OP-ED: Here's How You Can Help Fight Back Against Team Coup
A lot of people are feeling powerless and overwhelmed in the face of Elon Musk's slow motion coup of the United States. Here's what you can do about it on a local level.
On the day you read this, at 5 pm EST outside of the U.S. Treasury Building in Washington, you'll see the first—but not the last—mass mobilization against President Elon Musk's slow-motion takeover of America.
Mr. Musk's recent actions violate at least four federal laws. Additionally, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is a fictitious entity that has not received congressional approval to operate. Musk is a White House employee. (We are working to obtain his official White House email to file a FOIA lawsuit for its contents.) For now, you must know that everything Musk did, does, and will do via DOGE constitutes an illegal act. There’s already a lawsuit about this exact thing. (See below.)
Unfortunately, the Democrats and the corporate media continue to operate as if DOGE is legit despite it very much not being so.
For local Monroe Gazette readers, we've said this before, but we'll repeat it: There is absolutely no difference between what Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk are doing in Washington with DOGE and what Mr. Kalaj and Mr. Stern are doing with the Village of South Blooming Grove with the United Jewish Community of Blooming Grove organization. It's the same kind of grift on a much larger scale.
Therefore, if you see anyone loudly celebrating or endorsing Mr. Trump's actions, and you also see that same person calling for accountability for our brothers and sisters in the Haredi community — such as accountability for Mr. Joel Stern and Mr. Yitzchok “Isaac” Ekstein, the de facto Mayors of South Blooming Grove — you should treat these loud idiots in the way they deserve: As someone with no credibility. As someone just consuming oxygen and taking up space from the majority of people who actually want to hold all government employees and elected representatives accountable. Regardless of their faith or literally anything else about them. Hold that thought. Because today, we're going to talk about one of those people.
This action outside the Treasury Building directly responds to Musk being given access by "President" Trump to federal payment systems. This includes the one that governs your social security payments, for example. (Now the subject of a second lawsuit from Public Citizen.)
There are conflicting reports on whether President Elon Musk can "turn off" your individual Social Security payments. Politico reported that Musk's access is "Read Only." Oregon Senator Ron Wyden said Elon Musk has "full access" in a statement over the weekend. I've contacted the Department of Treasury, Senator Wyden's office, and the White House for clarification. "Read Only" can mean many things, depending on who you're asking.
Like many people, I am struggling with the complete and total failure of the Democratic Party establishment to treat this situation with the seriousness it deserves. Senator Chuck Schumer stopped a press conference AGAIN to see who called him. No, I'm not kidding. You can see this happen for yourself at 04:10 in the following video. While I appreciate his criticism of DOGE, this video — and the one where he stopped talking about a coup to share news about his grandson’s tooth — both indicate it’s time for this man to retire. I don’t know how many of you watch professional wrestling, but AEW fans have, correctly, been shouting “Please Retire” at Chris Jericho for a while now. They are correct to do so. Just like YOU would be correct to start screaming at Senator Schumer, “Please Retire” at every opportunity.
If you think that’s harsh, consider this: Despite lacking qualifications or appropriate skills for the position, Senator Schumer and the other New York State Senator, Kristen Gillibrand, voted to approve the Department of Transportation head, Sean Duffy. Schumer has also cut a deal to move forward more Trump appointments instead of doing what the American people of all political persuasions are demanding: To pull a Mitch McConnell and grind the functions of the Senate to a halt until the coup is stopped.
To his credit, in the case of Department of Treasury chair Scott Bessen, Schumer voted against the nomination (but Gillibrand voted for it. Bessen then went ahead and authorized Musk's access to the federal payment system and associated databases. Senator Kristen Gillibrand's office has not replied to emails from The Monroe Gazette requesting an explanation as to why she voted to approve Mr. Bessen for this job, given his enabling of Elon Musk’s illegal actions. “I didn’t think one of Trump’s guys would do something illegal” is not an acceptable response.)
In an upcoming post, I'll have more to say about our New York State Senators and their enabling of the Trump/Musk agenda. Needless to say, just because you live in a "Blue State" doesn't somehow mean your senators and congressional representatives are going to do the right thing.
In fact, it's incumbent on all of us — right now — to be bullying every Democratic Senator who refuses to gum up the works of the Senate. Don't email them. Call them. Better still, visit Senator Gillibrand and Senator Schumer and bring some friends. Senate and Congressional staffers actively track the quantity of in-person meeting requests and phone calls. They are a more valuable metric than email. So you have to get on your phones now. You have to go to their offices, in person, now.
So, as you might have guessed, there's a lot to discuss.
We still have our second Woodbury Town Board Member Brandon Calore post to finish.
I have this crazy FOIL appeal letter sent to South Blooming Grove to share with you.
And of course we have more national coverage. But I wanted to take a slight detour today. That's because, over the coming weeks, you'll see more national and local news mixed together here on The Monroe Gazette.
Rather than explain why, I will share something with you that helps demonstrate how interlocked everything is. In short, you can’t untangle the two.
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The Savior Of South Blooming Grove Joins Team Coup
Here at home, residents of the Village of South Blooming Grove are having trouble with their alleged savior, Mr. Chris Maderia. We've previously written about Mr. Maderia here. Over the weekend, for reasons known only to him, Maderia — who administers a large South Blooming Grove community Facebook group — made a series of troubling statements. These statements were troubling enough for numerous South Blooming Grove and Blooming Grove residents to contact The Monroe Gazette about them. (Seriously. There I was. Trying to enjoy my weekend. And my phone blew up. “Did you see this stuff the wannabe Mayor of South Blooming Grove is saying?”)
The gist of the statements is that Mr. Maderia doesn't like people answering him back; he is not fond of Democrats and will purge both from the local community group.
Why is this news?
Because South Blooming Grove is a News Desert.
This community group, originally operated by someone else before Maderia took it over, has become something residents depend on to share information. That alone is not great. Facebook is the enemy. We should not be using their platform for anything. But at the same time, it’s incredibly hard to move people off of Facebook. Believe me. I’ve been fighting that fight for over a decade now. There are also not a lot of great, easily accessible alternatives. And for all the reasons documented by The Monroe Gazette, the Village of South Blooming Grove has made it nearly impossible to get any accurate information about what’s happening in the village.
So SBG residents were alarmed about losing access to one of the few information sources concerning the village's news and events. Especially if that loss of access came because they correctly expressed their outrage over the slow-motion coup currently happening in Washington. A coup Mr. Maderia seems to be in full support of. (See? I told you. You can’t separate what’s happening in Washington with what’s happening locally.)
Most Americans — Democrats, Republicans, and Independents — have come to their senses about Trump over the last two weeks. In the days and weeks ahead, many more will follow as they realize he's just a frontman for tech billionaires who want to gut Social Security and Medicare to fund their tax cuts.
As we move forward into the future, you need to watch out for the people who refuse to condemn "President" Trump. Those who refuse to denounce President Trump must be emphatically denied any power at the local, state, and federal levels.
So, if you live in South Blooming Grove, I'd like to stress the following three points to you:
1. We (The Monroe Gazette, community leaders) hear you. A new South Blooming Grove Facebook Group/Page is in the works. Mr. Maderia will have no administrative control over this one. And if it were up to me, he wouldn't be allowed in the group at all.
2. You have more power than you know. If you plan to stay in the South Blooming Grove community, I encourage you to run for office when/if an election is actually held. (We suspect one is coming in March.) You do not have to vote for or endorse Mr. Maderia's candidacy for mayor in that election to defeat Joel Stern. Don't trade one problem for another.
You know what that gets you? On the local level, that gets you Tony Cardone over Harley Doles. Both turned out to be bad in different ways.
On the State level, that gets you State Senator James G. Skoufis over Dorey Houle. Ditto.
On the federal level, that gets you Trump over Harris. Although in the latter case, while Harris wouldn't have solved the more significant structural problems facing America today, she also wouldn't have started a trade war for no reason, contributed to America's first fatal passenger aircraft disaster in nearly 20 years through gross mismanagement, and then attempted to cut trillions of dollars that went directly to millions of Americans to fund tax cuts for billionaires. The point here is that when you try to trade one problem for another, neither gets solved. As Trump is currently demonstrating, you could actually make your situation worse.
As we've seen on the national level, people decided not to vote because of what was happening in Gaza, and given Trump's razor-thin margins, those voters would have been enough to have defeated him. While I think most reasonable people can agree that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal for his actions in Gaza — and ALSO responsible for the massive intelligence failures that allowed for the October 7th attack to happen in the first place — we can agree that staying home and not voting didn't help either. That's a poor use of exercising your power.
As we've also seen, people putting high prices at the grocery store and at the gas pump — neither of which have been addressed by Trump's executive orders, and both are now worse due to the tariffs — over concerns of re-electing a deeply unqualified fascist and convicted felon got us in the situation we have now. That, too, is a poor use of exercising your power.
We need more extensive structural solutions. And we don't get those structural solutions without YOU using your power correctly, like running for office. Otherwise, we'll repeat this cycle of choosing between two bad options on the local, state, and federal levels.
3. Finally, this isn't the first time a local elected official — or someone aspiring to local elected office as Mr. Maderia is in South Blooming Grove — has outed themselves as a member of Team Coup. In fact, we just need to look over to the Village of Woodbury and its new mayoral candidate, Brandon Caore, for another recent example. Wherein the local bigot described being a Democrat as a disorder. (Below he’s posting under the name of Brandon John.)
That brings us to our main point today …
Every member of Team Coup must be destroyed.
No. I don't mean literally.
Violence is never the answer. Neither, by the way, is property destruction. I want to stress the latter point because things will get wild this year. If you want to immediately lose credibility, the best thing you can do aside from what Mr. Maderia is doing is to destroy property. Protest good. Destroy property bad. Got it? Write that on your hand if you need to do so.
What I mean here is that destroying Team Coup means first finding and identifying the members of Team Coup. That's Tony Cardone, Dorey Houle, and Tim Mitts in Monroe. That's Brandon Calore, Teresa Luongo, and Katrhyn Luciani in Woodbury. That's Mr. Maderia in South Blooming Grove. That's Steve Neuhaus in Orange County. We know, through their past and current public statements, that all of these people are supportive of "President" Trump's slow-motion coup. You destroy Team Coup by defeating them at the ballot box.
But you don't have to wait until November to crush them.
You can start the process right now. So, for example, by forcing Team Coup at Town of Woodbury meetings — to provide one example — to denounce President Trump and Elon Musk's harmful policies like cutting federal funding to the Monroe-Woodbury School District, like cutting federal funding to programs like Meals on Wheels. Like cutting funding to the 72 million Americans who receive Medicaid. (I’ve been in touch with the Monroe-Woodbury school district about some of Trump’s recent executive orders impacting funding to public schools. A spokesperson said that they are currently evaluating all of the Executive Orders and will issue a statement when they’re ready to do so.)
By publicly identifying members of Team Coup at your next Town, Village, or City meeting, all across America, you are forcing Team Coup on the record to defend these Trump/Musk policies, which are all political poison.
Yes. They could also ignore you. But that’s ok! You know why? Because either way, they lose. You win.
Let's go back to the example of the Town of Woodbury. Current Town Councilmember Brandon Calore has not responded to multiple email requests to clarify whether or not he's a member of the Proud Boys. He has not responded to multiple email requests to clarify whether or not he thinks the January 6th terrorist attack was a "peaceful protest."
Woodbury residents can and should ask their mayoral candidate to clarify these things. If he ignores you, you can — and I hope should — loudly and emphatically share with your friends and neighbors that Mr. Brandon Calore is on Team Coup. And if you're not happy about Elon Musk having your social security number, being able to turn off your payments, or just gutting that program ultimately to pay for tax cuts for billionaires, then you can and should hold Mr. Calore accountable for Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump's actions.
Got that? You should hold every local member of Team Coup accountable for Trump and Musks’s actions.
(And if they're aspiring to be public officials but aren't yet, like Convicted Felon Tim Mitts and Mr. Maderia, you can screenshot them every time they make supportive statements of Team Coup or repeat Team Coup talking points. Then share those screenshots with your friends and neighbors to educate them about who’s on Team Coup.
Calling someone you don't like WOKE and implying they're not a woman? Yeah. That's Team Coup shit.
And while it's true the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi, when it comes to how you fight Team Coup, I want you to remember that the only good member of Team Coup is one that has absolutely zero political power over you.
This is how you fight back. Well, one way. We’ll talk about some others real soon …