Must-Reads and Yes, It's a Coup

Why would a billionaire raid the National Treasury? To get richer.

Kelly Hayes

Kelly Hayes

— 10 min read
Must-Reads and Yes, It's a Coup
audio-thumbnail
Listen to this article
0:00
/1000.050023

Greetings friends,

Your weekly curated list of must-reads is here, but first, there’s a new episode of Movement Memos I want to share with you. That’s right, Movement Memos is back!

For our first episode of 2025, I talked with LA Tenants Union co-founders Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis about what rent strikes and tenant unions can teach us about the work of collective survival in this moment. As Tracy explained, creating as much safety as we can for ourselves and others in these times will involve taking risks together:

I think that insight that we took from the [early] COVID-19 emergency, [was] that it was riskier not to take a collective risk, I think that that is precisely the insight that we need to bring to this moment of climate catastrophe, housing emergency, rising fascism, that not organizing, not taking calculated risks, is risking living in this housing system, in this undemocratic, oligarchic society, which is on a burning planet for the rest of our lives.

If you’re feeling discouraged right now, I highly recommend checking out this episode. You can subscribe to Movement Memos wherever you get your podcasts. If you need a transcript, you can find that here.

Must-Reads

From Elon Musk's administrative coup to El Salvador's mega-prisons, here are some of the most important articles I've read this week.

ICYMI

This week, I wrote about how Chicago teachers are building Sanctuary Teams to defend their schools against potential ICE raids. This piece includes practical resources for educators. I have been touched to hear that this piece has already led some educators to sit down and strategize about safety planning and community defense. It was also heartening to work on this piece, because Chicago’s teachers are an inspiration. I am proud of them, and proud of our city. We will resist Trump’s attacks on our children, our neighbors, and our values.

Conflict Transformation 101

February 21, Jovida Ross and Weyam Ghadbian are leading a workshop on creating purposeful strategic groups. Participants will be introduced to a template for group decision-making and learn how to articulate their group’s purpose and vision. You can learn more here.

Support Imprisoned Organizers

As I’ve recently mentioned, it is crucial that we remember the struggle of imprisoned people during this time, and support the work of imprisoned organizers. Imprisoned organizers, like my comrade Stevie Wilson, are operating under the most fascistic conditions in the U.S. Stevie’s group, 9971, practices mutual aid behind prison walls and does crucial political education work. 9971 needs our help to continue their work. You can donate here. (P.S. I promise to share more soon about a project Stevie and I are working on together. I am really excited about it.)

Yes, It’s a Coup

Four years after the January 6 attack on the Capitol, we are in the midst of another attempted coup–and this time, the bad guys appear to be winning. Elon Musk and his team of lackeys are executing an administrative coup, and unlike the January 6 insurrectionists, Musk and his team are operating under favorable conditions. When Trump attempted a “self coup” (an effort to illegally remain in power, beyond the bounds of his term), the battle for the presidency had already been lost. January 6 was a desperate and deadly act of political theater, perpetrated by brutes and fools. The administrative coup we are presently witnessing, however, has every chance of succeeding.

Musk’s efforts to gut federal agencies, freeze payments, and usurp the authority of Congress has the full support of a duly elected president. While some congressional Republicans have questioned Musk’s actions, none have raised a meaningful challenge. Trump clearly believes his Supreme Court (which has already handed him a get out of jail free card for any crimes committed in office) will show loyalty to his cause when the many legal challenges that Musk’s lawlessness and Trump’s executive orders have spurred are ultimately resolved.

As Scot Nakagawa recently explained, “An administrative coup refers to the illegal overthrow of a government achieved primarily without overt violence, relying instead on claiming powers, intimidation, bullying, extortion, and threats to media, thereby seizing all powers.”

Tech bro John Shedletsky captured the attitude behind this coup succinctly in a post on X when he wrote, “Silicon Valley built the modern world. Why shouldn't we run it?” (What Shedletsky actually helped build was a video game called Roblox, which has been deemed a "pedophile hellscape for kids.")

This coup is also bringing to fruition the long term vision of Steve Bannon. As Professor Joan Donovanhas has noted, “This is an administrative coup and it’s been Bannon’s dream for years to grind the administrative state to a halt.”

The “move fast and break things” ethos of the tech world has come to Washington D.C., and what’s being broken is the machinery of government. For critics of the US government, and its various agencies, that may sound pleasing in the abstract, but the consequences of these antics have already proven dire. The gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development [USAID]–an agency Musk bragged about putting "through the woodchipper"–means that HIV patients in Africa have found their clinic doors locked. While there are many legitimate critiques of USAID, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, of which USAID is a key implementer, has been credited with saving more than 25 million lives, mostly in Africa.

Meanwhile, civil servants are being pushed to quit their jobs with a sloppy and embarrassing campaign that aims to evacuate government agencies.

You might be wondering what we can do about all of this. The first thing I would advise is to speak clearly about what’s happening. This is not merely a crisis, it is a coup. It is an attempt to give Trump, as a figurehead, dictatorial control of the US government, while billionaires loot the system. Right now, D.C. is a chop shop, and while the institutions being dismantled are hardly laudable, the instability Musk is creating will harm millions of people.

Why would a billionaire raid the National Treasury? To get richer.

As researcher Anat Shenker-Osorio has plainly stated, “In case anyone is into definition, what happened this week is an administrative coup. Trump and the broligarchs are refashioning our government to be of, by and for the billionaires.”

Through intimidation, liquidation, and the illegal assumption of authority, Musk is attempting to rewrite how the government works, and assume a centralized position of power. When someone seeks to obliterate the divisions between separate but supposedly equal branches of government, unlawfully usurp authority, and illegally seize control of resources (to the tune of trillions of dollars), that is an administrative coup. This moment may feel like a free-for-all, but the character of these attacks can be described quite succinctly. Remember, clarity and focus are our primary defenses against shock and awe.

If corporate journalism were not complicit in the rise of fascism, legacy papers would be covering these events with the same intensity and condemnation that characterized January 6 coverage.

Despite complaints from armchair pundits on social media about a lack of protest, people around the country have taken to the streets to protest Musk’s actions. I commend these protesters. As author Zora Neale Hurston said, "If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it." Our collective condemnation is important. However, with Trump and the Republicans in power, I do not believe that liberal or leftist demonstrations will turn the tide in this moment. That doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t protest. Displays of public resistance are important. However, I would advise people to take care as they protest in these times. We are in untested waters, and I would not recommend engaging in symbolic arrests in the current climate. During any act of protest, I would advise having a plan to evade arrest–especially on federal property–as this administration could seek to make an example of arrestees, and we have no idea how ugly that could get.

To be clear, these words of caution do not apply to Democratic officials, who have largely retreated into irrelevance. They should not feel entitled to any amount of caution and should probably get themselves arrested–or do basically anything that might create a meaningful spectacle or disrupt this coup. This is especially true of Chuck Schumer, whose attempt to reappropriate the term “Stop The Steal” was so embarrassing that he should have been pulled offstage with a curtain hook.

Elizabeth Warren’s clear communications about what’s happening in this moment have been useful. All Democratic officials should be attempting to explain this situation to the public in plain terms, and with all of the alarm the moment warrants, as most people simply don’t understand the nature of what’s happening or why it matters.

Everyday people need to take up that task as well. To reiterate a point that may be hard for many of us to fathom: most of the people around you do not understand what’s happening or what it could mean for them or for the future of the United States (or the world for that matter). Billionaires are trying to overthrow the government. They are doing so by gutting agencies that most people never think about (or in some cases, have never heard of), and they are breaking laws so quickly, and with such abandon, that they are convinced that by the time anyone can effectively name what they are doing, or come up with a strategy to stop them, they will have permanently rewired the government to serve their interests.

Elon Musk is taking over the government. He is seizing our private information. He is jeopardizing our public services and the security of our private bank accounts. He has plainly stated that he believes his team should disregard all federal regulations, saying, “This is our shot. This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have. And if we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen, so we’re going to do it.”

We need to help people understand what’s happening. Even people who voted for Trump have a stake in objecting to this debacle–and if we are honest, those are the only everyday people whose opinions matter to Trump. We need a popular, plain-spoken narrative about the billionaires who are looting our government, and illegally occupying the halls of power in this country, and we need it yesterday.

That means the most important conversations we can have about this situation aren’t on social media with followers and mutuals who already agree with us. We cannot remain siloed. We need to talk to the people around us–our families, our neighbors, our coworkers, the people at our churches, and anyone else who will listen. We need everyone to be righteously furious.

I know people hate being told to call their elected representatives, but in this case, I believe it matters–and as far as asks go, it’s an easy one to extend to others. Anyone can call their Democratic senator and demand that they take action. Anyone can call their Republican senator and lash out at them for facilitating Musk’s coup. Public pressure, in all its forms, is worth applying.

I’ve been writing about the threat that Musk and Silicon Valley techno-fascists pose for a long time. I understand what they want, and as much as I loathe this government, I believe it matters how a system breaks. These are not the guys you want breaking it.

That’s all I’ve got for now.

Much love,

Kelly

Organizing My Thoughts is a reader-supported newsletter. If you appreciate my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber today. There are no paywalls for the essays, reports, interviews, and excerpts published here. However, I could not do this work without the support of readers like you, so if you are able to contribute financially, I would greatly appreciate your help.

Read more