Dems Must Think Big (#105)

The Long Twilight Struggle is a newsletter focusing on our long twilight struggle against authoritarianism, Christian nationalism, and the malignant influence of tech broligarchs. I also share links and commentary about sports, efforts to combat false accusations and wrongful convictions, and other stories I find interesting.

In this edition:

• The Democrats need to be more audacious in their opposition to the Trump budget, a belated thank you to Stanislav Petrov (the man who saved the world), and links to other stories I’m following.

Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.

Leading Off

Alas, COVID-19 finally got me. Thanks to the vaccinations science made possible, I had a relatively minor illness—although it took a frustratingly long time for my energy levels to rebound.

Still, I rate the experience 2/10—would not recommend.

In a rational world where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his anti-vax chorus were not in charge, I would wait a couple of months before getting the new booster. I am not sure that I can risk waiting that long. A patient and their doctor should make healthcare decisions.

I am grateful that my medical provider continues to allow me to order four COVID-19 tests per month by mail at no cost.

A lot happened while I was sick and recovering. Let’s dive into my browser tabs to see what I’ve found most interesting.

#1: The Republican Shutdown

I’m relieved that Democrats have not gone along with the Trump Republican budget plan so far. I am thankful Senate Democrats have not provided the seven votes Republicans need to reach the 60-vote threshold this budget bill currently requires.

They appear to be winning the messaging war so far, fighting to extend the Affordable Health Care Act premium subsidies. That is important, of course. But I hope the Democrats don’t fall into a trap of ending up creating bipartisan cover for the Trump regime’s anti-Constitutional actions as a result.

That’s one of the reasons I wish Democrats would take advantage of the opportunity to go bigger with their opposition, allowing voters to see what Republican policy does to the country and to set the stage for the 2026 and 2028 elections.

But let’s start with the good news: the correct response when offered nothing for your votes is to say, “no.” Or, as Senate Minor Leader Chuck Schumer put it yesterday in a surprisingly good message, “No fucking way.”

(Where has this guy been?)

That is especially true when the Trump Regime has already been using anti-Constitutional means to shut down parts of the federal government since taking office. The American Prospect’s David Dayen and Whitney Curry Wimbish explain just how much of our federal government has already been cut:

The Supreme Court’s latest ruling definitively allows the Trump administration to cancel whatever funding they disfavor within 45 days of the end of the appropriation, without any approval from Congress. The administration now has power, formalized by the Court in a sleight-of-hand move by claiming nobody has standing to sue, to cut whatever they want out of the budget, at a time when they are pressuring Congress to send them a budget.

That Supreme Court ruling involved $4 billion in foreign aid funding that the administration semi-formally tried to rescind; it doesn’t include the $410 billion that the White House has simply withheld from programs across the country. That represents close to half of all outlays in the fiscal year 2025 nondefense discretionary budget, which have simply vanished, perhaps permanently after the last day of the fiscal year, which is today. The Office of Management and Budget, as Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) has explained, has offered no explanation of how money is being spent or where withheld spending is going.

About 12 percent of the federal workforce has been terminated. Last week, we heard threats from OMB director Russ Vought that a shutdown will really allow the Office of Management and Budget to fire workers. A shutdown provides no actual legal authority to fire federal employees, but then again there was no legal authority to rescind or withhold appropriated spending without congressional approval, or put workers on extended administrative leave, as they did with the unauthorized buyout back in January.

This is why I wish the Democrats were being bolder with their messaging and demands. Restoring the Trump Republican cuts to healthcare subsidies is a worthy goal—but should that be the primary ask when no one can trust Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought to abide by a deal and not to rescind that funding?

Of course not. And even some Republican appropriators are willing to say it.

Some members of Congress understand this imperative. Behold this quote: “If you’re a Democrat—even just like a mainstream Democrat—your predisposition might be to help negotiate with Republicans on a funding mechanism … Why would you do that if you know that whatever you negotiate is going to be subject to the knife pulled out by Russ Vought?” That didn’t come from a Democrat but from Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR), a senior Republican on the House Appropriations Committee.

On top of that, as The Guardian’s Robert Mackey explains, Trump resorted to racism on social media after meeting with Jeffries and Schumer about the budget.

As the Trump administration insists it is serious about negotiating an end to the government shutdown, a pair of racist deepfake videos mocking Democratic leaders played on a loop in the White House briefing room for hours on Wednesday.

The videos, posted by Donald Trump on his social media platform on Monday, use fabricated audio to make it seem as if the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, called Democrats “woke pieces of shit”, and showed the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, with a fake mustache and sombrero.

Even granting that Trump is a terrible negotiator, these are not the tactics of someone who wants to deal with you respectfully.

Since the March shutdown, the Trump Regime has gone on a tyrannical bender. We are experiencing ICE and military raids in blue cities. U.S. citizens—including children—are being held in detention without probable cause or any due process. Paramilitary members are staking out courts, schools, and churches to meet Stephen Miller’s deportation quotas. Trump has authorized extrajudicial murders in international waters. Businesses are bribing Trump to stay in good standing with the tyrant.

Do Democrats really want to put a bipartisan vaneer on a budget that allows Trump to continue his anti-Constitutional crimes?

Unfortunately, it appears the answer to that is yes, as reports suggest some Democrats are feeling out Republican colleagues about putting together a bipartisan deal.

Trump would love that outcome. He would appreciate being able to say his anti-Constitutional actions have bipartisan support.

These dynamics are why I so strongly agree with Julie Roginsky’s plea for the Democrats to think more audaciously. Roginsky suggests that Schumer go to the Senate floor and declare:

If Republicans want to pursue this abject cruelty, they can pass this legislation immediately with a simple majority vote. Mr. Majority Leader, we will not contribute to your plans to make Americans sicker. Get rid of the filibuster and pass this spending plan with the Republican votes you already have. The blood will be on your hands, not on ours.

While Republicans pretend the filibuster is sacrosanct, they are willing to change it when they need to do so. In fact, they pulled the so-called nuclear option just a few weeks ago to make it easier to confirm large groups of sub-cabinet nominees.

I think it is inevitable that Trump will demand Senate Republicans change the rules again to pass this budget. So Democrats should take a big step and make it clear to the American people who owns the pain this budget will cause. As Roginsky writes:

Republicans will get rid of the filibuster eventually, when Trump presses them to pass some piece of legislation down the road. If Schumer had a spine — if Senate Democrats had any imagination whatsoever — they would push for the nuclear option themselves.

Go ahead, Leader Thune. Blow up the filibuster and pass this spending bill with Republican votes. We dare you.

Democrats need to shut down the MAGA narrative that Democrats have anything to do with the pain currently inflicted on Americans. The only way to do that is to flip the script and dare Republicans to eradicate the last vestige of senate comity, the last tool to force compromise. Republicans are disinterested in compromise anyway, so why pretend?

Democrats need to be the party of audacity, change, and reform. If the Trump Republicans won’t agree to restore the healthcare cuts from earlier this year and to prohibit the president’s ongoing anti-Constitutional crime spree, then Democrats should let Republicans pass the budget and own the pain it creates.

Tabs I Closed

• The Government Has Been Shut Down for Months (David Dayen, Whitney Curry Wimbish, The American Prospect, Link to Article)
• White House plays racist deepfake video of Democratic leaders on loop (Robert Mackey, The Guardian, Link to Article)
• What Democrats Must Do to Win (Julie Roginsky, Salty Politics, Link to Article)
• Trump's Deepfake Jeffries And Schumer Videos Teach Us How Not To Negotiate With A Fascist (Stephen Robinson, The PlayTyper Guy, Link to Article)
• Senate confirms 48 of Trump’s nominees at once after changing the chamber’s rules (Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press, Link to Article)
• Could a bipartisan Senate gang stop the shutdown? (Burges Everett, Semafor, Link to Article)

#2: The Man Who Saved the World

Soviet Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov is indeed a man who saved the world. His decision not to report what proved to be a false alarm prevented a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union on September 25, 1983.

The Atlantic’s Megan Gerber recounted the events of that morning in this 2013 article commemorating the 30th anniversary of his heroic decision.

It was September 26, 1983. Stanislav Petrov, a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defence Forces, was on duty at Serpukhov-15, a secret bunker outside Moscow. His job: to monitor Oko, the Soviet Union’s early-warning system for nuclear attack. And then to pass along any alerts to his superiors. It was just after midnight when the alarm bells began sounding. One of the system’s satellites had detected that the United States had launched five ballistic missiles. And they were heading toward the USSR. Electronic maps flashed; bells screamed; reports streamed in. A back-lit red screen flashed the word ‘LAUNCH.’”

That the U.S. would be lobbing missiles toward its Soviet counterpart would not, of course, have been out of the question at that particular point in human history. Three weeks earlier, Russians had shot down a South Korean airliner that had wandered into Soviet air space. NATO had responded with a show of military exercises. The Cold War, even in the early ’80s, continued apace; the threat of nuclear engagement still hovered over the stretch of land and sea that fell between Washington and Moscow.

Petrov, however, had a hunch—“a funny feeling in my gut,” he would later recall—that the alarm ringing through the bunker was a false one. It was an intuition that was based on common sense: The alarm indicated that only five missiles were headed toward the USSR. Had the U.S. actually been launching a nuclear attack, however, Petrov figured, it would be extensive—much more, certainly, than five. Soviet ground radar, meanwhile, had failed to pick up corroborative evidence of incoming missiles—even after several minutes had elapsed. The larger matter, however, was that Petrov didn’t fully trust the accuracy of the Soviet technology when it came to bomb-detection. He would later describe the alert system as “raw.”

But what would you do? You’re alone in a bunker, and alarms are screaming, and lights are flashing, and you have your training, and you have your intuition, and you have two choices: follow protocol or trust your gut. Either way, the world is counting on you to make the right call.

We are fortunate that a person with Petrov’s experience and integrity was in place that morning to make this vital decision.

It is, frankly, amazing that our species survived that year. So much was happening—and international tensions were as high as they could be short of a conflict.

Yuri Andropov had just taken over as the Soviet Union’s leader after Leonid Brezhnev’s death in November 1982. As relations soured, U.S. President Ronald Reagan gave his “Evil Empire” speech in March 1983. The Soviet military shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in September. (It was later that month when Lt. Colonel Petrov determined that the country’s early warning system was falsely reporting a massive United States nuclear launch and prevented a near-certain Soviet nuclear launch.)

On October 23, the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut were attacked by a bomber, killing 241. The U.S. invaded Grenada on October 25. On November 7, the U.S. and NATO began an extensive war exercise, Able Archer. We subsequently learned that the Soviets believed the exercise was actually part of the preparations for a surprise attack, thanks to double agent Oleg Gordievsky’s efforts to warn his United Kingdom handlers.

The Day After, the famous ABC television movie about a nuclear war and its aftermath, aired on November 20.

That was a lot. But thanks to luck and the actions of people like Petrov, we did survive 1983. He is a name worth remembering, particularly in times of crisis.

Petrov’s experience is particularly notable given discussions about whether to integrate AI into our nuclear weapons systems.

There is an entire genre of science fiction stories that highlight the danger of this idea. Has no one at an AI company or at the Department of Defense read or watched any of them?

But seriously, given AI’s propensity to hallucinate facts, erring of the side of escalating conflicts, and lack of human intuition, giving AI any decision making abilities with our nuclear weapons has a high probability of making dramatic mistakes trained humans like Petrov were able to avoid.

Finally, because I want to celebrate any effort that can get more people talking about the dangers nuclear weapons continue to create, I look forward to seeing A House of Dynamite. The movie, which has one of the best trailers I have seen recently, will be in theaters starting this weekend before streaming on Netflix starting on October 24.

Tabs I Closed

• The Man Who Saved the World by Doing Absolutely Nothing (Megan Garber, The Atlantic, Link to Article)
• Stanislav Petrov: The man who may have saved the world (Pavel Aksenov, BBC News, Link to Article)
• Sept. 26, 1983: The Man Who Saved the World by Doing ... Nothing (Tony Long, Wired, Link to Article)
• The AI Doomsday Machine Is Closer to Reality Than You Think (Michael Hirsh, Politico Magazine, Link to Article)

Other Stories I’m Following

• Police Said They Surveilled Woman Who Had an Abortion for Her 'Safety.' Court Records Show They Considered Charging Her With a Crime (Jason Koebler and Joseph Cox, 404 Media, Link to Article)
  In the latest example demonstrating why no one should trust initial statements from law enforcement officials, 404 Media reveals that the Johnson County, Texas, Sheriff’s Department was considering whether to charge a woman who had a self-administered abortion when they searched an AI-powered licence plate surveillance program to locate her vehicle. Court documents indicate that, despite the initial statements, there was no concern about the woman’s safety at the time they decided to misuse the license plate program.
• US prosecutors keep charging women with ‘pregnancy-related crimes’ (Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian, Link to Article)
  New research from Pregnancy Justice demonstrates how 412 people have been charged with pregnancy-related crimes since Roe was overturned. I know you’ve heard Republicans say they don’t want to punish women. But that’s a lie. That’s why we must continue to oppose efforts to establish fetal personhood laws and surveillance of pregnant people.
• The Supreme Court v. Democracy (Elie Mystal, The Nation, Link to Article)
  The Nation’s justice correspondent (and one of my favorite writers) previews the damage the Supreme Court is about to do to our democracy during its new term.
• ChatGPT Is Blowing Up Marriages as Spouses Use AI to Attack Their Partners (Maggie Harrison Dupré, Futurism, Link to Article)
  This is an example of the type of damage a new technology can cause when the companies behind it fail to incorporate common sense safeguards.
• MAGA’s Top “Voter Fraud” Watchdog Votes in a Swing State. He Doesn’t Live There. (Jacqueline Sweet of Slate and Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket, Link to Article)
  Yep, one of the worst MAGA people doesn’t appear to live in the state in which he votes. Weird how the voter fraud seems to come only from those who scream about it the most.
• Panicked Curtis Yarvin—JD Vance guru—Plans to Flee USA (Gil Duran, The Nerd Reich, Link to Article)
  The person who inspired the vice president, Elon Musk, and others writes that the Trump revolution is failing because it “spends all its time patting iteslef on the back.” For once, I hope he’s correct.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“And when the Nazis invaded and occupied Denmark in the 1940s, noncooperation was near-total. No one remembered how to run the railroad. Teachers had to leave school early to tend to their gardens. Factory workers slowed down or stopped production altogether. Danes obscured the identities of their Jewish neighbors, gave them temporary haven and secured their passage through fishing boats to neutral territory, saving thousands of lives.” (Jeremy Pressman, The Resistance Is Alive and Well – And Our Research Shows It)

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Craig Cheslog (@craigcheslog.com)

GenXer against fascism. Talking politics, women’s soccer, WNBA, Manchester United men and women, USWNT, USMNT, Green Bay Packers, Boston Celtics, Chicago Cubs, and Taylor Swift. (he/him/his) My newsletter: https://thelongtwilightstruggle.com/.

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