“DOGE House (Tesla for Sale)” — Hector Cosme

This weekend, MILLIONS OF PEOPLE took to the streets of America to protest Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and what this administration of dangerous idiots, creepy billionaires and outright white supremacist fascists are doing to this country.

MILLIONS OF PEOPLE! There were 1,500 registered protests and hundreds more that just sprung up spontaneously in places where nothing had been planned but people said… “F*ck it! Let’s just go down to the courthouse!”

You would think this would be front page news. This would be blasting every 20 minutes of “Breaking News” and “This Just In!” and “Happening Now in the Situation Room!”

But, according to CNN, it was “scores of people” and USA Today said it was “tens of thousands” which was at least more than FOX News which said it was just “thousands of people.”

They refused to believe that MILLIONS of everyday Americans left their homes and packed tens of thousands of streets — even though they knew in advance there were over 600,000 people who had already RSVP’d to rallies nationwide weeks before the protests even started! And if you’ve ever met any Lefties and Independents and Traditional Non Voters… we don’t sign up for ANYTHING. For every 1 person who RSVP’d there were at least 8 who said, “Dude, I’ll just show up, why do I have to RSVP? This isn’t a bridal shower!”

From my vantage point, I can safely tell you that there were at least 2,000 planned protests on Saturday — and, my guess, thousands more unplanned, random, last minute gatherings, curbside cheerings and angry spontaneous blowouts, fists-in-the-air, middle-fingers waving and otherwise mild mannered citizens of America SCREAMING HOLY BLOODY MURDER!

The outcry is massive and unstoppable. A hundred thousand people or more in EACH of these cities: New York, Boston, Chicago, Philly, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. Tens and tens of thousands of people came out in Seattle and Lansing and Madison and beyond. The list and the attendance numbers are breathtaking — from large metropolitan centers to all sorts of villages and small towns everywhere. And now… add in that there were well over 1,000 in Columbia, South Carolina and numbers just like this everywhere — from Mississippi (500 in Gulfport and 300 more in Jackson) to Traverse City, Michigan (4,000), to the 400 in nearby Benzonia. I know. What is a Benzonia?

The organizers of the nationwide event — the 50501 Movement — have an official tally of over 5,000,000 people — 5 Million!

Another group — the American Federation of Teachers — who know a little something about counting — say that there were at least 4 million people who took to the streets all across the country.

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Millions and millions of people from all over the country, from all walks of life and all age groups, marching for Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, marching to defend the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services, marching to protect the funding of cancer research and efforts to stop the next global pandemic, marching against the greed of capitalism, and marching to oppose mass deportations and the rounding up of immigrants and college students and marching against the unending genocide in Palestine, a mass murder paid for with our tax dollars and carried out with our weapons of war.

You would think all of this would lead all the news channels to show these scenes and talk about it all day long. But this was not done. It was not a front page story in the New York Times. Instead it was on Page 18 — in a city where there were literally and obviously well over 100,000 people in the streets just down the block from their billion-dollar skyscraper.

So, my friends, next to us already knowing that we are a nonviolent army of millions, and next to us already knowing the fact that that there are more of us than there are of all of them, here is the most important thing I want all of you to take away from this historic protest:

The only ones more frightened about our record turnout than Trump and Musk are the corporate media, the Wall Streeters, the billionaires and the other Party they own — the weak, lame Party that had 49 years to make Roe the law of the land and did nothing. The party that oversaw the rise of the #1 cause of death of American children — GUNS — and did nothing to stop this slaughter because they were afraid of the NRA. The Party that embraced Netanyahu and fully funded and armed his ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people — these are the same politicians whose pundits and media have tried to bury how massive the turnout was on Saturday when MILLIONS of Americans said ENOUGH! They do not want you to know that you hold the power, and that you are going to do their job for them and bring Trump down. Because when Trump’s MAGA traitors lose in next year’s elections, they, the pathetic old school Dems, they fear they too will be swept away. We are coming after them for their incompetence, their malpractice in letting Trump and Musk take over. They hid Biden’s decline from the public and fixed it so that we wouldn’t have someone who could crush Trump. They instead crushed the working class and the youth who ended up in despair, many of them too devastated, too resigned to even vote.

Let me say this again:

The people in charge — and I’m not just talking about the Trump administration — do NOT want to encourage you to rise up, to fight back. Because when the people rise up… that is the moment when everyone says, “I’ve had it!” — Democratic voters and Republicans — “with all the shit that is happening!” There's going to be such a reaction to all the destruction Musk and Trump have caused — and the fact that the “opposition” party has sat by and almost silently let it happen — that all of this madness, all of this OVERREACH and all of this MAGA attempt to OVERWHELM all of us into a mass depression — this will now boil over into a nonviolent OVERTHROW! The people are mad as hell, and they are not going to take it any more.

We will not be ignored.

Five million+ people in the streets organized by… each other! The media ignored it in the days and weeks leading up to this protest and tried to ignore it as soon as it was over — just like Fox News keeps removing the stock market ticker as Trump craters the American economy and plunders the 401(k)s of those lucky enough to have one. They ignored it all and we still showed up.

And we are not going to stop. The next mass nationwide rally is April 19. Go to www.FiftyFifty.one to find out about events near you. More events are being added each day. And if you don’t see one in your city or your town — they have tools to help you organize one.

ORGANIZE ONE!!

THE POWER IS IN YOUR HANDS!!

If you missed out on last weekend's protest — then this is your chance to take part! And if you were one of the FIVE MILLION+ PEOPLE IN THE STREETS this past Saturday… then make a plan now to get back out into the streets on April 19th… and think of 2-4 new people you can bring with you.

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AND NOW…

Here are the next three dozen paintings, pictures and sculptures in my ongoing series, DONALD TRUMP IS DESPERATELY BEGGING YOU TO PAINT HIM A NEW PORTRAIT…

ENJOY!! And send me yours to share with the world!

— Michael

If you missed the previous ones:

• GALLERY #1
• GALLERY #2
• GALLERY #3

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“Puppetmasters” — M. Louise Stanley

— Gina Telcocci

— J. Martin

— JLynch

— Ann Sorensen

— Doug Dalrymple

“Double Trouble” — Ingrid Schraufstatter

— Natalie Barbera

— Wayne Shellabarger

“These are doodles my late mother drew. I found them while I was cleaning out my parents home after they passed away. My mother was an artist and a great judge of character, as you can see in these renderings. If she were still here, I'm certain she would have painted a magnificent portrait of him depicting his true colors. My mother's name was Kelly Levene and she passed away in 2018. I wish she were still here, but I'm so grateful she did not live to see him in office again.” — Jolie Levene-Pryor

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— Paula Lessard

“Made by neighbor 2016 with a croissant for hair. Wouldn't last long so substituted my dog’s hair shed from brush. You have to put your lips on Trump's to blow up the balloon, but the air passing through and hot air blowing out is worth it!” — Guy Tucker

— Robert Meganck

“Clown Man” — Dani Smith

“Bromance” — Wendy Reiswig Bailey

“Clueless” — Hannah Ruth Price

— Jennifer

— Joel Tidey

“How Tariffs Work” — Jeff Berry

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— Rob Westall

“Snake of the Year” — Victoria Jendretzke

“He Speaks with Forked Tongue” — Marijane Mercer

— Jenny Fielstra

— Michael Connor

— Armando Gallegos

— Tamara Miller Lee

— Brian Colley

— Susie Wecker

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— Joe Mathieu

— Anonymous

— Linda Santanen

“Friends Forever” — Iris Richardson

— Karen Folsom

— B. Leake

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** In order to have a troll-free, hate-free comments section — and because if there’s one thing I know about my crazy haters, they would rather spend an eternity in hell with Marjorie Taylor Greene than send me $5 if forced to become a paid subscriber — my Comments section here on my Substack is limited to paid subscribers. But, not to worry — anyone can send me their comments, opinions and thoughts by writing to me at mike@michaelmoore.com. I read every one of them, though obviously I can’t respond to all. The solution here is not optimal but it has worked and my Comments section has become a great meeting place for people wanting to discuss the ideas and issues I raise here. There is debate and disagreement, but it is refreshing to have it done with respect and civility, unfettered by the stench of bigotry and Q-anon insanity.

This post has been syndicated from Michael Moore, where it was published under this address.

On April 1, Republicans and Elon Musk decisively lost their bid to buy the Wisconsin Supreme Court. But three days later the GOP came closer than ever to overturning the election of a Democratic justice to the North Carolina Supreme Court.

On April 4, two Republican judges on the North Carolina state court of appeals issued an extraordinary ruling tossing out more than 60,000 votes challenged by Republican candidate Jefferson Griffin, who trails Democratic justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes in the last uncalled race of the November 2024 elections. Two recounts affirmed Riggs’ victory, but instead of accepting that outcome, Griffin and his allies on the bench have followed Donald Trump’s 2020 Big Lie playbook to build support for invalidating the election. The key difference is, this time, Republicans could actually succeedin changing the rules for an election that has already occurred to flip the result. It’s January 6 without the insurrection, or if the Supreme Court had ruled in favor of Trump’s bogus election challenge.

The decision to overturn the election, if upheld, will have ramifications far beyond North Carolina. It will give Republicans a playbook for how to overturn future ones, institutionalizing election denial within the party at a time when democracy is under threat in so many escalating ways.

“This does not just affect North Carolina,” Riggs told Democratic lawyer Marc Elias. “This is like dropping a match in a really dry forest. And if we let this kind of anti-democratic effort take hold, we will not be able to contain it. So this is a fight for the very soul of democracy.”

Like Trump, who sought to overturn the votes of large urban centers in key swing states in 2020, Griffin has cherrypicked the type of ballots he wants thrown out.

He’s specifically challenged the eligibility of 60,000 voters with incomplete voter registration records, such as a missing driver’s license or Social Security number. But those registrations were incomplete only because that information was not required at the time or did not appear in state databases because of clerical errors. All of those voters showed identification when voting in 2024. And all of them voted by mail or during early voting, a group that is disproportionately nonwhite, young, and less likely to be registered Republicans. His list of challenged ballots included example after example of lawful voters—including Riggs’ own parents.

“The scale of this should be deeply troubling to anyone who has any respect for the rule of law,” Riggs told me after the election. “With 60,000 people, it is everyone’s friend, it’s everyone’s family member, it’s everyone’s neighbor. There’s no one who doesn’t know someone on that list.”

“If we let this kind of anti-democratic effort take hold, we will not be able to contain it. So this is a fight for the very soul of democracy.”

The second group of ballots Griffin challenged—and the court ruled should be thrown out—came from voters who lived overseas, including members of the military. Even though Griffin voted that way twice as a member of the Army National Guard, he said those ballots should not count because they did not show strict forms of photo ID when submitting their votes, even though the State Board of Elections specifically exempted overseas voters from the state’s new voter ID law, which went into effect for the 2024 cycle. The election board unanimously rejected Griffin’s effort to invalidate those ballots during a hearing in December.

Griffin contested the votes of overseas voters only in four heavily Democratic counties where Riggs won an average of 65.5 percent of votes. It was akin to Trump asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2020 to throw out 221,000 ballots only in the counties encompassing Milwaukee and Madison, which the court rejected. “This calculated challenge to voters in just four Democratic-leaning counties would pose a clear equal protection problem under the US Constitution,” Riggs wrote in a legal brief.

The last group of ballots Griffin challenged, and the court invalidated, came from 267 North Carolina residents who have never lived in the state but whose parents were eligible North Carolina voters, such as military members or religious missioners, before leaving the United States.

The Republican judges on the court of appeals voted to reject these 60,000-plus votes because “the inclusion of even one unlawful ballot in a vote total dilutes the lawful votes and ‘effectively ‘disenfranchises’ lawful voters,” they wrote.

But perhaps the most galling part of Griffin’s challenge is that he hasn’t uncovered a single instance of an ineligible voter casting a ballot. He just doesn’t like the voting methods they used, where they voted from, or who they may have voted for.

“Every single voter challenged by Petitioner in this appeal, both here and abroad, cast their absentee, early, or overseas ballot by following every instruction they were given to do so,” Democratic Judge Toby Hampson wrote in a fiery dissent. “Their ballots were accepted. Their ballots were counted. The results were canvassed. None of these challenged voters was given any reason to believe their vote would not be counted on election day or included in the final tallies.”

He said the court’s ruling would set a dangerous precedent. “Changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes in an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the Constitution,” Hampson added.

Riggs appealed the decision to the North Carolina Supreme Court, which has a 5–1 Republican majority with her recusal. It issued a temporary stay on Monday, but is likely to ultimately affirm the court of appeals given its hard-right leanings.

Election law experts believe the federal courts could step in, given how Griffin is seeking to change the rules of the election after the fact and challenge only certain types of ballots. “The court’s decision appears to violate the well-established federal due process principles that govern the resolution of state (and federal) election disputes,” wrote Richard Pildes, a professor of constitutional law at New York University Law School. Ben Ginsberg, who represented the Bush-Cheney campaign during the 2000 Florida recount, said that the state appellate court “has gone where no court has gone before.” Riggs, herself a longtime voting rights lawyer, said on Friday that she believed “this fight ends in federal court.”

The appellate court gave voters with incomplete registrations or those who did submit photo ID from overseas 15 days to affirm their eligibility before instructing the state election board to toss their votes and readjust the count, which Griffin believes will result in his victory. Hampson called that step “a fiction that does not disguise the act of mass disenfranchisement the majority’s decision represents.”

Confirming the eligibility of 60,000 otherwise lawful voters in a two-week period five months after the election will be a massive hurdle for Democrats and pro-democracy groups. “There can be no doubt that tens of thousands of voters—through no fault of their own—will be unable to cure their registrations or ballots in time,” Riggs’ campaign said in a legal filing.

“The judges went rogue and just created this cure process,” added Melissa Price Kromm, executive director of the pro-democracy group North Carolina For The People Action. “It’s a logistical nightmare to track down 60,000 people to get them to correct something they shouldn’t have to correct. Their votes count for all the other races but not for this race. It’s an incredibly desperate attempt to rewrite the rules for just this race.”

Unlike the courts that rejected Trump’s effort to overturn the election on more than 60 occasions in 2020, Republican judges in North Carolina have bent over backward to help Griffin.

The chief judge of the appeals court, Chris Dillon, chose the panel of judges that heard Griffin’s appeal. Chief Justice Brian Newby, who Griffin has called a “good friend and mentor,” appointed Dillon as the top judge last year, breaking with precedent to oust sitting Republican judge Donna Stroud, who was deemed too liberal by hard-right Republicans. Fellow Republican judges, including Griffin and North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Phil Berger Jr., donated to a primary campaign against Stroud. One judge who ruled in favor of Griffin, Fred Gore, ran a “joint campaign” with him in 2020 where they shared the same platform. (The other Republican judge who sided with Griffin, John Tyson, was charged with misdemeanor assault in 2021 for reportedly almost striking Black Lives Matter protesters with his car.)

As the case winds its way through the courts, the effort to overturn the election has been gathering momentum, like a slow-moving train crash that no one is willing to stop.

“The North Carolina Republican Party is one step closer to stealing an election in broad daylight,” said state House Minority Leader Robert Reives said on Friday.

Democracy isn’t dying in darkness this time. Republicans are nullifying it in plain sight—and using this as a road map for 2026 and beyond.

“I absolutely believe it’s a test case,” said Price Kromm. “It’s a test case for whether an election can be overturned after the election with different rules. If this is allowed to go through, it creates a blueprint for how future losing candidates can subvert the will of the voters by litigating through partisan courts.”

This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.