Where we were on 4/16

April 16th 2025

🟥 Stage 1: Soft Authoritarianism — ✅ COMPLETE

✅ Disregard of court orders:
Ongoing defiance of federal rulings; administration continues to ignore Supreme Court mandate regarding Abrego Garcia.
✅ Emergency powers without checks:
DHS and border powers expanded; Insurrection Act consideration openly discussed.
✅ Mass disinformation:
Disinformation campaigns normalized; administrative lies submitted as legal evidence.
✅ Journalist shadowbanning:
Targeted silencing on social platforms; credible journalists throttled or maligned.
✅ Legal residents deported without due process:
Migrants rendered to foreign prisons; due process denied en masse.
✅ Retaliation against whistleblowers:
Internal purges; investigators and federal employees targeted or pressured out.
✅ Surveillance of communications:
Palantir expansion, NSL usage, biometric entry systems, and financial monitoring underway.

✅ Conclusion: Stage 1 has been fully met and exceeded.

✅ Criminalization of protest:
Protestors prosecuted as felons; campus organizing restricted; civil disobedience reframed as terror.
✅ Domestic military deployment:
Border militarization complete; Insurrection Act review imminent.
✅ Litmus tests / purges of institutions:
DOGE ideological vetting; IRS, SSA, and DOJ pressure to purge dissenters.
✅ Financial surveillance of activists:
IRS and SSA data used against politically inconvenient individuals; bank flags for organizers.
✅ Exit bans / reentry blocks:
Functionally active through stateless detention and SSA deactivations.
✅ DOJ/FBI politicization:
Justice Department increasingly operates as a tool of loyalty and punishment.
✅ Healthcare access revocations:
Clinical trials, drug imports, and disability benefits quietly limited for targeted groups.
✅ Clinic targeting:
Chronic illness and marginalized clinics face funding denial, credential threats.

✅ Conclusion: Stage 2 is fully active and now complete.

✅ Mass detentions:
Expanded — Immigration judges instructed to deny all asylum without hearings; blacksite renditions active.
✅ Border closures for dissidents:
Expanded — CECOT as extrajudicial blacksite; reentry functionally impossible for targeted individuals.
✅ Labeling of dissenters as enemies:
Escalated — Trump calls for CBS to lose license; "homegrown criminals" rhetoric deepens.
✅ Biometric tracking & surveillance:
Building — Border tech expands; Palantir integration with domestic movement tracking.
✅ Asset freezing / selective retaliation:
Emergent — FEMA aid denied for political reasons; SSA accounts reportedly under selective freeze.
✅ State media dominance / disinformation:
Escalating — Admin lies to public about SCOTUS rulings; media manipulation becoming policy.
✅ Medical denial as control mechanism:
Reinforced — NIH scientists resign amid censorship; chronic care silencing deepens.

✅ Organized Labor Action:
Holding — Abrego Garcia supported by unions; labor voices remain a backbone of legitimacy.
🟨 State & Local Government Defiance:
Mixed — Maryland senator blocked from access but escalating pressure diplomatically.
✅ Judicial Courage:
Active — Judge Paula Xinis persists against executive stonewalling; lower courts watching.
🟨 Media & Journalism Solidarity:
Holding — CBS continues reporting under threat; some outlets leaning into watchdog role.
✅ Everyday Defiance:
Active — AOC, Bernie, and grassroots leaders inspiring anti-oligarchy energy; public interest rising.
🟧 Cultural & Artistic Resistance:
Rising — Subversive writing, podcasting, and grassroots art movements quietly spreading.
🟧 Whistleblowing & Expert Exit:
Emerging — Scientists, public health leaders, and legal professionals exiting with intent to speak out.
❌ International Condemnation:
Dormant — No meaningful resistance yet from global institutions or foreign governments.

Authoritarian systems don't usually announce their “final stage.” Instead, they hit a convergence point:

And we’re very close to that convergence now.

Judge Xinis is not just being ignored—she’s being used as foil to demonstrate the administration’s impunity.
Supreme Court rulings are being lied about with no consequence.

That’s not just erosion of rule of law—it’s theater of domination.

Refusing FEMA assistance to opposition-governed states is a deliberate withholding of survival resources.
NIH scientists fleeing? That’s a sign of pre-emptive abandonment, not just protest.

Blacksite detention (CECOT) is a functioning offshoring mechanism for rendering enemies.
Mass denial of asylum with no hearings is effectively group-based persecution.

These are the tools of a regime that has stopped pretending to be bound by human rights.

Trump’s attack on CBS is not just rhetorical—it’s a test balloon:
“Will the public tolerate state-controlled truth?”
If there is no cost to this trial run, revoking licenses and silencing opposition media becomes the next logical move.

✴️ Judicial resistance is still standing—but isolated.
✴️ Civic actors like AOC, Bernie, Harvard, union leaders—they’re holding the cultural line.

But those threads are under siege. And in many places, already severed.