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Introduction

The Commons librarians have put together a handout of recommended resources for the Climate Adaptation Fair hosted by Friends of the Earth in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia on 8 February 2025.

More information about the event here.

It’ll be a day of celebrating and uplifting community-led climate adaptation! There will be information on adapting to locked-in climate change impacts – how we keep each other safe. Those already implementing projects in their communities will share their story and knowledge, so others can be inspired and learn how to do the same in their communities.

On this episode of Follow the Money, Democracy & Accountability Director Bill Browne joins us to discuss the latest political donations data and why tens of thousands of Australians are concerned about the Government’s proposed electoral changes.

This discussion was recorded on Tuesday 4 February 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

Order What’s the Big Idea? 32 Big Ideas for a Better Australia now, via the Australia Institute website.

Guest: Bill Browne, Director, Democracy & Accountability, the Australia Institute // @browne90

Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebony_bennett

Show notes: 

Electoral Reform Bill analysis by Bill Browne and Joshua Black, the Australia Institute (February 2025)

SIGN NOW: Protect our elections!, the Australia Institute

Theme music: Blue Dot Sessions

If you are a current or former career Bureau of the Fiscal Service Employee, especially if you’re a legacy IT programmer with years of experience and especially if you are a COBOL programmer currently working on the PAM, SPS or any other adjacent team, contact me over email or over signal — linked here. My Signal username is “NathanTankus.01”. Legal counsel sources and payments level sources at the Federal Reserve are also helpful.

Edward Erler, John Eastman, Ryan Williams, Michael Anton, and Linda Denno have made powerful constitutional cases for limiting birthright citizenship. However, it is easy to get lost in the legal minutiae and fail to see the larger stakes. Behind the birthright citizenship debate, as with all major constitutional debates, is a fundamental political question: Who should be an American citizen?

The point of this post is to offer some explanation of a lawsuit filed yesterday, February 3, Alliance for Retired Americans v. Bessent. The case may slow or stop Trump and Musk from implementing a constitutional coup, though from its title it might seem otherwise. The named defendant is Scott Bessent, in his capacity as Secretary of the Treasury. The plaintiffs are two unions and a civil society association devoted to retirees' interests and two unions. They are represented by two cause law firms: Public Citizen Litigation Group, which is dedicated to consumer protection and State Democracy Defenders Action, dedicated to good government. The suit seeks to enjoin Bessent from continuing to give Musk and his minions personal and financial information about millions of Americans and to require the Treasury Department to remediate the damage already done.

The discussion around tariffs often gets caught up in political rhetoric, but if we take a step back and analyze the mechanics from a macroeconomic perspective, there are two key points that often get overlooked. Understanding these nuances requires thinking through the lens of post-Keynesian, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)-influenced macroeconomics—an approach that sheds light on how tariffs impact financial flows, growth, and inflation.

The Recent Tariff Announcement and Market Reaction

Last Friday, Trump announced the implementation of tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China—25% on Mexico, 25% on Canada, and 10% on China. The announcement created immediate market turmoil over the weekend, leading to significant drops in futures markets when they opened on Sunday night. However, by mid-afternoon on Monday, Trump had paused tariffs on Canada and Mexico after discussions with both nations, leading to a near-full recovery in the markets.

Despite the volatility, the S&P 500 remains only 2% off its all-time highs. This resilience underscores an important point: while tariff-induced uncertainty can cause short-term disruptions, the long-term macroeconomic impact is what really matters. That’s why it’s crucial to break down what tariffs actually do in an economy and how they might affect growth and inflation.

In movies, struggling writers are portrayed as trying to come up with ideas. In my experience as a writer and teacher of writing, that isn’t the hard part. Ideas are easy, and are much better in our head than on the paper, so a very, very hard part of writing is to getting the smart and elegant ideas in our head to be comprehensible to someone else, let alone either persuasive or admired. But the even harder part is submitting something we’ve written—sending it off to be judged. It feels like the first day of sending a child to middle school—will they be bullied? Will they make friends? Will they change beyond recognition?

Introduction

Insights and inspiration from two campaign strategists from a learning session held by For Purpose in 2024 in Aotearoa | New Zealand.

The two strategists were Kristin Gillies, founder and director of For Purpose, and Chennoah Walford, former Green Party Campaign Manager and now NZEI Te Riu Roa Online to Offline Organiser. Between the two of them, Kristin and Chennoah have stacks of campaigning experience, and they’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. They have shared five key insights into what makes for an effective advocacy campaign.

Here is a summary of the 5 insights and you can watch the full video of the session below.

Insights

1. Meet People Where They Are 

Campaigning today means understanding that people are online more than ever, but they’re scattered across different platforms. We’ve learned the importance of tailoring our approach—like using SMS to engage younger audiences who may not respond to traditional calls.

Get to know your audiences, how to reach them and how to understand what content and messaging is working.

Introduction

The Activists Resource Hub, is a website to help activists find the brilliant resources available for them quickly and easily.

We have scoured the online world to bring the best of what is available to you in one small, manageable, easy-to-navigate place. While these resources are predominantly aimed at UK activists, many of the insights they provide are applicable to other countries and contexts.

The hub is especially useful for people who are new to campaigning and activism.

It has practical help for everything from how to write a great press release to finding a fiscal host to manage your money. It also has inspirational stories to help you learn about other people’s strategies, tactics, setbacks and successes. 

The Activists Resource Hub was put together by Social Change Lab and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, both organisations who are passionate about supporting grassroots activists.

Practical Tools

The Practical Tools section provides practical advice on things all campaigners and activists are likely to need to do, namely:

Introduction

Disruptive protest tactics, such as road blockades, vandalising art or disrupting sports events, have drawn widespread attention and sparked debate.

Are these actions essential for raising awareness and pressuring institutions, or do they risk undermining popular support for social movements?

In this talk, Sam Nadel shares Social Change Lab’s research on the impact of such tactics across various outcomes, examining whether they are ultimately helpful or harmful for advancing progress on critical social issues.

The talk was held as part of the Effective Altruism Global EAGx Virtual conference in 2024.

Often it is difficult to know where to start when writing articles and book chapters, and sometimes even more so for blog posts summarising those articles and book chapters. Therefore, in keeping with a few examples such as here, here and here citing other bands, many thanks to Ultha for inspiration for this post’s title and section headings and for being happy with me invoking them so liberally.

Many of us are aghast at the unprecedented dismantlement of the US administrative state. Mass terminations. Website erasure. Removal of watchdogs. Unchecked access to the treasury. All around me, people are trying to connect what's happening to historical events. Is this fascism? A hostile corporate takeover? A coup? People want a frame both to understand what's happening and grapple with what's coming. Most of the people I know are also struggling to figure out where they can take action.

I've spent the bulk of my life tracking different dynamics in the tech industry. And, for the last decade, I've had the pleasure of working alongside federal civil servants and observing their commitment to American democracy. So as I watch this unfold, a few frames keep coming to mind. Frames that explain both the moment and how we got here. These are not frames that provide me with answers for the future, but perhaps they offer insights that others might be able to build on.

Jenga Politics.

Think about the wooden puzzle known as Jenga, where a tower is made out of criss-crossed wooden blocks. Players are asked to take out pieces of the wooden puzzle from the structure and then place their piece on top, increasing the pressure of gravity on the structure. The goal of the game is get your opponent to take the blame for making the entire system fall.

President Trump should thank former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The implosion of his Iran-backed regime handed Trump the perfect setting to make history. During his first 100 days, President Trump should deliver a speech outlining a fresh U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and announcing the withdrawal of American troops from Syria.

The highly visible nature of a troop withdrawal would mark a clean break from the shortcomings of his predecessors. It would also allow President Trump to fulfill campaign promises with clear, concrete action—correcting the complications from his earlier Syria policy and opening the door to a new golden age of American foreign policy. The neoconservatism of the George W. Bush era failed miserably. The liberal-oriented strategies of the Clinton, Obama, and Biden years did not fare much better. Recent attempts at progressive-oriented approaches have proven equally problematic.

Donghoon Lee and Joseph Tracy

On this episode of After America, Associate Professor Clare Corbould joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the relentlessness of the new Trump administration and the media coverage of his first two weeks in office.

This discussion was recorded on Friday 31 January 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

Order What’s the Big Idea? 32 Big Ideas for a Better Australia now, via the Australia Institute website.

Guest: Clare Corbould, Associate Head of School, Research, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University // @clarecorbould

Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis

Show notes:

Presidency Pending hosted by Clare Corbould and Zim Nwokora, Deakin University

Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism by Yanis Varoufakis (September 2023)

If you are a current or former career “civil service” Treasury or Federal Reserve System employee, including in the general counsel’s offices of either entity, and you have detailed knowledge of how the Bureau of Fiscal Service operates at an operational level please contact me over email or over signal — linked here.

This is a free piece of Notes on the Crises. I will not be paywalling any coverage of this crisis for as long as it persists, so please take out a paid subscription to facilitate performing that public service. The abbreviated version of this article is in Rolling Stone