MILLER 4 10 25

STEPHEN FUCKING MILLER --> TAG 9 26 SFM

10 12 25 THIS IS A COPY TO TERROR 3 BS

ESTB 9 25 POST KIRK 5 SHOOT

SEE NSPM 7 TERROR BS

see EMERGENCY ELIMINATIONALIST CANCER // RUBIO

NOTE PROJECTION ON GULAGS

MERRI OK

SEE FACISM HYPE FEAR ANGER ENEMY

CLETA --> GOP STEAL ELECTION

SEE SCHED F DOGEBAGS

SEE RETALIATE ICE GAMED OUT

SEE RACISM

SEE MASS DEPORT DENATURALIZATION ICE 3

AFGHAN INTERPRETERS global refuge usaid flynn

SEE BIRTHRIGHT CITIZEN 14TH SAUER IS AM 1ST LEGAL?!

SEE ACTIV SUPPRESS 5

SEE LEGAL SUPPRESSION SANCT CITY CA

SEE MILLER 3

see emergency STATE OF EXEMPT MARTIAL LAW INVASION

SEE BOGEYMAN ENEMY DEMONIZATION POLAR

TERROR BS // RUBIO ANTI-COMMIE RHET // ELIM

EXTRA-JUDIC KILLING VENEZ?

~ RULE OF LAW

SEE DEFUND 2 REDUMB?

SEE ANTIFA 4 WH MTG 10 25 CRC GAI

SEE MRS KATIE PODCASTER

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mma

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Cada Tarde hosts condemn elevation of "white supremacist" Stephen Miller

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AN 11 26 WILES NEVER DID POLICY? POD SAVE

Likely 'to go very badly': Critics gobsmacked as Miller becomes chief of staff

White House goes after intelligence community for 'black box' spending

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AN 11 26 RAGIN CAJUN

'Treason of the highest level': James Carville tears Stephen Miller apart

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AN 10 26

Trump’s effort to rescue white South Africans from an imaginary genocide has a problem: they don't seem particularly eager to flee it, even with a straight ticket to America up for grabs.

In what appears to be a desperate attempt, State Department officials are considering spending about $335,000 to advertise the program and find out why they aren't interested, according to an internal proposal obtained by *The Guardian*.

The report reveals that applications from Afrikaners have “trended lower than expected” since the administration made it easy with an online registration launched in November 2025. Officials acknowledge they have no idea what is keeping them away from flying over.

“There’s currently little research about why Afrikaners are not applying to request referral into the US Refugee Admissions Program,” the proposal reads.

The research and advertising campaign is set to come in three stages. The first phase is to organize focus groups in several South African communities, including Pretoria, Stellenbosch and Orania, which garnered headlines as the nation’s ‘White Only’ community.

A survey of 1,000 Afrikaners would follow, testing what messages could persuade them to migrate. The final phase would be a six-month online campaign, primarily in Afrikaans, aimed at convincing people to immigrate.

The campaign plan is still just a proposal and has not been approved.

With an executive order in February 2025, Trump put the resettlement of Afrikaners at the top of his agenda. He did so on the grounds that white South Africans are being subjected to unfair property seizures and race discrimination.

The administration has been vocal in its promotion of “white genocide” talk as well, even though such claims have been roundly discredited by experts and denied outright by the government in South Africa.

South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola used Trump’s favorite term when describing the genocide allegations.

“The story of white genocide does not exist, it’s fake news,” Lamola said during a discussion in New York, adding that there is no evidence to back the White House claims.

Trump drastically cut Biden’s refugee admission cap from 125,000 to 7,500. He eventually increased it to 17,000 with Afrikaners in mind.

According to figures cited by The Guardian, the United States admitted 16,292 refugees in the fiscal year ending September 30, with nearly all being South African. That total, however, has not eased officials’ disappointment with how many are seeking to enter the program.

A State Department spokesperson defended the administration’s approach in a statement:

“We continue to process and admit as refugees Afrikaners in South Africa who are escaping the threat of government-sponsored race-based discrimination”.

“President Trump has been very clear that we are prioritizing the resettlement of Afrikaners in South Africa who are escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination.”

Trump has had a difficult relationship with South Africa's president, Cyril Ramaphosa. Last year, when visiting the White House, Trump presented Ramaphosa with "evidence" of the mass killing of white South Africans, with pictures of burial sites, which were, in fact, showing humanitarian workers lifting body bags in Goma, Congo.

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AN 10 26

MAGA insider brutally trashes Stephen Miller’s wife in private: report

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JEFF SESSIONS ORIGIN IMMIGRATION

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But then, in June 2025, Heap turned to the courts to take back what he said were his lawful duties. He hired James Rogers, senior counsel with the America First Legal Foundation – a law firm co-founded by Trump’s policy director, Stephen Miller. It furthered suspicions that interests beyond Arizona were trying to influence elections in the country’s second largest voting jurisdiction.

The Republican-led board defended the county’s election administration as “the gold standard”. But Heap disagreed. Echoing the president, he claimed that recent elections had been riddled with “inconsistencies and illegalities”.

---

Sweeping Aid Freeze: In line with "America First" policies, the administration enacted a blanket freeze on foreign aid. [1]
Contract Cancellations: USAID ended thousands of contracts, including vital localized interpreter services and regional support pipelines. [1]
Flight Cancellations: Funding cuts to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) forced the immediate grounding of pre-cleared Afghan relocation flights. [1]

⚖️ Stephen Miller’s Role vs. Veteran Backlash

The Architect: White House adviser Stephen Miller has engineered these policies. Miller has consistently opposed Afghan resettlement, citing extreme costs and stating that no binding promise exists to resettle foreign nationals. [1, 2, 3]
Veteran Outcry: U.S. military veterans and advocacy networks like #AfghanEvac and No One Left Behind are actively protesting the orders. Veterans state that interpreters took immense risks to save American lives and that leaving them behind compromises national honor. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Third-Country Limbo: Due to blocked U.S. pathways, the administration is reportedly negotiating to relocate over 1,100 stranded Afghan allies from a base in Qatar to third-world countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo. [1, 2]

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RawStory NO LNX $

RawStory

Secret donors paid millions to Clarence Thomas-linked law firm with Supreme Court cases

Alexandria Jacobson, Investigative Reporter

September 21, 2026

Secret donors paid millions to Clarence Thomas-linked law firm with Supreme Court cases

Clarence Thomas attends the swearing-in ceremony of Pam Bondi as attorney general at the White House. Photograph: Kent Nishimura/Reuters

A conservative law firm with deep ties to Justice Clarence Thomas, President Donald Trump and a history of arguing more than a dozen cases on hot-button right-wing causes before the Supreme Court took in more than $33.5 million from nonprofit dark money networks, according to new watchdog research.

Consovoy McCarthy, a boutique conservative law firm started in 2014, brought in more than $29 million since 2015 from nonprofits associated with Leonard Leo, a co-chair of the Federalist Society, a Project 2025 contributor and architect of the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, alone, according to tax filings analyzed by True North Research, a progressive investigative research firm.

Leo has a well-documented history of using his networks to funnel money to ultraconservative causes, from working to limit access to abortion medication to supporting anti-trans laws.

ALSO READ: Bombshell memo on horrific race massacre exposes complicit FBI: 'They lied like crazy'

Nonprofits do not need to disclose the identities of their donors, and when such groups support political causes without revealing the sources of their funding, it's considered “dark money.”

Consovoy McCarthy has “become a go-to for these far-right networks, especially networks tied to Leonard Leo ... who's seeking to impose his agenda on all Americans by weaponizing the court system,” said Alyssa Bowen, deputy director at True North Research.

“We've seen Consovoy McCarthy undertake a ton of cases furthering Leo's agenda as they're enriching themselves with Leo cash and cash from other far-right dark money operatives.”

Have a tip? I want to hear it.

I'm an investigative reporter covering politics and government accountability. If you have information the public should know — inside government, a campaign or anywhere power operates with too little scrutiny — I want to hear from you."

I protect sources and can communicate securely and confidentially.

Alexandria Jacobson

Investigative Reporter, Raw Story

alexandria@rawstory.com

Consovoy McCarthy took in money from nonprofits associated with other conservative activists like Edward Blum, who has brought at least eight cases to the Supreme Court, mostly about race-conscious college admissions and voting rights.

“You've got money funneled through a nonprofit organization, you don't really know if there's a wealthy mega donor or special interest helping bankroll the legal arguments that are appearing before a court,” said Michael Beckel, money in politics reform director at Issue One, a bipartisan nonprofit that advocates for reducing the influence of money in politics.

“You don't know if a wealthy donor or special interest is helping underwrite this type of legal advocacy when so much money flows through a nonprofit network.”

Consovoy McCarthy argued high-profile cases before the Supreme Court, including Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which effectively ended affirmative action in 2023 and was spearheaded by Blum.

The biggest nonprofit contribution Consovoy McCarthy took in was more than $1.8 million from Students for Fair Admissions in 2018.

In total, the firm took in nearly $8.8 million from the nonprofit founded by Blum, according to tax filings.

“There's a lot of money behind the legal challenges to a lot of these high-profile cases that we see from voting rights law to affirmative action cases, other race-conscious policies,” Beckel said.

“These are very hot-button issues right now, and where there's heat, there's fire, and when you've got the ability to bring big guns into the courtroom, there's some donors who are more than willing to have their money help pay for that type of legal representation all across the ideological spectrum.”

The firm also represented Trump in his effort to conceal his tax returns.

Six of Consovoy McCarthy’s 11 partners clerked for Thomas. Another clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts.

“When you've got many of your partners previously clerking for a specific Supreme Court justice, that can give you an edge in the courtroom. That can give you an edge in recruiting and landing new clients. It can give you an edge in landing major cases before the Supreme Court,” Beckel said.

“These are individuals who might have a particular insight into how Clarence Thomas approaches the decisions that he makes on the bench. If you've got lawyers with special insights into how a Supreme Court justice thinks, that can be very lucrative.”

Thomas McCarthy, co-founder of Consovoy McCarthy, Blum and Leo could not be immediately reached for comment for this story.

'Sad state of politics'

The 85 Fund, managed by Leo, is formerly known as the Judicial Education Project and is the oldest in his dark money network. It gave Consovoy McCarthy $5.65 million between 2016 and 2023.

America First Legal Foundation, co-founded by Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and a recipient of funding from the Leo-connected donor-advised fund, DonorsTrust, paid Consovoy McCarthy nearly $235,000 in 2022.

Do No Harm, a medical and policy advocacy nonprofit associated with Blum and funded by Leo's network, paid Consovoy McCarthy more than $1.4 million total in 2022 and 2024. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated Do No Harm as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group that promotes conversion therapy.

Consovoy McCarthy was paid more than $544,000 from the Project on Fair Representation, founded by Blum.

“There's a coordinated effort by a few billionaire-backed political operatives that are throwing … their weight behind legal cases that undermine policies that help people and benefit politicians or billionaires,” Bowen said.

Speech First, which says it works to protect free speech rights on college campuses and is associated with the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, paid the firm more than $7.3 million total between 2018 and 2024.

The U.S. Chamber Litigation Center, which works on “defending Trump-era deregulation in court,” paid Consovoy McCarthy nearly $200,000.

Defending Education, formerly Parents Defending Education, which advocates for removing critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion from schools, paid Consovoy McCarthy $4 million total since 2021. Blum is a board member.

These nonprofits have been considered dark money networks with lack of transparency about their funders.

“Dark money has an incredible influence in the judicial system, as well as the political arena writ large,” Beckel said....

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9 16 26 WITHPOD HAYES END TIMES FASC

MILLER TEST: DO YOU WANT HIM TO HAVE X M POWER/

CH: STRONG TAKE WHAT THEY WANT HISTORY SAYS

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HE CLAIMS HE RECUSE HIMSELF ON AI

00:00:00 Katie Miller’s Grok promotion 00:01:00 Miller’s xAI stake revealed 00:08:04 FTC disclosure rules questioned 00:11:36 Influence battle over AI policy 00:13:53 AI companies compete for Pentagon 00:15:44 Online discourse drives AI decisions

Sep 11, 2026 Bulwark Takes

Will Sommer and Andrew Egger dig into Katie Miller’s previously undisclosed financial stake in Elon Musk’s xAI and why it may shed new light on her relentless promotion of Grok. Miller has posted hundreds of times repeatedly attacked OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI companies while boosting Grok as the AI for “true patriots.” But the Washington Post found through White House financial disclosures that she owns roughly $1 million in xAI stock. After the Post broke the story, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson rushed to defend Katie and instead of declining to comment, Ferguson accused the Post of partisan attacks.

Stephen Miller’s Wife Has Some Explaining to Do

1 mil$ xai grok stock

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BK 8 26 NERD REICH The Billionaire Plot to Destroy Democracy: Gil Durán on ‘The Nerd Reich’ book

guest host Jean Guerrero (The New York Times contributor, author of Hatemonger

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America First Legal Defends President Trump’s Use of the Alien Enemies Act to Safeguard Americans from the Deadly Tren de Aragua Gang Invasion

Washington, D.C. — March 21, 2025

Immigration

Yesterday, America First Legal (AFL) and U.S. Representative Brandon Gill (R-TX) filed an amicus brief supporting President Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to combat the escalating threat posed by the violent Venezuelan criminal syndicate, Tren de Aragua (TdA).

The Alien Enemies Act grants the President unilateral authority to determine when the United States is facing an invasion, identify the foreign terrorists involved, and expel them. Courts have repeatedly upheld this presidential power, ruling that the President’s decision to invoke the act is not subject to judicial review. President Trump has rightly recognized that TdA has launched a full-scale invasion of the United States. He is taking the necessary steps to defend the American people and remove TdA from the country.

AFL’s brief supports President Trump’s position in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which seeks to block President Trump’s decisive action to protect American citizens. The ACLU wrongly claims that dangerous foreign invaders should be granted the same lengthy immigration procedures typically reserved for deportable aliens.

AFL’s brief supports President Trump’s invoking of the AEA to protect American citizens from dangerous foreign entities, arguing:

The President has Absolute Authority: The AEA gives the President the absolute authority to determine when an invasion has occurred, and that decision is not subject to judicial review — meaning it cannot be challenged in court.
The Violent Invasion by TdA has Venezuelan Government Ties: The actions described in the President’s proclamation clearly meet the definition of an invasion under the AEA. The proclamation highlights TdA’s violent activities and their ties to the Venezuelan government.
The AEA Applies to Non-State Actors: Even if TdA were not tied to the Venezuelan government, the AEA would still apply because it allows the President to address invasions by non-state actors.
Immigration Court Procedures Do Not Apply to the AEA: Under the AEA, the U.S. government is not obligated to put criminal TdA members through standard immigration court procedures before removing them from the country. Their dangerous actions require immediate expulsion, and the AEA allows the President to do this.

AFL has led the efforts to expose TdA’s growing presence and threat in the United States, which began when the Biden-Harris Administration allowed this foreign terrorist organization to gain a foothold and set up business here.

In November 2024, AFL released data and documents showing how the Biden-Harris Administration’s open-border policies turned cities like Chicago into struggling border towns. Later that same month, AFL further released a second tranche of Cook County Sheriff’s documents exposing the dangerous, expanding illegal alien crime web and the politicians protecting them. In February 2025, AFL released documents revealing that Colorado officials downplayed the threat posed by the violent Venezuelan gang TdA, shielding dangerous criminals and endangering American citizens.

AFL will continue to defend President Trump’s authority to remove this dangerous and deadly criminal syndicate from the United States to ensure the safety and protection of American citizens.

Statement from America First Legal Senior Counsel James Rogers:

“TdA is a dangerous invading force sent by the Government of Venezuela to harm our nation and undermine our society. Members of this violent gang clearly qualify as invading aliens under the Alien Enemies Act. This law was passed by Congress in 1798. Until now — for more than 226 years — courts have universally held that they do not have the power to interfere with the President’s authority as Commander in Chief to decide when to invoke the Act and expel aliens under its terms. What the ACLU is seeking in this case is unprecedented: that a single unelected judge take upon himself the authority to micromanage the national defense of our nation. This would be a complete corruption of the principle of separation of powers, which is a bedrock feature of our Republic enshrined in the Constitution. AFL is proud to join with Representative Gill to stand up for the rule of law and the protection of American citizens,” said James Rogers.

Statement from U.S. Representative Brandon Gill:

“It’s going to take more than a radical activist like Judge Boasberg to stop President Trump from carrying out the mandate of the American People. I am proud to join America First Legal in leading an amicus brief in support of the president’s efforts to deport these violent Venezuelan illegals that have terrorized our communities for years. His presidency has ushered in a new era of accountability, justice, and security for our nation,” said Rep. Gill.

Read the amicus brief here.

“A Total Sham”

Around March 2025, the Trump administration began levying large penalties on immigrants by relying on an obscure provision from a 1996 immigration law signed by President Bill Clinton. The statute allows the government to fine undocumented immigrants for willfully failing to depart the country — but it had never been enforced until President Donald Trump first took office.

Around 2018, after Congress blocked the total funding requested by the Trump administration to build a wall along the country’s southern border, then-White House advisor Stephen Miller devised an alternative strategy. The administration would finance the wall by leveraging its civil penalty authority to raise funds on the backs of immigrants, according to leaked emails obtained by the government watchdog group American Oversight.

Once collected, those fines would be held in an “immigration enforcement account” administered by the U.S. Treasury that could then be tapped by Homeland Security as a de facto slush fund for enforcement initiatives of its choosing.

While the penalty program remained fairly limited during Trump’s first administration, it has ramped up considerably under his second term. By August of last year, over 20,000 people had been slapped with new fines.

Homeland Security recently expanded the scope of these penalties, including instituting a new $5,000 fine for illegal border crossings, as authorized by the One Big Beautiful Bill. But the most common fines target immigrants for overstaying deportation removal orders issued by immigration judges.

The government is now fining immigrants nearly $1,000 for every day they overstay a deportation order, even if those court orders were issued years ago.

The statute of limitations for such a penalty is five years, meaning the maximum fine Homeland Security can levy is $1.8 million. For many immigrants, that’s an insurmountable amount of debt, and it can’t be waived unless they leave the country.

The department also instituted new rules “streamlin[ing] the process for fining illegal aliens,” which entailed gutting the administrative hearings where they could previously protest a fine. Now, immigrants are merely entitled to written notice from the government in response to their petitions.

The rules also reduce the number of days’ notice Homeland Security must give immigrants before beginning to collect such fines, so they can contest the matter. That number is now 15 days, down from 30.

According to a lawsuit filed by a collection of immigration lawyers last year, Homeland Security may be enforcing this new penalty program illegally by targeting immigrants who have other legal avenues to remain in the country. The suit argues that the government has failed to demonstrate that many of these fines’ recipients were willfully defying deportation removal orders, per the statute.

According to the suit, in some instances, immigrants have secured permission from immigration authorities to temporarily remain in the country, but they still faced heavy fines. In other cases, immigrants received fines despite being in the process of contesting their deportation orders and pursuing other legal avenues to remain in the country, such as applying for temporary visas that may still be available to them.

“The entire process is a total sham,” said Moore, the attorney at Public Justice.

These ongoing legal challenges haven’t discouraged Homeland Security, which is now working with the Justice Department to file lawsuits against immigrants who haven’t paid their million-dollar fines. With a court order, the government can begin garnishing wages and seizing assets if payments aren’t made.

“We’ve heard of people who weren’t even notified of the fine before getting served a lawsuit by the government,” said Nicollete Glazer, an immigration lawyer based in Los Angeles. “There’s a lot of bad practices taking place.”

Weaponizing Financial Distress

In addition to bringing legal action against immigrants who haven’t paid their fines, Homeland Security is also using its massive new $190 billion immigration enforcement budget to award lucrative contracts to private contractors to collect this debt on the agency’s behalf.

Immigration lawyers say they used to only see debt notices coming directly from the government; now they’ve noticed an increase in notices sent by a host of private debt collectors. From June to September of last year, the Department inked procurement deals with Continental Services and four other debt agencies. That included a major collector, FH Cann Associates, which was awarded a contract valued at nearly $700,000. Coast Professional Inc., Central Portfolio Control Inc., and Pioneer Credit Recovery were also tapped by Homeland Security.

According to immigration lawyers, most of the collection papers they’ve seen from private contractors are for fines in the millions of dollars, accompanied by sky-high fees.

In itemized payment sheets sent by private collectors and reviewed by The Lever, such “administrative fees” make up the bulk of the financial markups, sometimes totaling $500,000 in charges for an $1.8 million fine. Language from the notices inform its recipients that authorized private collectors may collect fees as well as charge interest at an unspecified rate.

A Customs and Border Protection notice informing people that authorized private debt collectors may collect fees and charge interest on the Homeland Security fines.

“Additional interest, penalties, and administrative costs will also continue to accrue from the date of the initial CBP-issued invoice,” reads one notice sent by Customs and Border Protection, the division of Homeland Security that administers these fines.

It’s unclear whether these fees and interest charges line the contractors’ pockets or are transferred back to the government’s immigration enforcement account.

Based on the procurement records reviewed by The Lever, the private debt contractors are paid for their debt-collection services, regardless of whether they recover the fine.

A History Of Abuse

All of the debt collection firms now working under contract for Homeland Security formerly held contracts with the Department of Education to collect money from students who defaulted on government-guaranteed loans to pay for college.

The 2010 Federal Direct Loan Program created government-backed student loans, whose debt servicing was then outsourced to private firms. That public-private partnership was eventually expanded under the Obama administration to include 30 contractors. But the program quickly became a political and legal debacle, one that didn’t fade even after the Obama administration tried implementing reforms to cap exorbitantly high fees charged by student debt collectors.

In 2017, a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a scathing report finding endemic problems with the Education Department’s debt-collection privatization effort, including that contractors were profiting immensely from the program despite not delivering results.

For example, investigators found that the companies’ collection cost fees totaled as much as 25 percent of students’ loan balances, even though those fees didn’t reflect the firms’ actual costs of collecting such payments. In total, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that the government was reimbursing these firms $40 for every $1 they recovered from students.

The report led to a Senate inquiry that concluded the program was fueling a punitive, wasteful, and self-defeating debt cycle.

In a _{letter}_ to the Education Department, a group of senators wrote that the “Departmental process provides perverse financial incentives for private collection agencies to aggressively pursue borrowers… and encourages distressed borrowers to use less successful tools to help them deal with default.”

In 2021, the Biden administration shut down the private-sector student debt collection effort entirely. But now, some of the same contractors involved in the Education Department program have been reemployed to collect debts for Homeland Security.

Most prominently, in 2017, the Obama administration sued Navient, then an Education Department loan-servicing contractor, and its subsidiary, Pioneer Credit Recovery, for failing to inform students about debt-relief options before demanding payments, among other questionable practices.

In 2024, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a $120 million settlement in the matter banning Navient from all federal student loan servicing and putting Pioneer under the supervision of the chief consumer regulatory agency.

Now, Pioneer, which was spun off from Navient in 2025, appears to have been tapped to work on behalf of Homeland Security’s new financial-penalty effort. The firm has sent collection letters for Homeland Security fines, according to immigration lawyers, as part of an ongoing contract it has with the Treasury Department.

Alongside Pioneer, Continental Services, FH Cann Associates, Coast Professional Inc., and Central Portfolio Control Inc. were all part of the Education Department’s debt-collection privatization effort before being recently tapped directly by Homeland Security. Central Portfolio Control was a subcontractor of another debt agency, Professional Bureau of Collections of Maryland, which had secured a $13 million contract from the Education Department.

According to immigration lawyers and debt protection lawyers, the overlap may be by design.

“This kind of operation is going to be a perfect fit for [Homeland Security], which will tell [private contractors] there’s no rules or accountability,” said Glazer, the Los Angeles immigration lawyer. “And with the government guaranteeing pay, it’s a major revenue source for these collectors, even if they don’t end up collecting debt.”

According to Glazer, private collectors’ automated technology systems can churn out text messages, emails, letters, and phone calls at a vast scale to hound debtors for payments. That could be a major boon for Homeland Security, given the massive number of fines it has levied.

And now, the rapacious practices once deployed on student borrowers may be unleashed on immigrants who have even fewer legal protections.

“We’re seeing financial distress weaponized all across this administration to manipulate people’s behavior, especially now with immigration,” said Pierce at Protect Borrowers.

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MMA 4 26

A group of Trump allies have formed the Mass Deportation Coalition to encourage the administration not to back away from its deportation push. The coalition — which includes the Oversight Project’s Mike Howell, former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, former Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan, and conservative groups including The Heritage Foundation — released a playbook urging the White House to continue raiding work sites and deporting migrant workers despite pushback from voters. Politico, [4/1/26]

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deputy pow

an 4 26

Over the course of President Donald Trump’s two terms, he has endeavored to assert himself as the final say across GOP electoral races large and small. While he has often been successful at forcing his party’s candidates to bend to his will, in a race for the Indiana state Senate, Trump’s efforts to push one Republican out in favor of another have one conservative candidate accusing the White House of “threatening” behavior.

The Indiana state elections drew Trump’s attention after several sitting lawmakers opposed his redistricting plan last year. As a result, the White House has now thrown its support behind candidate Brenda Wilson in hopes of unseating state Senator Greg Goode, who voted against redistricting.

The administration became concerned, however, that Republican candidate Alexandra Wilson — no relation to the other candidate — would confuse and divide the vote because she has the same last name. As a result, reports NBC, the White House began leveraging wide-ranging tactics to pressure Alexandra Wilson out of the race, from offering a job to threatening personal attacks.

It started with a barrage of phone calls from three White House aides, including political director Matt Brasseaux, deputy chief of staff James Blair, and Midwest regional political director Marshall Moreau. These were followed by calls and texts from Indiana Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith, Governor Mike Braun’s chief of staffJoshua Kelley and a staffer for a Republican activist group.

In the first call with Brasseaux, the White House political director attempted to cajole Wilson into accepting a job in exchange for dropping out, offering her an administrative role. She declined.

“I had a hard time not feeling insulted the entire call,” she later explained. “The admin position — I have a career, my job — that was a fraction of what I make a year.” She also felt like Brasseaux didn’t take her assertion that there were genuine local issues she’d like to address seriously.

The calls from the aforementioned figures kept coming all day, the last from Lieutenant Governor Beckwith, who later told NBC, “I just said I don’t know if you guys really thought this one through, because this probably could end poorly for this woman.”

The next morning, the pressure campaign ramped up with a string of calls and texts. “They were very, very pushy,” Wilson said.

That evening, she received a call from Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, who noted that he was on a plane with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, before making veiled threats to reveal charges she’d faced at the age of 19 for resisting arrest (Wilson is now 34) and her husband’s DUI.

“I just wanted to talk about that brass-tacks reality that I think is going to be really ugly,” Blair warned.

“I was a child. I made a mistake,” Wilson explained about the charge, which had been resolved with a plea deal, then was later expunged from her record. “It was right after my mother passed away suddenly. I made a poor choice. Everybody makes mistakes. I have been a law-abiding citizen since then.”

When Wilson concluded the call, which she says was “a little threatening,” she made it plain that she had no plans to drop out of the race.

The next day, which was the last day candidates were allowed to quit, a local conservative attorney filed a petition with the state Election Commission to disqualify Wilson, alleging that her candidacy was a “trick” to hand the race to the Democrats. He argued that she wasn’t eligible to run due to her felony arrest at 19, even though it had been pleaded down to a misdemeanor and eventually removed from her record. After a series of deadlocked votes by the Commission, Wilson was ultimately allowed to remain on the ballot, though the attorney says he plans on appealing the decision.

“I have been accused of dirty tricks, political dirty tricks,” said Wilson. “This is exactly what is a political dirty trick. I’m a legitimate candidate with concerns for my district that would like to represent my district, and I have every right to be involved as anybody else on the ballot.”

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SEE BIRTHRIGHT CITIZEN 14TH SAUER IS AM 1ST LEGAL?!

AN 4 26

President Donald Trump is facing off against the U.S. Supreme Court as part of his ongoing effort to bully his way into remaking the country in his image. It could also be only the first example.

Speaking about his trip to the Court this week, Emily Bazelon, a staff writer for The Times Magazine, chatted with opinion columnist David French about the proceedings that legal analysts agree did not go well, with Trump looming in the audience.

Bazelon called Trump's flex a provocative political stunt, doubting its legal merit against the 14th Amendment, the Wong Kim Ark case (1898) and longstanding statutes.

"To me, this is the headline: Trump Trolls America. Because I don’t think the administration is making a serious legal argument," she said.

Criticizing Solicitor General D. John Sauer's "revisionist" history, Bazelon pointed to a moment in which the Trump lawyer outright misrepresented a 1921 law review article. Normally, lawyers trying to make a case before the Supreme Court cite the law itself, or conversations around making the law.

"Evan Bernick, a law professor, posted excerpts from that article to show that the solicitor general got it wrong," said Bazelon. While Sauer cited part of the review to justify those who thought the 14th Amendment to have a "domicile requirement." Meaning, if a family has a child in the U.S. they have to be established in the U.S. They can't simply come to the U.S. as part of "birth tourism," he called it.

"Too easy,"Evan Bernick said, chipping away at Sauer's argument. "He literally goes on to say that WKA follows the common law and the common law has no domicile requirement."

"Here’s the transcript. Sauer is just… lying," he added.

At one point, responding to Sauer's claim that it was a "new world," Chief Justice Roberts retorted, "It's a new world, but it's the same Constitution." It indicated skepticism on his part, but it was only the beginning of a very "bad" legal argument, CNN analysts agreed.

French focused on MAGA's outcome-driven approach with the textualists crowd, who believe the law applies to exactly what the text says and means at the time it was written.

Both note Trump's courtroom attendance was outright bullying, akin to his attacks on "rogue judges."

French added that Trump has started to treat the Supreme Court the same way he does with Republicans in Congress.

"He’s trying to insult, mock and bully them into compliance, but it’s not going to work. With precious few exceptions, the judiciary from top to bottom is unmoved. Judges are not so easily intimidated," said French.

Bazelon has another concern, however.

Another piece of "law as politics maneuvering that is eating at me," she said," is Stephen Miller. He "has been suggesting that Texas end public school funding for undocumented kids. A 1982 Supreme Court decision, Plyler v. Doe, requires states to pay for the education of all students, no matter their immigration status. But Miller and his allies would like nothing better than to set up a court challenge that could lead to the reversal of Plyler. It’s all in the service of immiserating immigrants to induce them to leave. I hope this is obvious, but taking away school from children — that is a real betrayal."

It's only one of the many cases that Republicans have their eyes on.

French said that it's time that Congress take the next steps to clarify the vague laws.

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AN 3 26

New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie says White House advisor Stephen Miller is cruising to create “subordinate class” by ending public education funding for undocumented children in red states. But this is about more than keeping some kids less learned than others.

Miller spirited Texas lawmakers away to a closed-door meeting in Washington last week, according to two sources in the meeting, where he commenced to challenge a decades-old U.S. Supreme Court precedent. That case, Plyler v. Doe, holds that it was a violation of the equal protection clause for states to deny undocumented children the same free public education state leaders provide to legal immigrants’ children — who are themselves citizens.

According to the Times, Miller wants to take advantage of partisan gridlock in Congress to encourage state lawmakers to pass the attacks on Plyler. But why is Miller so determined to “whittle down the 14th Amendment to essentially nothing,” asked Bouie.

In Bouie’s argument the 14th Amendment is “tied directly to the 13th.”

“The 13th Amendment states that ‘Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.’ It then adds, in section 2, that ‘Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.’”

But the 13^th Amendment was about more than just slavery, said Bouie. To the authors, it was “the foundation for the society they hoped to build” by outlawing “hereditary caste as much as” the end of chattel slavery.” Immediately after ratifying it, anti-slavery forces in Congress used it as an open door to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which established birthright citizenship and nullified the “Black Codes.”

The racist Supreme Court at the time neutered much of that good intent “as part of a larger political project to reconcile the white citizens of the United States” and give the white South the power to manage its own ‘affairs,’ and impose “imperial domination,” Bouie argued.

“Both Miller and the MAGA right are engaged in the same kind of work as their political forebears,” added Bouie. “It is no wonder, then, that they want to gut the 14th Amendment, which was revitalized by the struggles of Black Americans and other groups throughout the 20th century. Theirs is a project of subordination at home and abroad; of the re-inscription of caste and the recreation of tiered citizenship based on race and nationality. And now, as then, the 14th Amendment stands in the way.”

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AN 3 26

For years, Donald Trump and his MAGA followers railed against the so-called "deep state" within the government that was working to prevent his political goals. Now, according to a new analysis from MS NOW, the president is the one creating his own deep state within the government by heavily staffing agencies with loyalists.

In a piece published Wednesday, MS NOW's Zeeshan Aleem argued that the administration was in the process of "Trumpifying" the federal workforce. He characterized this as the second phase of Trump's larger plan to create a "MAGA state," following his mass layoffs earlier in his second term. This plan, to staff the government top to bottom with loyal followers who would rubber-stamp his every whim, was a major proposal contained in Project 2025.

Aleem cited a recent report from the Washington Post, which detailed how the administration is now working to bring in a "wave of new federal employees who will unthinkingly obey the president’s political directives," as opposed to the traditional bureaucrats Trump fired last year, who were only concerned with "providing nonpartisan expertise." Stephen Miller, Trump's controversial far-right senior advisor, is reportedly overseeing this process and "ensuring that new hires are aligned with Trump’s agenda."

"That’s a clear sign that the Trump administration has real ambition to change the way the federal bureaucracy works," Aleem wrote. "Miller is one of the most Machiavellian figures in the Trump administration and one of its most vocal ideologues in favor of authoritarian and nativist governance. Miller surely approves of a new immigration services job posting titled 'Homeland Defender,' which, according to the Post, asks applicants to be ready to 'protect your homeland and defend your culture.'"

Aleem also highlighted comments from Scott Kupor, the head of the Office of Personnel Management, who pledged to make the civil service workforce younger and established a "Tech Force" program to work with companies like OpenAI and Meta to create a pathway to private sector jobs for employees who work for a time in the federal government. The reporter argued that those plans are merely a cover to "import brash young tech bros with the kind of 'move fast and break things' ethos that DOGE used to take a wrecking ball to vital social services."

These efforts to reshape the federal workforce, he warned, could long outlast Trump's presidency.

"Put all these things together, and a clear agenda to morph the civil service into a political instrument of Trump comes into view," Aleem concluded. "Historically, the federal workforce is a corps of nonpartisan employees who use their expertise to advise on and execute the policies of the federal government. Trump wants to turn it into an army of reactionary yes-men. Even after he leaves office, many of these MAGA state hires are likely to remain, and the government will be worse off because of it."

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AN 3 26

For many years, Canada and the United States — both members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since 1949 — were close allies and trading partners. But U.S./Canada relations took a turn for the worse when U.S. President Donald Trump threatened its northern neighbor with steep tariffs and called for Canada to become "the 51st state" — an idea that Prime Minister Mark Carney and millions of other Canadians are adamantly against.

But in an article published by The New Republic on March 2, Ottawa, Ontario-based journalist John Last details MAGA efforts to exploit separatists in Canada's Alberta province.

Last explains, "Recent months have seen the escalation of a brazen campaign by separatists in the oil-rich province of Alberta to dismember the country and lease its resources to an expansionist American regime, with direct support from officials in the U.S. government…. A recent push for a referendum on independence has achieved unprecedented success, in no small part due to tacit support from the Trump-aligned provincial government."

Last notes that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith "was one of the first Canadian officials to kiss the ring of Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and has long tested the limits of her powers to pursue his crusades and causes at home."

Duane Bratt, who teaches at Mount Royal University in Alberta, told The New Republic, "Since the moment Alberta became a province (in 1905), there's been a movement to separate…. There is an ideological alignment with Trump. On gun rights, climate change, trans rights, renewable energy, wokeness.… it's all consistent with American right-wing movements."

Patrick Lennox, a former intelligence officer for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, told The New Republic, "There's a real national security threat there. This is the perfect scenario for foreign interference."

Lennox views as the capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as a "warning shot" for Canada and other countries rich in resources.

"The Trump Administration's crusade against Canada may have deeper causes," Last explains. "Figures like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, who has explicitly compared Canada to Ukraine, see Canada as a bastion of decadent liberalism in the West that must be broken and subdued, one way or another."

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AN 2 26

President Donald Trump has frequently had to answer for one of his top advisors, who has angered everyone from ordinary Americans, to Republican senators and even CEOs of public traded corporations. However, the president has yet to take any concrete action to limit his influence and power.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller – who has been a key member of Trump's inner circle since his first administration – is an increasingly divisive figure in the president's second term. Trump's hardline immigration enforcement tactics seen in Minneapolis and Chicago are the brainchild of Miller, who convinced the president to center his 2024 campaign on immigration rather than the economy.

However, the Trump administration's actions in Minneapolis – which include the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti — have put Miller in the spotlight. After Pretti was killed, the deputy White House chief of staff asserted that Pretti was an "assassin" wanted to do "maximum damage to law enforcement." This is despite ample video evidence showing the 37 year-old ICU nurse never reached for his gun, let alone threatened federal agents.

The Journal's Josh Dawsey and Tarini Parti wrote in their report that "cracks have appeared" in the Oval Office, as the administration faces mounting pressure over its heavy-handed tactics.

"The president, aware of polls showing that much of his immigration agenda isn’t popular, has told advisers he wasn’t comfortable with how far Miller has gone on some fronts, according to people who have spoken with Trump," the Journal reported. "The president has said that business officials are calling and complaining to him about longtime workers being thrown out of the country."

Miller has also attracted the ire of Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who has called on both Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to be fired. The retiring Republican senator accused both Miller and Noem of taking Trump's strongest issue and turning it into a liability for Republicans ahead of the midterms.

"That is amateur hour at its worst,” Tillis said, adding, “Stephen Miller never fails to live up to my expectations of incompetence.”

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CONTEXT

2ND MURDER PRETTI 1ST AND 2ND AMEND

AN 26

A leading Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota has withdrawn from the race, citing the Republican Party’s “stated retribution on the citizens of our state,” and saying he cannot count himself a member of a party that would do so.

Chris Madel’s announcement Monday morning, just two days after federal agents shot and killed a second U.S. citizen in Minneapolis in under three weeks, was deemed “stunning” by the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Madel recorded a nearly eleven-minute video explaining his decision to withdraw.

“United States citizens, particularly those of color, live in fear,” he told supporters. “United States citizens are carrying papers to prove their citizenship. That’s wrong.”

“ICE has authorized its agents to raid homes using a civil warrant that need only be signed by a border patrol agent. That’s unconstitutional, it’s wrong. Weaponizing criminal investigations against political opponents is unconstitutional, regardless of who is in power,” he continued.

Madel also pointed to the “countless United States citizens who have been detained in Minnesota due to the color of their skin. I personally have spoken to several law enforcement officers, some Hispanic, and some Asian who have been pulled over by ice on pretextual stops,” he said.

“Driving while Hispanic is not a crime,” Madel added. “Neither is driving while Asian.”

The Star Tribune reported that Madel “launched his campaign for governor as a staunch defender of law enforcement and had **:{recently provided legal counsel to Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.”}:

“I do this because I believe the constitutional right to counsel is sacrosanct,” he said.

He also called the federal operation in Minnesota, Operation Metro Surge, “an unmitigated disaster.”

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AN 1 26

Donald Trump's ego appears to be driving a conflict with the various "hardcore nationalists" in his administration, according to a new analysis from The i Paper, with his desire to be "loved and thanked" conflicting with their desire to go further in cracking down on immigration and protestors.

The administration is facing mounting unrest in Minnesota, where over the weekend, federal officers killed another American citizen, intensive care nurse Alex Pretti. This death, only weeks after the killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer, has soured more and more Americans on Trump's immigration crackdown plans, which were already tanking the president's approval on immigration, one of his key issues overall.

Writing for The i Paper on Monday, James Ball wrote that the administration is largely uninterested in discontent and protests from Democratic voters, and in fact seems to "relish" causing them pain and distress. The killing of Pretti, however, is driving away increasing numbers of independents and even some Republicans. This has created a conflict, Ball argued, between Trump's desire to be popular with non-Democratic voters and the desires of key figures in his administration to go as far as possible with the immigration crackdowns, as part of their plot to fundamentally remake the U.S.

"The problem for Trump in responding to this self-inflicted crisis is that while most of the American public hates what they are seeing in Minneapolis, some in his White House love it. This is what they came into office to do," Ball wrote. "Trump is surrounded by hardcore nationalists who see him as their vehicle to rebuild America – and mass deportations are the first step in doing that. A faction led by Stephen Miller, and represented by the ambitious US Vice President J.D. Vance, is leading this hardline movement. They are urging the President to go further, all but openly seeking an excuse to activate the Insurrection Act, enabling them to send in American troops into American cities."

Trump, meanwhile, wants on some level to be seen as a unifying figure and as a great president, typified by his recent focus on legacy projects. This instinct, Ball argued, will cause him to pull back on issues like Minnesota when they become toxically unpopular, despite the ambitions of his top officials.

"The main obstacle standing in their way is Trump himself, who, on some level, still wants to be loved and thanked by the nation he so divisively leads. Even now, he complains about the difficulties of building the new White House ballroom, wondering plaintively why anyone would mount legal challenges against a building project he sees as his legacy," Ball wrote.

He continued: "Trump is a petty and vindictive man who wants revenge on his enemies, but he still wants to be seen as a unifying figure – he has more than once spoken of his wish to one day be represented alongside other great presidents on Mount Rushmore. Trump doesn’t look at the footage out of Minnesota and feel horror in the same way most of us do, but he understands that it’s bad for him – trapping him between the hardliners he’s surrounded himself with, and his own political instincts."

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AN 1 26

President Donald Trump's administration frequently requests that the left stop using inflammatory language, accusing them of being Nazis or white supremacists. Former MSNOW host Mehdi Hasan responded that the administration should address such concerns first.

Hasan, who founded Zeteo News, wrote in a column for The Guardian on Thursday arguing that government officials with connections to extremist movements are employed in the Trump administration.

Hasan cited recent social media posts and referenced the 1978 book Which Way, Western Man by William Gayley Simpson, noting that phrases from the book have appeared in recent government communications.

A meme posted by the Department of Homeland Security regarding Greenland asks, "Which way, American man?"

Hasan argues that this phrase echoes language that has circulated on far-right internet forums. A second meme from the White House featured the caption "Which way, Greenland man?"

According to Hasan's column, official government accounts have posted content that researchers say contains imagery and language associated with extremist movements.

The Department of Labor posted a video with the caption "One Homeland. One People. One Heritage." Another Department of Labor post stated "America is for Americans."

Hasan notes that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem used the phrase "One of ours, all of yours," which Holocaust historian Page Herrlinger connected to historical references.

Hasan references White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller's speech at Charlie Kirk's memorial service. Snopes analyzed the speech and noted similarities to other historical speeches.

Dalton Henry Stout, identified as founder of the Aryan Freedom Network, stated in August: "[Trump] awakened a lot of people to the issues we've been raising for years. He's the best thing that's happened to us."

Stout added, "Our side won the election."

Hasan lists several examples throughout his column of government communications and staffing decisions he says warrant scrutiny.

In his conclusion, Hasan distinguishes between political disagreement and substantive concerns about staffing and messaging. He writes: "This is about government employees and their communications, as well as the rhetoric used in official capacity."

Read the full column here.

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AN 1 26

IFrame Content

If Democrats win control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November, multiple investigations into senior Trump administration officials would begin, a Democratic lawmaker said.

“Stephen Miller should lawyer up,” said U.S. Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY), responding to video of his remarks earlier Thursday.

Congressman Ryan had been speaking with Pablo Manríquez, the editor of Migrant Insider on Substack, who said to the New York Democrat that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller “seems to be operating sort of as a shadow president at this point.”

“Can you think of any legal liability he could face on the back end of this presidency?” Manríquez asked.

“Well,” Ryan responded, “there’s gonna be legal, and I think criminal liability for multiple members of this administration, certainly including Stephen Miller.”

“They continue to just violate the law, violate the Constitution, violate our moral standing and values as Americans,” he alleged.

Ryan said that Democrats across multiple House committees “are already readying investigations … to be ready on day one, when we retake the majority, when the voice of the people are brought back here to the House.”

Democrats currently appear likely to get that chance.

According to Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report on Thursday, “House ratings show Dems as modest favorites for control, as Republicans would need to win two thirds of Toss Ups (67%) to keep the majority.”

Wasserman also noted that eighteen House races had moved in the Democrats’ direction.

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an 1 26

Top aide to President Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, spoke to Fox News on Tuesday, and one legal expert says he may have just made things worse for the administration.

According to Evan Bernick, associate professor at Northern Illinois University College of Law, both Miller and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are creating a paper trail that will not work out well for them.

DHS posted the interview with Miller in which he tells Fox: “To all ICE officers: You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties. Anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony. You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one — no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist — can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties. The Department of Justice has made clear that if officials cross that line into obstruction, into criminal conspiracy against the United States or against ICE officers, then they will face justice.”

Bernick commented, "I encourage the administration to continue to leave a paper trail for future lawsuits — which are inevitable, because following this advice will lead to civil rights violations."

Qualified immunity, as explained by the Legal Defense Fund, personally protects government officials, including cops, when they're sued.

"The doctrine holds that officials who violate other people’s constitutional rights can only be held responsible if there exists a previous court decision, with very similar facts, that resulted in other officials being held accountable. Qualified immunity has been used in many cases to protect officials who have engaged in a variety of misconduct, including fatal shootings, police brutality, stealing, sexual misconduct, and more."

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AN 1 26

IFrame Content

Conservative Bulwark Editor Jonathan Last argued there are two groups of President Donald Trump's voters: Those who signed on to deport 20 million immigrants regardless of whether they had committed any crime, and those who signed on with Trump’s plan to remove only immigrants who were criminals.

“Because people are stupid, that first group of voters believed that there were 20 million undocumented immigrants who have committed felonies. This is not possible,” said Last. “The total number of people in jail in America today — this includes federal, state, local, and tribal land prisons — is just under 2 million. The number of undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes cannot be 10x the entire prison population of the United States. If it were, then daily life in America would look like Escape from New York.”

“So, some Trump voters were duped owing to their general ignorance and/or innumeracy. But others were not,” added Last. “Others signed up for Trump because of his second promise (the 20 million deportations) and viewed the first promise (about deporting only criminals) as the pap necessary to get the suckers onboard.”

The question Last wants to answer is how many “dupes” voted for Trump vs the avowed racists who simply want Brown people gone. To get his answer, Last reviewed an AP/NORC poll showing consistent 80 percent support for Trump’s immigration policies among Republicans. Then he compared that to a more recent YouGov poll showing 80 percent of Republicans still "approved" of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement even after they shot and killed 37 year-old U.S. citizen Renee Good in footage that reveals no threat to agents.

“It seems pretty clear that, at best, one in five Trump voters were duped. The majority of them are getting exactly what they wanted,” Last said. "Now if Trump were to lose the support of 20 percent of Republican voters — or even 14 percent — it would be meaningful for Republican electoral prospects. Which is nice. The problem is that having 80 percent of Republican voters actively supporting a fascist race war is meaningful for our societal prospects.”

That’s a lot of racists in one party, said Last, but what’s worse is the tally of avowed racists occupying high federal positions, including “Vice President JD Vance, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem," as indicated by a recent Homeland Security post claiming to seek the deportation of "100 million" deportations.

“There are 43 million foreign-born Americans. Most of them are legal immigrants. In order to perform 100 million deportations, DHS would have to round up every immigrant of any status —even naturalized citizens — and then also snatch 57 million American who are citizens by birth and deport them, too,” said Last.

“Want to guess who those other 57 million Americans might be?” Last asked, before sharing a recent U.S. Department of Labor X post ordering Americans “To remember who you are.” Last said this slogan is a dead ringer from Adolf Hitler’s own iconic “One People, One Country, One Leader” post from the 1940s. Couple that with a volley of blonde, blue-eyed propaganda posts from Trump’s Department of Labor, and you’ve got even more insight.

“On the one hand, it feels weird to say that the U.S. government is attempting some low-key ethnic cleansing,” said Last. “On the other hand, the reality is that we have a masked secret police force going door-to-door attempting to kidnap brown people; one government agency publicly daydreaming about deporting 100 million people; and another government agency saying that the ideal worker is a 20-year-old white guy.”

Last said this information mingles horribly with the White House’s obsession with white Americans’ falling fertility rate and it’s constant citation of “Stuff white people like” including false claims that white men who “did extremely well” in high school are not getting invited to college despite white men having a “significant advantage” during the application process.

Read the Bulwark report at this link.

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AN 1 26

President Donald Trump and senior members of his administration are now openly communicating that the only law they respect is that "might is right." One conservative is warning that Americans should take their words very seriously.

In a Monday article for anti-Trump conservative website The Bulwark, editor Jonathan V. Last pointed to a recent post by far-right social media influencer Matt Walsh justifying the recent capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Walsh referred to Maduro as a "s——little tinpot third world dictator" whose ouster was necessary because he was "harming our country" and "interfering with our national interests."

"'International law' is fake and gay. The only international law is that big and powerful countries get to do what they want," Walsh wrote on X. "It has been that way since the dawn of civilization. It will always be that way. And we are the most powerful country on the planet. It's about time that we start acting like it."

Last also observed that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller made a similar argument in an interview with CNN host Jake Tapper. When Tapper asked him about Trump not ruling out using the U.S. military to seize Greenland from Denmark, Miller defended the president by arguing that powerful countries should be able to assert their authority by force if necessary.

"We live in a world, in the real world ... that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power," Miller said. "These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time."

The Bulwark editor doubted if this worldview stopped at international law, and posited that the Trump administration likely viewed domestic laws as able to bent and broken to accommodate the wishes of the powerful. He opined that Trump is "seeking a return to an old international order which antedates the modern, rules-based era" in which global hegemons carve up the world into "spheres of influence where the strong do what they can while the weak suffer what they must."

"Tell me: Do you think it is impossible that Trump and his revanchists also seek to return America to an old order in which control of the military is control of the government?" He wrote. "He wants Russia and China’s foreign policy. Why would he not also want their domestic policies?"

"[T]he law says that federal agents cannot brutalize the citizenry. But the practical reality is that the federal agents outnumber and outgun local law enforcement. So they cannot be arrested for brutalizing the citizenry," he added. "The law of the jungle is already here."

Click here to read Last's full article for The Bulwark.

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an 1 26

Zeteo reports two White House officials and an anonymous military source say President Donald Trump's administration privately plans to go scorched-earth if U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are arrested or prosecuted for breaking the law.

“As one senior Trump administration official describes it, the mandate was clear: Don’t give an inch, and protect the accused agents ‘no matter what,’” write Zeteo correspondents Asawin Suebsaeng and Prem Thakker. “Two of the sources add that within the past year, President [Donald] Trump himself has privately said that if one of his immigration agents were ever subject to arrest or prosecuted, he and his administration could retaliate by refusing to hand over the officer, counter by federally charging Democrats or local officials with ‘obstructing’ immigration enforcement, or threaten to further cut off federal funding to the state in question.”

Trump began rolling masked ICE forces through U.S. cities last year, triggering violent arrests and harassment of local residents, often over the opposition of local leaders. Now that 43 year-old ICE agent Jonathan Ross has killed a 37 year-old mother in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the administration is already swinging into action to bar unbiased investigations into the slaying, claiming local courts and prosecutors have no jurisdiction into the murder of one of its own residents.

Administration officials say the White House and the president’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, “gamed out since early last year” what to do if Democrats, or state or local prosecutors, ever moved to arrest or prosecute ICE officers or federal immigration personnel accused of crimes, even murder.

“Almost instantly after news of the fatal shooting began circulating on social media, the Trump administration and its close allies fanned out to insist to the American people that the victim had it coming, or that Democrats will only suffer more if they try to hold anyone accountable for the killing,” Zeteo reports.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem quickly labeled the victim, Renee Nicole Good, a “domestic terrorist.” One anonymous military policy official told Zeteo he was surprised at “Noem so readily moving to defend the murderous ICE agent.”

“[It] never has bode well, historically, once the state stops pretending to care about some level of institutional respect and acts without regard for the public backlash,” the source told Zeteo. “Only makes me worried about what it’ll do next.”

The state of Minnesota may yet move to prosecute the ICE agent, but sources say the Trump administration is already “primed to retaliate.”

An anonymous National Guardsman told Zeteo that the ICE agent’s “weapons training, the trigger discipline is completely f—— up” but added that’s “lower down the list of issues.”

Read the Zeteo report at this link.

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AN 1 26

Danish leaders are on edge after President Donald Trump invaded Venezuela to capture Nicolás Maduro. A top Trump insider posted on X that Greenland might be next.

Mere hours after Trump's attack on Venezuela, right-wing podcaster Katie Miller, who is married to top Trump advisor Stephen Miller, posted a map of Greenlandon X with the U.S. stars and stripes across the land.

"SOON," she wrote.

The Guardian explained that the territory is "mineral-rich," making it appealing to Trump's ongoing efforts to secure rare-earth minerals and oil from other countries. Greenland is part of the NATO alliance.

The Guardian quoted Copenhagen’s ambassador to the U.S., Jesper Møller Sørensen, who reposted Miller’s comments, saying, "Just a friendly reminder about the US and the Kingdom of Denmark: We are close allies and should continue to work together as such. US security is also Greenland’s and Denmark’s security. Greenland is already part of NATO. The Kingdom of Denmark and the United States work together to ensure security in the Arctic. The Kingdom of Denmark has significantly boosted its Arctic security efforts - in 2025 alone, we committed USD 13,7 bn that can be used in the Arctic and North Atlantic. Because we take our joint security seriously."

"And yes, we expect full respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark," he added.

The Guardian noted that when Trump named former Gov. Jeff Landry (R-La.) as a "special envoy to Greenland," the Louisianan called it an "honor" to work on "mak[ing] Greenland a part of the US."

On Saturday, Landry celebrated Trump's arrest of Maduro.

“Having served as a sheriff’s deputy and AG, I have seen the devastating effects of illegal drugs on American families. With over 100k opioid-related deaths annually, I am grateful to see a President finally take real action in the war on drugs,” he posted on X.

“Thank you @realDonaldTrump for holding individuals like Maduro accountable," he added.

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AN 1 26

The Trump administration provoked horror this week with the suggestion that the United States could be turned into a paradise if over a quarter of the people in the country were deported.

On Wednesday, the official social media account for the Department of Homeland Security posted a piece of artwork depicting a pink late-1960s Cadillac Eldorado parked on a bright, idyllic beach. Over the clear blue sky are the words “America after 100 million deportations.The post was captioned by the agency: “The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world.”

Social media users later discovered that DHS had, ironically, stolen the image from the Japanese pop artist Hiroshi Nagai without giving credit.

It is hardly the first time the administration has used edgy and inflammatory social media posts to promote its agenda. But DHS has come under particular scrutiny for its style of communication, which often evokes white nationalist rhetoric and symbolism.

Posts by the agency have cheered “remigration,” a term that far-right parties in Europe have often used to describe the forced repatriation of nonwhite populations, including citizens. Other posts have referred to President Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” campaign as part of an effort to defend American “heritage” and “culture.”

The agency frequently evokes images of the American frontier and references “Manifest Destiny,” at times explicitly posting artwork glorifying the forced displacement of Native American populations.

An image by the agency, featuring a chiseled Uncle Sam calling on Americans to “REPORT ALL FOREIGN INVADERS,” was even directly sourced from an overt neo-Nazi account.

The agency has only continued to double down in the face of criticism this week. On Friday, it posted that “2026 will be the year of American Supremacy” over an image of then-Gen. George Washington crossing the Delaware River, which was emblazoned with the words “Return this Land,” a possible reference to a recently-founded “whites-only” town in rural Arkansas known as “Return to the Land.”

But Wednesday’s post calling for “100 million deportations” specifically was perhaps the most direct nod yet to those who believe the United States must be reconstituted as a white nation. As social media users were quick to point out, only about 47 million people living in America are foreign-born, according to the US Census Bureau.

Even if the administration kicked out every single immigrant—including legal residents and naturalized citizens—meeting such a goal would mean deporting 53 million people who were born in the US and are legally entitled to citizenship under the 14th Amendment.

If the use of the phrase “third world” did not make it obvious enough, the specific number—100 million—seems to betray the racial motivation behind the message.

Citing 2020 census data on the Wikipedia page for “Demographics of the United States,” one social media user pointed out that approximately 100 million people in the US identified as nonwhite.

The DHS post drew comparisons to one made earlier this year by the close Trump ally and unofficial White House operative Laura Loomer, who suggested that thanks to “Alligator Alcatraz,” the massive internment camp in Florida for those arrested by immigration agents, “the alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals,” which referenced the total number of Hispanic people in the United States.

While it’s almost certainly not possible for the administration to conduct a deportation campaign of such a staggering scale within Trump’s term of office, the administration’s latest post was frightening to many observers, even as they acknowledged that it was a “troll post” meant to rile people up.

It is still reflective of the Trump administration’s ideology with respect to immigration. Leaders of Trump’s deportation effort have acknowledged that they target people based on their appearance, and many nonwhite US citizens have been caught in the dragnet. Meanwhile, its refugee policy has welcomed only white South Africans, as Trump has enacted what he says is a “permanent pause on migration from all Third World Countries.”

During 2026, the administration has said it plans to target hundreds of US citizens each month for “denaturalization,” and Trump has called for it to be used against his most prominent critics, including the Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and New York’s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani.

“This is absolutely insane Nazi propaganda, posted by the US government,” said Ben Norton, editor of the Geopolitical Economy Report in response to DHS’s call for“100 million deportations.”

“It makes it clear that the Trump administration’s mass deportation drive is not actually about ‘illegal immigration.’ There are estimated to be 14 million undocumented immigrants in the US. But the fascist DHS wants to deport 100 million people,” Norton continued. “This is a call by the US regime for ethnic cleansing of racial minorities, to create a white-supremacist regime without anyone with ‘third world’ heritage.”

===

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an tc 1 26

Every autocrat needs a clan of loyalists, strategists, masterminds – these are the figures behind the scenes pulling the strings.

They’re unelected and unaccountable, yet they wield a huge amount of power.

This is the role Stephen Miller has played for Donald Trump – he is the architect in chief for the second Trump administration. He has so much power, in fact, he’s reportedly referred to as the “prime minister”.

So who is Stephen Miller? And why are architects so important in helping a would-be autocrat amass power?

As Emma Shortis, a Trump expert and an adjunct senior fellow at RMIT University in Melbourne, explains in episode 2 of The Making of an Autocrat:

[Miller] is the kind of brains behind particularly Trump’s hardline stances on immigration and the Trump administration’s ability to use the levers of power, and expand the power available to the president.

I think what Stephen Miller demonstrates and, and history has demonstrated over and over again is that autocrats cannot rise to power by themselves. They often require a singular kind of charisma and a singular kind of historical moment, but they also need architects behind them who are able to facilitate their rise to power.

- YouTub

*This episode was written by Justin Bergman and produced and edited by Isabella Podwinski and Ashlynne McGhee. Sound design by Michelle Macklem.

*Newsclips in this episode from, CNN,, and Timothy Snyder’s Substack.

*Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feedor find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.

Justin Bergman, International Affairs Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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wh sp xeno 12 17 25

an 12 25

Despite being given powers well beyond previous presidents, President Donald Trump has largely outsourced his duties to advisors who are actually running the White House's day-to-day operations, according to a recent analysis.

In a Wednesday op-ed for the New York Times, columnist Jamelle Bouie argued that Trump is mostly "uninterested in anyone except his most devoted fans, and would rather collect gifts from foreign businessmen than take the reins of his administration." Bouie pointed to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles' recent bombshell profile in Vanity Fair, in which she maintained that despite occupying America's highest office, Trump "doesn't know the details" of the "smallish agencies" that his administration decimated earlier this year.

"The president doesn’t know and never will," Wiles said.

Despite Trump being "practically AWOL," Bouie pointed out that he is president at a time when the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has dramatically expanded the powers of the executive branch under the philosophy of "unitary executive theory." Under that system, Trump himself is vested with all the powers of the executive branch as outlined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution, which SCOTUS' conservative majority has clarified includes the ability to fire executive branch employees at will — even those at independent agencies.

However, Bouie asserted that the caveat of SCOTUS' new broad definitions of executive power is that Trump is mostly idle, "rarely meets with ordinary Americans" and "is shuttled from one Trump resort to another to play golf and hold court with donors, supporters and hangers-on." He added that SCOTUS' empowering of Trump to act beyond traditional checks and balances has, by default, meant that his cadre of advisors has free reign to run the White House as they see fit.

"[T]here is something ironic at work in this effort to concentrate executive power in the name of constitutional fidelity. It is being done on behalf of a president who is mostly missing from the business of government," Bouie wrote. "The unitary executive lacks an executive. And the president we have isn’t unitary. He has given his newfound power away to a small set of virtually unaccountable advisers, insulated from public outcry and indifferent to public opinion."

These advisors include Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, who Bouie characterized as the "de facto shadow president for domestic affairs," and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who the Times columnist called the "shadow president for internal security." Bouie noted that the work of foreign policy — which has always traditionally been seen solely as the president's wheelhouse — is largely being handled by Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Bouie quoted former President John F. Kennedy, who wrote in the foreword of his advisor Ted Sorensen's 1963 book Decision Making in the White House that the “secret of the presidential enterprise is to be found in an examination of the way presidential choices are made."

"What do we make of a president who chooses not to make these choices?" Bouie wrote.

Click here to read Bouie's New York Times column in full (subscription required).

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an 12 25

trump judge loss

Late Thursday morning, December 18, the news broke that federal Judge Trevor McFadden —an appointee of President Donald Trump — had rejected a lawsuit brought by major Trump allies: the America First Legal Foundation, a far-right MAGA legal group.

According to Politico's Josh Gerstein, America First Legal was "trying to demand records" using the Freedom of Information Act. But Gerstein notes that McFadden, in his America First Legal Foundation v. John G. Roberts ruling, "says Congress 'excused' itself [and] judiciary."

McFadden, in a 21-page court document, wrote, "The Freedom of Information Act announced a policy of broad disclosure of government documents. Broad disclosure, however, does not mean unlimited disclosure. While FOIA promises access to many Executive Branch records, Congress excused itself and the courts from FOIA’s reach. In 2024, America First Legal Foundation ('America First') requested various documents from the Judicial Conference of the United States and Administrative Office of the United States under FOIA. Both entities rejected the request on the basis that they are part of the Judiciary, so FOIA does not apply to them. America First disagreed."

The Trump-appointed federal judge continued, "Taking a narrower view of FOIA's court-documents carve out, America First sees the Judicial Conference and Administrative Office as agencies subject to FOIA. So America First sued and asks the Court to compel the heads of the Judicial Conference and Administrative Office to comply with its FOIA request. See Am. Compl., ECF No. 2."

McFadden noted that the "defendants moved to dismiss America First's Complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and for failure to state a claim."

The judge wrote, "Under Rule 12(b)(1), this Court presumes it lacks subject matter jurisdiction. See Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Ins., 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994). Federal courts have limited jurisdiction and 'possess only that power authorized by Constitution and statute.' Id. And when a defendant brings a challenge under Rule 12(b)(1), the plaintiff bears the burden of establishing that the court has jurisdiction. See id."

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AN 12 25

Today’s Office Hours discussion question is particularly difficult to answer. After more than 10 months of this catastrophic Trump regime, who has emerged as the worst person in it, other than Trump himself?

There are so many candidates for this distinction that’s it been hard to narrow down the finalists, but I’ve done the best I can to identify the most dangerous. All have caused extensive damage. This isn’t to excuse Trump, of course. He appointed them and continues to support them. His rantings and ravings have encouraged them.

Which of them in your view is the worst of the worst?

Pete Hegseth. Trump’s secretary of defense (or of “war” as Trump and Hegseth want to call it) has created more chaos, infighting, and likely war crimes than any defense secretary in living memory. The former Fox News host reportedly gave a verbal order to kill everyone aboard vessels suspected of smuggling drugs, which led a military commander to carry out a second strike to kill those who had initially survived an attack in early September.

Senator Mark Kelly this week called Hegseth “unqualified” for his job. “He runs around on a stage like he’s a 12-year-old playing army. And it is ridiculous, it is embarrassing, and I can’t imagine what our allies think of looking at that guy in this job, one of the most important jobs in our country…. He is in the national command authority for nuclear weapons. This is the secretary of defense. This is not a serious person. He should have been fired after Signalgate. And then every single day after that.”

Pam Bondi. Bondi has turned the Justice Department into Trump’s private law firm — going after his enemies and pardoning his friends. When Trump demanded that she prosecute former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, Bondi didn’t hesitate. She has purged many lawyers for being inadequately loyal to Trump. DOJ has lost thousands of experienced attorneys. Even the elite Solicitor General’s Office has lost half of its staff.

Last week a federal judge found that Bondi’s appointment of Lindsey Halligan to the post of U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was illegal and threw out the cases she had brought against Comey and James. Federal judges have also ruled illegal the appointments of U.S. attorneys for the Central District of California and the District of Nevada. This week a federal appeals court rejected Alina Habba as U.S. attorney for the district of New Jersey and instead selected Desiree Leigh Grace, an experienced prosecutor, to lead the office. Bondi then fired Grace and maneuvered Habba back into control of the office.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.RFK Jr. has almost single-handedly destroyed public health in the United States. His war on vaccines poses a clear and present danger. He has decimated the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health — substituting anti-science fanatics for health experts. He has caused the U.S. to be less prepared for the next pandemic.

On Tucker Carlson’s podcast in June, Kennedy falsely claimed that the hepatitis B birth dose is a “likely culprit” of autism and said the hepatitis B virus is not “casually contagious.” Wrong on both counts. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention vaccine advisory panel appointed by Kennedy is scheduled to discuss and vote on the hepatitis B birth dose recommendation during its two-day meeting starting December 4, likely no longer recommending it for newborns.

Stephen Miller. Miller is the most powerful force behind the regime’s cruel and unconstitutional expurgation of immigrants from the United States. It began with a promise that it would target only undocumented immigrants who had committed terrible crimes here; then spread to all undocumented immigrants; then to many green-card holders and others here legally; and has now encompassed almost everyone who has immigrated to the United States.

Miller has turned the Department of Homeland Security into a domestic police force and the State Department’s visa and refugee operations into a personal fiefdom. He is overseeing efforts to separate families in which one parent is here legally, to detain people suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, and is sending others to prisons in foreign countries, all without due process of law. He and Trump are turning America into a nativist den of bigotry and hate.

---

As for Brennan, a source briefed on the matter said CIA Director John Ratcliffe had made a criminal referral of Brennan to the Justice Department. Exactly what prompted the Comey investigation is unclear.

:{===

2x see 3 anno

no lnx

You cannot debate a liar like Stephen Miller

Stephen Miller, senior advisor to President Donald J. Trump, speaks during a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, in New York, U.S., October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo

John Stoehr October 09, 2025

Today, I have a few things to say about that putz Stephen Miller. First, he’s been on TV a lot lately, because that’s how he pours more poison onto the president’s already-poisoned brain. He doesn’t whisper lies into the ear of the old and demented sovereign the way Wormtongue does in Tolkien's epic. King Théoden didn’t have a TV. King Donald can’t stop watching his. So Stephen Miller delivers poison that way.

Over the weekend, the White House advisor wrote on Twitter there’s “a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”

In the days since, Miller has repeated a variation of that “insurrection” theme during numerous TV appearances. Last night, for instance, he told a CNN anchor that ICE protesters are “actually, as we speak, trying to overthrow the core law enforcement function of the federal government. … ICE officers have to street battle against antifa, hand-to-hand combat every night, to come and go from their building.”

Every word here, including “and” and “the,” is a lie.

But today, we saw the fruit of Miller’s labor.

“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “Governor Pritzker, too.”

I have talked a lot before about how Trump has dementia and how growing public awareness of his disease could make him vulnerable to the allegation that he’s not really in charge – that malicious and unaccountable forces are pulling his strings. But I haven’t talked about how. Well, this is how. And Stephen Miller is doing it in plain sight.

The second thing I want to say about that putz is about his personality, specifically, about the character of a man who goes on TV to goad an old, demented president into invoking the Insurrection Act to impose martial law. (Miller seems to believe if he says “insurrection” on TV enough times, something in Donald Trump’s head will finally click.)

Before they lie to anyone else, liars like Stephen Miller lie to themselves. They must, because they cannot face the truth. However, I don’t mean just any old truth. I mean capital-T truth, which is to say, the whole truth about themselves. If they had to face it, they would die. (They believe they would die, because they have no faith.)

So they lie, as if their lives depend on it.

What truth? In Stephen Miller’s case, I can’t say I know for sure, but it’s probably that he’s a mediocrity. He’s neither exceptionally intelligent nor exceptionally gifted. Let’s say he’s bland-looking. He’s short by Washington standards. (He says he’s 5 foot 10.) Of course, there are plenty of men who are born of average appearance, talent and smarts, but who accept who they are and lead decent, honorable, happy lives.

Not Stephen Miller. Why? Titanic ego. The truth shall never be true! So he lies to himself, about himself. I would surmise that from a very early age, he began living his life as if he were surviving an endless series of traumatizing events. Do this long enough and you end up not knowing who you are, what you want or what you stand for. And because the lies you tell yourself, about yourself, literally prevent you from feeling joy or satisfaction, always present in life is a desperate, junkie need.

I would suggest this junkie need is the root of hatred. Miller looks around at others who are living their best lives according to the truth about themselves. He sees you doing you better than he’s doing him – and it makes him mad. You cannot do that to him. It’s an injustice. You must be stopped. Indeed, the only way he’s going to feel better is if you are forced to accept the lies he tells himself, about himself. The Stephen Millers of the world, including the president of the United States, are not mediocrities. They are not even human. They are gods. You shall obey. And if you refuse, they will “use legitimate state power.”

I’m dwelling on this facet of Stephen Miller’s personality, as well as on the nature of the totalitarian mind, for a reason. What he’s doing – goading an old, demented president through TV appearances into imposing martial law – is scary. But manipulating the president only gets Miller and the rest of the regime so far. If they are going to take control of the republic, which is their objective (make no mistake), they must convince the American people there’s no use in fighting back – that resistance is futile. And they are going to do that by lying.

During TV appearances this week, Stephen Miller made Donald Trump seem like a sovereign lord endowed by the law and the Constitution (and perhaps by God) with the divine right (“plenary authority,” Miller told CNN) to do whatever he wants in the name of his people, and that any opposition to his divine rule is not only pointless but punishable.

Greg Sargent put it this way. Miller “believes that if he supercharges the debate over Trump's abuses of power with enough propaganda, he can polarize it and force low-info voters to embrace authoritarianism.” (Greg’s latest in The New Republic is about how Democratic Governors JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom are taking Miller’s “theory of fascist power politics” at face value and devising a strategy to combat it.)

In other words, Miller is lying in order to get you (and “low-info voters”) to give up. And he’s doing that, because surrender is strategically vital. That is, without surrender, Miller and the rest of the regime got nothing. They lie, believing that you will believe their lies, and you end up doing their work for them – by conquering yourself.

But they can’t conquer you if you don’t believe them.

The moment you stop believing them is probably their most vulnerable moment, as we saw when Stephen Miller was asked by a Fox host to respond to comments made about him by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In a stream for constituents, AOC discussed the critical role of ridicule in fighting fascism. For instance, she said:

“Laugh at them. Stephen Miller is a clown. I’ve never seen that guy in real life but he looks like he’s 4’ 10”. He looks like he’s angry about the fact that he’s 4’ 10”. He looks like he is so mad that he is 4’ 10” that he’s taking that anger out at any other population possible. Laugh at them.”

Fox’s Laura Ingraham played that clip, right there on live TV. The written word cannot do justice to the face Miller made while watching it. (You have to see it for yourself.) All I can say is he looked wounded, as if AOC had stabbed him, and that’s because the injury was very real.

She did the unforgivable: refused to accept the lies Stephen Miller tells himself, about himself, and she deepened that wound by daring to enjoy herself while doing it. She not only hurt him, emotionally and psychically, but she reminded him of his misery he endures daily.

I’ll close with this. You cannot debate a liar like Stephen Miller. You cannot persuade him with logic or facts. You cannot find common ground with him. There is no compromise. They are too weak to be worthy of trust, and therefore, they can only be opposed. Trump said JB Pritzker should be jailed. In reply, Pritzker said come and get me.

Low-info voters might not understand much.

But they can understand that.

an 10 24

basically a threat to any who oppose trump

Anger as 'Trump regime' lackey threatens to arrest Dem governor

Jessica Corbett gov prtiz, set up by fox/ question?

an 10 25

This Trump plan would overhaul US refugee system to 'prioritize Europeans' and German far-right

Ailia Zehra

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AN 10 25 THOM

...Stephen Miller told us, when talking with Sean Hannity on Fox “News” in August, what that reason is, what their ultimate goal will be:

“The Democrat [sic] Party does not fight for, care about, or represent American citizens. It is an entity devoted exclusively [his emphasis] to the defense of hardened criminals, gang-bangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”

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OMFG TERROR

NO TXT JUST VID NO TRANSCRIPT

INGR id BOTH AS JRNLISTS ANN-TIFA FRIEND

ATTACK ON STUDENT MINN CHRLIE ASSAS TRIUMP, CATH SCH? ...NO TIME TO LOSE FELOINY CONSP STATE DEPT DECL INTL ARM OF ANTIFA TERROR ORG; OPEN UP TO SANTIONS; SAV BIDEN IGNORE JRNL AND STREETS; ANDY BRITALLY ASSAULTED; DOM TERR ORG ; JRNL DEMONIZED BY LAMESTREAM, ALSO IGNORE VIOLENT STR THUS VINDCATED; PRO HAMAS FREAS IN HY, PPL TIRED OF TERROR BEG FOR NAT GD; PRTOZ MAYOR JOHNSON CALLED TUMP NAZI IS THAT INCTE VIOL; ANTIFA SHOCH TROOPS FOR DEMS, ATTACK POL OPP; YOU ARE ON HIT LIST BRAVE TO COME TO DC

Inside the road to dismantle Antifa: 'We don't have any more time to lose' | Fox News Video

Inside the road to dismantle Antifa: 'We don't have any more time to lose'

Journalist Andy Ngo and Frontlines TPUSA contributor Savanah Hernandez discuss their experiences reporting on rioters on 'The Ingraham Angle.'

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AN 10 25

During Wednesday’s White House roundtable on “Antifa,” Trump Cabinet secretaries compared it to international drug cartels and vowed to dismantle it “brick by brick,” while the President described Antifa as “treasonous, probably.”

Antifa, which the President has labeled a “domestic terrorist organization,” is widely seen as a movement of people opposed to fascism and racism. It is not believed to be a formal organization. BBC News describes it as “a loosely organized, leftist movement that opposes far-right, racist and fascist groups,” and which “lacks a distinct leader, membership list or structure. In 2020, then-FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress that Antifa was better defined as an ideology than as a formal organization.”

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem told roundtable attendees, “One of the individuals we arrested recently in Portland was the girlfriend of one of the founders of Antifa.”

Secretary Noem said they are “hoping that as we go after her, interview her and prosecute her, we will get more and more information about the network and how we can root them out, and eliminate them from the existence of American society.”

IFrame Content

She also said that “this network of Antifa is just as sophisticated as MS-13, as TdA, as ISIS, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them.”

“They are just as dangerous. They have an agenda to destroy us, just like the other terrorists we’ve dealt with for many, many years. And today is the day that we have a president that won’t tolerate it, and will stand up and fight for the American people.”

Similarly, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that “fighting crime is more than just getting the bad guy off the streets. It’s breaking down the organization, brick by brick. Just like we did with cartels. We are going to take the same approach, President Trump, with Antifa, destroy the entire organization from top to bottom. We’re going to take them apart.”

“Their hatred for President Trump, and for law and order agendas, fuels their violence,” Bondi said. “We saw what’s happening in Portland and Chicago, and you saw what happened in Dallas. No longer. It is not activism, it’s anarchy. We can’t, and we will not, let masked terrorists burn our buildings, attack our law enforcement, and intimidate our communities.”

She declared that the Trump administration is “deploying the full might of the federal law enforcement to crack down on Antifa and other domestic terrorist organizations.”

President Trump said, “we’re going after Antifa criminals and all who fund and support their campaigns are in serious trouble, and we have a lot of records already, a lot of surprises, a lot of bad surprises — people that you would never think.”

He also asked the group to identify the “funders” of Antifa: “These are people that do not have good intention for the country, and that’s treasonous, probably.”

Critics blasted the event.

“After the US bombed multiple boats in the middle of the ocean, murdering people on grounds that they were allegedly ‘carrying drugs,’ the US Attorney General says ‘Just like we did with cartels, we’re going to take the same approach…with Antifa,'” wrote Zeteo News’ Prem Thakker.

Attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council observed, “Cartels have actual leadership structures, central funding, command and control, and more. ‘Antifa’ is mostly a philosophy. That the Attorney General doesn’t know the difference is quite the thing to admit!”

Bill Kristol, the director of Defending Democracy Together, wrote: “Which is more alarming? That the Homeland Security secretary might actually believe that ‘Antifa’ is as dangerous as Hezbollah or Hamas? Or that she’s willing to engage in this level of lying and demagoguery? Neither is good!”

Olga Lautman, a Russian intelligence expert and senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, pointed to Bondi’s remark about cartels and asked: “Are they planning on sending missiles to American cities to carry out extrajudicial killings.”

SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah issued this warning: “Please understand that This is Trump regime explaining how they will use the government to prosecute Democrats. Page 1 of the fascist playbook is imprison political opponents so that the fascist has one party rule.”

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Trump’s NSPM-7 Labels Common Beliefs As Terrorism “Indicators”

New directive targets “anti-Christian,” “anti-American,” and “anti-capitalism” opinions

Ken Klippenstein

Sep 27, 2025

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!fMp7!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F91129dba-8e6b-4ca7-a4ac-83d34e6abfee_1200x800.webp)Trump displays NSPM-7 at the Oval Office on Thursday

With the mainstream media distracted by the made-for-TV drama of James Comey’s indictment, Trump has signed a little-noticed national security directive identifying “anti-Christian” and “anti-American” views as indicators of radical left violence. Called National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, it’s being referred to as “NSPM-7” by administration insiders.

“This is the first time in American history that there is an all-of-government effort to dismantle left wing terrorism,” Trump’s homeland security advisor Stephen Miller said, referring to the issuance.

To the extent that the major media noticed the directive at all, they (even C-SPAN!) incorrectly labeled it an “executive order,” like this week’s designation of “Antifa” as a domestic terrorist organization.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!mkJ5!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff3af4d84-03ee-40bb-a36f-62363ef39cd4_1220x988.png)Come on, C-SPAN

It’s hard to overstate how much different NSPM-7 is from the over 200 executive orders Trump has frantically signed since coming back into office.

An executive order publicly lays out the course of day-to-day federal government operations; whereas a national security directive is a sweeping policy decree for the defense, foreign policy, intelligence, and law enforcement apparatus. National security directives are often secret, but in this case the Trump administration chose to publish NSPM-7 — only the seventh since he’s come into office.)

Previous national security directives have been controversial, even politically earthshaking. In 1980, for example, President Jimmy Carter signed the Top Secret Presidential Directive 59 (“PD-59”) directing new nuclear warfighting policies that persisted until the end of the Cold War. When revealed, PD-59 caused a public furor.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!THR3!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F239e355c-5037-47ed-bfcb-31c582f4e1f0_1872x1304.png)Declassified copy of PD-59 | Carter Library}:

Similarly, President George W. Bush signed a series of classified national security directives after 9/11, the most famous of which authorized NSA’s unlawful domestic intercepts, a directive that wasn’t publicly revealed until four years later.

In NSPM-7, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” President Trump directs the Justice Department, the FBI, and other national security agencies and departments to fight his version of political violence in America, retooling a network of Joint Terrorism Task Forces to focus on “leftist” political violence in America. This vast counterterrorism army, made up of federal, state, and local agents would, as Trump aide Stephen Miller said, form “the central hub of that effort.”

NSPM-7 directs a new national strategy to “disrupt” any individual or groups “that foment political violence,” including “before they result in violent political acts.”

In other words, they’re targeting pre-crime, to reference Minority Report.

The Trump administration isn’t only targeting organizations or groups but even individuals and “entities” whom NSPM-7 says can be identified by any of the following “indicia” (indicators) of violence:

anti-Americanism,
anti-capitalism,
anti-Christianity,
support for the overthrow of the United States Government,
extremism on migration,
extremism on race,
extremism on gender
hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,
hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and
hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.

“The United States requires a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts,” the directive states (emphasis mine).

A “pre-crime” endeavor, preventing attacks before they happen, is core to the post-9/11 concept of counterterrorism itself. No longer satisfied to investigate acts of terrorism after the fact to bring terrorists to justice, the Bush administration adopted preemption. Overseas, that led to aerial assassination by drones and “special operations” kill missions. Domestically, it led to a counter-terrorism campaign whose hallmark was excessive and illegal government surveillance and the use of undercover agents and “confidential human sources” to trap (and entrap) would-be terrorists.

Now, with Donald Trump’s directive retooling the counter-terror apparatus to go after Americans at home, this means monitoring political activity, or speech, as an investigative method to discover “radicalism.” (Contrary to other national security documents all during the post-Watergate era, NSPM-7 doesn’t even mention the First Amendment or the fundamental right of Americans to organize and protest.)

The focus on speech is evident throughout NSPM-7. The directive says that political violence is the result of “organized campaigns” that often begin (with the left) dehumanizing targets in “anonymous chat foras, in-person meetings, social media, and even educational institutions.”

To give a sense of how broad this formulation is, Trump’s earlier designation of Antifa as a domestic terrorist group was accompanied by a White House fact sheet singling out people who “celebrated” Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last December. As I wrote at the time, this describes a lot of Americans!

Trump’s new national security memorandum also alludes to Mangione but adds to it even larger categories of potential targets.

NSPM-7 is fundamentally a law enforcement directive, and it dispenses with the complications of using the active duty military or the National Guard in pursuit of political violence. It directs the Department of Justice to focus the FBI’s approximately 200 Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) to the new mission. The FBI network of task forces comprises over 4,000 members—including FBI personnel and task force officers (or TFOs) from more than 500 state and local agencies and 50 federal agencies, including special agents, police officers, intelligence analysts and surveillance technicians. First established in New York City in 1980 to systematize FBI and NYPD cooperation, today there are task forces around the country, including at least one in each of the FBI’s 55 field offices.

For the Trump White House, the beauty of using an already existing network is that it bypasses Congressional oversight and scrutiny and even obscures federal activity to governors and legislatures at the state level. States, cities, and local police have already signed Memoranda of Agreements with the feds to fight terrorism and officers are already assigned as task force officers.

NSPM-7 says the JTTFs “shall investigate” potential federal crimes relating to “acts of recruiting or radicalizing persons” for the purpose of “political violence, terrorism, or conspiracy against rights; and the violent deprivation of any citizen’s rights.” It authorizes the JTTFs to investigate individuals, organizations, and funders “responsible for, sponsor, or otherwise aid and abet the principal actors engaging in the criminal conduct.”

“The Attorney General shall issue specific guidance that ensures domestic terrorism priorities include politically motivated terrorist acts such as organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder,” NSPM-7 says. Civil disorder?

I don’t want to sound hyperbolic but the plain truth is that NSPM-7 is a declaration of war on anyone who does not support the Trump administration and its agenda. Yes, it repeats the word “violent” over and over to purport only to go after citizens who are moved to take up arms, but it also directs monitoring and intelligence collection to map and target the new “evildoers,” to borrow a Bush label he took from the Bible just days after 9/11.

The partisan focus couldn’t be more obvious.

“The real problem is this: since Charlie [Kirk] was murdered — a friend of mine, assassinated — nothing’s changed on their side,” White House counter-terrorism czar Sebastian Gorka told Newsmax after NSPM-7 was signed. “Not one leader —not one left wing thought leader, member of Congress, Senator — nobody has said we distance ourselves from the violent rhetoric.”

“The left refuses to rid themselves of the justification for violence,” Gorka continued, “and as such, President Trump is taking measures to protect us from the violent rhetoric that becomes snipers and bullets.”

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Washington’s biggest law firms are issuing memoranda on the implications of NSPM-7, Trump’s new national security directive, yet virtually no one in Congress has bothered to say a thing. What little the mainstream media have said about NSPM-7 has so far been wrong, often downplaying it.

The mainstream media is hopeless in the face of the complexity and secrecy of the national security state. Please help us in our effort to reveal and explain what’s going on by becoming a paid subscriber

Sources tell me that NSPM-7 will likely cause the FBI’s domestic terrorism watchlist, currently at about 5,000 U.S. citizens, to double in the coming months.

Last Thursday, President Donald Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7), titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism

and Organized Political Violence.” It creates a national strategy to investigate, prosecute, and dismantle organized political violence and domestic terrorism, identifying indicators of a potential domestic terrorist as the expression of “anti-Christian” or “anti-capitalism” or “anti-American” views. NSPM-7 directs the federal government to disrupt groups “before” they result in violent political acts. In other words, pre-crime.

Law firms like Arnold & Porter, WilmerHale, Caplin & Drysdale, Akin Gump, and Elias Law Group swiftly responded to NSPM-7 by issuing guidances explaining the implications for non-profits and other organizations that are among their clientele.

To date though, almost no members of Congress have commented on NSPM-7. I reached out to the following congressional leaders for a statement, but received nothing:

Sen. Chuck Schumer (Minority Leader)
Sen. Mark Warner (Senate Intelligence, ranking member)
Sen. Gary Peters (Senate Homeland, ranking member)
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (Minority Leader)
Rep. Jim Himes (House Intelligence, ranking member)
Rep. Jamie Raskin (House Judiciary, ranking member)

Rep. Bennie Thompson, ranking member of the Homeland Affairs Committee, responded with the following statement:

*“Just like with Trump’s reckless — and incorrect — antifa designation, his domestic terrorism memorandum serves no purpose other than an excuse for the Trump administration to stifle dissent, investigate anyone - or any group - they don’t like, punish their enemies, and potentially label any American they want as a terrorist.”

But the national security directive is far more consequential, as I recently explained, in that it directs the countrywide network of Joint Terrorism Task Forces to characterize, surveil, and conduct actions to thwart organizations and individuals espousing the domestic terrorism indicators described above (“anti-Christian,” “anti-capitalism” and “anti-American” rhetoric).

Legal heavyweights from Akin Gump to WilmerHale warn that NSPM-7 is not mere rhetorical theater — it presents real danger for tax exempt organizations.

(The directive says that the Secretary of the Treasury should make available ‘all resources’ “to identify and disrupt financial networks that fund domestic terrorism and political violence”; and that the Secretary “shall provide guidance for financial institutions to file Suspicious Activity Reports and investigate indicia [indicators] of illicit funding streams to ensure such activity is rooted out at the source and referred for law enforcement action…”)

Arnold & Porter, a heavyweight in Washington’s legal and policy circles, says “the stakes are high,” cautioning that NSPM-7 signals Justice Department plans to target tax-exempt organizations and their funders for criminal investigations based on actions historically protected by the First Amendment.

“The Presidential Memorandum makes clear that DOJ intends to target tax-exempt organizations and their funders for investigation and potential criminal prosecution,” the legal minds at the law firm say.

“Even the ‘indirect’ financing of ‘political violence’” could provoke liability, they warn.

Their analysis further notes that the memo doesn’t just threaten fringe actors: it stretches to organizations seen as supporting “progressive causes,” suggesting the scope could well include mainstream nonprofit advocacy. This runs contrary to the Trump administration’s framing of the crackdown as merely focused on extremist or radical elements, the law firm concludes

WilmerHale, a DC legal powerhouse, offers a similar reading. Their guidance warns that NSPM-7 may cause the federal government to pursue IRS investigations of nonprofit groups, assess terrorism designations, block nonprofit assets, and even target individual officers and employees.

“Employees and officers … are possible subjects of Justice Department and other investigations,” the law firm’s alert states.

Caplin & Drysdale, known for its political law practice, flagged the revival of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as especially significant, saying that with NSPM-7, Trump had brought FARA “back from the dead.” They call NSPM-7 a signal that the firm’s clients must no longer treat FARA enforcement as a low priority. (FARA requires registration and disclosure of individuals who act at the behest of foreign entities — at the intersection of political speech and foreign influence.) They also emphasize that NSPM-7’s focus is heavier on nonprofits and civil society than on for-profits.

Akin Gump, a leading international law firm with more than 900 lawyers, offers a brief summary of the practical effects of NSPM-7:

*“Directs the National Joint Terrorism Task Force to investigate, prosecute, and dismantle networks, organizations, and funding streams behind domestic terrorism and organized political violence. Orders federal law enforcement and financial regulators to prioritize identifying, disrupting, and prosecuting those involved, including funders, tax-exempt entities, and foreign-linked actors, and allows the Attorney General to recommend formal designation of domestic terrorism organizations.”

Elias Law Group,which describes itself as “the nation’s go-to law firm to fight back against voter suppression and election subversion,” warns that under NSPM-7, the government may interrogate individuals about “financial sponsorship” of protests or political activity. NSPM-7, the firm goes on to warn, “sends a troubling signal” that organizations opposing the administration may face investigations, punitive measures, or revocations of tax status.

“At a minimum, such politically motivated investigations would bog down targeted organizations with legal costs and compliance headaches all while detracting from their missions,” Elias concludes.

At root, NSPM-7 is not just about thwarting violent actors — it’s about chilling free speech and association. The directive empowers federal task forces to pursue not only organizations deemed in “support” of violence, but also funders, officers, employees, and indirect financial supporters, which means donors. Under the framework, even speech or advocacy currently considered protected could be swept into criminal exposure.

Maybe, someday, eventually, Congress will take notice of the most important change in the expansion of government power since the PATRIOT Act.

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REUTERS

Trump’s war on the left: Inside the plan to investigate liberal groups

By Nandita Bose, Jana Winter, Jeff Mason, Tim Reid and Ted Hesson

October 9, 20251:43 PM PDTUpdated October 9, 2025

:{A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Illinois. REUTERS/O

Summary
Companies

Powerful Trump aide Stephen Miller key part of crackdown
ICE agents being redeployed to target activist groups
George Soros' charitable network on White House list
Trump using isolated ICE clashes to justify national crackdown

WASHINGTON, Oct 9 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's threatened crackdown on the finances and activities of liberal non-profits and groups opposed to his agenda is a multi-agency effort with top White House aide Stephen Miller playing a central role, according to officials.

The Trump administration plans to deploy America's counter-terrorism apparatus - including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department - as well as the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department against certain left-wing groups it accuses of funding and organizing political violence, the officials said.

The effort marks an escalation in the administration's efforts to target domestic opponents, raising alarm among civil rights groups and Democratic leaders about the use of executive power.

Reuters spoke to three White House officials, four Department of Homeland Security officials and one Justice Department official to produce the first comprehensive account of how decisions are being made, forces deployed, and operations coordinated in the crackdown.

All of the administration officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations more freely.

Miller is deeply involved in reviewing government agencies' investigations into the financial networks behind what the administration labels "domestic terror networks," which include nonprofits and even educational institutions, a White House official said.

The Trump administration has released some examples of what it alleges are incidents of left-wing violence, but it has provided little evidence of a coordinated effort.

"Left-wing organizations have fueled violent riots, organized attacks against law enforcement officers, coordinated illegal doxing campaigns, arranged drop points for weapons and riot materials, and more," the White House said in a statement to Reuters.

Miller did not respond to a request for comment.

'ANTI-AMERICANISM, ANTI-CAPITALISM AND ANTI-CHRISTIANITY'

Two weeks after the September 10 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Trump issued a presidential memorandum directing the National Joint Terrorism Task Force to focus on "domestic terrorists" whose common ideologies include "anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity."

Trump's opponents say the focus on liberal and left-wing groups ignores violence by right-wing organizations. They point to the January 6, 2021, violence by Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol who sought to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump has pardoned most of those convicted of violence that day.

A Manhattan federal judge on Thursday dismissed rapper Drake's defamation suit against Universal Music Group,

While Trump has frequently blamed violence on left-wing groups, a second White House official noted that the president's directive does not mention them specifically and is aimed at disrupting organized political violence before it occurs.

The official said the "focus remains on violence and illegal activity," and that left-wing groups are free to protest within the bounds of the law.

Trump's sweeping crackdown on migrants has triggered confrontations in U.S. cities between Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and protesters, including Los Angeles and Chicago. Trump and Miller have claimed protests in which sporadic violence occurs are evidence of domestic terrorism.

Speaking to reporters on Monday, Miller asserted that protesters were engaged in a "continuum of violence" that was part of a larger conspiracy to disrupt federal operations.

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an 10 25

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem appeared to take a step toward circumventing federal laws that bar the military from taking part in domestic law enforcement in a letter she sent to the Department of Defense Sunday as the National Guard was deployed to Los Angeles amid mass protests over immigration raids.

In a letter obtained by The San Francisco Chronicle, Noem wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the Pentagon should direct military forces "to either detain, just as they would at any federal facility guarded by military, lawbreakers under Title 18 until they can be arrested and processed by federal law enforcement, or arrest them."

The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the military from taking part in domestic law enforcement without the authorization of Congress.

Noem called on the DOD to "support to our law enforcement officers and agents across Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and Federal Protective Services (FPS), as they defend against invasive, violent, insurrectionist mobs that seek to protect invaders and military aged males belonging to identified foreign terrorist organizations, and who seek to prevent the deportation of criminal aliens."

Noem did not specify the so-called "identified foreign terrorist organizations" that she claimed are involved in the protests that have erupted in Los Angeles in recent days in response to raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in which 118 immigrants were arrested last week.

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President Donald Trump has referred to the protests against his mass deportation operation as "riots," and has claimed those attending the demonstrations are "insurrectionists," but the protests were reported to be "largely peaceful" before Trump ordered more than 2,000 members of the California National Guard to Los Angeles on Saturday.

On Monday, 700 Marines were also deployed.

Syracuse University law professor William Banks told the Chronicle that Noem's request for members of the military to arrest protesters whom she labeled "lawbreakers" could be a step toward "the invocation of the Insurrection Act."

The Insurrection Act was last invoked in 1992 when Los Angeles residents erupted in fury over the acquittal of four Los Angeles Police Department officers who had been filmed savagely beating Rodney King, a black man who they had pulled over after a high-speed chase.

The 1792 law authorizes the president to deploy military forces domestically to suppress rebellions or unrest, when local or state law enforcement is unable to control the situation.

But Stephen Dycus, a professor emeritus at Vermont Law and Graduate School and an expert in national security law, emphasized that local authorities did not appear to lose control of the protests over the weekend.

Noem's requests for military arrests, along with Trump's federalization of the National Guard and deployment of the Marines, "can be seen as using the military, or at a minimum using that threat, to instill fear in the American people and discourage the kinds of protests that are going on in Los Angeles," Dycus told the Chronicle. "So this could be viewed as a preparation for invoking the Insurrection Act, or it could be viewed as part of a larger effort to frighten people who otherwise would exercise their First Amendment guarantee of free speech and protest."

Banks called Noem's push for military detentions of Los Angeles residents "a grave escalation."

The secretary indicated in her letter to Hegseth that she would send a formal request in the coming days. She also called for "the transportation of munitions" from Fort Benning and Wyoming, but did not say what the weapons would be used for.

California state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-11) said Trump's use of the military to suppress protests—which began when ICE agents searched the garment district of Los Angeles for undocumented workers—proves his mass deportation campaign "has nothing to do with deporting criminals and everything to do with creating a militarized terror police state."

"This isn't what happens in a democracy," Wiener told the Chronicle, "this is what happens in a dictatorship."

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DRAFTING ON MILLER TRUMP bs POST KIRK?

AN 10 25

'I don’t negotiate with terrorists': GOP congressman targets Democrats in outrageous rant // COMPROMISE?

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OMFG

an 9 25

In between his highly publicized designation of Antifa as a domestic terror organization and his indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, US President Donald Trump signed a little-reported national security memorandum that gives law enforcement new tools to target his critics.

Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) on Thursday. The directive, titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” focuses exclusively on “anti-fascist” or left-wing activities, and mandates a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”

“I don’t want to sound hyperbolic but the plain truth is that NSPM-7 is a declaration of war on anyone who does not support the Trump administration and its agenda,” journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote in a piece raising alarm about the directive on Saturday.

Klippenstein argued that the memorandum was worrying on several fronts. For one, its focus on preventing crimes before they are committed opens the door to rights violations.

“In other words, they’re targeting pre-crime, to reference Minority Report,” Klippenstein wrote.

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For another, the memorandum casts a very wide net, targeting groups, individuals, funders, and “entities” and listing several protected beliefs as “indicia” of extremism.

These include:

“Anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity;

Support for the overthrow of the United States Government;

Extremism on migration, race, and gender; and

Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

What’s more, the memorandum entrusts enforcement to the FBI’s over 4,000-strong Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF), which removes the legal challenges to directing the National Guard or other military forces to quash domestic dissent.

“For the Trump White House, the beauty of using an already existing network is that it bypasses Congressional oversight and scrutiny and even obscures federal activity to governors and legislatures at the state level,” Klippenstein wrote.

The types of activities that will be targeted are also quite broad, with the document defining “organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder” as “domestic terrorist acts.”

The memorandum also targets any individual or group who might fund activity the administration deems terrorism and directs the Internal Revenue Service to “take action to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism,” which could be a means of threatening the status of nonprofits.

Finally, as Drop Site Newspointed out, the memo authorizes the attorney general to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations for the first time in US history.

“By targeting beliefs and protest activity, the directive positions dissent itself as a potential crime,” Drop Sitewrote.

The Trump administration’s focus on violence associated with left-wing beliefs and groups is not supported by the facts. National Institute of Justice data found that right-wing violence had led to 520 deaths since 1990 compared with 78 deaths due to left-wing violence. However, the administration removed that study from the Department of Justice website shortly after Charlie Kirk was killed, The Guardianreported earlier this month.

The administration’s efforts, while accelerated, build on processes that began during the US response to the September 11 attacks, as Klippenstein explained:

A “pre-crime” endeavor, preventing attacks before they happen, is core to the post-9/11 concept of counterterrorism itself. No longer satisfied to investigate acts of terrorism after the fact to bring terrorists to justice, the Bush administration adopted preemption. Overseas, that led to aerial assassination by drones and “special operations” kill missions. Domestically, it led to a counter-terrorism campaign whose hallmark was excessive and illegal government surveillance and the use of undercover agents and “confidential human sources” to trap (and entrap) would-be terrorists.

However, the Trump administration is expanding the War-on-Terror mandate with fewer guardrails.

“Now, with Donald Trump’s directive retooling the counter-terror apparatus to go after Americans at home, this means monitoring political activity, or speech, as an investigative method to discover ‘radicalism,‘” Klippenstein said, noting that the NSPM-7 breaks with post-Watergate national security documents by failing to mention the First Amendment rights to protest and organize.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is already eager to make use of the document.

“We are witnessing domestic terrorist sedition against the federal government,” he wrote on social media on Friday. “The JTTF has been dispatched by the Attorney General, pursuant to NSPM-7. All necessary resources will be utilized.”

In an interview with Greg Sargent for theNew Republic, Trump ally Steve Bannon confirmed that Miller and others in the administration were preparing to go after left-liberal groups and media whose criticism of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could be interpreted as “goading” on violence against the agency.

Referring to Miller’s comments that calling ICE authoritarian incited violence and terrorism, Bannon responded, “Stephen Miller is correct—more importantly he’s in charge.

The threats of investigations put liberal and left-leaning organizations in a tough place. On the one hand, they want to prepare as best they can. On the other, they do not want to obey in advance.

“Officials at these groups tell me they must strike a balance between being clear-eyed about how bad this could get while not letting it discourage political activity,” Sargent wrote. “That latter form of surrender is exactly what Trump and Miller want. And under no circumstances should anybody willingly hand it over to them.”

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dem dock 9 25

Trump signed a memorandum Thursday directing the federal government to investigate and dismantle “domestic terrorism networks.”

The move appears targeted at left-leaning progressive nonprofit groups, which Trump days ago vowed to dismantle, falsely claiming they fund and support political violence and terrorism in the U.S.

The memo directs the FBI’s National Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to go after “anti-fascist” movements in the U.S.

“This ‘anti-fascist’ lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties,” the memo reads.

Trump signed the memo shortly after the New York Times reported that the Department of Justice directed several U.S. attorneys offices across the country to open investigations into the Open Society Foundations, a progressive grant network founded by Democratic megadonor George Soros.

Asked what specific people or organizations the memo seeks to target, Trump named Soros, who Republicans have long claimed without evidence funds violent protests in the U.S.

“Soros is a name certainly that I keep hearing,” Trump said. “I don’t know. Soros is a name that I hear.”

Trump earlier this month asserted Soros must be “jailed” because “he’s a bad guy,” while Vice President JD Vance baselessly claimed that Soros and the Open Society Foundations pay “the salaries of terrorist sympathizers” and “promote violence and terrorism.”

The Open Society Foundations in a statement to Democracy Docket said the Trump administration’s “accusations are politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech.

“When power is abused to take away the rights of some people, it puts the rights of all people at risk,” it added.

“The Open Society Foundations unequivocally condemn terrorism and do not fund terrorism. Our activities are peaceful and lawful, and our grantees are expected to abide by human rights principles and comply with the law.”

“Our work in the United States is solely dedicated to strengthening democracy and upholding constitutional freedoms. We stand by the work we do to improve lives in the United States and across the world.”

Trump also named LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party. Hoffman founded the Aphorism Foundation, a California-based private grantmaking group that focuses on noncontroversial causes such as supporting universities and hospitals.

Through a separate nonprofit, Hoffman provided financial support for writer E. Jean Carroll’s sexual assault lawsuit against Trump.

In terms of specific actions, Thursday’s memo ordered the commissioner of the IRS “to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism.”

“In addition, where applicable, the Commissioner shall ensure that the [IRS] refers such organizations, and the employees and officers of such organizations, to the Department of Justice for investigation and possible prosecution,” the memo reads.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has repeatedly threatened to strip left-leaning organizations of their tax exemptions.

Federal law bars senior executive branch officials from directing the IRS, which is currently headed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in an acting capacity, to audit any taxpayer or nonprofit organization.

However, the Trump administration could create pretext triggering an IRS audit through several different means.

The White House has repeatedly attempted to link the recent murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk to progressive causes and groups. The effort has heightened fears that Trump and his allies seek to exploit the killing to further attack institutions that power the political left.

The Trump administration has also specifically targeted the Ford Foundation, another progressive philanthropic organization.

Earlier this week, Trump signed a separate memo claiming to designate “antifa,” a leaderless and decentralized anti-fascist movement, as a “domestic terrorist organization.”

Trump and many of his fellow Republicans have long used antifa as a catch-all designation against protests or speech they disapprove of.

Senior White House officials Thursday claimed that large-scale nationwide protests in recent years, such as the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, were organized by unspecified organizations and amounted to terrorism.

“This is the first time in American history that there is an all-of-government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism, to dismantle antifa, to dismantle the organizations that have been carrying out these acts of political violence and terrorism,” Stephen Miller, Trump’s homeland security advisor, said as the president signed the memo.

“Whether it be going back to the riots that started with Black Lives Matter and all the way through to the antifa riots, the attacks on [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officers, the doxing campaign and now the political assassinations, these are not lone isolated events,” Miller added. “This is part of an organized campaign of radical left terrorism.”*

Miller recently referred to the Democratic Party as “not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”

*This breaking news story has been updated with additional details throughout.

Next Up

DOJ Obeys Trump, Indicts Comey Days After Order to Pursue President’s Foes

Former FBI Director James Comey has been indicted on two criminal counts days after President Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue his perceived enemies more aggressively.

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GUK 9 25

Trump issued a presidential memorandum on Thursday aimed at reining in what he has called a radical leftwing domestic “terror network” but which seemed likely to meet fierce legal pushback from critics depicting it as a licence for a broad crackdown on his political opponents.

Prompted by journalists, Trump suggested that George Soros, the billionaire Hungarian-born philanthropist who funds the Open Society Foundations, could be in his sights. He also identified Reid Hoffman, a billionaire venture capitalist, adding: “I hear about him. Maybe it could be him. It could be a lot of people.”

Earlier, the Open Society Foundations had hit back at reports that the justice department was planning to target the group and criticized the Trump administration for “politically motivated attacks on civil society”.

Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a statement: “After one of the most harrowing weeks for our first amendment rights, the president is invoking political violence, which we all condemn, as an excuse to target non-profits and activists with the false and stigmatizing label of ‘domestic terrorism’. This is a shameful and dangerous move.”

At a signing ceremony in the Oval Office, the memorandum was presented as aimed at “establishing a comprehensive strategy to investigate, disrupt and dismantle all stages of organized political violence and domestic terrorism”.

It was said to be part of an administration-wide response that would include the FBI’s joint terrorism taskforces, the Department of Justice and the Department of Treasury.

The ACLU said in a statement that joint terrorism task forces “already have a long history of investigations that wrongly target protestors, communities of color, and those engaged in dissent”.

Surrounded by members of his cabinet, Trump said the goal was to target “the funders of a lot of these groups”, some of whom he claimed to know. But he was vague when asked which groups he meant or who the funders were.

“These are anarchists and agitators, professional anarchists and agitators, and they get hired by wealthy people, some of whom I know, I guess, probably know,” he said. “You wouldn’t know at dinner with them. Everything’s nice, and then you find out that they funded millions of dollars to these lunatics.”

Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School and former federal prosecutor, said the memorandum itself probably doesn’t carry much legal weight. “You can’t by executive order create new crimes. This does not create new crimes. This says you will use the Terrorism Task Force to go after things they would usually go after,” Richman said.

But, he added: “The concern is that this administration has made clear it is only interested in pursuing politically oriented terrorism that disagrees with its political agenda.”

The Trump administration does not need to create new crimes in order to do this, he said. Laws already on the books “have and continue to provide the ability to go after ideological opponents”.

Though the memorandum may not hold up in court, “I fear how far they are going to take this,” said Jason Charter, a former activist who faced charges during Trump’s first term in connection with efforts to tear down the Andrew Jackson statue in front of the White House. “Antifa is antifascism, and antifascism is a very widely shared thing, and being against fascism should not be illegal.”

“It’s trying to slap terrorism charges on people doing protected activities under the Bill of Rights,” Charter said.

The memorandum comes amid a rightwing clamor for retribution in the wake of the 10 September murder of the far-right pundit Charlie Kirk, which Trump and his supporters have blamed on an organized leftwing network, despite early indications that the suspect acted alone.

It also followed Wednesday’s deadly attack on a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facility in Dallas that killed one detainee and injured two others. One of the bullets used in the attack was inscribed with the message “anti-Ice”.

The memorandum lumps together a series of apparently unrelated episodes, including a foiled 2022 assassination attempt on the supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh, the murder of the CEO of United Healthcare in Manhattan last December, last year’s two failed attempts on Trump’s life, and unrest on the streets of Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon.

Stephen Miller, the influential White House deputy chief of staff – who has been vocal in the administration’s previous calls for a crackdown – called the initiative “historical and significant”.

“This is the first time in American history that there is an all-of-government effort to dismantle leftwing terrorism, to dismantle antifa, to dismantle the organizations that have been carrying out these acts of political violence and terrorism,” Miller said. The joint terrorism taskforce, a unit inside the FBI, would be “the hub” of the effort, he added.

He said “an entire system of feeder organisations” were funding “harassment, doxing, intimidation and, ultimately, attempted assassinations” of public officials.

“It is all carefully planned, executed and thought through,” said Miller. “It is terrorism on our soil. We are going to use the entire force of the federal government to uproot these organizations, root and branch.”

Trump and his allies have portrayed political violence as a phenomenon primarily associated with the left, overlooking recent incidents in which Democrats have been targeted by people who are believed to be rightwing extremists or incidents in which the perpetrator’s motives are unclear.

Postingon his Truth Social network on Wednesday, Trump clearly tied the Ice facility attack to the Democrats and their criticism of his immigration crackdown in a manner resembling his response to Kirk’s killing.

“This violence is the result of the radical left Democrats constantly demonizing law enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to “Nazis,” he wrote. “The continuing violence from Radical Left Terrorists, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, must be stopped. ICE Officers, and other Brave Members of Law Enforcement, are under grave threat.”

But authorities on Thursday said that they did not find evidence that the suspect was a member of “any specific group or entity, nor did he mention any specific government agency other than Ice”.

In the wake of Kirk’s killing, Trump issued an executive order designating antifa, a loose network of groups that has been involved in confrontations with the far right, as a “domestic terrorist organization”.

The new memorandum states: “This political violence is not a series of isolated incidents and does not emerge organically. Instead, it is a culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.

“A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies – including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them – is required.”

“Intimidation tactics against those standing up for human rights and civil liberties are sadly not new in the history of this country,” Shamsi, the director of the ACLU’s national security project, said. “In an earlier era, civil rights movement leaders were also labeled security threats and investigated, monitored, threatened, and even arrested.”

*Lauren Gambino contributed reporting

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