Hitler
February 28, 1933
The evening of February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building was set on fire. The alleged arsonist was Marinus van der Lubbe (1909-1934), a young Dutch Communist of questionable sanity; he was arrested on the spot and executed the following year. High Nazi officials immediately – and irrationally – interpreted the blaze as incontrovertible evidence of a Communist conspiracy to bring down the government. Victor Klemperer (1881-1960), then a professor in Dresden, responded to the incident in his famous diary: “I cannot imagine anyone really believes in Communist perpetrators instead of paid [Nazi swastika] work.” (2) A persuasive and detailed account of the evening’s events was eventually supplied by Rudolf Diels, who was head of the Prussian political police at the time. In his 1949 autobiography, Diels convincingly describes Marinus van der Lubbe as the lone arsonist (3). Among historians who have studied the evidence, there is now a general consensus that he alone was responsible for the blaze.
(2) Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, 1933-1941: A Diary of the Nazi Years, translated by Martin Chalmers (New York: Modern Library, 1999), p. 5 (entry from March 10, 1933).
(3) Rudolf Diels, Lucifer ante portas: ... es spricht der erste Chef der Gestapo (Zurich: Interverlag, 1949), pp. 142-44.
“Hours after the Reichstag building had been set afire, Chancellor Adolf Hitler and his Cabinet of Ministers drew up an emergency decree for President Paul von Hindenburg to sign under Article 48 of the German constitution. "Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State" took effect immediately upon the President's signature "as a defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state". (WIKI)
House searches and property confiscations were made easier. The right to personal liberty was curtailed, and the government was permitted to imprison individuals, without trials, on a more-or-less legal basis. Finally, if an individual state government failed to take the appropriate measures to restore order and security, the Reich government could take over the state’s police force and internal administration and act directly. In addition to destroying civil liberties, this decree (also known as the “Reichstag Fire Decree”) obliterated what little remained of the old system of constitutional checks and balances that regulated the relationship between the national and state governments in Germany’s federal system. As with the “Decree for the Protection of the German People,” Hindenburg signed the “Reichstag Fire Decree,” thereby giving the Nazis another huge club to wield against their opponents. It turned out to be a long-lasting measure – the decree was never lifted during the twelve years of the Third Reich.
Besides suspending guarantees of "personal liberty", "free expression of opinion", "freedom of the press", "the right of assembly" and "the right of association", the decree invoked the death penalty for a wider variety of crimes, including "serious disturbance of the peace" by an armed individual. Hitler's Stormtroopers across Germany conducted mass arrests, including taking members of Parliament into custody.” (WIKI)
Trump
February 18, 2025
On his 30th day in office Donald Trump...
went GOLFING.
HuffPost calculated the cost based off of a 2019 report from the Government Accountability Office that broke down the cost of Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago. That report, HuffPost said, said it cost taxpayers $3,383,250 for each trip. (Penn Live)
Called for a new presidential election to be held in Ukraine as part of a peace deal with Russia.(The Telegraph) (NBC News)
Directed that all “Biden Era” U.S. attorneys be terminated. Trump announced on his Truth Social account that he had ordered the removal of the attorneys because “the Department of Justice has been politicized like never before.” Read more ›
Sought to expand presidential power over agencies that Congress made independent. Trump’s order asserts a power to block such agencies from spending funds on projects or efforts that conflict with presidential priorities. Read more ›
Left hundreds of deported migrants trapped in a Panama hotel after they were flown out by the U.S. military. They were stripped of passports, barred from seeing lawyers and told they would be sent to a makeshift camp near the Panamanian jungle. At the hotel, at least one person attempted suicide. Another broke his leg trying to escape. Read more ›
Began high-level talks with Russia on ending the war in Ukraine. Senior American and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia and agreed to work on a path to ending the conflict. Ukraine was not invited.Read more ›
Shared shocking post of immigrant being deported. The official White House account on X shared a video of a person in handcuffs preparing to board a plane, which was captioned “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.” Read more ›
Ordered agencies to make public all “wasteful spending”. A presidential memo ordered the heads of agencies to make public, to the extent allowable by law, “the complete details of every terminated program, cancelled contract, terminated grant, or any other discontinued obligation of Federal funds.” Read more ›
Ordered expanded access to in vitro fertilization. Read more ›
Accused Representative Bennie Thompson and former Representative Liz Cheney of destroying information as part of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Read more ›
Hinted at new talks with Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea. The president said he would reach out to Mr. Kim, raising the possibility of rekindling their relationship five years after their first round of negotiations drew global attention but did little to reduce North Korea’s growing nuclear threat. Read more ›
Held a joint interview with Elon Musk on “The Sean Hannity Show”. Read more ›
Suggested falsely that Ukraine started the war with Russia. The president suggested that Russia was not responsible for the war that has devastated its neighbor and that Ukraine is to blame for Russia’s invasion. Read more ›
Pledged to halt all aid programs that “intervened” in Hungary’s internal affairs. Pete Marocco, the State Department official who took over the remains of U.S.A.I.D., made the remarks to a Hungarian official. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s autocratic leader, later praised the Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the agency as a “cleansing wind.” Read more ›
Considered naming Alice Marie Johnson the “pardon czar”. Ms. Johnson was serving a life sentence for a drug conviction when the president commuted her sentence during his first term. Read more ›
Criticized Britain’s clean-energy goal as “sinister”. Britain’s Conservative government in 2019 passed a law setting out a goal to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. Chris Wright, the U.S. energy secretary, also incorrectly blamed renewable energy for what he called Britain’s “economic collapse.” Read more ›
Claimed that Elon Musk does not run the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. A White House official said Musk was “an employee in the White House Office” and “not an employee of the U.S. DOGE Service.” Read more ›
Gutted the National Institutes of Health and training programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The N.I.H. is the nation’s premier biomedical research agency. Experts say the firings threaten to leave the country exposed to further shortages of health workers, putting Americans at risk if a health crisis erupts. Read more ›
Continued expanded drone flights over Mexico to hunt for fentanyl labs. The covert drone program began under the Biden administration and is now part of the Trump administration’s more aggressive campaign against drug cartels. Read more ›
Additional News
The United States Senate confirms businessman Howard Lutnick as the Secretary of Commerce in a51–45 vote. (AP)
Health Department will scrutinize childhood vaccine schedules, psychiatric medications and other targets. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in his first address to employees of the Department of Health and Human Services, said a new presidential commission would prioritize topics he cared about but that he said were “formerly taboo or insufficiently scrutinized” by mainstream scientists. Read more ›
Added 2.2.25
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