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Donald Trump’s top economic advisor, Kevin Hassett, recently outlined the administration’s economic vision, and after digging into the details, one thing stands out: it looks eerily similar to what Europe did following the Great Financial Crisis (GFC). If Trump gets his way, the U.S. economy could end up looking a lot like Europe’s—stagnant growth, higher unemployment, and structurally weaker economic conditions. Let’s break it down.

The Core Strategy: Fighting Inflation by Shrinking the Economy

Hassett laid out two main pillars of Trump’s economic plan:

1. Increase Labor Supply – This means pushing those receiving government assistance into the workforce, which effectively increases unemployment before they find jobs.
2. Lower Aggregate Demand – Achieved through government spending cuts, meaning less money flowing through the economy.

Theoretically, this will bring down inflation. But at what cost? If history is any guide, slashing government spending and pushing more people into the labor market without increasing demand leads to stagnation—a scenario Europe found itself in after the GFC.

Like a herd of American buffalo, joy and high spirits have stampeded across America since January 20, 2025—Liberation Day! The country has been liberated from the bleak, suffocating prison of woke tyranny—and we will need all the determination we can muster if we are going to finally put an end to it. The spirit of Making America Great Again is once more at large in the land, stronger, more inspired, and more determined than ever.

It is hard to keep up with the astounding multitude of executive orders President Trump is signing in his first weeks in office. One deserves more attention than we might be inclined to give it: “Celebrating America’s 250th Birthday.” It is focused on preparing “a grand celebration” of America on July 4, 2026, among “other actions to honor the history of our great Nation.” This includes the construction of the monument garden Trump tried to launch during his first term, now to contain 250 statues in honor of our nation’s birth.

Just when you think you can't be more alarmed and disgusted by the Republican Fascist regime, further horrendous stuff happens. Just because none of it is surprising doesn't mean it isn't shocking. Nothing Trump, Musk, the Trump cabinet heads and other Trump appointees are doing is unexpected, yet it is still very hard to process and absorb. Same for the support for all of this by the Republican Fascists who form the majorities in both the House and Senate of the federal government.

The fear and loathing, overlaid by feelings of incredulity and unbelief, can be disorienting and paralyzing, not just for us ordinary folks but also, I imagine, for state executive branch members and state legislators who prepared for months to respond to the reign of Republican Fascism at the federal level. Yet they, and we, are going to have to act if we are to give ourselves any protection at all.

I’ve spent my career looking at bad, unforced decisions. I describe them as times that people took a lot of time and talk to come to a decision they later regretted.

On this episode of Follow the Money, Senior Economist Matt Grudnoff joins Ebony Bennett to explain how tariffs work, Trump’s 25 per cent levy on steel and aluminium imports, and how big a deal this will be for Australia.

This discussion was recorded on Tuesday 11 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: Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist, the Australia Institute // @mattgrudnoff

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

Show notes: 

After America, the Australia Institute

‘Trump’s latest tariff bid shows the old rules of trade no longer apply. Scraps of paper will not save us’ by Greg Jericho, Guardian Australia (February 2025)

The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

Higher Education Reform Part II | Cincinnatus Series Ep. 2

Introduction

Want to make a sign that gets noticed? Here is a template and tips shared by the Visibility Brigade, who make different signs each week.

Origin and Mission

The Visibility Brigade model was born in 2020 out of a frustration due to the lack of physical messaging in the real world regarding the existential crisis we face as a nation. We present our messages at a pedestrian walkway over Route 4 in Paramus, New Jersey.

Our goal is to remind folks of this crisis, to suggest simple actions to take and to support pro-democratic state and national candidates. However, perhaps the greatest purpose at present is to comfort heartbroken voters and let them know that they are not alone.

Who We Are And What We Do

As Margaret Meade once wrote,

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

A Visibility Brigade needs only a handful of dedicated members (5 minimum) to create weekly actions. This requires a weekly dedication of 60-90 minutes a week of placing a simple message in a public location, usually an overpass or other well-trafficked locale.

The Australia Institute’s Democracy Agenda for the 48th Parliament proposes reforms aimed at strengthening Parliamentary debate, increasing government accountability, and enhancing the integrity of our political institutions.

Joined by Greens Senate Leader Larissa Waters and independent MPs Kate Chaney, Zoe Daniel, Helen Haines, Sophie Scamps, Monique Ryan, Andrew Wilkie, the Australia Institute’s Director of Democracy & Accountability Bill Browne launched the report today with a press conference at Parliament House.

Key proposals include:

Introduction

Looking for narrative and storytelling directories, libraries or hubs? Here is a live list collated by the Commons librarians. Contact us if you if a suggestion to add.

The supposedly large campaigns run by community independents have been used to justify the Albanese Government’s rushed changes to electoral laws. Labor Special Minister of State Don Farrell explicitly linked the laws to an attempt to limit funding for community independents, saying “if you can’t get your message across after spending $800,000, then maybe you shouldn’t be in politics”.

Liberal MP Paul Fletcher claimed that “[t]hese amounts being spent on campaigns in individual electorates are without precedent in the Australian political system”.
Since these claims are being used to justify sweeping changes to Australian electoral law, they warrant close scrutiny.

The data reveals that the line being pushed by the two major parties does not stack up.

Despite what the Labor and Liberal parties might wish to suggest, million-dollar campaigns were not uncommon before the 2022 election.

By Manuel Maldonado

Over the past year, a fantastic group of practitioners and researchers, led by Rainer Kattel and Mariana Mazzucato, have been exploring whether the concept of dynamic capabilities, can be measured — and whether such measurement could provide valuable insights to guide city leaders and other stakeholders in their decision-making.

As part of our campaign to commence to socio-economic duty, we’re asking supporters to write to their MP about Early Day Motion 258. This EDM calls for the socio-economic duty to be commenced in the strongest way, alongside consultation from trade unions, campaigners, and community groups. MPs from any party can sign this EDM! You […]

The post Write to your MP about our Early Day Motion appeared first on Equality Trust.

Introduction

A live list of training and planning tools about narrative and storytelling collated by the Commons librarians. If you have a resource to add please contact us.

Training Resources

Exercises and Activities

Crowdsourcing what Narratives Mean, Feminist Basket of Resources, Oxfam, see pgs 103-104
Purpose: Collectively build an idea of what narratives mean to the group. Useful for when you want to explore narratives but not everyone has the same idea of what they are and how narratives impact but can also be useful in social justice work.
Time: 10-25 mins

Counter or Transformative Narratives, Feminist Basket of Resources, Oxfam, see pgs 105-106
Purpose: Exploring the differences between “counter” and “transformative” narratives this is a simple exercise to source this knowledge and build it collectively. We do this because often we get stuck in responding or reacting to others, rather than thinking about our own narratives, what we believe in, what we are for.
Time: 20 mins

President Trump has already appointed more Supreme Court justices than any president in 50 years. He now has a chance to be the first president since Eisenhower to appoint a majority of the justices on the Court. If he does, he would solidify his place as one of America’s most consequential presidents, and he would lock the Court’s liberals out of power for a generation.

If President Trump waits for a vacancy, his opportunity to secure his legacy may slip away. It is possible that neither Justices Alito nor Thomas will retire before the 2026 midterms. And three other justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, will soon be older than 65, the common retirement age, and could in theory vacate their positions between the 2026 midterms and the conclusion of President Trump’s term. If the Democrats win the Senate majority in 2026, they will likely block any appointments President Trump would make to the Court in the interim.

To guard against this, within the first 100 days and without a single justice announcing their retirement, Trump should nominate at least two candidates for the Supreme Court. Alternatively, he could make as many as five nominations for the justices aged 65 or older. President Trump can specify that these nominations will vest upon a vacancy actually arising, and the Republican Senate should swiftly confirm the nominees.

Introduction

Here is a live list of resources to read, watch and listen to collated and recommended by The Horizons Project and their partners about resisting authoritarianism. These resources are sourced from their monthly newsletters, The Vista.

Resources

Reading

Twenty Lessons on Tyranny
by Timothy Snyder

Notes on the Crises pivoted on February 1st into around the clock coverage of the Trump-Musk Treasury Payments Crisis of 2025

In a letter, published in newspapers today, CEOs, investors and academics have called for governments to stop subsidising and approving fossil fuel projects and to implement policies that will drive investment in decarbonisation.

Signatories include business leaders and investors across a range of sectors including resources, retail and superannuation.

According to the letter Real Zero means:

• Setting a deadline for ending fossil fuel use, rather than relying on offsets.
• Rapid reduction in fossil fuel use and absolute greenhouse gas emissions, not delays based on future technology promises.
• A managed end to fossil fuel production, including a phase out of subsidies.

“A critical mass of Australian businesses have declared their support for or signed voluntary climate commitments aligned with 1.5 degrees of global warming. It is welcome to see the private sector actually start to align their advocacy with these existing commitments,” said Polly Hemming, Director, Climate & Energy Program at The Australia Institute.

“To have any chance of staying within the liveable bounds of climate change, we must all be as ambitious as we say we are. ‘Real Zero’ must be the aspiration. ‘Real Zero’ must be the goal.

Introduction

The Global Nonviolent Action Database details some 40 cases of mass movements overcoming tyrants through strategic nonviolent campaigns.

This article written by George Lakey was originally published on Waging Nonviolence. The Commons librarian has added quote marks and additional images to the original article.

Read Article

With Donald Trump set to take office after a fear-mongering campaign that reignited concerns about his desire to become a dictator, a reasonable question comes up: Can nonviolent struggle defeat a tyrant?

There are many great resources that answer this question, but the one that’s been on my mind lately is the Global Nonviolent Action Database, or GNAD, built by the Peace Studies department at Swarthmore College. Freely accessible to the public, this database — which launched under my direction in 2011 — contains over 1,400 cases of nonviolent struggle from over a hundred countries, with more cases continually being added by student researchers.  

Even a (so-far) nonviolent constitutional crisis moves swiftly. So far today there have been significant developments in two ongoing lawsuits to check the unlawful, unconstitutional conduct of the Trump regime. Both bring us closer to the inevitable face-off between the federal judiciary and that regime.

The two suits are both proceeding in federal district courts, the federal trial court level. Both have been brought by coalitions of state attorneys general. State of New York v. Donald Trump is before Judge John J. McConnell in the District of Rhode Island. This is the lawsuit seeking to prevent the Trump regime from freezing or otherwise interfering with the flow of Congressionally appropriated funds to the individuals and states meant to receive them. I will call this the funding freeze case. The other lawsuit is State of New York v. Donald J. Trump. It is before Judge Jeanette A. Vargas of the Southern District of New York. Here the plaintiffs are trying to prevent anybody other than the usual career civil servants from accessing the Treasury's secure payments systems and associated records. The litigation was prompted by Secretary of the Treasury Bessent giving access to "consultants" hired by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), compromising the personal and financial information of millions of Americans. I will call this the Treasury systems case.

As wildfires in California resulted in almost 40,000 acres burning and tens of thousands of buildings being destroyed, the backslide in global climate politics brazenly continues. Many jurisdictions around the world are battling against the economic impact of intensifying nature catastrophes and extreme weather events, at the same time, climate inaction and sluggish action plague governments. Most recently, the Federal Reserve announced its resignation from the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), a worldwide cooperation of central banks and financial supervisors. Under the auspices of the NGFS, central banks have been working on understanding what the impact of climate inaction looks like for economies all around the world —and more increasingly specifically in the Global South— and how they can enable climate action for financial world and government agencies. In light of Fed’s withdrawal, it is important- now more than ever- to understand what kind of weight global climate cooperation efforts can have in the greening of the financial system.

The American people have made their voices heard. In giving Republicans unified control of Congress and sending President Donald Trump back to the White House, they told the world exactly what they want: a return to American greatness, prosperity, and security—in other words, the Golden Age of America.

As I begin my term in the U.S. Senate, I am humbled by the faith the people of Indiana have placed in me, and I am energized by the mandate the Republican Party under Donald Trump’s leadership received from voters nationwide. I pledge to deliver on my campaign promises and to put America first in everything I do.

Americans could not have been more clear: they are tired of failed policies, eroding values, and being a laughingstock on the world stage. They demand, and are entitled to, a government that works for them, not against them. 

It’s long past time their elected leaders actually fight for their interests—leaders unphased by the influence of special interests or foreign powers.

My agenda for this session of Congress is straightforward and unapologetic. Alongside my colleagues in the Senate, I plan to rebuild American industry, secure our borders, strengthen our military, and remove toxic influences from our culture. I am laser-focused on advancing this blueprint for national renewal. 

There have been improvements, including the replacement of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, increased funding to some agencies and the introduction of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), although without the power to hold public hearings whenever they are in the public interest.

Overall, the government’s broader record on integrity and transparency remains wanting.

• There is no Whistleblower Commissioner or Office as Labor promised in 2019.
• This government’s record on dealing with freedom of information requests remains poor.
• Integrity agencies remain underfunded even as their responsibilities expand.
• Ministers are not required to, and do not proactively, publish their diaries to reveal who they are meeting with.
• The response to the Robodebt scandal has failed to achieve justice for victims of the unlawful scheme, with the NACC subject to adverse findings over its handling of the matter.
• David McBride is behind bars for blowing the whistle on alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan.

This Tuesday, the Australia Institute and Fairer Future will convene a roundtable of integrity experts and officeholders emeritus to discuss the decline in accountability and the role of the integrity arm of government: including auditors, ombudsmen, anti-corruption commissioners and information commissioners.

The media is invited to attend community independent Senator David Pocock’s keynote address, which will open the roundtable. 

With the federal government having long treated birthright citizenship as a requirement of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment, President Trump’s executive order denying it to children of noncitizen, non-permanent resident mothers faces an uphill court battle. Still, opponents of birthright citizenship can hope that the result will elucidate Section 1’s much-debated “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” phrase and clarify whether an amendment is necessary to reinterpret it.

This issue is not trivial. My colleagues and I at the Center for Immigration Studies recently put together a preliminary estimate that illegal immigrant mothers gave birth to between 225,000 and 250,000 babies in 2023. That number is larger than the total number of births in any single state in 2023 except Texas and California. All of these children are automatically U.S. citizens, and through their birth they increase their parents’ chances of remaining in the country as well.

With the U.S.’s sub-replacement level fertility, isn’t having more children exactly what our country needs? “I want more babies in the United States of America,” Vice President J.D. Vance recently declared, and with good reason. Deaths will soon outnumber births in the U.S., bringing the risk of economic and cultural stagnation as our population ages.

On this episode of After America, Matt Duss, Executive Vice-President at the Washington DC-based Center for International Policy, joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss Trump’s Gaza announcement, the freeze on US development funding, and the new Cabinet’s approach to China.

This discussion was recorded on Friday 7 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: Matt Duss, Executive Vice-President, Centre for International Policy // @mattduss

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

Show notes:

‘Trump’s Gaza Proposal is Less Original Than He Thinks’ by Matthew Duss, Foreign Policy (February 2025)

Introduction

How can you organise more efficiently and effectively? Coaching is a leadership practice that is essential to ensure the success of your campaigns – from the initial stages of a campaign strategy and managing your team, to building the right work processes and mapping your biggest challenges.

Here is an introduction to coaching from a session held at the FWD+Organise Conference in 2024 in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. This session explored best practice approaches based on the works of Marshall Ganz and the Leading Change Network. Learn more about coaching using the Marshall Ganz approach.

Leadership is enabling others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty. Coaching enables others. – Marshall Ganz

Coaching 101

Coaching is different from managing or mentoring. Whilst Managing focuses on performance and accountability and Mentoring focuses on guidance and providing perspective – Coaching focuses on facilitation of self-discovery and personal growth.