The tentacles of the ongoing fascist coup d’etat are touching Fresno in some surprising and not so surprising ways. Trump’s blitz on the rule of law, taken right from the 1933 Nazi playbook, revealed some traitorous local allies on his first day in office. These are the collaborators, the quislings, who value their positions more than democracy itself.
A long Project 2025 tentacle running through Democrats on the Fresno Unified School District (FUSD) Board of Trustees, the Fresno City Council and the Fresno County Board of Supervisors was revealed on inauguration day (Jan. 20) when Supervisor Luis Chavez praised Trump’s perverse attack on California water law. He even put it in writing.
According to the Business Journal’s Gabriel Dillard article the next day, “Luis Chavez, newly sworn supervisor for Fresno County’s District 3, said Tuesday he was encouraged by President Donald Trump’s executive action on California’s water system.
“In a memo to the Commerce and Interior secretaries Monday, Trump directed federal agencies to ‘immediately restart’ the work of his first administration on the environmental reviews used to determine the impact of California’s water infrastructure on threatened fish species.
“The goal is to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta southward to the Central Valley and Southern California—a cause long championed by the region’s growers and opposed by conservationists.”
Not done with just praising Trump, Chavez went on to attack the state’s leading Democrat, Governor Gavin Newsom, telling Fox News Channel 26’s Rich Rodriguez, “If (Newsom) has some higher aspirations, I think it’s important to show he can work with, you know, the working men and women of, you know, rural America.”
In a display of profound ignorance, Chavez released a statement that said, in part, “At a time when food prices have been steadily increasing, we have an opportunity to help lower food prices for our region and nation, by allowing one of the most fertile agricultural regions in the world to reach its maximum potential.” That’s not even close to true.
Strangely, Chavez was talking about the millionaire-laden Westlands Water District, which lies far to the west of his district, and he’s regurgitating district talking points, repeating their wildly inaccurate claims. But, hey, that’s what Westlands has been doing for decades. Why now for Chavez?
Lo and behold, Chavez’s wife, Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas, who’s running to replace Chavez on the Fresno City Council, happens to work at Westlands as its deputy general manager for external affairs, which a week later issued a statement in support of the illegal Trump power grab bearing her name at the top.
As I wrote a few years ago in this space, this politically ambitious couple are conservatives and only portray themselves as Democrats on some social issues. Her mother, Martha Rosas, founded El Agua es Asunto de Todos (Water is Everyone’s Business), a front group for the Westlands Water District, and worked closely with the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, as reported by Stan Santos in the September 2014 Community Alliance.
It’s clear the folks at Westlands knew what was coming. Project 2025 has spent years building its list of conservative grievances and clearly had been fed this line of attack by Westlands in advance of Trump taking office, and Jonasson Rosas fed Chavez his lines.
Elected Democrats are failing to stand against the coup immediately and are ushering it in. These two are quite possibly the worst political couple around. And to make matters worse, Jonasson Rosas, who currently serves as an FUSD trustee, is now running for her hubby’s empty seat on the City Council.
The District 5 special election is on March 18. A handful of other candidates are running, and Sanger Unified School Board Trustee Brandon Vang had the fundraising advantage as of mid-February. Jose León Barraza, while low on funds, is big on name recognition. A Fresno parks commissioner, he has run several times before and has been a strong advocate for the new southeast regional sports park.
But Chavez’s backers, which includes many Democrats and labor unions, will fill the money gap through direct contributions and separate independent expenditure committees. Jonasson and Chavez sat silent as Trump a few weeks later ordered the wasteful release of billions of gallons of water from two Army Corps of Engineers dams in the southern San Joaquin Valley.
A shorter, more damaging tentacle runs through the office of Rep. Jim Costa (D–Fresno). As Edward Kissam of Ethnic Media Services reported in the February Community Alliance, the seven-term Congress member voted on the first day of the Trump-Musk coup for the Laken Riley Act, the first step toward mass deportations of immigrants, including DACA residents.
“The bill, named for the 22-year-old University of Georgia student killed in 2024 by a Venezuelan migrant, sanctions the unconstitutional detention and possible deportation of thousands of non-citizens who have never committed a crime,” wrote Kissam.
“Yet, while the Laken Riley Act is now being hailed as a welcome bipartisan effort in ‘Making America Great Again,’ in truth it is a first step toward assembling the administrative machinery to implement mass deportation plans already outlined by President-elect Trump, his advisor Stephen Miller and scores of anti-immigrant legislators.”
Palestinians rate far lower on Costa’s scale of who’s fully human and who’s not. Like many of his fellow Democrats in Congress, Costa has stood firm in his support for the Israeli government’s horrific annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. From his support for billions in arms to his cheering for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his appearances before Congress, Costa is boosting the MAGA “Christian” wing’s heretical agenda.
A “No Kings” rally against the Trump-Musk coup d’etat was held in front of Fresno City Hall on Presidents Day. Not a single elected Democrat was in attendance. They’re cowering in fear of losing their political positions, while the Nazis surround the Reichstag bent on destroying it all.
