Dear Daily Disaster Diary, May 18 2025

 

What is a man born for but to be reformer, a remaker of what has been made, a denouncer of lies, a restorer of truth and good?

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The GOP War on Medicaid: 14 Million Could Lose Healthcare to Fund Tax Breaks for Rich

🛡️ The Citizen Survival Manual: How to Resist, Rebuild, and Rise in the Age of American Collapse

“You were never meant to survive.”

– Audre Lorde

Let’s not sugarcoat it. The American experiment is crumbling in real time. The courts are being gutted. The Department of Justice is a weapon. 

The free press is under siege. 

Whole communities — especially Black, Brown, Indigenous, disabled, and poor — are being sacrificed in broad daylight. 

Climate collapse accelerates while billionaires hoard bunkers and politicians pledge allegiance to authoritarianism.

And yet — we’re still here. And survival is no longer enough. We have to resist, rebuild, and rise.

This isn’t a call to nostalgia. This is a call to revolution, restoration, and reinvention. 

If Trumpism 2.0 is the final unraveling of the old world, this manual is your fire-starter for what comes next.

---

⚠️ Understand the Battlefield

1. Democracy is now a performative myth. Courts are openly defied, elections are undermined, and executive power is unchecked. This isn’t partisan spin — it’s constitutional rot.

2. Dissent is being criminalized. Protesters are surveilled. Whistleblowers are silenced. Educators and journalists face retribution. You are not paranoid. You are awake.

3. The economy is rigged to collapse — for you. Tariffs, service cuts, and supply chain sabotage are designed to break small business and working families while enriching corporate cronies.

4. Public institutions are targets. Universities, civil services, even the Forest Service — being gutted from within. Chaos isn’t a bug; it’s a strategy.

5. Black, Indigenous, and marginalized communities are hit first — and hardest. This regime isn’t just anti-democratic. It’s anti-Black, anti-Native, anti-poor, and anti-truth.

---

💥 Step One: Get Organized Locally — Fast

Build parallel systems. When national systems collapse, neighborhood systems matter more than ever.

✅ Start a Mutual Aid Network:

• Food and medicine sharing.

• Child and elder care coordination.

• Emergency transportation plans.

🧰 Use our [Mutual Aid Starter Kit (PDF)](download link coming soon)

✅ Host “Democracy Defense Circles”:

• Gather 5–15 people regularly.

• Read and discuss resistance news.

• Train together: legal observation, digital security, de-escalation.

🗓️ Use our [Meeting Agenda Template (DOC)](download link coming soon)

---

🧭 Step Two: Know Your Targets — and Push Hard

🧠 Strategic Pressure Campaigns:

Use the [Citizen Contact Guide (PDF)](download link coming soon) to:

• Flood local, state, and federal officials with coordinated demands.

• Target corporate sponsors of authoritarian policies.

• Expose collaborators in media, law, education.

🗳️ Election Defense:

• Organize poll monitors.

• Report voter suppression (we'll include hotline lists).

• Help neighbors navigate ID, mail-in, and early voting.

---

🔒 Step Three: Protect Yourself

🛡️ Digital Safety:

• Use Signal or ProtonMail for secure communication.

• Never share protest plans over unsecured apps.

• Avoid AI-generated deepfakes — train your community in verification.

🔐 [Digital Security Mini-Manual (PDF)](download link coming soon)

👮 Legal Defense:

• Know your rights during stops, searches, arrests.

• Have a legal observer plan for public events.

• Connect with legal defense collectives.

⚖️ [Know Your Rights Card (Printable)](download link coming soon)

---

🔨 Step Four: Rebuild What They Broke

1. Reclaim public space. Turn libraries, abandoned schools, and parks into community hubs.

2. Teach what they banned. Host underground teach-ins. Share banned books. Keep history alive.

3. Create worker-owned and land-based projects. Start co-ops. Grow food. Invest in land trusts.

4. Support radical joy and art. Make zines. Throw underground shows. Build culture — it's a weapon.

---

🌍 The World Is Watching

Authoritarianism isn’t just a U.S. problem. The Trump Doctrine — cruelty, privatization, isolationism — is being exported. 

Resistance here ripples outward. So does silence.

We are the firewall. 

We are the storytellers. 

We are the builders of the next world.

Sincerely,

ADAPTATION-GUIDE

ADAPT OR DIE!

LESS IS MORE!

WE ARE READY! ARE YOU?

Dear Daily Disaster Diary, May 17 2025

 

In  everything we ought to look to the end.

- Jean De La Fontaine

The History Of The U.S. National Emergency | NBC News Signal

The American Empire Is Eating Itself: Lawless, Leaderless, and Losing the Plot

---

 

“You are being fired for poor performance. You are no longer needed.”
— A termination letter from a gutted U.S. Forest Service

This isn’t dystopia. This is the United States of America in 2025.

A nation once defined by a grand experiment in democracy has now become a test lab for authoritarian resilience, institutional collapse, and ideological warfare. 

From the highest courts to the forest trails of Montana, from children’s toy shelves to the foundations of civil rights, the American promise is unraveling thread by thread.

And the silence of those benefitting from this decay is louder than any protest.

---

1. The Rule of Law Is Dead. Bury It.

We need to stop pretending. The Department of Justice is no longer independent. It’s a blunt weapon wielded by a man who pardons seditionists and prosecutes dissenters. 

Federal judges are mocked, threatened, ignored — not just in rhetoric, but in action. Court rulings are suggestions. 

The Constitution? A flexible menu item.

Lawyers, once the immune system of democracy, are now being targeted — purged from the inside out. Law firms doing pro bono work against the regime are under siege. 

Universities like Columbia and Harvard, once thought too powerful to bully, now find themselves caught in a Faustian bargain with a government that demands obedience in exchange for federal funding.

America’s judicial branch has become an endangered species. The real question is not whether the Supreme Court will stop this descent — but whether they’ll even dare.

---

2. This Is the Most Anti-Black Administration Since Jim Crow

Don’t be fooled by the absence of overt slurs. The policy speaks louder than the dog whistles.

• Civil Rights protections? Undermined.

• Voting rights? Eviscerated.

• DEI programs? Scrapped at every level.

• Justice40 funds for marginalized communities? Gone.

This isn’t just indifference. This is intentional regression. The systemic erasure of every gain Black America has made in the last 60 years.

Meanwhile, Democrats host concerts with Beyoncé instead of building real power in Mississippi. 

Nearly six million voters sat out in 2024. Why? Because no one showed up for them when it mattered.

You cannot rally your way out of abandonment. You can’t TikTok your way out of systemic oppression.

---

3. Main Street Is Being Sacrificed for Silicon Valley’s Ego

While Google and Apple hedge against Chinese reverse-engineering, small businesses are going extinct. 

One toy company founder, who built his American dream with $500 in a West Hollywood apartment, now faces a 145% tariff wall.

His crime? Designing products in the U.S., but manufacturing them — as nearly every company does — in China. Tariffs are not economic strategy. They’re political grenades lobbed into the global supply chain.

Come Christmas, toy shelves may be empty. The global economy is breaking, not because it has to, but because one man thinks William McKinley was a genius.

If Trump gets his way, a $5 toy will cost $60, and small business owners will watch their dreams rot in warehouses. 

Not because they failed. But because their country failed them first.

---

4. The Forest Service Is Burning from the Inside

In Montana, 42 Forest Service employees were cut loose with generic pink slips, many under the lie of “probationary status.” These weren’t rookies. They were seasoned veterans — some with decades of experience — gutted in a campaign of cruelty disguised as efficiency.

America is heading into another wildfire season with skeleton crews, burnt-out staff, and hollowed-out agencies. Trails are unmaintained. Wildlife protection is eroding. Districts are unstaffed. 

Fire fatalities? Inevitable.

Public lands are no longer public. They are being stripped of stewardship, carved up for profit, and sold out to the highest bidder. And all under the banner of “America First.”

But “America First” has come to mean “Everyone Else Last.”

---

5. The Authoritarian Playbook Is No Longer Subtle

• Pardon the loyal.

• Punish the disobedient.

• Starve dissenting institutions.

• Rewrite the law by ignoring it.

• Replace public service with private interest.

• Normalize chaos.

• Make cruelty the point.

Trump isn’t dismantling the system. He is the system now.

And the Democrats? 

Caught between nostalgia and paralysis. Offering bland centrism while the nation bleeds out in rural towns and burns in the urban core.

---

6. Is America Broken Beyond Repair?

Yes. But that doesn’t mean it’s unfixable.

To fix it requires acknowledging what we’ve become:

• A nation where courts are feared, not followed.

• A nation where policy is designed to erase Black life.

• A nation that sacrifices workers and wilderness for corporate tantrums.

• A nation whose leadership views compassion as weakness and knowledge as treason.

But here’s the raw truth: the damage is not just Trump. It’s bipartisan neglect. It’s neoliberal rot. 

It’s boomers who built a nation on extraction and passed the bill to millennials and Gen Z.

We’ve become a country that can no longer tell the difference between capitalism and cannibalism.

---

7. Where Do We Go From Here?

If we continue on this path, America becomes the next cautionary tale — an empire that destroyed itself from within while tweeting about greatness.

But there is a way forward:

• Build power in the places forgotten by both parties.

• Defend every institution — courtrooms, classrooms, forests — from ideological takeover.

• Nationalize voting protections. Expand civil rights. Codify DEI into law.

• Create resilient local economies that don’t depend on global supply chains.

• Return to the radical idea that government is meant to serve the people — not punish them.

---

Final Word:

If you feel like you’re watching something sacred die in slow motion, you’re not alone. But this isn’t a funeral yet.

It’s a reckoning.

And the clock is ticking.

---

Sources:

• Trump’s DOJ and Legal Warfare

• Black Male Voter Project

• Tariffs and Small Business Impact

• Forest Service Cuts

• Voting Turnout 2024 vs 2020

Sincerely,

ADAPTATION-GUIDE

ADAPT OR DIE!

LESS IS MORE!

WE ARE READY! ARE YOU?

Tomorrow: 

The Citizen Survival Manual: How to Resist, Rebuild, and Rise in the Age of American Collapse

Dear Daily Disaster Diary, May 16 2025

"Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants."

—  Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice

Pfizer COVID texts: EU wrong to deny release of von der Leyen messages, court finds

The Pfizer Texts Scandal: Why Ursula von der Leyen Owes the EU an Apology—And the Mic

---

“Klatsche” for von der Leyen: The EU Court Slams Her Leadership Style, Transparency in Tatters

It’s a hard slap in the face for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. This week, the EU’s General Court ruled that the Commission acted unlawfully by refusing to release text messages exchanged between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during the pandemic’s vaccine procurement frenzy. 

The messages were never published. 

The justification? They “didn’t exist.” The court disagrees—and so should every EU citizen.

---

⚠️ The Real Scandal: Not Just the Texts—But What They Say About Power

Let’s rewind.

Spring 2020. COVID had shut the world down. Governments scrambled to secure vaccines. The EU? 

Unprepared, unequipped, and dangerously slow. While the US, UK, and Switzerland raced ahead, Europe lagged behind—and people were dying.

So von der Leyen, without a formal mandate, went off-book. She engaged directly with Pfizer’s CEO. 

They reportedly exchanged texts about a vaccine deal worth €35 billion—for 1.8 billion doses. 

Let that sink in: billions of taxpayer euros negotiated over text, with zero official oversight.

Then came the New York Times, revealing in 2021 that she had been messaging her “dear Albert.” 

A journalist requested access to those messages, invoking the EU’s transparency regulations. The Commission flat-out refused.

Their excuse? We don’t have the texts.

Seriously?

---

⚖️ The EU Court Wasn’t Buying It

This week’s ruling declared that the Commission’s refusal was legally void. The court said the NYT’s reporting had credibly undermined the Commission’s claim that the messages never existed. And even if they were deleted, the Commission had a duty to explain how and why. It didn’t.

In short: The Commission lied, stonewalled, or both. And now it’s been caught.

---

🤐 Authoritarian Management Disguised as “Crisis Response”

Behind this mess lies a broader problem: Ursula von der Leyen’s governing style.

Her leadership has become synonymous with centralization, opacity, and power hoarding. Communications are tightly controlled. Decision-making is closed-door. Critics silenced. Dissenters removed. Her rival, Thierry Breton? Gone. Her inner circle? Handpicked.

Supporters call it “strong leadership.” Let’s call it what it is: an increasingly authoritarian, top-down regime within what should be the world’s most transparent democratic project.

---

🔥 Where Was This Verdict Before the EU Election?

Let’s ask the obvious:
Why didn’t this court ruling land before von der Leyen’s re-election campaign?

Was it strategic timing? Bureaucratic delay? Political shielding? We’ll never know. But what we do know is this: Democracy without transparency is a fraud.

---

🎤 Time to Grab the Mic, Ursula

Now is the time, Frau von der Leyen.
Take the mic. Own it. Pledge to rebuild trust. Apologize.
Not because the court told you to.
Not because the NYT embarrassed you.
But because without transparency, the EU is no better than Putin’s Russia or a post-truth United States.

You were meant to be better than this.

---

🙌 A Salute to the New York Times

Let’s give credit where it’s due: The New York Times did what European institutions failed to do—hold power accountable. When even the EU Parliament sat on its hands, NYT filed the lawsuit.

That’s journalism. That’s resistance. That’s democracy in action.

---

🗳️ Dear EU Voters: Wake Up

Here’s the most dangerous part: every lie, every cover-up, every deleted message feeds the far-right.

For every one of Ursula’s blunders, a hundred new votes go to the AfD, to Le Pen, to Orbán clones across Europe. Not because they offer solutions—but because they claim to be “different.” And when democratic leaders act like autocrats, those claims gain traction.

Stop handing them ammunition.

---

✊ Final Word: Stop It. Or Step Down.

Von der Leyen’s legacy doesn’t have to be stained by scandal and secrecy. But that choice is hers.

The message from the people is clear:

Lead with integrity—or step aside.

The European Union deserves better.

We at ADAPTATION-GUIDE warned you long ago about von der Leyen’s backdoor deals, sketchy digital contracts, and unaccountable style. This latest ruling is not a surprise—it’s a confirmation.

And to the next leader:
Don’t bring us more PR spin. Bring the receipts.

---

Sources:

• New York Times Report on von der Leyen's Pfizer Texts

• EU Court Ruling Summary (2025)

• Transparency Regulation – EU Law

Sincerely,

ADAPTATION-GUIDE

ADAPT OR DIE!

LESS IS MORE!

WE ARE READY! ARE YOU?