: During a later rally in Waterloo, Iowa, he doubled down on the rhetoric, alleging without evidence that migrants bring "crime and potentially disease with them".
• Truth Social Posts: Trump also used all-caps posts on Truth Social to assert that "illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation". 
• Sources above Google AI 

The backfire has begun: It was set by the people of Minneapolis

Massive crowds from California to New York turn out to protest ICE crackdowns | Watch The attempt to frighten protesters into submission in Minneapolis is backfiring on the Trumpists, and instead, their violent behavior may be resulting in more than just increasing the numbers of protesters in Minneapolis, but it is feeding an already vibrant pro democracy movement nationwide. Many can now see what it is like to be oppressed by an out-of-control militia, a hands-on lesson to the rest of the nation of what a police state dictatorship looks and feels like. Supporting democracy is no longer a matter of keeping some revered abstract political science theory memorialized in a Founders' document that we must protect just because we have had it for 250 years. Protecting it is the antidote to a real-life attempt by a wannabe tyrant strong man to wreck a democracy so he can have more power at the expense of we the people.

What Minnesota has done is to replace the description of undocumented migrants as murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and fraudsters with the term "neighbor". That alone has a profound impact of giving the law-abiding, papered or unpapered brown and black migrants and citizens, a positive name, and throws in the face of the white nationalist ideology, their assumption that citizens will cheer migrants' removal from their communities. It is not a value shared by the citizens and state city officials. It was a gross miscalculation by the Trump machine that, in their media-echoing bubble, ordinary people in blue states share the same racist /anti migrant attitude as MAGA land. Minnesota has turned the perception of the evil nature of migrants upside down by calling and protecting them because they are neighbors. The moral outrage this has inspired is now evident in word, deed, and protest by the citizens themselves, mostly white who know their brown and black neighbors are living in fear of being snatched in the ICE racist profiling dragnet.

In Minneapolis, the neighborhood-by-neighborhood and city-wide demonstrations of thousands have become an inspiration to those fighting to keep a democracy in hundreds of communities elsewhere. To help keep the focus on ICE's violent overreach, Bruce Springsteen just composed a protest song:

Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio) - YouTube

The buzzword of the 2026 elections: affordability.What does that mean?

Zohran Mamdani's winning election campaign for New York City mayor's contribution to the 2026 elections is the word: affordability. It is one of those words that can be such an umbrella term, it can mean much to so many that even if it could be defined, it falls into a category of "I can't tell you, but when I see or feel it, I know what it is".  It is sort of like the judge trying to define what obscenity means. In 1964 Judge Potter Stewart wrote an opinion in a Supreme Court case that has become famous in defining a vague term like hard-core obscenity: He famously wrote: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."  Affordability is like that: hard to define, but a voter knows when he/she sees it.

Lying about it as Trump is doing in Iowa does not fly either. Fact check: Trump says Democrats don’t talk about affordability anymore (they do) because inflation is over (it isn’t)  It is either his staff does not dare correct him, or his gears and mouth are stuck in lying or he thinks his MAGA base is really that  dumb. 

There has been some polling to try to understand what a word like affordability means. One was just published, but the final conclusion was what it meant to most polled concerning specific costs that worried them the most.. Per a New  York Times analysis of an in-depth poll (Cross-Tabs: January 2026 Times/Siena National Poll  of Registered Voters - The New York Times): "When we asked voters what they were most worried about affording, they usually didn’t mention the costs of goods that surged in the wake of the pandemic, like gas, cars, and food. Instead, they mentioned major expenses like housing, retirement, and health care."  The Tilt - The New York Times,  in a column written by Nate Cohn and published January 28, 2026.

MUFTIC FORUM BLOG: Affordability vs economy is not about semantics; both are true at the same time

If the Trump regime tries destroy Colorado's vote integrity in 2026 a buzz saw awaits

Update 1/30/2026  FBI raid in Georgia has little legal basis – but serves Trump’s goal to weaken trust in election results | Georgia | The Guardian    Why now? FBI raid in Georgia has little legal basis – but serves Trump’s goal to weaken trust in election results | Georgia | The Guardian Why now? Here is why, as the British press tries to explain this to its readers. It is to undermine our faith in the integrity of our voting. My comment: This kind of action constitutes an attempt to create a pretext for federal takeover and control of elections by separate states. The beauty of having elections controlled separately by each of the 50 states is the protection it provides from just a tyrannical wannabe who wants to control who can vote and the outcome of the vote. The tyrant may succeed in a state or two, but not in the entire nation. It is a matter that may both suit an egomaniac power-mad tyrant, but it also serves to try to shape public opinion to accept the end of our ability to trust that our elections are free and fair, the fundamental undermining of democracy that is a government of, by, and for the people, regardless of whoever sits in the Oval Office. All voters of any affiliation must understand that there is an effort to make sure your voice expressed in a vote can be ignored and you no longer count in determining who governs you if this trust is broken and breaking the trust is what such actions like the Fulton raid is also about. Note: Felicia Muftic is a former Denver elections official who holds trust in the integrity of elections sacred.

Update 1/29/2026: Trump's obsession with the 2020 elections, an attempt to prove it was stolen 6 years later, and his FBI raid on the Fulton County, Georgia, voting records could be attributed to an out-of-control personality quirk of an egomaniac who never admits a loss, or worse. Trump looks like he has an obsession with rewriting history to fit a false narrative and to justify anti democratic power grabs.. In recent history, communists and fascists, from Hitler to Mao, have used this propaganda tactic.

What is most scary about this is that there is a concerted drive to undermine fair and free elections more easily by putting voter records kept separately by 50 states per the Constitutiion into the hands a federal control and to set up the acceptance of a FBI loyal only to the president to undertake such similar actions to do so in the future, including November 2026 and 2028. Political scientist Jason Stanley warned about this in his recent book.Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future: Stanley, Jason: 9781668056912: Amazon.com: Books

FBI searches Atlanta election office, chasing Trump 2020 vote fraud claims | Reuters

Continuing with original post:

The Trump regime is threatening to hurt Colorado voter integrity in November.  The Colorado Secretary of State is ready protect our vote from the Trump attempt to federalize voter counts and elections in direct contradiction to the Constitution. Expect Trump et al will try to keep Colorado's vote from being counted, as well as any blue states,  throwing the results of who gets the majority in Congress into chaos and dispute. They will meet a buzz saw if they try such tricks on Colorado. Colorado has a plan and backup plans. 

Threat of force won’t change Colorado secretary of state’s mind on voter rolls, mail-in ballots 

Trump's false pretense of such dirty tricks is still: the 2020 election was stolen because all of those illegals voted and mail-in votes are all a fraud, their propagandists and a delusional Trump claim.. In over 6 years, such attempts to prove these claims have failed. They think if they can get voters' personal information, they can prove their pretext, the Constitution provisions delegating elections to states be hanged. The DOJ has requested Colorado’s voter rolls, including driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers, and is attempting to change the post office delivery terms of mail-in ballots to be counted by local officials.  There may be hope as a federal judge blocked the DOJ request for Oregon 1/27/26. Federal judge blocks Trump DOJ access to Oregon voter rolls

  This Trumpian scheme smells like a pretext to keep the House in GOP hands by throwing the 2026 midterms into chaos.  In the longterm, it is also a way to put the control of elections in the hands of the federal government over vote outcomes, voter participation, and election results.  If Trump and his administration can't win one way (the predictions are he will lose control of the House), they will find another way, and this one is ugly.  It will mean the end of fair and free elections that we can trust.

"Don't believe your eyes ", a pattern of Trump's spin doctors that needs exposing..

Updated: 1/31/2026.We have seen enough of the spins and lies lately to see what Trump's spin doctors are trying to do: to get voters not to believe their very eyes. Their lies and spins are being exposed by citizens who have unlimited access to new kinds of technology. Those objecting to Trump's tactics have the advantage in this age of everyone having a video camera in their cell phones and access to social media to publish it. Whether a passing-by citizen or a seasoned journalist like Don Lemon uses their phone to video a protest, or  ICE killing a protester or shooting a pepper ball at a praying pastor, or a 5-year-old, looking like every other 5-year-old, being shipped with his dad to an ICE camp, the Trumpian attempt to get their followers not to believe their very eyes becomes harder and harder. Drones overhead and protesters themselves film the actual size of 7 million protesting the tyrannical king-like regime of Trump marching in masses in hundreds of locations, making a mockery of theTrump propaganda line that all of those protesters are being paid or are professional agitators.  While the most loyal MAGA close their eyes, cover their ears, Trump minions try to buy out any media who dare report these citizens' and journalists' videos,  or Trump uses the DOJ to prosecute them (the attempt is the punishment; they rarely succeed in court). They are still failing because these days of social media, those videos still escape into the public realm. This is despite the attempts by the Trump regime to suppress press reporting  them by using threats of delicensing and buyouts of their owners by MAGA loyalists.  This is not just a matter of violating the First Amendment, which protects both freedom of speech and the press. It is an attempt of a regime to control the thoughts and minds of citizens, just like the fascists and communist dictators of years past did. What is different now, everyone with a cell phone can become a photo journalist, and social media is their publisher if traditional media is suppressed.

  Here are the danger signs that your mind is being twisted to swallow the spin.  Immediately, within minutes, without any attempt to investigate first, the spin is out: the agent was always acting in self-defense in the shooting, followed by refusing to let independent or multiple agencies do an investigation. The spin doctors depend on the suppression of evidence to the contrary. They are afraid their cover-up would be exposed, which itself suggests they are engaged in a cover-up. Next, if the selected video is shown and edited to support their spin, know that given the same opportunity exists for everyone else in the world to see something quite different, and then give the world the opportunity with eye-opening multi-video opportunities in every media opportunity possible. Third, as the event gets less and less coverage, the propagandists will try to revise history by those whose memories have dimmed. Keep the videos to the contrary shown every time the spin is attempted in the future, and never let up doing it whenever the opportunity presents itself. The pattern itself is damning.

Some opportunities to show the pattern of behavior of lies and spins using  the "don't believe your very eyes"attempts and put events in context of behavior:

A most recent one, 1/28/2026: Lying about affordability, the economy, and inflation as Trump is doing in Iowa does not fly either. Fact check: Trump says Democrats don’t talk about affordability anymore (they do) because inflation is over (it isn’t)  It is either his staff does not dare correct him, or his gears and mouth are stuck in lying, or he thinks his MAGA base is really that dumb. He assumes they do not know the price of gas in the tank is not under $2, or if grocery bills have increased, not decreased or he thinks he can get away with "don't believe your eyes" line on this issue, too.  Even those in Trump's cabinet who should know better about the economy lie. Scott Bessent says construction jobs are booming under Trump's tariffs. Government data show the opposite,  and the job numbers sector is just for starters in this fact check.1/29/2026.

On January 6,the spin: The Trump banner-waving rioters were looky-loos tourists who were not called to be violent that day by the president himself (Jack Smith's detailed findings are to the contrary and demand release of his report. Call it a cover up diverted with personal attacks on Smith). The propagandist response is to bury and rewrite history in words that contradict what we saw with our very eyes or videos of the violence that the stormers of the Capitol committed. In the shooting of Renee Good, show the wheels and back-up lights as she moved away from the threatening ICE agents, and the bullets that riddled her side of the car that killed her is from an agent on the drivers side, not standing in front of it.  An agent claiming that she tried to run him down has a hard time showing why he shot her from the side of the car.. In the case of the killing of  Alex Pretti, focus on the cell phone in his hands, some 9mm pistol. Show he was pinned to the ground on all fours with no gun in his hand. His legally concealed gun was removed from him, but after that, he was shot multiple times by the agent/killer after he was subdued and the weapon was removed..Timeline: How the Shooting of Alex Jeffrey Pretti Unfolded - The New York Times And do it all over again and again and again as a way to demonstrate a pattern of behavior and destroy the credibility of the Trump spinners.

Sidenote: Some takeaways from the Alex Pretti killing that serve as a warning to protesters: 1) leave your legal conceal and carry weapon at home; you too could be called a domestic terrorist armed and dangerous with an evidenced plan to kill ICE agents 2) wear a covid mask; you are on ICE agents cell phone cameras for future prosecutiion as domestic terrorist. Filming ICE is legal but exposes you to digital tracking – here’s how to minimize the risk 

Gen. Mark Hertling, former commander of US troops in Europe, called out ICE for being an uncontrolled militia. He did this morning, 1/26/2026 on Morning Joe. 'ICE is playing soldier but without the discipline:' Ret. general | Watch

 Hertling and other analysts. In the past heand others have used the term like a "violent militia" or "occupying army". This includes accusations of using excessive force, such as the shooting of a civilian in Minneapolis, which contradicts official reports (per a search on Google AI).