1. The Fascist Trump/Pence Regime Is Subverting the Separation of Powers
2. The Fascist Trump/Pence Regime Is Subverting the Separation of Church and State
3. The Fascist Trump/Pence Regime Has Called for a New Nuclear Arms Race
4. The Fascist Trump/Pence Regime Is Demonizing the Press
5. The Fascist Trump/Pence Regime Has Dismissed the Very Concept of Truth

The Fascist Trump/Pence Regime Is Subverting the Separation of Powers

RefuseFascism.org FACT SHEET #1:

“The Trump/Pence Regime is a Fascist Regime. Not insult or exaggeration, this is what it is. For the future of humanity and the planet, we, the people, must drive this regime out.” – from the Refuse Fascism Call to Action

A fundamental principle of U.S. government, inscribed in the Constitution, is that each branch of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) acts as a “check” against other branches violating the Constitution or accumulating too much power. Donald Trump is aggressively subverting this, asserting the supremacy of the executive under his supreme and unchallengeable authority.

In his inaugural speech, Donald Trump did not even mention the U.S. Constitution. Instead, he pledged his allegiance to the movement who supported and voted for him.

• After a federal judge temporarily blocked the implementation of parts of his January 27th Muslim travel ban, Trump tweeted: “just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!” Later, he referred to the judge as a “so-called judge.” Through this, Trump denigrated the role of the judiciary and its right to check his authority, and preemptively blamed the judge and the entire judicial system if “something happens.”
• On January 30th, acting Attorney General Sally Yates instructed the Department of Justice not to defend Trump’s Muslim ban because she did not find it legally defensible. She acted on her responsibility to the U.S. Constitution, not the arbitrary will of the president. Trump’s response? He immediately fired her.
• Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior policy advisor who wrote many of his campaign speeches and played a key role in crafting his Muslim ban, lashed out on public TV against the courts that blocked the Muslim ban. He insisted that with respect to national security, “the president has enormous powers” that cannot be checked by the courts, and “he is going to use the authority to keep us safe.”

Miller continued: “[W]e have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become in many cases a supreme branch of government. … The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see, as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.” [emphasis added]

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The Fascist Trump/Pence Regime Is Subverting the Separation of Church and State

RefuseFascism.org FACT SHEET #2:

The separation of church and state ensures that people are free from the imposition of state- backed religion, and free from persecution for their religious beliefs or non-beliefs. This is enshrined right in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” Trump is aggressively violating this – singling out Muslims for persecution, openly favoring Christians, and increasingly injecting Christianity into public life and government.

• Trump’s January 27th executive order was a thinly disguised ban on Muslims. Rudy Giuliani said publicly that Trump asked him to come up with a “Muslim ban” but to do it “legally.”
• Trump told the Christian Broadcast News that the ban would prioritize Christians. Christians from the banned countries were given preference as a “minority religion.”
• On February 18th, Melania Trump opened a Trump rally by reciting “The Lord’s Prayer.”
• Reciting this at this presidential rally casts the nearly 30% of the people in the U.S.— and the 68% of the world’s population—who are NOT Christian as outsiders and basically as “infidels.”
• Trump repeatedly invoked “God” during his inaugural address, including by saying, “We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement and, most importantly, we are protected by God.”
• Trump appointed Betsy DeVos to head the Department of Education. DeVos has invested years and huge sums of her family’s enormous wealth in working to end public education altogether, and to replace it with federally funded Christian fundamentalist schools and indoctrination.
• Vice President Mike Pence is an unyielding Christian fascist whose fanatical interpretation of Christianity informs his governing. As Indiana governor, he passed some of the most extreme anti-abortion legislation in the country. He defended the “right” of businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ people. He argued for teaching the anti-scientific theory of “intelligent design” in public schools.

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The Fascist Trump/Pence Regime Has Called for a New Nuclear Arms Race

RefuseFascism.org FACT SHEET #3:

Nuclear weapons are the world’s most destructive weapons. In August of 1945, the U.S. became the only country ever to use them in war – bombing the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instantly killing, burning alive, or vaporizing tens of thousands. Firestorms engulfed the cities. Shockwaves and winds over 1,000 miles an hour shattered buildings, hurling people through the air. Today, the U.S. possesses nearly 7,000 nuclear warheads – enough to destroy the world five times over. While the U.S. has always refused to sign any “no first use” policy, it has claimed that its nuclear arsenal was mainly for defensive purposes and deterrence. Trump is aggressively breaking with that, bragging about massively expanding the U.S.’s nuclear arsenal and viciously expressing his eagerness to use it. This threatens the entire world.

• For 70 years, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has released its yearly “Doomsday Clock,” indicating how close the world is to devastation from nuclear war and other threats. At the end of January, they moved the clock closer to “midnight” – indicating the greatest threat the world has faced since 1953. A primary factor they cited was Donald Trump becoming president. Never before has the Bulletin decided to advance the clock largely because of the statements of a single person.

• On December 22, 2016, Donald Trump tweeted, “The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.
• According to Joe Scarborough, during a foreign policy briefing, “three times [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked, at one point, if we have them, why can’t we use them?”
• December 23, 2016 Trump told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program: “Let it be an arms race, because we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”

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The Fascist Trump/Pence Regime Is Demonizing the Press

RefuseFascism.org FACT SHEET #4:

A central characteristic of fascism is the insistence that everyone adopt and promote their centrally produced narrative – even when it is flagrantly untrue and violently harmful. All throughout his campaign, and in an even more sustained and chilling way since becoming president, Trump has not only repeatedly LIED – he has fought hard to discredit, threaten, and destroy any media outlet that does not fall in line with his LIES.

• On August 25, 2015, at a press conference in Iowa, Jorge Ramos questioned Trump about his deportation plans. Trump had thugs throw Ramos out of the press conference, and snarled at him to “go back to Univision” (a major Spanish language TV network). In case anyone missed Trump’s coded language, a Trump supporter assailed Ramos (a U.S. citizen) and ordered him to “get out of my country.”
• On January 11th, CNN’s Jim Acosta attempted to question Trump about his attacks on CNN, calling out: “Since you are attacking our news organization, can you give us a question?” Trump shouted him down, saying, “No, not you, not you, your organization is terrible… quiet, quiet… No, I’m not going to give you a question. You are fake news.” Acosta says that afterwards, Trump’s press secretary told him that “if I were to do that again I was going to be thrown out.”
• On January 25th, Steve Bannon, Trump’s top advisor and founding member of Breitbart, told the New York Times, “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while.”
• On February 17, Trump tweeted, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”
• On Feb 24th, after Trump repeatedly lambasted them as “enemies of the people,” the Trump White House blocked the New York Times, Politico, Buzzfeed, and the Los Angeles Times from a press briefing. This has never happened before under any president.
• Meanwhile, the White House has credentialed and/or Trump has given interviews to extreme “alt-right” (i.e.: white supremacist and neo-Nazi) media outlets and Christian fascist networks like Brietbart, the Christian Broadcast Network, and others.

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The Fascist Trump/Pence Regime Has Dismissed the Very Concept of Truth

RefuseFascism.org FACT SHEET #5:

In order for people to play a role in shaping the world, they must understand it as it actually is.

This means being able to find out what the evidence shows to be true – in the natural world as well as in politics and society. The Trump/Pence fascist regime not only spews forth LIE after LIE, they are waging war on critical thinking and on the ability of people to recognize and expose their lies. This not only makes it easier for them to hide the devastating impact of their fascist program and to discredit those who challenge them, this also feeds a mindless and obedient lynch-mob social base eager to do the regime’s bidding at great cost to humanity.

• Trump repeatedly insists that his inauguration had the biggest crowds in years – a blatant LIE.
• When the National Park Service re-tweeted photos that disproved this LIE, Trump’s White House muzzled and (temporarily) shut down the National Park Service’s Twitter feed.
• At his first press conference, press secretary Sean Spicer repeated this LIE, saying, “This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period.” When further challenged, he responded, “These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong.”
• When media outlets challenged this LIE, Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway insisted that these LIES were just “alternative facts.” No. They were LIES.
• On February 6th, Donald Trump tweeted, “Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.” This is not true. While polls are often biased by how questions are framed, many different polls show approval ratings for Trump around 44%. The Rasmussin poll Trump has cited to “prove” his popularity is flawed; it only surveyed “likely voters” as opposed to the general population.
• Trump has often cited the media’s pre-election predictions to “prove” how “fake” they are. This, too, is wrong. Polls by TV networks during the election were not “fake news.” In fact, most national polls were not far off the mark. The polls correctly showed Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote by a relatively small margin – in fact, she won the popular vote by nearly three million.

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