PPL LOSE CONST RIGHTS
1021 BELATED
MERRI OK
see 1st amend ACTIVIST SUPPRESS, STUDENT SUPPRESS --> FAscism
aha yikes this is seen as rightEous corrective action, punishment of those ppl
see ACAD SUPPRESS HARVARD 7 25
SEE ACTIV SUPPRESS KIRK 6 ANTIFA TERROR BS 3ILLEGAL TO VIDEO ICE 1 26 GGL PRIVacy 1st amend
// PRESS SUPPRESSION 1ST SULLIVAN
SEE FASCISM KIRK 5 SHOOT ~ KIMMEL SOROS
SEE ACLU
SEE 4TH AMEND SRCH SIEZE ~ KAVANAUGH RULE 6-3 DISSENT
SEE SHADOW DOCKET
SEE PNSM-7 MAMDAMI ACT CHIP ROY
SEE THOM
SEE IRATE
note ppl get const rights via amendment, slow hard, vs corps get given to them by scotus?!
erode incrementaL ATTACK START WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS, STATE OF EXCEPTION/ EMERGENCY POWERS? CDA 1ST NATIONS WATER PROTECTORS FROM CORP PIPELINE DAPL
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Political showdown in NC as HOAs ban election signs
an 10 26
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PPL LOSE 6TH? 14TH? STATE OF EXEMPTION?
AN 9 26
Trump just activated a secret 1990s court
Thom Hartmann September 16, 2026
Last Friday, for the first time in American history, a brand new court in America deported to Afghanistan Nazira Haji Zada, a 47-year-old lawful permanent resident living in Fort Worth. She was never charged with a crime, and wasn’t allowed to see the evidence against her (and neither were her lawyers). Attorney General Todd Blanche called the whole thing “a win for national security and the rule of law.”
This was possible because, in a moment of national hysteria following the Tim McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma City in the 1990s, Congress authorized the creation of the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, something so counter to normal American concepts of the rule of law and fair play that no president before now had been willing to use it.
Until, of course, Trump.
When I was around twelve, my dad gave me his tattered copy of a paperback of Franz Kafka’s short novel The Trial and told me he wanted to discuss it after I’d read it. The book gave me nightmares for weeks, which was clearly his goal.
He was a tool-and-die maker in Lansing, a WWII vet, and a man who’d volunteered in 1945 to go fight and even die to defeat fascism and defend the rule of law. He saw The Trial as the essence of why he’d joined the Army straight out of high school.
The Trial opens with a bank clerk named Josef K. being dragged out of his bed one morning by two officers who won’t tell him what he’s being charged with. They made clear that even they didn’t know what his crime was.
Over the following year he’s pulled deeper and deeper into a dark court that’s never held in public or official buildings, whose judges he never sees, and whose files are “secret” and thus not available to him or his lawyer. Nobody ever sees or says what Joseph K. was accused of, and his attorneys advise him it’s best to stop asking because the fact that he was arrested in the first place will be considered by the court as all the proof they’ll need of his guilt.
The story ends when two men in frock coats drag him out to a quarry at night and carry out his execution as mandated by the secret court:
“Where was the judge he had never seen? Where was the high court he had never reached? He raised his hands and spread all his fingers.
“But the hands of one of the men closed around K.’s throat, while the other drove the knife deep into his heart and turned it there twice. With failing eyes K. could still see the two men close in front of his face, cheek pressed to cheek, watching the outcome. ‘Like a dog!’ he said…”
When Kafka wrote that in 1914, he was a Jew living in Prague inside a dying empire. He never lived to see Hitler or the Gestapo or Putin build the very thing he’d imagined, but my dad did which is why he’d given me that book so I could understand what a police state would feel like from the inside. He told me repeatedly throughout my life that “only the rule of law” and the Constitution protected us from the tyranny he’d volunteered to fight as a teenager.
I got a glimpse into that world myself twenty-some years later, in the winter of 1986, when my teenage daughter and I crossed through Checkpoint Charlie and were picked up in East Berlin by a young gypsy cab driver named Torsten. Before we’d traveled even a full block he had us rehearsing a cover story, that we were his cousins from the West, in case the Volkspolizei or the Stasi pulled us over.
That’s because in East Germany — where the secret police were then largely run by a guy named Vladimir Putin — Torsten knew that anybody could be hauled into jail at any time for any reason and nobody would ever have to explain why.
What happened Friday here in America is the Trump administration’s version of the same thing:
— Under this bizarre law in these secret courts, 8 U.S.C. § 1534, the judge reviews the government’s classified evidence alone, in chambers, and neither the accused nor the public may learn what it is or where it came from beyond an unclassified summary.
— The Federal Rules of Evidence don’t apply.
— The government may use the fruits of FISA wiretaps and warrantless physical searches, and the accused is specifically denied the right to suppress evidence she claims was gathered illegally.
— You get a court-appointed “special attorney” with a security clearance who can look at the secret file on your behalf, but that lawyer is forbidden by law from telling you or other lawyers what’s in it, and if he does he faces ten to twenty-five years in federal prison.
Kafka gave Josef K. a lawyer who couldn’t see the file with the charges against him. Now Trump mandates a lawyer who can see the file, but goes to prison if he talks about it to any other living being.
Zada’s public defenders put it plainly before she was chained and thrown onto the plane to Afghanistan:
“Dragging lawful permanent residents into court but refusing to show them or their attorneys the evidence that will be used against them is a plain violation of due process,” they said in a statement, adding that her consent to removal “should not be seen as an endorsement of this court’s legitimacy.”
This secret court is only the most recent brick in the fascist wall Trump, his tech bro billionaire supporters, and his fascist lickspittles are building around what used to be American law. Last year he sent 238 men to life sentences in to a torture prison in El Salvador — most with no criminal record whatsoever — without even bothering with a hearing for them.
One of them — a gay makeup artist named Andry Hernández Romero who was snatched by masked, armed men at the asylum appointment the government had set up for him — was shipped off to his life sentence in a foreign hellhole on the strength of crowns tattooed above the words “mom” and “dad”; he spent 125 days incommunicado before a prisoner swap got him out.
Shades of Joseph K. 109 years later.
ICE today is holding roughly 65,000 people in detention, most of them never convicted of even any minor crime (being in the country without papers is a civil infraction, not a crime) and never having seen a real judge or courtroom. Most will wait months for a hearing that may never come, a clear violation of their Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
In their frantic efforts to purge America of nonwhite people, Trump’s racist toadies have frozen our refugee program since he was sworn in a year ago January, with more than 100,000 fully vetted people stranded abroad. We’ve only admitted 6,069 refugees, and all but three were lily-white South Africans.
These misogynist white supracist fascists are also purging our government’s own institutions of women and people of color. Whiskey Pete Hegseth has fired or forced out at least twenty generals, admirals, and senior civilian leaders; when he removed the Army’s chief of staff in April, in the middle of a war, the Pentagon announced it in true Kafkaesque fashion without even bothering to give a reason.
White South African immigrant Elon Musk’s DOGE and the OPM drove out more than 300,000 federal workers in a single year, with Black women losing roughly a third of those jobs. (I can no longer link to this because the administration deleted their workforce demographic data in March, 2025.) Many were fired with Joseph K.-style form letters that cited nonspecific “performance” issues, often sent to people who’d gotten glowing reviews just weeks previously.
One NIH analyst’s supervisor told her that management had been ordered to pick either misconduct or performance as the reason and so had simply randomly picked one. A federal judge correctly called the entire process a “sham” and when ProPublica dug into what ICE has been up to they found more than 170 US citizens who’d been dragged off and imprisoned, often for days with no access to either a phone or a lawyer, all in clear violation of the law and our Constitution.
Each of these examples of overreach and lawbreaking by Trump, ICE, and the DOJ are grounded in the same basic logic Kafka described: you are powerless before the all-knowing all-seeing state. Instead of being judged, you’re processed through an impersonal, uncaring, brutal machine.
If you’re arrested it must be because you’re guilty, even if nobody knows for sure of what. And when you ask why this is happening to you, the answer is a variation on, “You don’t need to know and, besides, we won’t tell you in any case.”
My father’s generation understood something we’ve lost track of in the years of rightwing hysteria since McVeigh and 9/11.
Our Sixth Amendment guarantees that every accused person — citizen or not — must be told the nature and cause of the accusation they’re charged with, have a public trial, and be confronted with the witnesses against them. The Fourteenth Amendment requires and guarantees due process for everybody confronted by the government, citizen or not.
When a government stops honoring the rule of law, due process, and fundamental human rights it cease to be a legitimate republic and has demonstrably slid into the early stages of being reinvented as a full-blown fascist state.
Zada may well have been involved in potential terrorist activity, although none of us will ever know because of the secretive nature of this case. If she was guilty, it should have been established in public; we have plenty of ways to protect sources and methods, when necessary, that are consistent with our Constitution.
Torsten knew what a country that doesn’t respect the rule of law and civil rights felt like. So did my dad, which is why he asked me to read The Trial when I was twelve. We’re not East Germany yet, but Trump’s clearly learned from his mentor/owner who used to run that country’s secret police, and this new terrorist court is now established as a legal precedent. Which means this is just beginning.
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“ICE agents entered a polling place to intimidate a worker about her social media posts,” said a civil liberties advocate.
Jun 25, 2026
COMM DREams
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AN 8 26
Lawsuit filed against Trump's 'blatantly corrupt' Truth Social scheme
100K$ FOR EARLY ACCESS FOR INSIDER TRADING PRED MKT; LOSING USERS 28%?
A lawsuit filed on Wednesday is challenging the legality of Truth API, a recently unveiled initiative to allow Wall Street firms to pay up to $100,000 per month in exchange for early access to potentially market-moving social media posts from President Donald Trump.
The complaint, filed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) and The Intercept, alleges Truth API violates the US Constitution’s First Amendment by granting insiders special access to the president’s announcements.
The scheme also violates the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment by “charging unreasonable sums that cannot be justified to offset the cost” of receiving the benefit of information from the president, the complaint states.
The lawsuit describes Truth API as “profoundly corrupt,” given that “the president stands to gain financially by giving ‘market-moving’ government information to those who are willing and able to pay his personal company.”
In establishing the plaintiffs’ standing, the complaint argues that The Intercept is being put at a competitive disadvantage by the scheme, given that the news outlet is “both unable and unwilling to subscribe” to it, even though it risks “losing out on timely news to competing organizations.”
Ben Muessig, editor-in-chief of The Intercept, accused the president of “trying to enrich himself by privatizing government information that he has no right to sell,” while vowing that “we won’t let that stand.”
David Bralow, chief legal officer for The Intercept, said that “nothing could be more antithetical to the free, independent press than the president charging for early access to his public announcements,” emphasizing that “public information belongs to the public.”
Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at FPF, said Truth API “is so blatantly corrupt and unconstitutional that it would have been hard to even fathom just a few years ago.”
“Trump’s crooked scheme is particularly outrageous,” Stern added, “because, as documented by our Trump Anti-Press Social Media Tracker, he frequently uses his Truth Social account to berate journalists and even to announce his plans to sue them and criminally investigate them. Then, he makes them wait in line behind paying customers to find out about it unless they’re willing to subsidize the platform he uses to attack them.”
The Intercept and the FPF are being represented in the case by attorneys from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, the Public Integrity Project, and Altshuler Berzon LLP.
Nikhel Sus, chief counsel at CREW, said his organization was “proud to represent our clients in their effort to end this corrupt and unconstitutional scheme” because “all Americans are entitled to timely access to their president’s public statements, not just those willing to pay the president’s company $100,000 a month.”
Truth API has also drawn the attention of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), ranking member of the US House Judiciary Committee, who announced a probe into the initiative last month, describing it as an “insider-information scheme” that “will enable Wall Street to profit from the president’s frequent market-moving posts on major businesses.”
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1st amend STUDENT SUPPRESS 6 26
GGL
AI Overview
The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI) is actively representing pro-Palestinian student activists at the University of Michigan (U of M). Legal actions include a federal civil rights lawsuit against U of M officials, campus police, and private contractors for the alleged targeting, surveillance, and arrest of student advocates. [1, 2, 3]
Key developments and legal actions concerning CAIR-MI and U of M students:
- Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit: CAIR-MI, alongside the Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on behalf of Josiah Walker, a Black Muslim student advocate, citing unconstitutional punishment, unlawful arrest, and harassment. [1, 2]
- DOJ Indictments: Federal prosecutors and the DOJ unsealed indictments against pro-Palestinian activists linked to the University of Michigan following coordinated FBI and state law enforcement raids. [1]
- Free Speech Advocacy: CAIR-MI has actively pushed back against disciplinary sanctions on pro-Palestinian student groups—such as the Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE)—arguing that public universities are violating students' First Amendment rights by selectively punishing them for political advocacy. [1, 2]
Review additional information on these cases via the official CAIR Press Releases or read the initial reporting from CBS News Detroit.
MICHIGAN STUDENTS DOJ 6 26 cair-mi-raises-serious-first-amendment-concerns-regarding-university-of-michigan-protest-indictments
The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI) today expressed serious concerns regarding the recently unsealed indictments arising from protests at the University of Michigan, warning that while allegations of criminal conduct should be addressed through the judicial process, charging documents should not blur the line between alleged unlawful acts and constitutionally protected political expression, peaceful protest, and advocacy on matters of public concern.
WOW MJR CYA PARa]
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NYT
Eight people who federal prosecutors said had ties to the University of Michigan were accused Wednesday of conspiring to threaten campus leaders and others into severing ties with Israel.
An indictment unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, accused the pro-Palestinian activists of crossing the line from campus protest to crimes that included threats and vandalism. The defendants face varying charges, but the indictment included federal counts of conspiracy to transmit threats, witness intimidation and destruction of property to prevent seizure.
The charges in Michigan, all felonies that carry the possibility of years in prison, appeared to signify an escalation in the federal government’s efforts to crack down on pro-Palestinian activism that roiled American campuses in recent years.
“Their criminal activity included spray-painting threats, breaking windows and throwing glass jars filled with noxious chemicals into family homes,” the indictment said. “They marked their victims with threatening symbols used by Hamas, including red inverted triangles and red handprints. They used the internet and social media to broadcast their message to ensure their threats and commitment to continuing criminal activity were heard by their victims and others who support Israel.”
The Trump administration has taken a hard line against pro-Palestinian protesters, whose activism after the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza led to tumult on campuses. Until now, the administration had mostly targeted universities themselves over their response to protests, although it did move to strip visas and deport some individual students last year.
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GUK
A Palestinian middle school student in Michigan who was publicly admonished for refusing to stand for the pledge of allegiance as part of a personal protest against the war on Gaza has settled with her school district following a lawsuit around her first amendment free speech rights.
The teenager, identified as DK in court documents, said she faced racism from a teacher at the East middle school in Plymouth, Michigan, after she did not participate in the pledge. The teacher reportedly told DK to “go back to her country”, Fox 2 Detroit reported.
In a statement following the settlement, DK called the ordeal “terrifying” and “overwhelming” at times.
“But it taught me the importance of speaking up for what I believe is right,” said DK. “I feel proud of the outcome and of being part of something that reinforces how important free speech is. I’ve learned that even when it feels uncomfortable or risky, speaking out can make a difference, not just for me, but for others as well.”
DK, who is 14, chose not to participate in the pledge on 10 January 2025 given the continuing war on Gaza.
“I decided I wanted to sit down because I didn’t feel comfortable standing because of what’s happening in Palestine,” said DK at a February press conference.
After the pledge, DK said that a teacher told the class that “anyone that was sitting down was being very disrespectful to soldiers, to America”. DK said she tried to explain her view to the instructor but was told that if she did not like the US, she should go back to her own country. DK later left the room in tears.
The Arab American Civil Rights League and the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan later filed a lawsuit in June 2025 against the Plymouth-Canton community schools district on behalf of DK.
As a part of the recent settlement, the Plymouth-Canton community schools district has pledged to provide diversity, sensitivity and first amendment training for staff. The district has also agreed not to punish DK, remove any indication from school files that suggest her protest was inappropriate and provide needed counseling.
Jacob Khalaf, DK’s father, applauded his daughter for her bravery in advocating for her freedom of speech.
“My daughter has shown her strong moral fiber throughout all of this,” he said in a statement to Fox 2 Detroit. “She had the courage to resist when a person in authority tried to make her relinquish her right to free speech, and then, with the help of the ACLU and ACRL, brought a lawsuit to make sure her first amendment rights, as well as those of others, were protected.”
A representative of the district could not be reached for comment by the Guardian.
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an 5 26
A Canadian critic of President Donald Trump is fighting to block the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from obtaining their personal and location information from Google.
A press release from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that DHS issued an "administrative demand" after "John Doe" posted criticisms of the death of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti. The individuals were killed earlier this year by federal officers who shot them during the so-called "Operation Metro Surge," in which agents were sent into Minneapolis and faced protests.
Doe's posts on X received over 100,000 views. The X account is connected to a Google account, which identifies who the individual is. However, he isn't a U.S. resident and hasn't even been in the U.S. for over a decade.
Google told the man that it can't hold out forever, but it's raising questions about the Trump administration using the power of the federal government to go after critics.
The ACLU’s complaint said that the demand for information is “a transparent gambit to chill speech the government doesn’t like.”
“I have long admired the United States for its commitment to free speech,”the plaintiff said. “Never in a million years did I think that, after criticizing the US government, I would be targeted with a summons seeking to find out who I am, where I live, where I go and what I read online.”
The ACLU's senior staff attorney, Michael Perloff, attacked the DHS effort, saying that "consequences of its potential release go beyond one individual, whether they are in the United States or elsewhere.”
Trump and his allies are known for doxing individuals, but it doesn't scare them into compliance. It has happened to federal judges who rule against the Trump administration. In one case, Trump pal Rudy Giuliani targeted two Fulton County, GA vote counters who faced death threats and harassment. They won a lawsuit, forcing Giuliani to pay millions in damages.
So far, DHS has demanded information on individuals from Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta, the New York Times reported in February, citing four people who are aware of the requests. In each case, the requests were sent directly to the tech companies, and there was no court order granting a warrant. In the past, DHS and ICE have been known to use what's called "Administrative subpoenas," which are simply written up by the departments and not issued by a court.
*The Washington Post* reported earlier this year that DHS is increasingly relying on the use of administrative subpoenas to get such personal information from companies. The report cited former officials and experts who estimate there have been thousands, possibly even tens of thousands of these kinds of subpoenas that are approved by mid-level staff who have no public accountability.
One such subpoena was issued for an individual who emailed an ICE attorney asking that they "[a]pply principles of common sense and decency" in immigration cases. The individual who sent the email filed a motion to quash, saying that the administrative subpoena was motivated by his speech and violated his First Amendment rights.
“Not satisfied with trying to suppress speech at home, the Trump administration is now targeting dissenters abroad,” the ACLU's Perloff said of the latest case of the Canadian.
Google said it requires that government requests not be overly broad.
“When we receive a subpoena, our review process is designed to protect user privacy while meeting our legal obligations,” a spokesperson told CBC News. “We inform users when their accounts have been subpoenaed, unless under legal order not to.”
Google didn't comment on whether it requires the subpoenas to come from a court or whether it accepts the made-up subpoenas issued by DHS.
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NO LNX
Inside the GOP's sinister new weapon
:{Rep. Chip Roy of Texas in Kissimmee, Florida
Thom Hartmann April 27, 2026
Republicans are at it again, and it’s hard to overstate how chilling this is and what it tells you about the direction people in this Party want to take America.
Texas Congressman Chip Roy is preparing to introduce legislation he’s calling the “MAMDANI Act,” named after Zohran Mamdani, the recently elected democratic socialist mayor of New York City, that would let the federal government bar entry to, deport, and strip naturalized citizenship from any person who advocates for or is “affiliated with” what Roy calls “totalitarian” movements. The list includes, from Rep. Roy’s webpage:
“[A] socialist party, a communist party, the Chinese Communist Party, or Islamic fundamentalist party, or advocates for socialism, communism, Marxism, or Islamic fundamentalism.”
The bill targets people who “write, distribute, circulate, print, display, possess, or publish” material supporting socialism or any of those other ideas.
“Possess?” That single word means that owning a copy of Marx’s Das Kapital, or a pamphlet from a Palestinian solidarity group, or a battered paperback of Howard Zinn — or maybe even one of my books on the New Deal — would be enough to make a green-card holder or a naturalized citizen “inadmissible or deportable.”
“Affiliated with?” That would prevent anybody who’s ever affiliated themselves with the Democratic Socialist Party in New York that Mamdami ran on behalf of (along with the normal Democratic Party; New York has fusion voting so you can run on two parties simultaneously) from staying in America. Gone to a meeting, rally, or put yourself on their mailing list? You’re toast.
“Write?” That means they’re coming for me, and for you if you’ve ever echoed in writing the kind of sentiments that Republicans call socialism, including food stamps and school lunches, free college, public libraries, a national healthcare system, police and fire, and highways that don’t have tolls. (When billionaire David Koch ran for vice president in 1980 on an antisocialism agenda, he called for the end of all these forms of “socialism”.)
“Distribute?” And they’d be coming for Substack, too, it appears. Along with your local bookstore or library.
We haven’t seen anything this sweeping since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, when then-President John Adams had roughly 30 newspaper editors and publishers thrown in prison for attacking him. Ben Franklin’s grandson was arrested for publishing an op-ed calling the president “old, querulous, Bald, blind, crippled, Toothless Adams.” A town drunk in New Jersey was arrested for criticizing him while imbibing in a bar. Adams’ overreach lost him the election of 1800 to his then-political enemy Thomas Jefferson, who openly opposed the Acts.
But here we are again, and here’s another dangerous overreach on the GOP’s part in this legislation: Roy’s bill explicitly forbids judicial review of any inadmissibility, deportation, or denaturalization decision made under it.
In other words, if this law passes, then no court can stop or second-guess the government: no habeas corpus, no meaningful appeals; just an order from the Attorney General or some twit at ICE or Homeland Security and you’re on a plane or stuck in a hellhole “detention facility,” possibly for the rest of your life.
That’s not immigration policy, that’s the architecture of a police state, and it’s modeled on how the Nazis stripped citizenship from German Jews and political dissidents in 1935 under the Reich Citizenship Laws.
I’ve walked through Berlin’s Topography of Terror museum, and the documents on display tell the horrific story of how that the lawyers who drafted those Nazi laws studied America’s own racial and political exclusion laws for inspiration.
Now Republican Chip Roy wants to bring them back to America as Republicans try to reinvent or country in the image of Trump’s mentor Putin’s Russia or — as the authors of Project 2025 openly suggest — Orbán’s Hungary.
The bill’s namesake, Mayor Mamdani, became a U.S. citizen in 2018 after moving here from Uganda as a child. He hasn’t been credibly accused of any crime, and as the Brennan Center for Justice meticulously documents, the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected the use of stripping people of their citizenship as a political weapon like Putin now routinely does and Trump loves to threaten.
That goes all the way back to trying to overturn the 1943 Schneiderman Supreme Court ruling, which held the government must prove “lack of attachment” to the Constitution by “clear, unequivocal, and convincing” evidence. Disagreeing with someone’s politics doesn’t cut it by a long shot. But Roy and his allies aren’t interested in the existing jurisprudence; they want to write new laws that nullify that decision (and common decency) altogether.
Roy told Breitbart his target is what he calls a “Red-Green Alliance” of socialists and Islamists, and a summary from his office goes further, claiming current immigration policies — echoing Clarence Thomas‘s recent speech that I wrote about Monday — have produced “dangerous levels of opposition to classical American political doctrines, like free-market capitalism.”
That’s an extraordinary admission, because Roy isn’t proposing to deport people who commit crimes, or who support terrorism, or even who lied on their citizenship applications. He wants, instead, to strip of citizenship and then deport people who don’t sufficiently believe in the unregulated, low-tax version of the so-called free market capitalism advocated by the rightwing billionaires who now own the GOP.
This is a loyalty test for an ideology rather than a country, and, as I lay out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, it’s the kind of legislation the robber barons of the 1920s and the John Birchers and McCarthy movement of the 1950s dreamed of but could never ram through Congress and neither Taft nor Eisenhower would ever have signed.
We’ve actually run a smaller, more local version of this experiment before, and it ended in disgrace. The Palmer Raids of 1919 and 1920 saw roughly 10,000 immigrants rounded up without warrants and 556 of them deported, including the anarchist Emma Goldman, all for the crime of holding the wrong politics.
The Communist Control Act of 1954 put into law by Republicans at the height of McCarthyism, was eventually declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1973 and most of its provisions repealed. Each time we’ve tried this sort of neofascist thing the country looked back in shame, having relearned that the First Amendment doesn’t have an exception for people who say we should tax the morbidly rich to build and support a middle class.
History tells us, over and over again, that once you give the government the power to disappear people for what they read, write, believe, or advocate that power never stays trained just on the original targets.
There are nearly 25 million naturalized citizens and 12.8 million green-card holders living in the United States today, and every single one of them would, under Roy’s bill, be subject to having their citizenship reviewed and potentially revoked based on some rightwinger complaining about them to a federal bureaucrat or police agency or the discovery of a book in their house.
It would threaten millions of legal permanent residents and visa holders working in our hospitals, building our houses, teaching our children, designing our electronics, and even farming our food. The fear alone is the point: if you’re a naturalized citizen or green-card or visa holder and you want to attend a Free Palestine rally, a labor union meeting, or a tenants’ rights organizing session, you’d now have to ask yourself whether some aide in Stephen Miller’s office might decide that constitutes “advocacy for socialism.”
And it’s one of dozens of similar laws that have been proposed by Republicans in recent years.
Presumably, this is the sort of thing that the billionaire who funded JD Vance’s rise to the Senate and vice presidency meant when he famously said, “I no longer believe freedom and democracy are compatible.” That’s the billionaire whose company now compiles information on Americans on behalf of the Trump regime.
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AN 4 26
More than friendly to fascists both abroad and at home, the Trump administration is now seeking to destroy the Southern Poverty Law Center -- historically one of the nation's most powerful and effective opponents of the Ku Klux Klan, American neo-Nazis and other white supremacist movements.
This was the latest in a long series of signals from the White House to the president's swastika-flying fans. It means that such groups need no longer fear a resolute federal response to their criminality.
On April 22, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced -- at a blatantly political press event -- that the Justice Department has indicted the SPLC for "wire fraud, false statements, and conspiracy to commit money laundering." The indictment, described by Patel as "massive" and "sweeping," relies on the notion that the SPLC 's use of paid informants in violent white supremacist outfits such as the Klan and the neo-Nazi National Alliance and Atomwaffen somehow defrauded its donors.
Blanche and Patel went on to assert that those payments -- which over the years amounted to millions - had financed the continued existence of those groups, a claim echoed in right-wing media outlets. In the New York Post, for instance, a columnist wrote that by paying its confidential informants, the SPLC "kept relic organizations like the Ku Klux Klan on life support."
The alleged motive was to justify the SPLC's own continued existence and fundraising by maintaining a threat from fascist violence, which Republicans in Washington have persistently minimized or dismissed. Indeed, the Trump administration has hired and promoted any number of far-right extremists, especially since its return to power.
The absurdity of the indictment ought to be obvious to anyone -- including former federal prosecutor Blanche -- who knows how the FBI prosecutes organized crime, terrorism, narcotics smuggling or violent extremism, in nearly every case depending on paid informants. Over the past few decades, in fact, the FBI and the Justice Department have relied on information from SPLC and its informants to jail violent Klansmen and Nazis.
The indictment also charges that the SPLC "concealed" its identity behind false fronts when sending money to informants, following similar practices by the FBI and the Justice Department to avoid exposing their paid agents.
To suggest that the SPLC "supported" the activities of those criminal groups, as the DOJ indictment alleges, is precisely the same as saying that federal prosecutors and FBI agents were responsible for financing the Mafia, narcotics cartels and terrorism networks.
Under questioning from reporters, Blanche essentially admitted that the indictment's fundamental claim is baseless. Asked whether the indictment specifically alleged that the SPLC payments benefited the Klan, Atomwaffen or other extremist groups, Blanche admitted that it offered no such evidence. "To the extent that there's any link between that individual receiving the money and benefits to that organization," he said, "that's not in the indictment."
Not surprisingly, perhaps, former federal prosecutors who have gone after the Klan and other violent extremists were appalled by the government's attack on SPLC.
Doug Jones, who served as U.S. attorney in Alabama, described the indictment as "outrageous" and "pure political retribution" by President Donald Trump. Having taken down white supremacist gangs himself, Jones recalled how the SPLC "helped dismantle the Ku Klux Klan's operations in Alabama and beyond" in 1981, when its attorneys and investigators secured justice in a Mobile, Alabama, lynching incident.
There are dozens of similar cases in the SPLC files, including major victories against the United Klans of America, the Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Imperial Klans of America, and the paramilitary White Patriot Party and the Aryan Nations.
It isn't only liberal lawyers who can see through the flimsy accusations in the DOJ indictment. In The Free Press, Bari Weiss' Trump-friendly online publication, conservative Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld warns that "the Justice Department will have a hard time proving that the (SPLC's) use of informants amounts to fraud."
Many other right-wing commentators and organizations have welcomed the indictment as just desserts for an organization whose views they despise, particularly because the SPLC has defended Muslims, gays and trans people as well as Blacks and Jews. So much for freedom of speech, a value more likely to be upheld on the right when convenient and comforting to their own.
The most telling commentary on this disgraceful frameup comes not from liberals or conservatives but from the fascist underworld. Gleeful as they are, the fascists admit that the indictment is nonsensical and indeed view its legal falsification as evidence that Trump is truly on their side.
Curtis Yarvin, the authoritarian gadfly whose writings have influenced various Big Tech figures and others in the Trump circle, celebrated the indictment on X: "What's cool is that I don't really see a strong legal case that the SPLC shouldn't be able to run these kinds of wacky black ops. That means DOJ is prosecuting the SPLC just because it (kind of) can. If so this would be an unusual sign of 'finally getting it.'"
On the "revolutionary fascist" American Futurist Telegram channel -- whose authors include former members of the Atomwaffen neo-Nazi group, linked to at least five political murders -- the indictment won praise for the same sickening reason. They know that the SPLC, far from secretly propping up violent white nationalists, is their worst enemy.
"The SPLC was not funding racist groups to enable their racism -- they, in fact, were not funding racist groups at all," the American Futurist-linked TAF Private channel posted, according to Raw Story. "What they were doing was funding bad actors within groups, with the intention of destroying those groups from the inside."
The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as the old saying goes -- and for the Trump White House, the enemy of fascism is its enemy too.
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AN 3 26
On Monday, March 23 in the case Villarreal v. Alaniz, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Laredo, Texas-based journalist Priscilla Villarreal — who believes she was wrongly arrested while doing her work. Villarreal argued that the arrest was a First Amendment violation, but most of the High Court's justices disagreed with her appeal and declined to take the case.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, however, offered a vehement dissent in the decision, agreeing with Villarreal (who goes by La Gordiloca online) that journalism was being treated like a crime.
In a newletter published by Slate on March 26, journalist Shirin Ali emphasizes that the High Court's Villarreal v. Alaniz decision and Sotomayor's dissent come at a time when journalism is under attack from the second Trump Administration.
"This week," Ali argues, "the Supreme Court effectively shielded the nation's law enforcement from consequences when it treats journalism as a crime. In rejecting an appeal in Villarreal v. Alaniz, the Court has allowed local officials in Texas to remain immune from prosecution for arresting a journalist who published information she received from a government official. This case presented a strikingly simple question: Does it violate a journalist's First Amendment rights if they are arrested for requesting and publishing information that a government employee willingly hands over?.... The case of Villarreal v. Alaniz has been ping-ponging through the courts since 2019, when it was first filed by Priscilla Villarreal….. Things took a sharp turn for her in 2017, when she was arrested at her home for allegedly violating section 39.06(c) of the Texas Penal Code."
Ali adds, "The obscure law bans a person from soliciting or receiving nonpublic information from a public servant by means of their office or employment with the intent to obtain a benefit."
The Slate reporter notes that although a judge dismissed the charges against Villareal and criticized the Texas law for being too vague, Villareal "fought back with a lawsuit demanding damages."
In her dissent, Sotomayor laid out her arguments in favor of Villareal's position.
The Barack Obama appointee wrote, "It should be obvious that this arrest violated the First Amendment….. By arresting Villarreal, rather than solely disciplining the employee for any wrongdoing, county officials took this 'everyday journalism' and transformed it 'into a crime.' This was a blatant First Amendment violation. No reasonable officer would have thought that he could have arrested Villarreal, consistent with the Constitution, for asking the questions she asked."
The High Court's March 23 decision, Ali argues, is especially bad in light of the Trump Administration's attacks on the First Amendment.
"As we collectively watch Trump's second presidency play out, when he has weaponized every tool at the executive's disposal to attack speech he does not like —Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, late night host Jimmy Kimmel, and a slew of major national news organizations come to mind — the Supreme Court's lack of action threatens all Americans," Ali writes. "Journalists have a singular ability to hold the Trump Administration and local governments all across the country accountable, through shedding light on what they are doing and how they are wielding their power. Criminalizing this work without consequence doesn't just endanger those journalists; it threatens everyday Americans who rely on local and national reporting in nearly all aspects of their lives."
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AN 3 26
The Wall Street Journal— hardly an outpost of left-wing propaganda — reported yesterday on the results of an investigation conducted by the Journal’sHannah Critchfield and her team.
I’m summarizing it below because it deserves your attention.
Critchfield and her team found that 279 people have been accused online by the Trump administration of assaulting federal ICE and Border Patrol agents, and more than half of these people — 64 percent — are American citizens.
Of the 181 American citizens that the Trump administration has accused of attacking federal ICE and Border Patrol officers, close to half have never been charged, and none have been convicted at trial. But the public charges alone have caused them significant harm.
The investigation
The Journal’s team analyzed more than 200 videos associated with allegations of assault against ICE and Border Patrol agents, using both police body camera footage and bystander recordings from social media. Many of the videos cast doubt on the federal government’s claims that agents were assaulted.
The Journal also reviewed more than 100,000 posts on X, posts made in the last year by accounts linked to government agencies and senior government officials.
Each time the government identified a person on a post, theJournal tracked that case through the legal system to see what charges were brought, under what statute, whether the charges were later modified, and what happened to the person in the case.
One of the cases they investigated was that of Sydney Lori Reid, a 44-year-old veterinary assistant in D.C. and a U.S. citizen.
In July, Reid went to a jail to witness an immigration enforcement action. Federal officers had gone there to arrest two migrant men, and Reid said she felt a duty to document it.
As Reid began videotaping, an agent grabbed her and pinned her to a wall. Reid was then surrounded by several federal law enforcement officials. One of them was an FBI agent wearing a face covering and an FBI vest. Two others were ICE officers, dressed in plain clothes, plaid shirts, and khaki pants.
Reid was handcuffed and told she was being arrested for interfering with their operation. Videos reviewed by Critchfield and her team cast doubt on the agents’ claims.
Reid was then placed in a government vehicle and transferred to federal custody. Like many American citizens who wind up in the crosshairs of DHS, she was accused of assault.
The government alleges she assaulted an FBI agent on the basis of scrapes on the agent’s hands, but the scrapes occurred in the process of putting handcuffs on Reid.
The government later charged Reid with felony assault of a federal official, a charge punishable with up to 20 years in prison — a serious federal charge that’s being applied far more broadly now than at any time in recent history.
When Reid was being arrested, she dropped her phone, but the phone was still recording. An agent picked up the phone and put it into the same vehicle that she was riding in on her way to detention.
One officer says: “We’re at the D.C. jail. We’re at the D.C. jail. We have an agitator in custody for ...”
Reid was handcuffed in the backseat. You can hear agents going back and forth about exactly how Reid had assaulted them. First, it was a raised knee, then an elbow.
Another officer: “Yeah, it appeared that there was an elbow that was ... When she was resisting, but she definitely interfered. So we have interfering and I’m going to get ...”
One of the ICE agents called her a stupid female as he was talking to a colleague: “Hey brother, are you good? I have to return to 1D and process this stupid female now that I f------ don’t want to process her.”
Reid was held by federal authorities for roughly two days. She wasn’t allowed to make a phone call during that time.
In the aftermath of her arrest, prosecutors tried to indict her, but that needed to be done through a grand jury, and the grand jury declined to indict her. They tried again before another grand jury, which also declined to indict her. Then they went back to a third grand jury, which declined to indict her.
This is almost unheard of. It showed both the resistance from the public to charge her based on the evidence and the government’s determination to bring charges in this case.
Prosecutors ultimately charged Reid with misdemeanor assault of an officer, a lesser offense that doesn’t require going through a grand jury. Reid was acquitted of that misdemeanor charge at trial.
The Trump Administration’s Strategy
Critchfield and her Journal team found that the push to charge more people for assaulting federal officers — as happened to Reid — is an administration-wide strategy.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and her Department of Justice have pledged to prosecute these cases aggressively. From the very beginning of Bondi’s tenure, starting on her first day in office, she issued a flurry of memos, including one that encouraged prosecutors to aggressively investigate any instances of violence against law enforcement or obstruction of law enforcement.
Gregory Bovino, then the head of Border Patrol, directed his agents to arrest anyone who touched them. “Arrest as many people that touch you as you want to. Those are the general orders all the way to the top, everybody f------ gets it if they touch you. You hear what I’m saying?”
In addition to an increasing number of prosecutions, the Department of Homeland Security has been using social media to exaggerate these alleged attacks, often with a warning to the public: “Don’t be like this person. If you behave in this way, we will come for you.” And they have posted people’s pictures and their full names, seeking to make an example out of these people even before they’re convicted of a crime.
This happened to Reid. A week after she was arrested, her mug shot and name went up on the official ICE account on X, along with the fact that she’s based in Washington, D.C., and a post that said, “Assault an officer or agent get arrested. It’s not rocket science.”
ICE also publicly alleged that Reid assaulted federal agents on behalf of two alleged international gang members.
The Purpose of This Strategy
The Journal’s investigation makes clear that the purpose of this strategy has been to intimidate and silence Americans who might otherwise protest what ICE and Border Patrol are doing.
ICE publicly describes many of these protesters as rioters, agitators, thugs, and terrorists.
Here’s Vice President JD Vance speaking of Renee Good’s death:
“I can believe that her death is a tragedy while also recognizing that it’s a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of the far left who has marshaled an entire movement, a lunatic fringe against our law enforcement officers.”
And here’s then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on the death of Alex Pretti:
“This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism, that’s the facts.”
Renee Good was in her car when she was killed. Critchfield and her team found that federal government officials have accused 32 U.S. citizens of intentionally using their vehicles as weapons. DHS considers a vehicle to be a deadly weapon, justifying the use of force. Of those 32 drivers, only one pleaded guilty to an assault charge. Three had their cases dismissed; the rest were never charged.
TheJournal investigation found that in most cases where citizens were accused by the government, the outcome was similar to Reid’s.
181 citizens were accused by the government on X of attacking federal officers, but close to half of them were never even charged at all. When people werecharged, more often than not, the cases fell apart. Either they were acquitted or found not guilty at trial.
Fifteen people mentioned in government posts pleaded guilty before going to trial. Ten of whom pleaded guilty for lesser offenses than what the government initially charged them with.
Videos have often played major roles in contradicting the government’s case. Critchfield and her team viewed videos that repeatedly cast doubt on the government’s allegations. Protesters were often called violent rioters or professional agitators and accused of making physical contact in some way with agents, but video footage often showed immigration agents being the first to lay their hands on demonstrators.
TheJournal found that most of the government’s assault allegations against American protesters posted on X were unsubstantiated. Even federal prosecutors themselves acknowledged that in some cases, the evidence to back up these charges wasn’t there.
Federal prosecutors across the nation told Critchfield and her team that they are facing intense pressure to charge demonstrators and bystanders with crimes even when video evidence contradicts what officers initially claimed about what occurred, or in situations where they wouldn’t normally pursue federal charges.
The costs to those who are arrested are substantial. Even in cases where the person is exonerated, they must still deal with posting bail, securing defense attorneys, and taking days off from work to appear in court. In more extreme cases, people are doxed online and face death threats.
Reid says she’s been more hesitant about engaging in political speech, even though, as she put it, “Those are our rights as U.S. citizens and they’re being stifled.”
Conclusions
The Journal’sinvestigation concluded that:
“U.S. citizens are caught in the crosshairs of an aggressive government campaign to detain and demonize detractors, including by calling them terrorists, rioters, and agitators. The Department of Homeland Security, which was created in 2002 to protect Americans, has turned its force against U.S. citizens.”
By putting a public bull’s-eye on Americans whom the government accuses of assault, the Journal also found that the Trump administration is chilling First Amendment expression:
“People who had been accused publicly by the federal government of assaulting federal officers … are less likely to participate in protests and less likely to put themselves in situations where their name might be tracked…. There is a real pressure to crack down and send a message to people who the government views as perceived dissenters, even if video contradicts what agents have initially claimed happened.”
Again, let me remind you that this comes from The Wall Street Journal.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.}:
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no mention of don lemon?
You can’t celebrate the First Amendment with Donald Trump
Written by Matt Gertz
:{Published 03/03/26
The White House Correspondents Association has decided that now is the time to link arms with President Donald Trump. After Trump claimed Monday night on Truth Social that the group had “asked me, very nicely, to be the Honoree” at the annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner, its president, CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang, confirmed in a press release that he had accepted its invitation.*
The White House Correspondent’s Dinner — an annual event in which D.C.’s top journalists rub elbows with the people they cover and an odd array of celebrities — is, at its best, an unseemly affair excused by the conceit, as Jiang put it in her press release, that it is “a dinner that celebrates the First Amendment.” Under past administrations, there was a benefit to have the president attend the event and give a speech in which he would inevitably pay tribute to the freedom of the press.
But as a matter of principle, you can either have a dinner that celebrates the First Amendment or you can have a dinner that features Donald Trump. You can’t have both because the president holds the freedom of the press in contempt and is using the administration to hammer reporters into compliance with his whims — and everyone knows it.
Trump’s White House violated the First Amendment by punishing the AP. The president kicked off his second term by barring Associated Press reporters from the White House press pool and other events because the AP continued referring to the “Gulf of Mexico” instead of adopting Trump’s new “Gulf of America” moniker. When a Trump-appointed judge ordered the AP’s access restored on the grounds that this violated the First Amendment, the White House sidestepped the ruling by eliminating the press pool’s dedicated slot for wire service reporters.
The Pentagon replaced its press corps with Trumpist propagandists. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News propagandist, has overseen the replacement of credible reporters with MAGA shills. After handing the workspaces of national news outlets to right-wing publications and barring unescorted reporters from much of the building, in September the department rolled out stringent new reporting guidelines that nearly every member of the established press corps refused to sign on the grounds that it would make them “stenographers parroting press releases.” They were subsequently replaced by far-right outlets and influencers willing to accept those terms.
At Trump’s behest, the Justice Department targets journalists. Trump ranted about the “fake news” during a March 2025 speech at DOJ headquarters, instructing its employees to “watch for” their “totally illegal” behavior. Attorney General Pam Bondi subsequently rescinded the previous administration’s restrictions protecting journalists from prosecutorial scrutiny. Several journalists, including former CNN host Don Lemon, were arrested in January and charged with federal crimes in connection with their filming of a protest inside a Minnesota church. The same month, the FBI conducted an unprecedented search of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s home, seizing her devices as part of a leak investigation.
Trump has also suggested that Bondi could prosecute critical reporters for “hate speech” on the grounds that “you treat me so unfairly, it’s hate,” and said media pollsters whose surveys show he is unpopular “should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD.”
The FCC crackdown on free speech. Trump has frequently called for the Federal Communications Commission to rescind the broadcast licenses of ABC, CBS, and NBC in retaliation for coverage he finds unfavorable. While taking those networks off the air is not actually within the FCC’s power, its Trumpy chairman, Brendan Carr, is leveraging its authority to cudgel them into line, leading to the censoring of Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert.
An authoritarian plan for America’s media. Trump emulates the authoritarian policies of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who dismantled his country’s independent news media by steering critical outlets into the hands of his cronies. CBS News, the social media platform TikTok, and Paramount’s movie studios have already come under the thumb of the pro-Trump billionaires Larry and David Ellison — and CNN, along with HBO and Warner’s movie business, could soon follow after Trump’s threats of regulatory retribution influenced their sale.
Trump’s endless lawsuits over journalism he doesn’t like.ABC News and CBS News faced lawsuits from Trump they could have won over coverage he didn’t like, but after Trump’s reelection, their parent companies capitulated and settled them. Trump is currently suing The New York Times and several of its reporters for $15 billion over its coverage of his businesses; The Wall Street Journal, two of its reporters, several related entities, and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, for $10 billion over coverage of Trump’s relationship with notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein; and The Des Moines Register and its pollster, J. Ann Selzer, for publishing poll results that showed Trump trailing in Iowa in October 2024.
Trump is also currently suing the Pulitzer Prize Board for defamation over its 2018 award to the Times and the Post for their reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The WHCA’s Jiang should probably consult with the group’s lawyers before announcing the “awards honoring excellent journalism” she said would be given at the event — if the “wrong” honoree wins, the president attending the dinner to celebrate the First Amendment may respond with a lawsuit.
Trump is well aware that the media establishment is capitulating to his will.
“You know at some point, they give up,” he said of media owners in an interview last year with The Atlantic. “At some point they say, No más, no más.”
Now it’s the WHCA’s turn to surrender.
*Notably, Jiang did not address Trump’s assertion that he would be the dinner’s “Honoree.” That's almost certainly a lie designed to humiliate the press — Trump loves grinding them into the dirt, which is what we should expect from the forthcoming event.
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RWW
01/20/2026
by
- Sean James @ Mediaite: Trump Proclaims ‘God Is Very Proud’ of His First Year Back in the White House
The Good Lord is smiling down approvingly at President Donald Trump — according to the president.
- Ashley Parker @ The Atlantic: Trump Exhaustion Syndrome
Among the greatest tricks Donald Trump ever pulled is convincing significant portions of the population that the slow erosion of their rights is not, actually, that big of a deal.
- New York Times: How Trump Has Pocketed $1,408,500,000
One year ago, Donald Trump took an oath to serve the American people. Instead, he has focused on using the presidency to enrich himself.
- Alex DeLuca @ Miami New Times: Miami Club Plays ‘Heil Hitler’ for Right-Wing Influencers
The group was seen throwing up Nazi salutes inside the Miami Beach nightclub.
- Andrew Kordik @ Salon: The revival of Moms for Liberty
After setbacks and scandals, the group's efforts have expanded — and its role in public education is growing.
- Olivia Little @ Media Matters: Nick Fuentes’ Instagram takeover
An army of groypers is spamming Instagram with Fuentes’ content, netting millions of views.
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AN 1 26
A Reagan-appointed judge just shot a warning flare up into the night
:{Thom Hartmann January 21, 2026
Nebraska mom Jamie Bonkiewicz filmed her interaction with Secret Service agents and police who came to her door because of a tweet.
“The Secret Service came to my door today because of a tweet. No threats. No violence. Just words. That’s where we are now.”
Meanwhile, the Justice Department is going after multiple Democratic members of the House and Senate, the governors of two states, the mayor of Minneapolis, and any Republican who speaks against Trump or his lickspittles:
Jerome Powell, Lisa Cook, Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Chris Christie, Jack Smith, Christopher Krebs, James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton, Tim Walz, Jacob Frey, Miles Taylor…
Are we really losing our fundamental freedoms under Donald Trump?
Back in 1994, I was invited by a parents group in Singapore to speak about education and ADHD; my book on the topic had just made the cover of TIME magazine. I flew in, they put me up in the city/state’s fanciest hotel, and late the following afternoon I gave my speech. When, during the Q&A afterward, somebody asked me how best to institute the public school reforms I’d suggested, I said words to the effect of, “Get politically active, get your politicians involved, as they control and fund the schools.”
The room went completely quiet, which I thought odd, but then the conversation moved on and I didn’t think about it again until a few hours later when I arrived back at the hotel. My room had been ransacked. The bed was askew, drawers emptied, my suitcase all over the floor, even my toiletry kit spread across the bathroom floor.
When I called down to the hotel’s switchboard to let them know what had happened, the manager came up to my room and carefully told me that the police had visited my room while I was out.
“You must have done or said something suspicious,” he told me. That’s when I remembered the eerie silence in response to my suggestion that people get politically active.
America isn’t Singapore. Yet.
Or Russia, where even standing in the street with a blank sign will get you prison time. Yet.
Or Hungary, where posting on Facebook against Viktor Orbán will get you thrown into jail. Yet.
But we’re sure as hell moving in that direction.
Retired professor Barbara Wien stood outside Stephen Miller’s home passing out “No Nazis in NOVA” [North Virginia] fliers with his picture and the slogan, “Wanted for crimes against humanity.” Three weeks later, she was visited by agents of the FBI, the Secret Service, and a Virginia state policeman, because Miller’s podcaster wife had reportedly called them.
In addition to intimidating Wien, they had a search warrant signed by a judge and took her phone. The New York Times notes:
“The activist … has not been charged with any crime, though the Virginia State Police still have her phone. The investigation remains active, leaving it unclear whether law enforcement has since gathered additional evidence.”
Her lawyer told the Times about his client and the activists who’d been distributing similar flyers in town:
“They were speaking truth to power, and that is really at the core of our Constitution. It’s a principle and a right that our country was founded on.”
True, but the Trump regime doesn’t care about the law.
Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson had been reporting on Trump’s corruption and reorganization of our government, so FBI agents showed up at her home and took her phone, her laptop, and her sports watch, which had a record of everywhere she’d visited for the past few weeks. They were apparently looking for the names and locations of the federal employees she may have interviewed. As theTimes reported:
“It is exceedingly rare, even in investigations of classified disclosures, for federal agents to search a reporter’s home. A 1980 law generally bars search warrants for reporters’ work materials, unless the reporters themselves are suspected of committing a crime related to the materials.”
True, but the Trump regime doesn’t care about the law.
Meanwhile, a Reagan-appointed federal judge in Boston just said out loud what millions of Americans are feeling in their gut. U.S. District Judge William G. Young, hardly a lefty firebrand, looked at the evidence in front of him and concluded that the Trump administration is using the machinery of the state to punish speech it doesn’t like.
“I find it breathtaking,” Young said, that he was forced to conclude that “high-level officers of our government — cabinet secretaries — [were] conspiring to infringe the First Amendment rights of people with such rights here in the United States.”
Young was presiding over a case involving the arrest and threatened deportation of non-citizen college students and scholars who spoke out on Palestine. What troubled him wasn’t just the individual cases, but the pattern. The brown-nosers around Trump, he said (without using that word), appeared to be deliberately chilling dissent by turning immigration enforcement into a political weapon.
“The record in this case convinces me,” Young said, “that these high officials — and I include the president of the United States — have a fearful view of freedom. A view that defines the freedom here in the United States by who’s excluded.”
In other words, free speech for those who agree with Trump, Miller, Vance, Noem, et al, but fear, harassment, and punishment for those who don’t.
Then Young went farther, in a way judges almost never do. He openly described Trump’s governing style as authoritarian:
“It’s fairly clear that this president believes, as an authoritarian, that when he speaks, everyone — everyone in Article II — is going to toe the line absolutely.”
When a Reagan judge with impeccable conservative credentials and four decades on the bench is sounding alarms about authoritarianism and the collapse of First Amendment norms, it’s not partisan noise. It’s a warning flare shot up into the night.
But, of course, the Trump regime doesn’t care about norms or the Constitution. And if what’s going on isn’t clear enough, Stephen Miller posted last night about Minneapolis:
“Local and state police have been ordered to stand down and surrender.”
I spent decades doing international relief work in some of the worst places on the planet. I’ve had government soldiers threaten my life, police put automatic weapons in my face, and government ministers on three continents solicit bribes from me and my organization.
I’ve met with political prisoners and families whose members were murdered by the state for simply having the wrong political view. I’ve held children as they stopped breathing from starvation and had an aid worker shot to death in front of me.
This is the road to third-world-style-governance that our corrupt felon of a president has put America on. He justifies the execution of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, sets his rabid mobs on judges who don’t rule the way he wants, intimidates reporters and sues news outlets to shut them up, and is now threatening to deploy the full force of the federal government to silence dissent, criminalize protest, and punish individual speech he finds inconvenient.
He’s destroying our European alliance to the benefit of his friend and mentor Vladimir Putin, writing to the Norwegian Prime Minister as if Trump alone can determine American foreign policy like some sort of emperor or America’s mad king:
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace…”
He’s dragging this country step by step toward the sort of strongman state like the ones I used to work in, where loyalty matters more than the law and fear crowds out personal freedom. He’s overseeing a rapid and radical transformation of America from a democratic republic into a strongman oligarchy where billionaires like him, Elon Musk, the 13 billionaires in his cabinet, and the 140 billionaires who supported him in 2024 run the show.
He’s turned America into an oligarchy, in other words. Rich people buy pardons, corporations buy regulations and subsidies they want, and average people are screwed, particularly if they complain too loudly.
But history teaches us that oligarchies are unstable systems of government.
They typically either collapse from their own internal rot (as happened here in 1932 when the Republican Great Depression brought down the oligarchs of the Roaring Twenties) or get overthrown by their own people (as happened here in the 1860s when the fascist Confederate system that had taken over the Old South was destroyed by the Civil War).
And when oligarchies don’t collapse or get overthrown, they morph into tyranny; usually that happens within a single generation.
That’s what happened in Russia. It went from the chaos of the 1990s oligarchy to Putin’s authoritarian state in less than 20 years. It’s also what happened in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán took a newly-liberated democracy and turned it into an authoritarian state in less than a decade. It’s also what’s happening right now in Turkey, the Philippines, Brazil, India, and multiple other countries around the world.
Tyranny doesn’t typically pop up fully formed and all at once. It comes incrementally, moving step by inexorable step, until it hits a tipping point where it can no longer be stopped. Even days before that tipping point is reached, most people still think the system will correct itself, that once everyone figures out what’s happening, things will go back to normal.
They’re almost always wrong.
America is now in that dangerous zone between oligarchy and tyranny. Because of the corrupt Supreme Court Citizens United decision and its 1978 parent Bellotti, our nation’s oligarchs have controlled our politics for a solid 40 years.
They own the media, have captured the courts, and have bought most of Congress. The question for today is whether they’ll be satisfied with their comfortable oligarchy or whether they’ll join Trump and the GOP’s push for America’s final transition to outright dictatorship.
Steve Bannon told us what the goal was: “Deconstruct the administrative state.” That’s tyrant-speak for dismantling the institutions that might dare or have the ability to constrain oligarchic power.
As a result, we’re in a race against time and the window for successful action is narrowing. Every week that the Trump regime isn’t seriously challenged in the states, courts, the press, or at the ballot box, America’s oligarchs tighten their grip. Every election they buy makes the next election easier to purchase. Every judge they install makes the next judge easier to intimidate or buy off.
This isn’t alarmism: it’s the historical pattern, repeated across dozens of countries and thousands of years. I’ve seen it, repeatedly, with my own eyes.
Oligarchies either collapse or they become tyrannies; there’s no third option.
Thus, the only real question now is whether enough of us will recognize what’s happening while there’s still time to stop it. Republics like ours die — like Russia and Hungary did — when ordinary people convince themselves that the warning signs aren’t real. At least until the knock on the door comes for them.
And then, of course, it’s too late…
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AN 1 26
President Donald Trump's administration is now allegedly preventing a U.S. citizen and veteran from meeting with their attorney, according to a new report.
ABC News reported Monday that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is not allowing attorneys representing clients who are being held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the Whipple Building outside of Minneapolis. This apparently includes at least one U.S. citizen who also served in the Iraq War.
According to ABC, an unnamed "prominent local criminal defense attorney" verified that his client was a bystander witnessing an immigration enforcement operation near his home.
"They told me that because my client had not requested me by name, that I could not see him," the lawyer said. "I’ve been practicing law in Minnesota for almost 20 years, and I have never been denied access to a client."
Another attorney who withheld their name told ABC that the Whipple Building is unable to accommodate meetings between attorneys and their clients. They accused the Trump administration of denying their client a core Constitutional right that is afforded both citizens and non-citizens alike.
"One ICE agent said if we let you see your clients, we would have to let all the attorneys see their clients, and imagine the chaos," the attorney told ABC. "And I said to that person, yeah, you do have to let all the attorneys see their clients. You do have to accommodate that. That’s the Constitution. You chose to put them here. I didn't bring this guy here, you did."
Under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, anyone who is "accused" of a crime not only has the right to a speedy trial by a jury of their peers in the jurisdiction where they were charged, to be able to confront witnesses, have the process for obtaining witnesses in their favor "and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence." Attorney Robert Sicoli told ABC that there is "nothing in the Constitution that talks about accommodating the government."
"It is a violation of constitutional rights," said Sicoli, who said he was also prevented from meeting with a client detained by the federal government.
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AN 1 267
President Donald Trump's Department of Justice (DOJ) is now claiming that Americans do not have a Constitutional right to film law enforcement officers.
NOTUS reported Tuesday that the DOJ made the claim during a hearing in U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez's courtroom. The hearing was the result of ongoing litigation by Minneapolis residents over claims that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents pepper-sprayed and arrested them without cause. While the initial complaint was filed prior to the fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, the plaintiffs cited Good's death as reason to issue a temporary restraining order against federal agents.
DOJ attorney Jeremy Newman defended the recent trend of ICE agents drawing their weapons on civilian vehicles following them, saying that "following" can lead to "dangerous activity," and that it was "reasonable for officers to be concerned about their safety. NOTUS further reported that Newman cited the 2023 Molina v. Book case to support his argument that "observing and recording police is not a clearly established First Amendment right."
"It’s very clear that this is an ongoing emergency," Newman said.
However, other court cases decided at the federal appellate court level have ruled that Americans do indeed have the right to document police officers in the course of their duties. In the 2022 Irizarry v. Yehia case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that the First Amendment guaranteed the right to film police officers "subject to reasonable time, place and manner restrictions."
Judge Menendez – an appointee of former President Joe Biden — reportedly chided ICE agents for not including copies of any police reports, body camera footage or statements from agents involved in altercations with plaintiffs. Newman responded that the agency "did the best we could" as their response to the litigation was cobbled together over the holiday season.
Menendez also told plaintiffs she would rule on their petition for emergency relief by Thursday or Friday, and hinted that any ruling would pertain to their specific case, rather than a broader decision impacting all protesters in Minneapolis.
Click here to read NOTUS' article in its entirety.
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Meet the man currently leading Border Patrol's operations in LA
4TH BOVINO ICE MASS DEPORT
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Public opposition to artificial intelligence data centers—and the push by corporations and officials to move forward with their construction anyway—were vividly illustrated in a viral video this week of a woman who was arrested after speaking out against a proposed data center in her community in Wisconsin.
Christine Le Jeune, a member of Great Lakes Neighbors United in Port Washington, spoke at a Common Council meeting in the town on Tuesday evening. The meeting was not focused on the recently approved $15 million “Lighthouse” data center set to be built a mile from downtown Port Washington—part of a project developed by Vantage Data Centers for OpenAI and Oracle—but the first 30 minutes were taken up by members of the public who spoke out against the project.
As CNBC reported last month, more than 1,000 people signed a petition calling on Port Washington officials to obtain voter approval before entering into the deal, but the Common Council and a review board went ahead with creating a Tax Incremental District for the project without public input. The data center still requires other approvals to officially move forward.
“We will not continue to be silenced and ignored while our beautiful and pristine city is taken away from us and handed over to a corporation intent on extracting as many resources as they can regardless of the impact on the people who live here,” said Le Jeune. “Most leaders would have tabled the issue after receiving public input and providing sufficient notice. But you did nothing, and you laughed about it.”
Le Jeune spoke for her allotted three minutes and went slightly over the time limit. She then chanted, “Recall, recall, recall!” at members of the Common Council as other community members applauded.
Police Chief Kevin Hingiss then approached Le Jeune while she was sitting in her seat, listening to the next speaker, and asked her to leave.
She refused, and another officer approached her before a chaotic scene broke out.
City officials had told attendees not to speak out of order during the meeting, and Le Jeune acknowledged that she and others had spoken out of turn at times.
But she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinelthat she had been surprised by the police officers’ demand that she leave, and by the eventual violence of the incident, with officers physically removing her from her seat and dragging her and two other people across the floor.
The two other residents had approached Le Jeune to protest the officers’ actions.
“I never expected something like that to happen in a meeting. It was very strange,” she told the Journal Sentinel. “Suddenly this police chief showed up in front of me, and all I was thinking was: ‘Wait, what is going on? Why is he interrupting her speech? ... It felt like [police] were kind of primed tonight to pounce.”
State Sen. Chris Larson (D-7) said that “police should not be allowed to violently detain a person who is nonviolently exercising their free speech. This used to be something all Americans agreed on.”
William Walter, executive director of Our Wisconsin Revolution, filmed the arrest and told ABC News affiliate WISN, “I’ve never seen a response like that in my life.”
“What I did see was a lot of members of the Port Washington community who are really frustrated that they’re being ignored and they’re being dismissed by their elected officials,” he said.
AI data centers, he added, “will impact you. They’ll impact your friends, your family, your neighbors, your parents, your children. These are the kinds of things that are going to be dictating the future of Wisconsin, not just for the next couple of years but for the next decade, the next 50 years.”
After Le Jeune’s arrest, another resident, Dawn Stacey, denounced the Common Council members for allowing the aggressive arrest.
“We have so many people who have these concerns about this data center,” said Stacey. “Are we being heard by the Common Council? No we’re not. Instead of being heard we have people being dragged out of the room.”
“For democracy to thrive, we need to have respect between public servants and the people who they serve,” she added.
Vantage has distributed flyers in Port Washington, which has a population of 17,000, promising residents 330 full-time jobs after construction. But as CNBC reported, “Data centers don’t tend to create a lot of long-lasting jobs.”
Another project in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin hired 3,000 construction workers and foresees 500 employees, while McKinsey said a data center it is planning would need 1,500 people for construction but only around 50 for “steady-state operations.”
Residents in Port Washington have also raised concerns about the data center’s impact on the environment, including through its water use, the potential for exploding utility prices for residents, and the overall purpose of advancing AI.
As Common Dreamsreported Thursday, the development of data centers has caused a rapid surge in consumers’ electricity bills, with costs rising more than 250% in just five years. Vantage has claimed its center will run on 70% renewable energy, but more than half of the electricity used to power data center campuses so far has come from fossil fuels, raising concerns that the expansion of the facilities will worsen the climate emergency.
A recent Morning Consult poll found that a rapidly growing number of Americans support a ban on AI data centers in their surrounding areas—41% said they would support a ban in the survey taken in late November, compared to 37% in October.
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context
an 11 25
President Donald Trump’s Department of Defense is now targeting a sitting U.S. Senator, one of six Democratic lawmakers who appeared in a video reminding members of the U.S. Armed Forces and the Intelligence Community of their right to refuse to obey an illegal order.
U.S. Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), a retired astronaut and former naval officer, along with the other five said, “threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home.”
“Our laws are clear,” they added. “You can refuse illegal orders.”
In an official statement on social media, the Department of Defense alleged it has “received serious allegations of misconduct against Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.).”
It added, “a thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures.” The statement also said, “federal laws such as 18 U.S.C. § 2387 prohibit actions intended to interfere with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces.”
President Trump last week in a series of social media posts promoted hanging the six Democrats.
“It’s called seditious behavior at the highest level,” the president also charged. “Each one of these traitors to our Country should be Arrested and put on trial. Their words cannot be allowed to stand – We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example must be set.”
“Seditious behavior, punishable by death!” he continued.
Critics blasted the Pentagon’s move.
“Sen. Kelly didn’t tell troops to defy lawful orders, he reminded them of their duty to refuse unlawful ones, which is literally what the UCMJ and decades of military precedent require!” wrote The Bulwark’s Evan Rosenfeld. “Pretending that doing so is ‘misconduct’ is complete propaganda and not rooted in law.”
Punchbowl News’ Andrew Desiderio called it “Pretty extraordinary to call out a sitting senator in this way.”
The Bulwark’s Sam Stein labeled it “ham-handed,” and Bill Kristol of Defending Democracy called it “Naked authoritarianism.”
But The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg noted that the video “looks to have been an official one for which [Kelly] would enjoy Speech or Debate immunity.”
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intercept 11 25
Federal prosecutors have filed a new indictment in response to a July 4 noise demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, during which a police officer was shot.
There are numerous problems with the indictment, but perhaps the most glaring is its inclusion of charges against a Dallas artist who wasn’t even at the protest. Daniel “Des” Sanchez is accused of transporting a box that contained “Antifa materials” after the incident, supposedly to conceal evidence against his wife, Maricela Rueda, who was there.
But the boxed materials aren’t Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, or whatever MAGA officials claim “Antifa” uses to wage its imaginary war on America. As prosecutors laid out in the July criminal complaint that led to the indictment, they were zines and pamphlets. Some contain controversial ideas — one was titled “Insurrectionary Anarchy” — but they’re fully constitutionally protected free speech. The case demonstrates the administration’s intensifying efforts to criminalize left-wing activists after Donald Trump announced in September that he was designating “Antifa” as a “major terrorist organization” — a legal designation that doesn’t exist for domestic groups — following the killing of Charlie Kirk.
Sanchez was first indicted in October on charges of “corruptly concealing a document or record” as a standalone case, but the new indictment merges his charges with those against the other defendants, likely in hopes of burying the First Amendment problems with the case against him under prosecutors’ claims about the alleged shooting.
It’s an escalation of a familiar tactic. In 2023, Georgia prosecutors listed “zine” distribution as part of the conspiracy charges against 61 Stop Cop City protesters in a sprawling RICO indictment that didn’t bother to explain how each individual defendant was involved in any actual crime. I wrote back then about my concern that this wasn’t just sloppy overreach, but also ablueprint for censorship. Those fears have now been validated by Sanchez’s prosecution solely for possessing similar literature.
Photos of the zines Daniel Sanchez is charged with “corruptly concealing.” Photo: U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas
There have been other warnings that cops and prosecutors think they’ve found a constitutional loophole — if you can’t punish reporting it, punish transporting it. Los Angeles journalist Maya Lau is suing the LA County Sheriff’s Department for secretly investigating her for conspiracy, theft of government property, unlawful access of a computer, burglary, and receiving stolen property. According to her attorneys, her only offense was reporting on a list of deputies with histories of misconduct for the Los Angeles Times.
If you can’t punish reporting it, punish transporting it.
It’s also reminiscent of the Biden administration’s case against right-wing outlet Project Veritas for possessing and transporting Ashley Biden’s diary, which the organization bought from a Florida woman later convicted of stealing and selling it. The Constitution protects the right to publish materials stolen by others — a right that would be meaningless if they couldn’t possess the materials in the first place.
Despite the collapses of theCop City prosecution and the Lau investigation — and its own dismissal of the Project Veritas case — the Trump administration has followed those dangerous examples, characterizing lawful activism and ideologies as terrorist conspiracies (a strategy Trump allies also floated during this first term) to seize the power to prosecute pamphlet possession anytime they use the magic word “Antifa.”
That’s a chilling combination for any journalist, activist, or individual who criticizes Trump. National security reporters have long dealt with the specter of prosecution under the archaic Espionage Act for merely obtaining government secrets from sources, particularly after the Biden administration extracted a guilty plea from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. But the rest of the press — and everyone else, for that matter — understood that merely possessing written materials, no matter what they said, is not a crime.
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Guilt by Literature
At what point does a literary collection or newspaper subscription become prosecutorial evidence under the Trump administration’s logic? Essentially, whenever it’s convenient. The vagueness is a feature, not a bug. When people don’t know which political materials might later be deemed evidence of criminality, the safest course is to avoid engaging with controversial ideas altogether.
The slippery slope from anarchist zines to conventional journalism isn’t hypothetical, and we’re already sliding fast. Journalist Mario Guevara can tell you that from El Salvador, where he was deported in a clear case of retaliation for livestreaming a No Kings protest. So can Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, as she awaits deportation proceedings for co-writing an opinion piece critical of Israel’s wars that the administration considers evidence of support for terrorism.
At least two journalists lawfully in the U.S. — Ya’akub Ira Vijandre and Sami Hamdi — were nabbed by ICE just last month. The case against
is partially based on his criticism of prosecutorial overreach in the Holy Land Five case and his liking social media posts that quote Quranic verses, raising the question of how far away we are from someone being indicted for transporting a Quran or a news article critical of the war on terror.
Related
“Antifa” Protesters Charged With Terrorism for Constitutionally Protected Activity](https://theintercept.com/2025/10/17/antifa-ice-protesters-terrorism-texas-prairieland/)
Sanchez’s case is prosecutorial overreach stacked on more prosecutorial overreach. The National Lawyers Guild criticizedprosecutors’ tenuous dot-connecting to justify holding 18 defendants responsible for one gunshot wound. Some defendants were also charged with supporting terrorism due to their alleged association with “Antifa.” Anarchist zines were cited as evidence against them, too.
Sanchez was charged following a search that ICE proclaimed on social media turned up “literal insurrectionist propaganda” he had allegedly transported from his home to an apartment, noting that “insurrectionary anarchism is regarded as the most serious form of domestic (non-jihadi) terrorist threat.” The tweet also said that Sanchez is a green card holder granted legal status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The indictment claims Sanchez was transporting those materials to conceal them because they incriminated his wife. But how can possession of literature incriminate anyone, let alone someone who isn’t even accused of anything but being present when someone else allegedly fired a gun? Zines aren’t contraband; it’s not illegal to be an anarchist or read about anarchism. I don’t know why Sanchez allegedly moved the box of documents, but if it was because he (apparently correctly) feared prosecutors would try to use them against his wife, that’s a commentary on prosecutors’ lawlessness, not Sanchez’s.
Violent rhetoric is subject to punishment only when it constitutes a “true threat” of imminent violence. Even then, the speaker is held responsible, not anyone merely in possession of their words.
Government prosecutors haven’t alleged the “Antifa materials” contained any “true threats,” or any other category of speech that falls outside the protection of the First Amendment. Nor did they allege that the materials were used to plan the alleged actions of protesters on July 4 (although they did allege that the materials were “anti-government” and “anti-Trump”).
We don’t need a constitutional right to publish (or possess) only what the government likes.
Even the aforementioned “Insurrectionary Anarchy: Organizing for Attack” zine, despite its hyperbolic title, reads like a think piece, not a how-to manual. It advocates for tactics like rent strikes and squatting, not shooting police officers. Critically, it has nothing to do with whether Sanchez’s wife committed crimes on July 4.
Being guilty of possessing literature is a concept fundamentally incompatible with a free society. We don’t need a constitutional right to publish (or possess) only what the government likes, and the “anti-government” literature in Sanchez’s box of zines is exactly what the First Amendment protects. With history and leaders like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán as a guide, we also know it’s highly unlikely that Trump’s censorship crusade will stop with a few radical pamphlets.
The Framers Loved Zines
There’s an irony in a supposedly conservative administration treating anti-government pamphlets as evidence of criminality. Many of the publications the Constitution’s framers had in mind when they authored the First Amendment’s press freedom clause bore far more resemblance to Sanchez’s box of zines than to the output of today’s mainstream news media.
Revolutionary-era America was awash in highly opinionated, politically radical literature. Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” was designed to inspire revolution against the established government. Newspapers like the Boston Gazette printed inflammatory writings by Samuel Adams and others urging the colonies to prepare for war after the Coercive Acts. The Declaration of Independence itself recognized the right of the people to rise up. It did not assume the revolution of the time would be the last one.
One might call it “literal insurrectionist propaganda” — and some of it was probably transported in boxes.
The framers enshrined press freedom not because they imagined today’s professionally trained journalists maintaining careful neutrality. They protected it because they understood firsthand the need for journalists and writers who believed their government had become tyrannical to espouse revolution.
For all their many faults, the framers were confident enough in their ideas that they were willing to let them be tested. If the government’s conduct didn’t call for radical opposition, then radical ideas wouldn’t catch on. It sure looks like the current administration doesn’t want to make that bet.
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1ST AMEND
10/24/2025 RWW
by
- David Peisner @ Rolling Stone: A Company Is Building Communities for Right-Wing Christians. Some Neighbors Aren’t Happy
“Are you fed up with crime, corruption, and wokeness in your big, blue city?” says RidgeRunner CEO Josh Abbotoy. “Move here”
- Liliana Segura @ The Intercept: The Absurd Prosecution of a Man Who Posted a Charlie Kirk Meme
Larry Bushart Jr. posted trolling memes on a Facebook thread about a vigil for Kirk. He’s been in a Tennessee jail ever since.
The Absurd Prosecution of a Man Who Posted a Charlie Kirk Meme
By the time the cops showed up to arrest him for sharing a derisive meme responding to the killing of Charlie Kirk, Larry Bushart Jr. had posted on Facebook more than 100 times on Sunday alone.
It was past 11 p.m. on September 21, and Bushart, 61, was still up with his wife at their home in Lexington, Tennessee, a small city halfway between Nashville and Memphis. It had been a normal weekend. On Saturday, they went to see a community theater performance of “Arsenic and Old Lace.” The next day, they moved furniture to prepare for a new carpet delivery. And, as he did almost every day, Bushart spent hours on his phone, posting on Facebook a torrent of liberal memes.
Born and raised in West Tennessee, Bushart worked as a police officer and sheriff’s deputy for 24 years, then spent another nine with the Tennessee Department of Correction before retiring from law enforcement last year. His politics made him an outlier among his neighbors. Like many people, he reserved his most strident opinions for the internet. On Facebook, Bushart slammed President Donald Trump and his followers, whom he likened to a cult. He quarreled with vaccine skeptics and fought with election deniers. As things took a darker turn during Trump’s second term, Bushart posted memes decrying the president’s increasingly authoritarian moves. After Kirk’s killing on September 10, Bushart posted furiously, repeatedly, about why the right-wing activist did not deserve to be lionized — and warning about the escalating assault on free speech.
His posts were not limited to his own feed. That Saturday morning, in a Facebook group called “What’s Happening in Perry County,” Bushart spotted a thread about an upcoming candlelight vigil honoring Kirk in the county seat of Linden, a small town some 45 minutes away. He fired off a rapid series of trollish memes. One showed a scene from “The Sopranos.” “Tony, Charlie Kirk died,” Carmela Soprano says. “Who gives a shit,” Tony replies. Another quoted Kash Patel’s press conference after Kirk’s murder, where he said, “I’ll see you at Valhalla,” depicting the FBI director in a Viking costume and holding a rubber chicken. The most vulgar meme appeared to capture the moment Kirk was shot, accompanied by the words, “Release the Epstein Files.”
But it was a more innocuous post that would soon send Bushart’s life spiraling out of control. It was an image he had previously posted to his own feed to little response: a photo of Trump alongside a quote, “We have to get over it.” The meme, which had been circulating for more than a year, drew from remarks Trump made after a January 2024 school shooting in Perry, Iowa. Beneath the quote was a line providing context: “Donald Trump, on the Perry High School mass shooting, one day after.” Above the image were the words “Seems relevant today.”
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If Bushart shared the posts to taunt those mourning Kirk, the reactions on the forum remained relatively mild. “Jeez Larry, take a stress pill or something,” one man commented. “Mow the lawn, get off the computer. A simple, concise statement like ‘I HATE Charlie’ would be sufficient.” Some of Bushart’s posts were received more positively; a meme arguing that “Billionaires fund the class war. Charlie Kirk sold it as a race war” got several likes. The Trump meme, meanwhile, was ignored.
By Sunday evening, however, the posts had gotten the attention of Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems. An avid Facebook user himself, Weems had shared the information about the Kirk vigil on his own page a few days earlier. He had also posted his own emotional response to the news of Kirk’s murder in September, warning ominously about the “evil” in our midst. “Evil could be your neighbor,” he wrote. “Evil could be standing right beside you in the grocery store. It could be your own family member and you never even know it.”
Weems contacted his investigator. Just under an hour later, in Lexington, Bushart wrote a two-line post on Facebook at 7:53 p.m. “Received a visit from Lexington PD regarding my posted memes on ‘What’s Happening in Perry County,’” he wrote. The police had come at the behest of Perry County, he said, but did not elaborate.
If he was concerned, Bushart didn’t show it. He went back to posting. At 9:48 p.m., Bushart shared a meme from a page called Blue Wave 2026, featuring an unhinged-looking Roseanne Barr. “Many maga are claiming that Obama used the pressure of his office and the FCC to get Rosanne cancelled just like Trump did to Kimmel,” it read. “Except Obama wasn’t president in 2018. Care to guess who was?”
It would be his last post that night. At 11:15 p.m., police knocked on his door again. This time there were four officers, one of whom was holding a warrant for his arrest, which had been sent from Perry County. Body camera footage obtained by The Intercept shows police following Bushart inside his house and waiting while he slips on his shoes. Then they handcuff him on his front porch and lead him away.
Arriving at the local jail, the officer with the warrant unfolded the piece of paper. “Just to clarify, this is what they charged you with,” he told Bushart, pointing and reading aloud: “Threatening Mass Violence at a School.”
“At a school?” Bushart said, sounding confused.
But the officer had no further explanation. “I ain’t got a clue,” he said, chuckling. “I just gotta do what I have to do.”
Bushart laughed too. “I’ve been in Facebook jail but now I’m really in it,” he said. He hadn’t committed a crime, he said. “I may have been an asshole but…”
“That’s not illegal,” the officer said.
Bushart was booked at the Perry County Jail in Linden on September 22, just before 2 a.m. He has been there ever since. His bail was set at $2 million — a shocking amount, wildly beyond his financial capacity. Under Tennessee law, Bushart would have to pay at least $210,000 to get out of jail, under onerous conditions. Although his defense attorney has filed a motion asking General Sessions Judge Katerina Moore to reduce his bail on the grounds that he is not a flight risk and does not pose a threat to the community, a hearing on the motion was reset at prosecutors’ request. Bushart’s next court date is not scheduled to take place until December 4.
[
Related
:{:{Trump’s Cult of Power Cancels Free Speech}:
https://theintercept.com/2025/09/19/briefing-podcast-charlie-kirk-trump-right/)}:
Bushart is one of countless people whose lives have been upended due to social media posts shared after Kirk’s death. The murder triggered an extraordinary crackdown on speech, wielded against Americans from every level of government, with the White House and its allies targeting those whose public reactions they considered offensive. Vice President J.D. Vance urged Americans to report people to their employers. At the Pentagon, nearly 300 employees were investigated. And more recently, the State Department revoked the visas of people who spoke ill of Kirk.
:{:{In Tennessee, a wave of firings and suspensions took place across the state, with numerous public employees and college and university staffers punished for their posts. A high school science teacher was suspended after being targeted by the right-wing website The Federalist for an Instagram story calling Kirk a “POS” and quoting his reaction to the 2023 Covenant School shooting in Nashville, which left seven dead, including three 9-year-old students. “It’s worth to have, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights,” Kirk had said. }:
And, under pressure from Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who is running for Tennessee governor, a university fired a theater professor for posting an old article about Kirk’s comments, issuing a statement explaining that the professor had “reshared a post on social media that was insensitive, disrespectful and interpreted by many as propagating justification for unlawful death.”}:
But Bushart’s case is in a class of its own. He is almost certainly the only person who was arrested and held on a serious criminal charge for a Facebook post in the wake of Kirk’s death — a charge that seems clearly divorced from reality. Among those who have heard of it, the case has been met with shock, outrage, and considerable confusion. On TikTok, Reddit, and a “Justice for Larry Bushart” page on Facebook, many see the case as a form of government overreach that puts all Americans in danger. And though the case is undeniably part of the broader assault on free speech sparked by the Kirk assassination, it is also locally rooted: a perfect storm of bad law, overzealous policing, and a political climate that has emboldened law enforcement officials to punish perceived enemies.
At the heart of the controversy is elected Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems. In office since 2015, his previous claim to fame in Tennessee was his response to the 2018 shooting at Parkland High School in Florida, which killed 17 people. In an impassioned open letter, he criticized politicians who failed to protect students, pledging $500 of his own money to install barricade locks on school doors in Perry County. His rallying cry: “Not Our Children!”
More recently, Weems has availed himself of a Tennessee law passed after the Covenant School shooting, which sought harsh new punishments for “recklessly making a threat of mass violence.” The American Civil Liberties Union and other free speech experts cautioned at the time that the language was so broad, “it could potentially criminalize a wide range of adults and children who do not have any intent of actually causing harm or making a threat” — and this is precisely what has happened. The law has ensnared numerous students for social media activity that, by all rational interpretations, are not actually threatening actual violence. Earlier this year, ProPublica and WPLN/Nashville Public Radio reported on a group of middle school cheerleaders who were slapped with criminal charges by the local sheriff for filming a TikTok video in which one girl said, “Put your hands up,” while other girls dropped to the floor....
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AN 10 25
President Donald Trump said Wednesday his administration took action against people who burned the American flag, adding, “We took the freedom of speech away.”
While speaking at a roundtable held to discuss alleged activities of Antifa at the White House on Wednesday, Trump said the administration made it possible to act against individuals accused of burning U.S. flags, despite court rulings that protect such acts under the First Amendment.
Trump acknowledged that flag burning is considered free speech under U.S. law, but suggested his administration had acted anyway to discourage the practice, citing public disorder.
“We took the freedom of speech away,” Trump said. “Because that's been through the courts and the courts said you have freedom of speech, but what has happened is when they burn a flag, it agitates and irritates crowds, never seen anything like it on both sides and you end up with riots. So, we’re going on that basis.”
Flag burning has long been a controversial form of protest in the U.S. In 1989 and again in 1990, the Supreme Court affirmed that flag desecration is protected speech under the First Amendment.
However, Trump signed an executive order in August titled “Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag,” directing the Attorney General to prioritize prosecution of flag “desecration” when it violates existing law or “incites violence.”
The order claimed that while Supreme Court precedent protects flag burning as symbolic speech, the Court has never held that acts of flag burning likely to incite “imminent lawless action” or amount to “fighting words” are protected.
Trump’s remarks about having “taken away the freedom of speech” led to strong reactions from his critics, with many calling it an admission of guilt.
Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) wrote on the social platform X: “The President can't take away Free Speech, but he sure IS actively trying to SUPPRESS it.”
Former U.S. ambassador Luis Moreno said: “This is not politics as usual. This is not the standard GOP vs. Dems. This is a direct attack on the Constitution, specifically on the First Amendment. It’s authoritarianism vs. democracy. This is not a drill. It’s up to us to decide.”
Michael MacKay, a political scientist, wrote: “Trump is abrogating the First Amendment of the Constitution, knowing that no power in the United States will stop him – certainly not the corrupt Supreme Court. American fascism seems inexorable.”
Conservative political commentator Dave Hale wrote: “The one thing Trump is honest about -- his blatant authoritarianism.”
Activist Melanie D’Arrigo wrote: “Trump’s version of ‘law and order’: If you burn a flag, despite it being a protected form of free speech, you go to prison. If you beat a cop with a flag during a riot to overthrow the government, you get a pardon and job offers from ICE.”
Joshua Eakle, a communications executive with Project Liberal, wrote: “I'm so confused. I was informed over and over again in 2024 that Trump was going to be the ‘free speech President.’”
Watch the video of Trump's remarks below:
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no lnx
The next target on Trump's list should trouble all of us
Thom Hartmann
October 08, 2025
Remember the old TV crime/drama shows? A cop would bang on a suspect’s door and the suspect would say, through the door, “Do you have a warrant?” The officer would then walk away, promising to come back later with the requisite paper signed by a judge.
No more. Now they’re kicking in doors, shooting pepper-gas balls into the open windows of cars driven by reporters, smashing windows and furniture, and concealing their faces and identities like the Klan did in days of old. In Chicago, they’ve shot two unarmed people, killing one. And there wasn’t a warrant signed by a judge to be seen anywhere.
People ask, “Are we there, yet? Has America gone fascist? Are we now in a militarized dictatorship?”
Last week’s illegal, unconstitutional military assault on an apartment building in Chicago argues “Yes.” And if it doesn’t stimulate a similar level of public outrage as the Jimmy Kimmel suspension did, we’re all screwed.
And by “all” I mean you, too. None of us are safe if all of us aren’t safe. We have to stand up and speak out now.
Trump, Vance, Hegseth, and Noem carefully selected a low-income apartment building filled with Black and Hispanic people, correctly believing that the American mainstream media wouldn’t give it the coverage they would if ICE and our military had instead kicked in the doors of a building full of middle-class white people.
Soldiers rapelled from Black Hawk helicopters as some 300 masked agents ran throughout the apartment building kicking in doors, dragging American citizens out (including near-naked children) into the street and zip-tying them for hours.
They then trashed multiple apartments, ripping up furniture, smashing windows, breaking and scattering possessions, and removing and carting away phones and laptops. No warrants signed by judges were presented and one ICE thug, when asked about the shivering American citizen kids standing in the freezing cold, said, “F--- the children.”
This is the exact same sort of thing that British forces did against the colonists in the 1770s that provoked our nation’s Founders to write in the Fourth Amendment to our Constitution:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”}:
MAGA is delighted; puppy-killer Noem claims people were “clapping in the streets,” although there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of that. MAGA folks seem to think that because they’re white they’re safe from attack by this regime.
But when they’re done with the brown folks, they’ll be coming for the white people next. They’ll start with Democrats — Trump called them “Satan” last week — but history shows they won’t stop there.
It’s already started, with Trump’s most recent National Security Directive that instructs the 200-plus local police/FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces all across the country to begin investigating anybody or any group that exhibits or has ever given a donation to any group showing “indicia of terrorism” including being anti-Christian; anti-capitalism; extremism on migration, race, or gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional views on family, religion, or morality.
Do you have a queer kid? A Black or Hispanic friend? Are you a union member? Have you failed to attend church over the past few years? Are you Jewish or Muslim? Unitarian? Ever donated to a civil rights group? Voted Democratic? Or voted for a Republican who Trump despises, like Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger?
You’re next.
They may have already started surveilling you, tapping your phone, reading your emails, collecting your browser and location history.
This isn’t the first time masked, armed agents of the government have terrorized American citizens. In the late 1870s and the 1920s, in Portland, Oregon (among other cities) armed, hooded members of the Klu Klux Klan were deputized and unleashed against racial minorities, Catholics, Jews, union members, and other “criminals and undesirables.”
Oregon had been so taken over by the Klan that in the election of 1876 their electoral college votes were challenged by both parties in Congress, leading, in part, to the election being handed to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes.
Eventually, Oregon and the rest of America rejected masked secret police and vigilantes in our streets. Now, in this generation, it’s our turn.
Christopher Armitage, on his Existentialist Republic Substack newsletter, argues forcefully that masked federal agents committing crimes should be arrested by state and local police:
“Here’s what you need to know: Federal agents are committing state felonies every day. Breaking and entering. Kidnapping. Assault. When they kick down doors without judicial warrants, when they detain citizens without probable cause, when they point guns at children, these are crimes under state law. And Democratic governors have the power to prosecute those crimes …“When ICE agents face potential state prosecution for breaking down doors, they’ll start getting real warrants signed by real judges. When pointing guns at families could mean assault charges, they’ll think twice. When detaining U.S. citizens could mean kidnapping prosecutions, they’ll check IDs more carefully.” (emphasis added)}:
And Trump can’t pardon state crimes; those convicted end up in state prisons. It’s probably why, like the Klan of old, they conceal their identities.
ICE isn’t bothering to get the kinds of warrants required by the Fourth Amendment, instead they’re using “administrative warrants” signed by ICE officials; these are just window-dressing paperwork and are not legal warrants.
Armitage points out:
“So when ICE breaks down a door with only administrative paperwork, that’s burglary under California Penal Code 459. When they haul away citizens without probable cause, that’s kidnapping under Penal Code 207. When they point weapons at unarmed families, that’s assault under Penal Code 245.”}:
He correctly tells us all to contact our state and local elected officials and demand that they enforce the laws of our states.
You can duckduckgo.com search for your town’s mayor’s office, your state representative and senator, and you can call your House and Senate members at 202-224-3121.
This brutal, illegal attack on American citizens last week was the Trump regime’s most visible “crossing the Rubicon” moment. If it stands, it will become normal and none of us are safe.
When the government becomes the criminal, silence is complicity. The Fourth Amendment is not a relic or a privilege; it’s the firewall between freedom and tyranny. If we allow it to burn, we’re setting fire to the idea of America itself.
Every citizen, every journalist, every elected official who still believes in the rule of law must speak out, organize, and demand accountability before this becomes irreversible. History does not forgive those who stayed quiet while justice was destroyed in plain sight.
The time to speak out and demand action is now.
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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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Donald Trump is the greatest threat to our free speech rights
The president’s new comment demolishes the pathetic argument some elements of the right have pushed over the last week
Written by Matt Gertz
:{:{Published09/24/25}:
The greatest threat that free speech currently faces in this country is that the president doesn’t believe in it. Donald Trump treats criticism of himself, his administration, and his policies as fundamentally illegitimate, and he is eager to use government power to curtail it. When Trump’s allies downplay or spin the anti-speech activity flowing downstream from his whims, they engage in willful ignorance or deliberate deception.
Trump responded to Jimmy Kimmel’s Tuesday night return to ABC’s airwaves following a suspension his administration helped bring about by once again threatening the network with retribution. After claiming that ABC had reversed a decision (apparently announced only privately to the White House) that Jimmy Kimmel Live! “was cancelled,” the president accused Kimmel of being an “arm of the DNC,” which he alleged makes Kimmel’s show “a major Illegal Campaign Contribution.” He went on to say: “I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do.”
The president’s comment demolishes the pathetic argument some elements of the right have pushed over the last week.
According to Fox News stars, Republican members of Congress, and Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, ABC’s decision to take Kimmel off the air was purely a “business decision.” In their telling, it was simply a quirky coincidence that the move came just hours after Carr said that ABC’s affiliates and parent company Disney could “do this the easy way or the hard way” and either “take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead” — a credible threat given his history of leveraging regulatory power for the right’s benefit.
Even Senate Republicans who criticized the administration’s clear violation of the First Amendment focused their attention solely on Carr while leaving a Trump-shaped hole in their arguments.
Trump’s post, however, shows that Carr’s actions were totally in keeping with the president’s desire to use state power to try to impose censorship on media outlets. Trump is not concerned that his administration was violating the First Amendment by trying to force his critics off the air — he is concerned that it didn’t work, and he is making it abundantly clear to everyone who works for him that he wants them to keep trying.
That position is hardly a new revelation. Denunciations of critical media coverage are a hallmark of Trump’s politics, and he has frequently used personal lawsuits and government authority to try to strong-arm outlets into submission.
:{:{We saw a similar inability to grapple with Trump’s closely held and consistent position that his administration should be able to punish critics for their speech earlier this month. After Attorney General Pam Bondi declared that the Justice Department would “absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” the floodgates opened.}:
Commentators across the right condemned her comments as an affront to free speech principles. They wrote that she “fails to understand the basics of the U.S. Constitution” (the editors of National Review), lacks “a basic understanding of the First Amendment” (The Wall Street Journal editorial board), and should be fired (The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh). The response was so furious and widespread that Bondi was forced to clarify her remarks.}:
That’s commendable as far as it goes. But it’s not like Bondi is some sort of wild outlier in a Trump administration otherwise committed to free speech. When an ABC News reporter asked the president about Bondi’s remarks the following morning, he didn’t even try to distance himself from them. Instead, he told the reporter, “She’ll probably go after people like you, because you treat me so unfairly, it’s hate.”
Trump’s remarks once again give the game away — he views potential “hate speech” prosecutions as an extension of his desire for his administration to punish his critics and media outlets that publish or air them. But right-wing criticism of Trump’s comments was far more muted than the backlash Bondi faced.
Perhaps they think that it’s much more important that an attorney general support the Constitution’s protections than that the president do so. I think it’s more likely they understand the president’s position is a threat to the First Amendment, but also recognize that it is impossible to remain a conservative in good standing while voicing such concerns about the president and have simply decided not to talk about it.
Meanwhile, the president will continue his administration’s efforts to punish critics and coerce media outlets until he can turn on his TV, flip through the channels, and see nothing but Fox-style propaganda on every network.
MMA //
09/18/25 12:00 PM EDT
08/25/25 12:40 PM EDT
07/21/25
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AHA HE LOOKS FOR THE EDGE OUTLIER MARGINAL AS STARTING PT?
an 9 25 the conv
“If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail. No early exits. No nothing.” This is what US president Donald Trump
in the Oval Office in the last week in August. Ever the master media manipulator, America’s communicator-in-chief issued this as an executive order. VID]
An executive order is issued by the president and doesn’t need to be passed by Congress. They are, however, expected to relate to existing law. Trump so far has signed 196. His latest directive, which aims to restore “respect, pride and sanctity” to the US flag, instructs the Department of Justice to investigate instances of burning the nation’s insignia under particular circumstances.
While the practice of flag burning as protest has a long history in the US, dating back to the US civil war, it is not a regular occurrence, and has been constitutionally permitted for decades.
The issue is already creating divisions among Republicans. There are three broad categories of GOP reaction. First, the Maga faithful are unlikely to complain. Unconditional support for their leader is a key trait of this group. And the executive order includes language with guaranteed appeal to those for whom terms such as “American patriots” and “foreign nationals” are predictable triggers. The president has long excelled at rallying his supporters on flag-related matters.
Beyond red-meat-for-the-base appeal, both the executive order and GOP support for it get a little more complex. Traditional conservatives, including Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, are a group that may have strongly negative feelings about flag burning, but their adherence to the first amendment and associated freedom of expression would generally override this.
Those who hold constitutional principles in high regard are increasingly concerned about a president demonstrating his desire for expansive power. And, the US Supreme Court has clearly ruled on more than one occasion that the act, however distasteful, is constitutionally permitted.
Antonin Scalia, the late Supreme Court justice and noted constitutional textualist, famously stated that “if it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag”. But, he added: “I am not king.” Alongside the more centrist Anthony Kennedy, these justices upheld the right to burn the US flag in the 1989 landmark case of Texas v Johnson, despite Scalia’s personal distaste for the act. In his writings, Scalia differentiated between the form of expression that was flag burning, and an act of insurrection, which, he noted, was “something quite different”. The first amendment, as he understood it, allowed for symbolic political protests, regardless of how offensive such expressions might be to patriotic sensibilities.
Already, analysts have highlighted how the president’s efforts to sidestep the constitution are laden with problems. Executive orders cannot override a Supreme Court ruling. Even Donald Trump should know that.
Getting around current law
What the executive order does attempt to do is to get around the law that allows flag burning. To do so, it focuses on associated crime such as property destruction, open burning violations and disorderly conduct. The attorney general, Pam Bondi, was instructed to pursue cases against those who “incite violence or otherwise violate our laws while desecrating this symbol of our country”. So, when someone is (legally) burning a flag, they may be acting illegally at the same time by, for example, committing a hate crime. And this could trigger prosecution.
Donald Trump signs an executive order on flag burning.
Furthermore, the executive order nods to a key flashpoint of the current climate by leveraging immigration law, and potentially facilitating the deportation of non-citizens who engage in flag-burning. Beyond the smoke-filled headlines, what this ruling does is circumvent the core ruling of Texas v Johnson by focusing on the circumstances surrounding any flag burning, rather than the act itself. A further aspect will involve the extent to which the courts could expand existing first amendment exceptions. This can only make for nervous constitutional conservatives.
The third group who mostly reside on the Trumpian side of the partisan fence are libertarians such as Republican senator Rand Paul. In a similar vein to their conservative counterparts, their worldview would sit uncomfortably with the president’s foray into testing constitutional principles, and not standing up for more wide-ranging free speech.
Flags and freedom
Libertarians tend to feel strongly about freedom of expression. And when their president picks a fight with the first amendment for no apparent reason beyond a mention he made of it on the campaign trail, he may end up aggravating more supporters than he pleases.
Writing on Reason.com, libertarian journalist Robby Soave argued that Trump is the “last person who should confuse protected speech with incitement to violence”. He added: “Any administration that purports to care about freedom of speech should easily reach the conclusion that criminalizing provocative yet nonviolent acts of political expression is a violation of this principle.”
For a president who deliberately and controversially appointed “Scalia-like” judges during his first term, his latest executive order seems at odds with this vision. Such inconsistency, for what may involve more Justice Department smoke than actual fire, may not serve the president well if many conservatives remain uncomfortable with the move.
To misquote a famous phrase attributed to Voltaire, the US Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that whatever a majority of the justices think of those who actually want to burn the US flag, they will all but defend to the death your right to burn it.
The waters are further muddied now that a self-described combat veteran has set fire to the flag in response to the executive order. It is unlikely he is a “sandal-wearing weirdo”. Hence, the president’s patriotic script may end up somewhat singed around the edges.
Clodagh Harrington, Lecturer in American Politics, University College Cork
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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an 8 25
Veterans and legal analysts say the Trump administration’s arrest of a former army sergeant and roadside bomb victim marks an escalation in the administration’s attacks on first amendment rights, reports the Guardian.
Officials arrested Afghanistan war veteran Bajun Mavalwalla II for “conspiracy to impede or injure officers” after joining a demonstration against federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Spokane, Washington.
“Here’s a guy who held a top-secret clearance and was privy to some of the most sensitive information we have, who served in a combat zone,” said Kenneth Koop, a retired colonel who trained the Afghan military and police during Mavalwalla’s deployment. “To see him treated like this really sticks in my craw.”
READ MORE: Emotionally damaged Trump is a born loser
The Guardian reports Mavalwalla was not among the more than two dozen people arrested at the scene of a June protest that left a government van with a broken windshield. Nevertheless, FBI officials arrived at the door of Mavalwalla and his Afghanistan war veteran wife one month later.
According to the indictment, Mavalwalla and his co-defendants “physically blocked the drive-way of the federal facility and/or physically pushed against officers despite orders to disburse and efforts to remove them from the property”.
Video shows Mavalwalla, who has no criminal record, locked arms with other demonstrators to block a gate.
Mavalwalla has pleaded not guilty, and the Guardian reports Richard Barker, the former acting US attorney for eastern Washington state, resigned before signing the arrest warrant.
READ MORE: The last straw for the Supreme Court could spell trouble for Trump
“I am grateful that I never had to sign an indictment or file a brief that I didn’t believe in,” Barker wrote on Linkedin.
However, replacing Barker is Trump-appointed acting US attorney Pete Serrano, which the Guardian reports as having filed an amicus briefat odds with the 14th amendment. Serrano also has no prosecutorial experience and has described Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol rioters as “political prisoners.”
Luis Miranda, former chief spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, told the Guardian Serrano appears willing to test the waters for Trump’s use of political detainment.
“He’s a test case to see how far they can go,” said Miranda.
Read the full Guardian report at this link.
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an 7 25
no lnx
One Trump court case will determine whether America will still have a democracy
Sabrina Haake, Raw Story July 26, 2025
Oral arguments were heard this week in Harvard v. Trump’s cross motions for summary judgment. Summary judgment, or “judgment on the papers,” means both sides agree on the facts but disagree on how the law applies to those facts.
Neither Harvard nor the Trump administration dispute that Trump made certain unprecedented written demands to the University, accompanied by unprecedented threats if they refused to comply.
Harvard refused to comply, and sued instead.
Whichever party loses summary judgment will appeal, and the final disposition will likely, eventually, come from the Supreme Court. If the high court’s republican majority further empowers Trump’s edicts under their misguided “unitary executive theory,” our 249 year history of ideological freedoms will come to an end and the nation will yield to Trump’s revenge.
Trump’s pressure campaign against Harvard
The Trump administration, ostensibly seeking to reduce campus antisemitism following widespread protests over Gaza, threatened to withhold billions in federal funding from Harvard, place a lien on University assets, and put academic departments in receivership, unless Harvard agreed to:
Exclusively promote faculty committed to Harvard’s mission and Trump’s viewpoints;
Submit the university to a Trump administration review of “viewpoint diversity;”
Scrutinize any “programs and departments” that might, in Trump’s judgment, fuel ‘antisemitic harassment;’
Submit all faculty to outside review for alleged ‘plagiarism;’
Submit to a comprehensive hiring and review audit conducted by the federal government;
Implement a comprehensive mask ban and suspend anyone who wears a mask;
Report to the federal government on any faculty members who “discriminated against” Jewish or Israeli students;
Screen student applicants to reject those with viewpoints “hostile” to Trump/ Israel’s policies;
Establish outside review for Harvard programs that reflect “ideological capture” ie, programs where classroom messaging does not reflect Trump-supportive dogma;
Diminish the influence of its own professors and faculty over the university; or
Establish “merit based” hiring and admissions policies that pleased the Trump administration.
The oral argument
Oral argument was both testy and basic. The lone DOJ lawyer arguing the motion, Michael Velchik, asserted that the administration “has the power to decide” where it will spend taxpayer money and that, “the government does not want to fund research at institutions that fail to address antisemitism to (the government’s) satisfaction.” According to Velchik, when Harvard refused to go along with Trump’s demands, Trump was free to terminate any and all contracts with the university.
Trump essentially argues that the federal government can terminate or withhold funds under a contract for any reason at all, even if that reason violates free speech, the right of free association, or any other rights protected under First Amendment.
Steven Lehotsky, Harvard’s counsel, countered that Trump’s attempts to control the University, including telling the University what it can teach and how it can teach it, represents Trump’s blatant “and unrepentant” violation of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has long held viewpoint discrimination to be such a serious violation of the 1st A that it is treated as ‘presumptively unconstitutional.’ Lehotsky argued plainly that, “It’s the constitutional third rail, or it should be, for the government to insist it can engage in viewpoint discrimination.”
Trump has been consistent in his belief that he can punish speech and political conduct he doesn’t like, notwithstanding clear and unequivocal legal precedent to the contrary. He has applied the same strong-arm tactics to boardrooms and corporations, national media outlets, law firms, and, most recently, comedians. If the Roberts court continues to enable him, Trump will extend the same reasoning to imprison or otherwise punish anyone who criticizes him, following the same authoritarian playbook that produced such hits as Nazi Germany, Viktor Orban’s Hungary, and Putin’s Russia.
How does Trump tie withdrawal of medical research funding to the civil rights of Jewish people?
Even if Harvard allowed the expression of antisemitic views on campus—despite a strong Jewish presence among Harvard faculty—there still has to be some nexus, or some connection, between what the government is trying to fix (antisemitism) and the methods it uses to fix it. The judge went to the heart of this concept when she asked Trump’s counsel to explain the relationship between antisemitism and cutting off unrelated cancer research funding, noting that Trump is “not taking away grants from labs that have been antisemitic.”
An amicus brief filed in the case by Jewish scholars also points out that Trump routinely uses “antisemitism” as a ruse to attack freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom of association. As noted in their amici brief, many Jewish scholars reject the notion that being Jewish “requires adherence to a specific conception of Zionism or support for the Israeli government or its policies and practices.”
Judge Burroughs noted that if Trump, or any federal administration, could punish a university without due process simply because they don’t like their politics, or their message, or the substance of their curriculum, the constitutional consequences would be “staggering.”
The outcome of Harvard v. Trump will determine whether we still have a democracy
Harvard v. Trump asks the most fundamental questions one can ask about the relationship between the government and the governed. Under the First Amendment, can the federal government control what is taught in the classroom and what is said on campus at various universities? Can the federal government withhold federal funds if it doesn’t like what it hears, or doesn’t agree with the viewpoints expressed?
If the answer is no, then our Constitution stands. Trump will join a 249 year line-up of presidents who have to grin and bear it when students call them ugly names and protest their policies. Who knows, Trump might even someday learn why the framers made free speech and association the very first amendment to the Constitution.
But if the answer is yes, the First Amendment will fall under the Roberts court, and there’s no reason to believe any other Constitutional protection will stand. Trump will forcibly insert his right-wing ideology onto campuses, boardrooms, and legacy media nationwide. That ideology will serve a madman’s lust for power and revenge, and America’s democracy will cease to exist.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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NOTE LEGACY MEDIA CNN NBC ~ OBAMA TRAITOR BS
As Trump struggles to deflect from reporting on his Epstein ties, MAGA media set their sights on the press
It’s getting really bad out there
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 07/23/25 MMA
Six months into Donald Trump’s second presidency, an unhinged MAGA media is infested with calls for the arrest of former President Barack Obama — and one prominent right-wing commentator is even floating legal consequences for journalists who debunk their twisted rationale.
On July 18, amid a Trump administration effort to stave off a MAGA revolt over its handling of disclosures related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard released documents she claimed proved the existence of “a treasonous conspiracy” by the Obama administration following the 2016 election against Trump, claiming she had asked the Justice Department to investigate further. The president piled on in remarks to the press on July 22, claiming that “we caught Barack Hussein Obama” and accusing him of “treason.”
This argument is based on either malice or stupidity. Gabbard is conflating the findings of a December 2016 document showing that the intelligence community did not assess that the Russian government had hacked election systems and changed vote totals to benefit Trump with those of a January 2017 assessment that the Russian government had sought to influence the campaign to benefit Trump by, among other things, hacking Democratic email servers and releasing the contents.
Based on that faulty premise, Gabbard accused Obama and his advisers of subverting the intelligence community for political aims. But the December 2016 assessment is consistent with what the Obama administration was saying publicly at the time, while the findings of the January 2017 assessment were reiterated in Trump administration reports by the Justice Department as well as a Senate committee helmed at the time by current Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Indeed, that committee reviewed the January 2017 intelligence community analysis and concluded it was an “impressive accomplishment” that “reflects proper analytic tradecraft” and “provides a proper representation of the intelligence” and that the analysts who produced it faced “no politically motivated pressure.”
Members of the right-wing media ecosystem, with few exceptions, do not care about these facts, and they are using incredibly demagogic language to rile up their audiences as they call for political retribution.
Benny Johnson is floating a “military tribunal” for Obama; Mike Davis says the former president should “lawyer up”; Charlie Kirk wants “perp walks”; Liz Wheeler is demanding that the charges be not “perjury” but “treason”; Jesse Watters is asking a U.S. senator whether Obama should “go to prison.” They have apparently learned nothing from overpromising on Epstein only for the Trump administration to under-deliver when the facts couldn’t match the MAGA narrative.
Indeed, according to Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist and a Fox contributor, even typing the preceding paragraphs casting doubt on the validity of Gabbard’s argument should expose me to legal exposure. In a July 22 thread, she described Gabbard’s “revelations” as “the biggest scandal in our history” and condemned media outlets for “ignoring” and “downplaying” it.
“Every time the Washington Post, CNN, the New York Times, Margaret Brennan, The Atlantic, etc., lie and say this story is not a big deal, they are perpetuating their seditious conspiracy,” she added. “Creative minds should think about what legal exposure they have for their role in this.”
Hemingway went on to describe those outlets and journalists as “co-conspirators” in the alleged plot. She did not identify the legal consequences she believes they should face. Nor is it clear what this legal argument would mean for conservatives like her Fox colleague Andrew McCarthy or Eli Lake, who criticized Gabbard’s conclusions, or the right-wing outlets which published their assessments, Rich Lowry’s National Review and Bari Weiss’ The Free Press.
It should go without saying that the idea of “creative minds” dreaming up ways to punish journalists for producing reporting which contradicts the views of the president, his administration, and its propagandists is an affront to the First Amendment and basic principles of free speech and a free press.
Unfortunately, right-wing dreams of frog-marching journalists may not be far-fetched
We warned in December, after Trump campaigned on threats to jail reporters and pull the licenses of critical news outlets and won, that a coalition of elite right-wing figures were “using wealth, lawfare, and government power to silence the press and carry out their political agenda unimpeded.” And the last six months have demonstrated the president’s determination to use his power to bend the press to his will.
Trump has sought to put financial pressure on news outlets in order to chill speech critical of him. He filed lawsuits that experts found frivolous over reporting he disliked from ABC News and CBS News, then successfully leveraged the threat or use of corrupt regulatory actions to secure eight-figure settlements. He is currently pursuing similar lawsuits against the Pulitzer Prize Board, The Des Moines Register, and the corporate parents of The Wall Street Journal. The president has threatened additional lawsuits against The New York Times and CNN and called for the firings of their reporters.
Corporate owners of media outlets appear to be buckling to this pressure. “Executives at major media outlets are reportedly instructing their newsrooms to temper their coverage of President Trump and his administration amid growing fears of political retribution,” Axios reported in May. Indeed, Trump has gloated to reporters about the effectiveness of his strategy.
Beyond personal lawsuits, Trump has floated federal criminal investigations into news outlets over their reporting. That is no idle threat given his pattern of launching Justice Department probes into his political enemies via executive order and given the reality that the top ranks of federal law enforcement are stocked with people who are comfortable functioning as an extension of his personal desires.
Indeed, federal law enforcement officials appear more than willing to participate in Trump’s assault on the free press. His attorney general terminated rules which restricted prosecutors from seeking records and testimony from journalists as part of leak investigations. Several noncitizens have faced detention by the Department of Homeland Security over their public writing. And a former lawyer for January 6 defendants is running a DOJ “Weaponization Working Group” whose purpose appears to be weaponizing the government against Trump’s foes.
Trump’s diverse right-wing coalition and the fractured media ecosystem he unified during his campaign may be breaking apart over his handling of the Epstein case. But he seems to recognize that one thing that brings them together is their shared hatred of Democrats like Obama and the free press, and he’s been acting accordingly. And that means that just an eighth of the way through his second presidency, we’re already in very dangerous territory.
//
Trump’s latest attempt to defuse the Epstein revolt: Point supporters at common enemies
07/21/25 2:38 PM EDT
12/23/24 9:59 AM EST
05/28/25
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an 7 25
Roughly 140 Environmental Protection Agency employees have been placed on administrative leave after signing a letter warning of political interference in the agency’s work—prompting critics to accuse the Trump administration of ignoring their First Amendment rights.
Calling the letter “a remarkable rebuke of the agency’s political leadership,” The New York Times reported on Monday that more than 270 EPA employees had signed the public letter “denouncing what they described as the Trump administration’s efforts to politicize, dismantle and sideline the main federal agency tasked with protecting the environment and public health.”
On Thursday, the Times reported that 144 workers had been suspended, other news outlets put the number at 139.
In that public letter, signatories said they are joining in “solidarity with employees across the federal government in opposing this administration’s policies,” and that they “stand together in dissent against the current administration’s focus on harmful deregulation, mischaracterization of previous EPA actions, and disregard for scientific expertise.”
READ MORE: ‘Stop Talking’: Johnson Suggests Jeffries Is Lying in Marathon Budget Speech
They detailed their five primary concerns, including, “Undermining public trust,” “Ignoring scientific consensus to benefit polluters,” “Reversing EPA’s progress in America’s most vulnerable communities,” “Dismantling the Office of Research and Development,” and “Promoting a culture of fear, forcing staff to choose between their livelihood and well-being.”
On Thursday, the 140 or so employees who allegedly had signed the letter with their official titles received emails saying they had been placed on leave for two weeks “pending an administrative investigation,” The New York Times reported.
“The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November,” Brigit Hirsch, an EPA spokesperson, said in a statement, according to Bloomberg Law News.
“The letter, addressed to EPA head Lee Zeldin, alleged the agency has used its communication platforms to ‘promote misinformation and overtly partisan rhetoric,'” Bloomberg added. “One example the signatories cited was a March statement laying out the administration’s deregulatory agenda, in which Zeldin referred to ‘the climate change religion.'”
READ MORE: Democratic Strategist Warns Trump Could Try to Impose Martial Law Before 2026 Midterms
Nicole Cantello, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 704, called the move “blatant retaliation,” The Hill reported.
“We don’t swear an oath to the Trump administration, we swear an oath to the Constitution and so we don’t feel like we violated that oath or that we did anything wrong by signing this letter,” she said.
Cantello, on social media, wrote that EPA workers “have the right to freedom of speech, just like every other American.”
Addressing EPA Administrator Zeldin directly, she said: “See you in court.”
Some denounced the administration’s move.
Attorney Mark Zaid, who handles national security and whistleblower cases, wrote: “Apparently retaliation has already begun. This is what defines this Administration.”He also offered to “provide pro bono consultation to examine current situation.”
The New York Times’ Trip Gabriel asked, “What First Amendment?”
READ MORE: Trump Appeared Unaware His Budget Bill Cuts $1T From Medicaid: Report
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'Banning people for speech': US State Dept. revokes English punk duo’s visa after Glastonbury chant
an 6 25
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martial law LA ICE protests 6 25
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terry moran abc fired for saying miller 3 hateful
PRESS SUPPRESSION
AN 525
Whistleblowers and leakers, many constitutional scholars argue, play an important role in safeguarding democracy. When conservative Miles Taylor was serving as chief of staff to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2018, he wrote an anonymous op-ed for The New York Times that was famously headlined "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration."
Now, President Donald Trump is calling for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Taylor for potentially "treasonous" conduct. And his defenders are arguing that the ex-DHS official turned Never Trumper did the U.S. a huge favor by anonymously drawing attention to his national security concerns.
Trump and Bondi are also taking aim at journalists and media organizations that use whistleblowers and leakers in their reporting.
READ MORE: 'Blatantly illegal': Two officials push back against new Trump plan
In an article published by Salon on May 12, journalist/historian James Thornton Harris explains why he finds this so disturbing.
Bondi, Harris warns, is making a forceful, if underreported, "effort to suppress reporting by seeking to collect the phone records of reporters and trying to force their testimony in court, all in pursuit of government 'leakers.'"
:{:{"Attorney General Pam Bondi announced (a) new policy which replaces a Biden Administration rule restricting federal agencies from intimidating reporters in this manner,}:
" Harris explains. "In 2021, Biden's Department of Justice revealed that in 2017, the Trump Administration had secretly obtained the phone records of reporters from both the New York Times and Washington Post. It also tried unsuccessfully to obtain the reporters' e-mails. The (DOJ) said no legal action was taken against the reporters."}:
Harris adds, "Trump appears eager to pick up where he left off in his first term. Reporters Without Borders described Trump's current campaign as an attack on 'the credibility, independence, and sustainability of the news media.' Despite this disturbing all-out war on the press, which goes directly against First Amendment protections of freedom of speech, most Americans do not seem to care…. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found that just 36 percent of Americans reported hearing 'a lot' about the Trump Administration's relationship with the news media."
READ MORE:This is the last thing MAGA wants you to do
Harris notes that according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Trump's attack on freedom of the press is "happening rapidly, and, apparently, many Americans don't know, haven’t heard, or are choosing to look away."
"Free speech advocates are particularly concerned about Bondi's new policy," the journalist/historian warns. "Her directive states the new measures are needed to protect 'classified, privileged and other sensitive information.' By including the vague term 'sensitive information,' the new policy potentially covers a wide range of government information; it goes far beyond the federal criminal code, which focuses on protecting classified information…. Democratic President, John F. Kennedy, a former journalist, spoke out for press freedom and warned that 'without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive.'"
READ MORE:'Deeply offensive': MSNBC host rips 'gold-plated' Trump for trivializing 'financial hardship'
*James Thornton Harris' full article for Salon is available at this link.
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AN 4 25
'Dangerous dictator': How Trump 'bullied' Bezos to drop plan to display Amazon tariff cost
SPOX: 'Hostile and political act': Analyst says Leavitt just revealed 'Trump’s weakness'
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no lnx
Is this the moment American democracy finally broke?
Thom Hartmann April 11, 2025
The highest form of freedom in a democracy isn’t just the right to vote or protest — it’s the right to speak truth to power. To call out corruption. To challenge lies. To stand firm when the powerful demand silence. This is the freedom that sustains all others.
And it’s the one Donald Trump tried to crush yesterday with the stroke of a pen.
When he signed an executive order directing the Justice Department to investigate Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor — two public servants whose only crime was telling the truth — Trump didn’t just abuse his office. He weaponized the government against honesty itself.
This wasn’t law enforcement: It was political vengeance. This wasn’t democracy: It was a warning shot from the edge of autocracy.
And if we let this slide — if we treat it as just another Trump headline — we are inviting the next strongman to do the same, only worse.
The freedom to speak truth to power is either sacred, or it’s gone.
Thus, Donald Trump just moved America miles down the road toward our becoming a police state. There’s no other way to describe it.
His Executive Order (EO) signed yesterday demanding criminal investigations into Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor — and his public statement that Taylor is a “traitor” guilty of “treason” — are nothing short of a blatant assault on the rule of law and a perilous step toward turning America into a dictatorship.
This isn't just about settling personal scores; it's a calculated move to instill fear, silence dissent, and dismantle the very foundations of our democratic institutions.
Can you imagine yourself being called a traitor by the president of the United States and thus facing prison? Having to hire expensive attorneys that may well force you to sell your home to pay for, just to defend yourself? Not to mention having to protect yourself and your family from the rightwing enforcers who are probably at this moment doxxing and threatening Krebs and Taylor?
This echoes tactics used by autocrats throughout history: Stalin’s purges, Nixon’s enemies list (though less successfully executed), and more recently, Orbán in Hungary, Duterte in the Philippines, or Putin in Russia. If normalized, it risks further turning the U.S. into an illiberal democracy or autocracy, where elections occur but power is retained through fear, manipulation, and coercion. Or worse, a violent kleptocracy like Russia.
Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), had the audacity to do his job by ensuring the integrity of our elections and debunking Trump’s baseless lies of fraud in the 2020 election. Miles Taylor, who served as Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security, dared to speak out against the administration's reckless policies and wrote a book.
Their “crime”? Upholding their oaths to the Constitution and telling the truth.
By weaponizing the Department of Justice to pursue these individuals, Trump is not only abusing presidential power but also sending a chilling message to current and future whistleblowers: “Cross me, and you’ll pay.” This is the hallmark of a despot, not a democratically elected leader.
But Trump isn’t stopping there. He’s extending his vendetta to the very institutions that safeguard our legal system and might defend Taylor and Krebs.
Law firms like Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, and Jenner & Block are being targeted with punitive measures — revoked security clearances, terminated federal contracts, and restricted access to federal buildings including courthouses — all because they’ve had the courage to represent clients like these two who have challenged Trump’s overreaches.
In addition to signing an executive order targeting two former employees yesterday, Trump also signed one attacking yet another law firm, this time Susman Godfrey, which helped Dominion Voting Systems get millions from Fox for their 2020 election lies.
This is a direct attack on the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees the right to legal representation. When the government intimidates law firms into submission, it erodes the adversarial system that is essential for justice.
The implications are dire. If attorneys fear retribution for taking on cases that oppose the administration, who will hold the government accountable? Who will defend people like Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor?
This orchestrated campaign of intimidation is designed to create a chilling effect, deterring legal professionals from defending those who dare to speak truth to power.
This EO is a tactic ripped straight from the playbook of violent, authoritarian regimes like Putin’s, Erdoğan’s, and Orbán’s, where the law becomes a tool of oppression rather than justice.
Moreover, this politicization of the Department of Justice undermines its very mission. The DOJ is meant to operate independently, free from political influence, to uphold the law impartially.
Yet, under Trump’s directive, it is being transformed before our eyes into his personal enforcer, pursuing baseless investigations to settle political scores in ways Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of. This perversion of justice not only delegitimizes the department but also erodes public trust in our legal institutions.
Let’s be clear: This isn’t just about Krebs, Taylor, or the targeted law firms: It’s about the survival of our democracy. When a president can wield power to punish dissent and dismantle checks and balances without consequence, we are treading dangerous waters.
The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Trump’s actions are a direct assault on these freedoms, aiming to silence opposition and consolidate power.
The legal community is beginning to push back. Over 500 law firms have united to challenge these types of executive orders, recognizing them as a grave threat to our constitutional governance. Former top lawyers from major corporations have also voiced their opposition, understanding that this isn’t just a legal issue but a fundamental attack on the principles that underpin our society.
However, resistance must extend beyond the legal profession: we all must speak out. Every American who values democracy, justice, and freedom should be alarmed by these developments.
This is a moment that demands vigilance and action. We cannot afford to be complacent as the pillars of our democracy are systematically dismantled. The phone number for Congress is 202-224-3121, and another set of demonstrations are scheduled for a week from this coming Saturday, April 19th.
If there was ever any doubt, Trump’s authoritarian ambitions are now laid bare. His actions are not those of a leader who respects the Constitution or the people he serves: They are the actions of a man desperate to exploit and cling to power by any means necessary, even if it means destroying the very fabric of our nation.
This executive order is more than just a scandal — it’s a frontal assault on democracy. It shows Trump’s willingness to use the machinery of state as a weapon against truth and accountability, and underscores the urgent need to safeguard democratic institutions, enforce accountability, and reaffirm the independence of the rule of law in America.
If we fail to hold Trump accountable for turning the justice system into a tool of revenge, we are not just rewriting the rules — we're erasing them.
Democracy doesn’t “die in darkness.” It dies when truth becomes a crime and silence becomes survival. The time to speak up is now—while we still can.
NOW READ: The sickening secret sauce to Trump's political success
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an 4 25
On Sunday, April 6, Dearborn, Michigan-based attorney Amir Makled was returning from a visit to the Dominican Republic when he was detained by federal agents for roughly 90 minutes at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Makled, who is representing Samantha Lewis — a pro-Palestinian demonstrator arrested at the University of Michigan in 2024 — described the experience during an interview with the Detroit Free Press.
According to Detroit Free Press reporter Tresa Baldas, Makled was "questioned about his clients and asked to give up his cellphone" but "stood his ground" and "didn't give up his phone."
Makled explained to the Free Press, "So, I tell them, 'I know you can take my phone. I'm not going to give you my phone, however.... 90 percent of my work is on my phone. You're not getting unfettered access to (it).'"
READ MORE: Right wing unleashes attack on Amy Coney Barrett
Baldas reports, "What followed was a 90-minute, back-and-forth verbal tussle between Makled and two federal agents, who, he said, ultimately released him without taking his phone, but looked at his contacts list instead. For the 38-year-old civil rights and criminal defense attorney, it was a daunting experience that he says highlights a troubling phenomenon that's occurring across the United States: Lawyers are getting targeted for handling issues the administration of President Donald Trump disagrees with."
Trump, in March, sent the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) a memo urging sanctions against attorneys he is accusing of making "rampant fraud and meritless claims" in the immigration system.
Makled, however, points out that he is not an immigration attorney.
Makled told the Free Press, "This current administration is doing something that no administration has done — they are attacking attorneys. This is a different type of threat to the rule of law that I see. They are now challenging the judiciary, or lawyers; they're putting pressure (on them) to dissuade attorneys from taking on issues that are against the government's issues. We have an obligation as lawyers to stand up to this stuff."
READ MORE:MAGA turns on 'weak and timid' Justice Barrett after key SCOTUS ruling
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NO LNX
A Quarter-Billion Dollars for Defamation: Inside Greenpeace’s Huge Loss
A pipeline company’s lawsuit against the environmental group could chill free speech, experts said. First Amendment issues are likely to figure prominently in an appeal.
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:{:{Greenpeace representatives outside the courthouse in Mandan, N.D., where the jury ruled against the environmental organization this month.}:
By Karen Zraick
Karen Zraick covered the trial from the courtroom in Mandan, N.D.
March 31, 2025
When the environmental group Greenpeace lost a nearly $670 million verdict this month over its role in oil pipeline protests, a quarter-billion dollars of the damages were awarded not for the actual demonstrations, but for defaming the pipeline’s owner.
The costly verdict has raised alarm among activist organizations as well as some First Amendment experts, who said the lawsuit and damage awards could deter free speech far beyond the environmental movement.
The verdict “will send a chill down the spine of any nonprofit who wants to get involved in any political protest,” said David D. Cole, a professor at Georgetown Law and former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “If you’re the Sierra Club, or the N.A.A.C.P., or the N.R.A., or an anti-abortion group, you’re going to be very worried.”
The lawsuit, filed by Energy Transfer in 2019, accused Greenpeace of masterminding an “unlawful and violent scheme” to harm the company’s finances, employees and infrastructure and to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace countered that it had promoted peaceful protest and had played only a minor role in the demonstrations, which were led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe over concerns about its ancestral land and water supply.
A key part of Energy Transfer’s case relied on defamation claims. For example, the jury found that Greenpeace defamed the company by saying it had “damaged at least 380 sacred and cultural sites” during pipeline work, the first of nine statements found defamatory.
Greenpeace called Energy Transfer’s lawsuit an attempt to muzzle the company’s critics. “This case should alarm everyone, no matter their political inclinations,” said Sushma Raman, interim executive director of Greenpeace USA. “We should all be concerned about the future of the First Amendment.”
Greenpeace has said it will appeal to the Supreme Court in North Dakota, the state where the trial was held. Free-speech issues are widely expected to figure prominently in that filing.
But Greenpeace was not the only party invoking the First Amendment.
Upon leaving the courtroom, the lead lawyer for Energy Transfer, Trey Cox of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, called the verdict “a powerful affirmation” of the First Amendment. “Peaceful protest is an inherent American right,” he said. “However, violent and destructive protest is unlawful and unacceptable.”
Vicki Granado, a spokeswoman for Energy Transfer, described the verdict as “a win for all law-abiding Americans who understand the difference between the right to free speech and breaking the law.”
The clashing comments shine a light on a central tension in the debate: Where do you draw the line between peaceful protest and unlawful activity?
“If people are engaged in non-expressive conduct, like vandalism, like impeding roadways such that cars and passers-by can’t use those roadways, the First Amendment is not going to protect that,” said JT Morris, a senior supervising attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonprofit that defends free speech across the ideological spectrum. “But peaceful protest, criticism of companies on matters of public concern, those are all protected.”
The verdict landed in the midst of a larger debate over the limits of free speech. President Trump has accused news outlets of defaming him, and he has been found liable for defamation himself. His administration has targeted law firms he perceives as enemies, as well as international students deemed too critical of Israel or of U.S. foreign policy. Conservatives have accused social media platforms of suppressing free speech and have vowed to stop what they call online censorship.
“There’s nothing in this particular political climate that’s shocking anymore,” said Jack Weinberg, who in the 1960s was a prominent free-speech activist and later worked for Greenpeace. (He’s also known for the phrase “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” although that’s not exactly how he said it.) “But it’s wrong,” he said of the verdict, “and it will have profound consequences.”
There has long been a high bar for defamation lawsuits in the United States.
The First Amendment protects free speech and the right to protest, and a landmark 1964 Supreme Court decision, New York Times v. Sullivan, strengthened those protections. To prevail in a defamation suit, a public figure must prove that the statement was false and was made with “actual malice,” meaning knowledge that the statement was false, or reckless disregard for its veracity.
Carl W. Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, said that ruling intentionally raised the bar to win a defamation suit. “It’s extreme,” he said. “It’s meant to be.”
Eugene Volokh, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, pointed to the history of that famous case. It concerned a 1960 ad in The Times that described police actions against civil rights demonstrators in Alabama as “an unprecedented wave of terror.”
A police official sued the paper and won. But the Supreme Court overturned the verdict. The court ruled that protecting such speech was necessary, even if it contained errors, in order to ensure robust public debate.
In a Greenpeace appeal, Mr. Volokh said, the evidence demonstrating whether Greenpeace’s statements were true or false would be crucial in evaluating the verdict, as would the question of whether Greenpeace’s statements were constitutionally protected expressions of opinion.
Other issues that loom: What was permitted to be entered into evidence in the first place, and whether the instructions to the jury were sufficient. Then, he said, if the statements are found to be clearly false, is there enough evidence to show that Greenpeace engaged in “reckless falsehood, acts of so-called actual malice?”
Any award for defamation chills free speech, Mr. Volokh added, whether against Greenpeace or against the Infowars host Alex Jones, who was found liable for more than $1 billion over his false statements about the murder of children at the Sandy Hook school shooting.
In the Greenpeace case, the nine statements found by the jury to be defamatory referred to Energy Transfer and its subsidiary Dakota Access. One statement said that Dakota Access personnel had “deliberately desecrated burial grounds.” Another said that protesters had been met with “extreme violence, such as the use of water cannons, pepper spray, concussion grenades, Tasers, LRADs (Long Range Acoustic Devices) and dogs, from local and national law enforcement, and Energy Transfer partners and their private security.”
Thumbnail of page 11
Read all nine statements found defamatory by a jury
They’re listed on page 11 of the verdict.
Read Document Page 11 of 33
Other statements were more general: “For months, the Standing Rock Sioux have been resisting the construction of a pipeline through their tribal land and waters that would carry oil from North Dakota’s fracking fields to Illinois.”
The protests unfolded over months, from mid-2016 to early 2017, attracting tens of thousands of people from around the world, and were widely documented by news crews and on social media.
Janet Alkire, chairwoman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, argued that Greenpeace’s statements were true and not defamatory. “Energy Transfer’s false and self-serving narrative that Greenpeace manipulated Standing Rock into protesting DAPL is patronizing and disrespectful to our people,” she said in a statement, using an abbreviation for the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Image
Protesters against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016.Credit...Alyssa Schukar for The New York Times
She said that “scenes of guard dogs menacing tribal members” were publicly available “on the news and on the internet.”
Videos of the incidents in question weren’t shown at the trial. Everett Jack Jr. of the firm Davis, Wright Tremaine, the main lawyer for Greenpeace, declined to discuss why.
The 1,172-mile pipeline, priced at $3.7 billion when announced, has been operating since 2017. It carries crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois.
During the trial, some arguments hinged on whether the pipeline crossed Standing Rock’s land, or how to define tribal land. The pipeline is just outside the borders of the reservation but crosses what the tribe calls unceded land that it had never agreed to give up.
There was also debate about whether tribal burial grounds were harmed during construction. Experts working for the tribe found that was the case, but experts brought in by Energy Transfer did not.
Even if a statement was false, Mr. Cole said, a defendant cannot be held liable if they had a basis for believing it. He also predicted that the penalty would likely be reduced on appeal if not overturned.
Martin Garbus, a veteran First Amendment lawyer, led a delegation of lawyers to North Dakota to observe the trial. The lawyers have said that the jury was biased against the defendants and that the trial should have been moved to another county. He expressed concern that an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court could be used to overturn Times v. Sullivan. He noted that Justice Clarence Thomas has called for the Supreme Court to reconsider that case.
But Mr. Cole, Mr. Tobias and other experts said they did not expect the court to reconsider Times v. Sullivan.
Greenpeace has said previously that the size of the damages could force the organization to shut down its U.S. operations.
The lawsuit named three Greenpeace entities, but it centered on the actions of Greenpeace Inc., based in Washington, which organizes campaigns and protests in the United States and was found liable for more than $400 million.
A second organization, Greenpeace Fund, a fund-raising arm, was found liable for about $130 million. A third group, Greenpeace International, based in Amsterdam, was found liable for the same amount. That group said its only involvement was signing a letter, along with several hundred other signatories, calling on banks to halt loans for the pipeline.
Earlier this year, Greenpeace International filed a countersuit in the Netherlands against Energy Transfer. That lawsuit was brought under a European Union directive designed to fight what are known as SLAPP suits, or strategic lawsuits against public participation — legal actions designed to stifle critics. (State law in North Dakota, where Energy Transfer brought its case against Greenpeace, doesn’t have anti-SLAPP provisions.)
The next hearing in the Netherlands case is in July.
Karen Zraick covers legal affairs for the Climate desk and the courtroom clashes playing out over climate and environmental policy. More about Karen Zraick
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Rising Fears for Free Speech After Greenpeace’s Defeat.
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NO LNX
Another institution capitulates to Trump
Sabrina Haake, Raw StoryApril 06, 2025
I never worked for a big law firm and never wanted to. No matter their politics, large law firms breed conformity and impose a hierarchy, and chasing 60 billable hours a week in a suit is crushing.
But watching yet another big firm cave to Trump’s extortion scheme is demoralizing. That Doug Emhoff works for the latest firm to fold adds a special sucker punch.
Trump’s racket is illegal, and every lawyer at every law firm bending the knee knows it’s illegal. But instead of standing united, doing the world a solid with the most consequential class action of all time, large law firms are caving serially to Trump’s demands.
With the exception of a noble few led by Jenner & Block, big firms are picking themselves off one by one, putting money and their short-term careers over principle. They are modeling how, in Trump’s America, the law is whatever a malicious and intellectually stunted man says it is.
Nice practice you got there.Shame if something happened to it.
Trump’s executive orders attacking law firms that have opposed his illegal conduct are not law; Trump has no Constitutional authority to make law of any kind. An executive order is a written directive to do or refrain from doing something specific, but a president’s Article II EO authority is limited. A president can issue executive orders for the sole purpose of ensuring that existing laws are “faithfully executed.” He can’t issue them to challenge existing law, he can’t issue them to retaliate against firms that applied existing law, and he can’t issue them prophylactically to insulate himself from legal consequences in the future.
Trump’s illegal EOs seek to blacklist law firms that serve his political opponents by suspending security clearances for those firms. They also instruct federal agencies not to meet or ‘engage with’ (ie, talk to or correspond with) lawyers and personnel of targeted firms. They have restricted physical access to federal buildings for all attorneys and staff employed by targeted law firms, proving that Trump sees federal property as an extension of his own tacky pay-for-play motel, which is itself a glaring violation of federal emoluments law.
There is no legitimate legal theory under which Trump’s big law firm shakedown is Constitutional. A president has the right to select his own legal counsel, and has some limited degree of control over attorneys working under the executive branch. But in a delusional dictator’s wettest dream, that authority does not extend to controlling lawyers in private practice, private industry, or the judiciary. There is no legal scenario whatsoever where Trump’s EO authority trumps the First Amendment.
Trump is targeting adversarial law firms to undermine rather than ‘faithfully execute’ federal law. As such, his EOs are unauthorized and therefore illegal on their face, even without regard to the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Like his ill-conceived tariffs, Trump is attacking law firms, throwing spaghetti on the wall to see what sticks. Instead of wiping it off with a class action any first year could write, firms like Milbank, Skadden Arps, and Paul Weiss, by agreeing to “pay up” tens of millions of dollars in legal work and adjust which clients they will represent, are eating it and asking for seconds.
The law is stronger, older, and wiser than Trump. Law firms should start acting like it.
It is beyond settled that government officials cannot try to “coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views” the government disfavors. Just last year in NRA v. Vullo, where a New York government official criticized firms for doing business with gun rights organizations, the Supreme Court limited regulatory authority at the point where that authority intersects with free speech rights. Even the partisan federalists on the bench who appear poised to serve Trump are not likely to reverse their own First Amendment ruling just one year later.
The First Amendment protects the “right to associate with others in pursuit of a wide variety of political, social, economic, educational, religious, and cultural ends.” It has long prohibited government officials from retaliating against private actors for having engaged in this First Amendment-protected conduct. As cited in Jenner and Block’s well drafted complaint, filed last week, Trump’s retaliation against law firms that have opposed his politics is a “blatant and egregious form of content discrimination.”
These cases are well known; there is zero chance the firms capitulating to Trump’s demands are unaware of them.Even the notoriously conservative Wall Street Journal recognizes that Trump is attacking law firms in an attempt to intimidate them, seeking to deter “elite law firms from representing his opponents or plaintiffs who challenge his policies.”
Lawyers, of all people, must stop the deference
Trying to put nationwide firms out of business because they represent, or have represented, Trump’s political opponents is a direct assault on freedom of political speech and association. It is also an authoritarian attack on the rule of law.
Under the American system, every person in the nation, every organization, and even every criminal, including Trump, is entitled to legal representation. Trump’s pettiness and vindictiveness notwithstanding, he doesn’t get to decide who gets legal counsel and who does not.
As Constitutional scholars and pundits have written repeatedly, Trump hates the rule of law because he wants to stay in office for life, and law is the only thing blocking him.His fawning reverence for Roy Cohn, Putin, Xi and Jong-un aside, however, we are not a banana republic where Trump gets to decide what the law is. Large firms need to remember this basic truth.
To the next blue stocking partner Trump threatens to put out of business: Sue the bastard and honor your oath to the legal profession. It will work out better for you in the long run than throwing it under the bus.
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense.Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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rubio had to sign off?
an 3 25
Since March 8, Mahmoud Khalil — a 30-year-old Columbia University student — has been held in a federal detention center in Louisiana for, Trump Administration officials allege, expressing sympathy to the terrorist group Hamas during protests on the campus.
Khalil, who was born in Syria to Palestinian parents, is a legal resident of the United States and is not accused of any acts of violence. And his wife is a U.S. citizen. But Khalil is at risk for deportation, and critics of the Trump Administration and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi are arguing that his detention is an example of thought policing — not an action based on legitimate national security concerns.
Two of those critics are attorneys Thomas Anthony Durkin and Bernard Harcourt (a law professor at Columbia University in New York City).
READ MORE:Sabotaging Social Security: Behind the leaked memo to cut agency staff and critical services
In an op-ed published by The Guardian on March 21, Durkin and Harcourt argue that the movement to deport students for saying controversial things recalls the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy's (R-Wisconsin) witch hunt of the 1950s.
"The legal risks are real," Durkin and Harcourt warn. "They are perilous, and they are alarming. Where a designated foreign terrorist organization (FTO) — such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or related organizations such as the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network — is concerned, the line separating political advocacy from material support to terrorism can be razor thin, and any doubt tends to be resolved against those engaged in the political advocacy. FTOs are foreign organizations that the Bureau of Counterterrorism in the U.S. State Department designates as terrorist entities under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act."
The legal scholars add, "Once such a designation is made, it becomes unlawful for a U.S. person to knowingly provide that group with 'material support or resources.'"
According to Durkin and Harcourt, the "questionable legal strategy" being used against Khalil and other student protesters raises major civil liberties concerns.
READ MORE:'Clear and present danger': Experts alarmed at 'insanity' of Musk getting secret war plans
"Legal jeopardy for political advocacy has long existed in this country despite its storied embrace of the First Amendment," the attorneys explain. "But the Justice Department's new taskforce and threatened anti-terrorist prosecutions reach deeper into policing political dissent than anything seen since the McCarthy era. The consequences could be far more draconian than the usual campus risk of a misdemeanor civil-disobedience arrest or student discipline. The threat to the values of free speech and open debate on college campuses could hardly be more consequential."
READ MORE:Trump official urging Fox viewers to buy Tesla stock decried as 'abuse of power'
*Thomas Anthony Durkin and Bernard Harcourt's full op-ed for The Guardian is available at this link.
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trump ADMIN NOW SAYS THEY CAN ENTER ANY HOUSE W/O WARRANT IF THEY SUSPECT FOREIGN GANGBANGER
an 3 25
Another academic has been arrested by President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on legally dubious grounds, according to a new report.
Politico reported Wednesday that Indian national Dr. Badar Khan Suri was recently arrested outside of his Virginia home by "masked agents" who said they were with the DHS. Suri — who is in the United States legally on a student visa and who is married to a U.S. citizen — was not charged with any crime and has no criminal record, yet he is being targeted for deportation and awaiting transfer to Texas.
Suri is being put into deportation proceedings under the same vaguely worded statute that the Trump administration invoked after it arrested Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil (a legal permanent resident and Columbia University graduate student who led pro-Palestine protests last year). That statute claims that an administration has the authority to deport any foreign-born resident who it suspects could be a threat to U.S. foreign policy.
READ MORE:Justices' 'cozy ties' to right-wing kingpin sparks outrage as critics demand recusal
“We’re trying to speak with him. That hasn’t happened yet,” Hassan Ahmad, who is Suri's lawyer, told Politico. “This is just another example of our government abducting people the same way they abducted Khalil.”
Ahmad is alleging that Suri is being targeted because his wife, Mapheze Saleh, is of Palestinian heritage and that the couple have been outspoken about the United States' continued support of Israel. He also told Politico that the two have been repeatedly doxxed on far-right websites over their criticism of the Israeli government. The Hindustan Times (one of the largest English-language newspapers in India) reported in a 2018 article that Saleh's father, Ahmed Yousef, was once a "senior political adviser to the Hamas leadership."
According to his faculty page on the Georgetown University website, Suri is a postdoctoral fellow at the Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. His LinkedIn profile shows that he has a Ph.D. in peace and conflict studies from an Indian university. A Georgetown University spokesperson told Politico in a statement that Suri was "duly granted a visa to enter the United States to continue his doctoral research on peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan."
“We are not aware of him engaging in any illegal activity, and we have not received a reason for his detention," the spokesperson continued. "We support our community members’ rights to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate, even if the underlying ideas may be difficult, controversial or objectionable. We expect the legal system to adjudicate this case fairly.”
READ MORE:French scientist denied entry to the US because he 'expressed a personal opinion' about Trump a text msg on phone that ~ trump science policy?!
Click here to read Politico's article in its entirety.
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an 3 25
One of the purposes of “flooding the zone,” as the Trump regime is trying to do — shocking and awing us with its blitzkrieg of bonkers orders — is to make it almost impossible to sort out what we should be incredibly freaked out about from what we should merely freak out about.
I’m incredibly freaked out about the regime grabbing people from their homes who are legally in the United States, with permanent status — not just visas permitting them to work or study here but green cards —and then whisking them away to prison because they’ve engaged in constitutionally protected speech that the regime doesn’t like.
You think I’m exaggerating? This is exactly what happened to Mahmoud Khalil on Saturday night. Khalil, who graduated from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in December, has a green card. His wife, who is eight months pregnant, is an American citizen.
Immigration agents appeared at his apartment building and told him he was being detained. He now appears to be in a detention facility in Louisiana.
Khalil did nothing illegal. He has not been charged with a crime. He expressed his political point of view — peacefully, non-violently, non-threateningly. That’s supposed to be permitted — dare I say even encouraged? — in a democracy.
So why is he in jail?
Khalil was one of the leaders of last year’s peaceful pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump conceded Khalil was snatched up and sent off because of his politics. “This is the first arrest of many to come,” wrote Trump. “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it.”
Where, may I ask, are the “First Amendment absolutists” such as Trump First Buddy Elon Trump when it comes to protecting speech that the Trump regime finds objectionable?
Where are all the Republicans who for years have accused liberals of “cancelling” their views?
Where are the conservatives who have claimed for even longer they only want to conserve traditional American values?
Nearly 13 million people in the United States hold green cards. Tens of thousands more are here temporarily as foreign students and professors. Apparently all are now in danger of being arrested if they speak their minds.
If this assault on civil liberties stands, Trump could just as well arrest and expel permanent residents who voice support for, say, transgender people or DEI or “woke” or Ukraine, or anything else the regime finds “anti-American” and offensive.
If it stands, what’s to stop the Trump regime from arresting American citizens who support any cause the regime doesn’t like — such as, say, replacing Republicans in Congress in 2026 and putting a Democrat in the White House in 2028?
Does anyone remember Senator Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunts? I do. They weren’t pretty. Careers were ruined; reputations, destroyed. They remain a stain on American democracy.
American democracy. That’s what’s at stake. The Trump regime is out to trash it. The regime doesn’t believe in the First or any other amendments. It doesn’t believe in the Constitution.
Let’s commit to ending Republican control of Congress in 2026 and sending this regime packing in 2028 — if there’s still a democracy that enables us to do so.
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RUBIO PULLED GREEN CARD FOR COLUMBIA STUDENT GAZA 3/1025
AN 3 25
Trump is following Putin’s, Xi’s, and Orban’s playbook. First, take over military and intelligence operations by purging career officers and substituting ones personally loyal to you.
Next, subdue the courts by ignoring or threatening to ignore court rulings you disagree with.
Intimidate legislators by warning that if they don’t bend to your wishes, you’ll run loyalists against them. (Make sure they also worry about what your violent supporters could do to them and their families.)
Then focus on independent sources of information: the media and the universities. Sue media that publish critical stories and block their access to news conferences and interviews.
Then go after the universities.
Last week, Trump threatened in a social media post to punish any university that permits “illegal” protests. On Friday he cancelled hundreds of millions in grants and contracts with Columbia University.
This is an extension of Republican tactics before Trump’s second term. Prior to Trump appointing her ambassador to the United Nations, former Representative Elise Stefanik (Harvard class of 2006) browbeat presidents of elite universities over their responses to student protests against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, leading to several presidents being fired.
Senator Josh Hawley (Stanford class of 2002 and Yale Law class of 2006) called the student demonstrations signs of “moral rot” at the universities.
But antisemitism was just a pretext.
JD Vance (Yale Law 2013) has termed university professors “the enemy” and suggested using Victor Orban’s method for ending “left-wing domination of universities.”
I think his way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give them a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching. [The government should be] aggressively reforming institutions … in a way to where they’re much more open to conservative ideas.”
Trump is also targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on university campuses.
But of all Trump’s and Republicans’ moves against higher education, the most destructive is the cancelation of research grants and contracts. The destruction is hardly confined to Columbia and other suspected left-wing bastions.
Research universities depend on funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Trump reportedly aims to slash the budget of the National Science Foundation by up to two-thirds. And he’s instructed the National Institutes of Health to no longer honor negotiated rates for “indirect costs” on grants that it administers — money that universities use for laboratory space and research equipment.
In defiance of court orders, Trump has largely maintained a freeze on NIH funding.
As a result, many of America’s great research universities have stopped hiring and are cutting Ph.D. programs — in some cases rescinding offers to accepted students.
Trump’s moves are consistent with the tyrant’s playbook, but they’re also jeopardizing America’s national security and competitiveness.
Trump speaks of putting America First, but his attack on the nation’s great research universities is ensuring that the U.S. comes in second — to China.
Although America has long been the global leader in scientific output, China is now surging ahead. Even before Trump’s cuts in research funding, China was projected to match U.S. research spending within five years.
China has already surpassed the U.S. as the top producer of highly cited papers and international patent applications. It now awards more science and engineering Ph.D.s than the U.S.
Tyrants close universities. Fascists burn books. Trump is destroying America’s most important asset — its innovative mind.
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intercept 3 25
Trump administration said Thursday that it canceled a federal grant to a climate nonprofit over the group’s protected First Amendment speech.
The Climate Justice Alliance, a nonprofit that organizes on climate issues in poor and Indigenous communities, was awarded a multimillion-dollar grant under former President Joe Biden’s climate infrastructure package. The Biden administration, however, later delayed that funding over the group’s support for Palestine, The Intercept reported.
Related
Biden Attack on Nonprofit Over Palestine Stance Made Trump’s Job Easier](https://theintercept.com/2025/01/22/biden-climate-justice-alliance-funding/)
Last month, the group received word that it would not receive the funding under President Donald Trump.
The Environmental Protection Agency, which issues the grant, previously said it was continuing to evaluate the funding. On Thursday, however, Trump’s appointee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency posted a tweet that seemed to confirm what the nonprofit has been saying all along: The government canceled its grant in retaliation over its public statements on Palestine.
“I just cancelled a $50 MILLION Biden-era environmental justice grant to the Climate Justice Alliance, which believes ‘climate justice travels through a Free Palestine,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin wrote in a tweet on Thursday. (The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
A post shared by Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) (@cjaourpower)
CJA collaborates with close to 100 smaller groups, community networks, and other grassroots organizations that deal with climate issues in working-class rural and urban communities. Its direct work has little to do with Palestine, but it has connected its mission of climate justice to theeffects of war in Palestineas aglobal climate issue. CJA also put out a statement calling for a ceasefire shortly after the October 7 attacks in 2023.
In a post to Instagram on Thursday featuring a screenshot of Zeldin’s tweet, CJA wrote that the Biden administration had left its fate in the unwelcoming hands of Trump. (Asked for comment, CJA referred The Intercept to its social media statement.) The group said the grant would have helped create sustainable jobs, provide resources for projects to protect public health and safety, and benefited taxpayers and working-class families.
“The Administration continues its attacks on working class communities, rural and urban families with its announcement of the cancellation of the Climate Justice Alliance’s UNITE-EJ program grant,” CJA wrote, referring to the EPA grant.
“Unfortunately, the Biden administration failed to process these obligated funds intended to help communities facing disasters from climate change and left the decision in the hands of the Trump administration. Despite claims that this administration will protect clean water and clean air for the nation it has attacked basic protections for neglected communities from day one.”
Republican lawmakers and right-wing media have also targeted CJA, claiming it exhibited “anti-Republican sentiment” and wanted to “defund the police.” Republicans also slammed the group for supporting a Green New Deal.
Trump is increasingly using political attacks as a policy tool, starting with his support for a “nonprofit killer bill” passed in the House last year. The bill would allow the Treasury secretary to strip nonprofit status from groups it designates as a “terrorist supporting organization.”
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an 3 25
Hours before delivering his first address to a joint session of Congress in his second term, President Donald Trump issued what some legal experts quickly condemned as an attack on the First Amendment—a statement threatening imprisonment or deportation for certain forms of campus protest. The order, seen by some as authoritarian, targets students and faculty and raises questions about whether he anticipates resistance to the announced theme of his speech, “The Renewal of the American Dream.”
“All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests,” Trump declared at 7:30 Tuesday morning. “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Legal experts and historians swiftly condemned Trump’s threats, arguing they were intended to suppress free speech and, if enforced, could constitute a violation of the First Amendment.
READ MORE: ‘Will Be Big’: Trump Faces Dangerous Warning Signs Ahead of Address to Congress
Larry Sabato, the well-known University of Virginia professor of politics and founder and director of the Center for Politics, had already written remarks about Trump’s theme for his address to Congress.
“You must admit, #Trump 2.0 has exceeded expectations. In both foreign and domestic policy, it’s far worse than most critics had predicted. You might call it the Renewal of the American Nightmare,” Professor Sabato observed.
NCRM asked him to weigh in on the President’s latest statement.
“My response is the First Amendment,” Professor Sabato replied.
READ MORE: White House Is Demanding ‘Explicit’ On-Camera ‘Public Apology’ From Zelenskyy: Report
Former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade, a professor of law and NBC News/MSNBC legal analyst, said, “Peaceful protests, of course, are not ‘illegal.’ A government ban on peaceful protests would violate the First Amendment. The goal here seems to be intimidation and fear to chill free speech.”
Journalist and historian Paul Brandus, author of books on the presidency and the White House, asked: “The president – who swore to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ the Constitution – is accelerating his attack on the First Amendment. Protests are ‘illegal?'”
Immigration attorney Eric Lee offered this response: “Only in a dictatorship can the president deem protests against his government and its policies ‘illegal.’ Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Constitutional attorney Casey Mattox, vice president for legal and judicial strategy at the conservative Americans for Prosperity, served up this detailed response:
“1. ‘illegal’ would have to do a whole lot of work here for this not to violate the 1st A. Enough that it would have been better to not even bother using the ‘protest’ word. So let’s assume that.
- The President can’t expel students from their colleges.
- Good morning.”
Joe Walsh, the former Tea Party Republican congressman turned independent talk show host blasted Trump, who just last week declared himself a “king.”
“‘Illegal protests?’ He’s not a king,” Walsh exclaimed. “He doesn’t have the authority to stop protests. Or expel students. Or tell protestors not to wear masks. He’s not a king.”
Attorney and editor-in-chief of MediasTouch, Ron Filipkowski, slammed Trump: “Presumably, this government by Truth Social posts will define exactly what an ‘illegal protest’ is, and that definition will not be so broad that it encroaches on free speech guarantees we’ve enjoyed for two centuries.”
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DN AN 2 25
:{:{We look at the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on press freedom, and how the media has responded with bended knee in some cases, with Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. The Trump administration has threatened journalists and media outlets for their coverage, and the Federal Communications Commission is investigating PBS and NPR over its funding sources. Meanwhile, a number of major news organizations face accusations of surrendering to Trump’s threats.}:
In December, ABC settled a defamation suit brought by Trump by making a $15 million donation to his future presidential library. CBS’s parent company Paramount is reportedly in talks to settle a multibillion-dollar lawsuit filed by Trump, who accused 60 Minutes of deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris. Trump initially sought $10 billion in the lawsuit and is now seeking $20 billion. “What I see here is media organizations that have the power to fight back against Trump but aren’t doing it. I think that’s a failure of courage,” says Jaffer. “Every time one of those media organizations settles a case, the next organization finds it more difficult to resist Trump.}:
AMY GOODMAN: As a constitutional crisis grows in Washington, we begin today’s show looking at the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on press freedom. Last week, the interim U.S. Attorney in Washington Edward Martin threatened to prosecute anyone, including journalists, who, quote, “target” or, quote, “impede” Elon Musk and DOGE — that’s the Department of Government Efficiency. Martin’s letter came a day after Musk claimed it was a crime to identify the young computer engineers who have helped him gain access to highly sensitive information at agencies across Washington.
Meanwhile, the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, has opened an investigation into San Francisco-based KCBS over the radio station’s reporting on recent immigration raids. The FCC has also opened a broader investigation of NPR and PBS and their practice of airing underwriting announcements.
On Friday, Donald Trump openly called for The Washington Post to fire longtime columnist Eugene Robinson after he accused Trump of trampling the Constitution.
Meanwhile, a number of major news organizations face accusations of already bending a knee to Trump. In December, ABC settled a defamation suit brought by Trump by making a $15 million donation to his future presidential library.
CBS’s parent company Paramount Global is reportedly in talks to settle a multibillion-dollar lawsuit filed by Trump, who accused 60 Minutes of deceptively editing an interview with Kamala Harris. Trump initially sought $10 billion in the lawsuit, but he’s upped it now to $20 billion. Last week, CBS took the unusual step of handing over its unedited tapes to the FCC. While the tapes showed no wrongdoing on CBS’s part, many believe Paramount might still settle the lawsuit. This all is happening as Paramount seeks federal approval for its $8 billion merger with Skydance Media.
We’re joined right now by Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. His recent New York Timesopinion piece is headlined “This Is Not a Moment to Settle with Trump.”
AMY GOODMAN: So, we just went through some of the cases, but if you can go through them in depth and explain what is happening here? Is the media obeying in advance?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah. I mean, that’s how I see it. I see a kind of failure of courage among the largest and most powerful media organizations in the country. You know, you started with the ABC settlement. This is a case that arose out of George Stephanopoulos saying on TV that President Trump had been found liable for rape, when in fact the jury had found him liable for sexual assault. Trump sued, claiming that he had been defamed. I don’t think that there —
AMY GOODMAN: And let’s be clear: It was the judge who said, in common parlance, this would be rape.
JAMEEL JAFFER: That’s right. That’s right. I don’t think that Trump had any chance of winning that lawsuit. If ABC had contested it, ABC would have been protected by the New York Times v. Sullivan rule. New York Times v. Sullivan is a 60-year-old case that gives citizens broad power to — or, broad latitude to criticize government officials, makes it very difficult for public officials to recover in defamation actions. I don’t think there’s any way that ABC would have lost that case. But they settled the case.
Second one is Meta’s settlement with Trump. This is over Meta’s decision or Facebook and Instagram’s decision to deplatform Trump after January 6th. Trump sued, claiming that his First Amendment rights had been violated. This, I think, is a totally frivolous case. There’s no way that Trump would have won that case against Meta, but Meta settled it, as well, for $25 million — again, all going to Trump’s presidential library.
And then, finally, this reported CBS settlement, or possible CBS settlement, with Trump over the action — over the case that involved the editing of this Kamala Harris interview. I don’t think that CBS edited that interview in any unusual way at all. The kind of editing they did is routine for journalism, for media organizations. Trump knows that. Again, no chance that Trump would have won that case, but CBS is reportedly thinking about settling it.
So, what I see here is media organizations that have the power to fight back against Trump but aren’t doing it. I think that’s a failure of courage, and it has implications for those particular media organizations, because I think it affects their credibility and their prestige. But it has larger press freedom implications, as well, because every time one of those media organizations settles a case, the next organization finds it more difficult to resist Trump. And this is a moment in which we need these organizations to hold the powerful to account, hold Trump to account, and this is exactly what they should not be doing.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jameel, what about this latest story this week about the FCC investigating a San Francisco —
JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — radio station, KCBS, for its coverage of immigration enforcement in San Jose?
JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah. I mean, here, too, I think you see the Trump administration trying to use its regulatory authorities in a way that chills press freedom, chills legitimate reporting. No question here that that radio station was within its rights to report what it did. And what Trump is trying to do or what the FCC is trying to do here is chill not just that radio station, but other radio stations and other media organizations, from engaging in reporting that is inconvenient to the administration.
I mean, I mentioned the CBS case. You know, another aspect of that case involves the FCC, with the FCC having demanded from CBS that it turn over unedited transcripts of its interview with Kamala Harris. And I don’t think in another —
AMY GOODMAN: And they released them.
JAMEEL JAFFER: And they released them. And they released them. I don’t think in another — in any other era a news organization would have just turned over those transcripts without at least trying to get a judge to narrow the request or look at the transcripts in camera before turning them over. But CBS just turned them over.
And, you know, I think that there’s a real risk here that, on paper, we’re going to have all the First Amendment rights in the world. The First Amendment is going to look great on paper. But the organizations that we need to assert their First Amendment rights, to defend press freedom, are increasingly just not doing it.
I mean, I’ve named a few of the settlements, but even before we got to the settlements, there were the L.A. Times and The Washington Post, which quashed editorials that would have been — that would have provoked Trump. This happened before the election. Then there were the Big Tech companies that all made million-dollar donations to Trump’s inaugural fund. You know, I think what we’re seeing is media organizations, including social media organizations, lining up to ingratiate themselves with President Trump. And that is an extremely troubling thing at this particular moment.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, of course, it’s not just media organizations. Universities. Talk about the free speech rights that are endangered, increasingly endangered, at universities by the Trump administration, for instance, threatening to deport pro-Palestinian students.
JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah, I mean, I think this is — it’s a larger issue across society. Many of the institutions that we need to serve as checks on government power at a moment like this are not doing their jobs.
Now, this question about, you know, in what circumstances can the government deport noncitizens for exercising their First Amendment rights, I think, is a hugely significant question. And I want people to understand that the First Amendment protects noncitizen students at American universities just like it protects everybody else. The government cannot constitutionally deport people simply because they have exercised their First Amendment rights, simply because they have criticized a war overseas or criticized our government or criticized another government. Those are not constitutionally permissible justifications for deporting somebody.
So, you know — and you don’t have to take my word for it, because a couple years ago, the Knight Institute, my institute, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Biden administration, and we were able to get two memos, two legal memos, in which the Trump administration had considered its authority to engage in these kinds of deportations based on First Amendment activity. And Trump administration lawyers wrote memos that acknowledged that noncitizens at universities in the United States are protected by the First Amendment and that deporting them on the basis of their speech would almost certainly be unconstitutional.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, Jameel Jaffer, talk about what happened Friday night with the casino magnate Steve Wynn asking the Supreme Court to revisit the Times v. Sullivan defamation rule, the Supreme Court decision, one of the two most important press freedom cases.
JAMEEL JAFFER: Yeah, so, I mentioned New York Times v. Sullivan already. This has been a campaign by some conservatives over the last few years to try to get the Supreme Court to narrow or overrule New York Times v. Sullivan, which would be a very big deal because it’s The New York Times v. Sullivan, more than any other case, that protects our ability to criticize government officials, which is core to our democracy. And this —
AMY GOODMAN: What was it established under, New York Times v. Sullivan? What case was that?
JAMEEL JAFFER: So, it’s called New York Times v. Sullivan. It’s a case involving — The New York Times was sued by a Southern police official who was concerned about civil rights activism in the South and complained, in particular, about an ad in The New York Times that he said — he said accurately — was inaccurate. The ad included some inaccuracies in it. And he said, because the ad included inaccuracies, The New York Times was liable. I think it was for $500,000, which at the time would have been crushing liability even for The New York Times. And if he had won that case, other news organizations reporting on the civil rights movement would have been crushed, as well. But the Supreme Court said, if you’re criticizing government officials, you have to have broad latitude, even to get things wrong. So, unless the public official can show what’s called actual malice, so unless the public official can show that the newspaper or the writer recklessly published false information or deliberately published false information, there’s no recovery possible. The First Amendment forecloses recovery.
So, now some conservatives are pushing to get the Supreme Court to overrule that decision. I think it’s a misguided campaign, even, you know, if you want the things that these conservatives want. I think this is going to backfire on them. But this cert petition that was filed on Friday night, this request that the Supreme Court hear the case, is another effort in this longer campaign to get the Supreme Court to either scale back or overrule New York Times v. Sullivan.
AMY GOODMAN: Jameel Jaffer, thanks so much for being with us, director of the Knight —
JAMEEL JAFFER: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: — First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. We’ll link to your piece in The New York Times, “This Is Not a Moment to Settle with Trump.”
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mta 11 24
...We the People have never included all the people.
Many of those interpretations involved Supreme Court rulings affirming the power and rights of corporations over the power and rights of citizens and workers. Following each Supreme Court decision, our democratic space contracted. The democratic box became smaller.
Examples:
1819 – Corporate perversion of the Contract Clause
Dartmouth College v. Woodward –A corporate charter is ruled to be a contract and can’t be altered by the government. States had less flexibility to use corporate charters as tools to define corporate actions.
1875 – Corporate perversion of the Commerce Clause
Welton v. State of Missouri – The Supreme Court begins a century-long effort to frame every corporate action as a form of “interstate commerce” – which overrules the police power of cities and states to uphold their duty to protect the health, safety and welfare of their communities.
1886 – Corporate perversion of the 14th Amendment
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad –Corporations are in effect granted equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment. Louis K. Liggett Co. v. Lee(1933) – Florida voters passed a law that levied higher taxes on chain stores than on locally owned stores. The Supreme Court overturned the law citing the due process and equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and the Interstate Commerce clause.
1906 – Corporate perversion of the 4th Amendment
Hale v. Henkel – Corporations get 4th Amendment “search and seizure” protection. The public no longer has the ability to publicly inspect corporate books and records to ensure accountability. A 1978 decision, Marshall v. Barlow, prohibited OSHA inspectors from doing surprise public inspections.
1922 – Corporate perversion of the 5th Amendment
Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon – A regulation is deemed a taking. A corporation subject to certain regulations has to be compensated for lost future profits.
1974 – Corporate perversion of the 1st Amendment – right not to speak
Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo – Corporations granted the right NOT to speak. They don’t have to reveal information, even if that information is important for public safety (i.e. toxins in food).
1980 – Corporate perversion of the 1st Amendment – commercial speech
Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp., v. Public Utilities Comm’n – Corporate “commercial speech” rights (to increase profits) preempted the state’s right to protect the welfare of its residents.
1978 – Corporate perversion of the 1st Amendment – political free speech
First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti – U.S. constitutional law case defines the free speech right of corporations for the first time – the right to spend on issue campaigns.
2010 – Corporate perversion of the 1st Amendment –free speech is expanded
Citizens United vs FEC – The ability to influence elections via money from wealthy individuals and corporations is expanded beyond the First National Bank of Boston decision and the 1976 Buckley v Valeo decision that equated political money spent in elections as free speech. Corporate entities and individuals can now make unlimited independent expenditures for political campaigns.
===
Thom: First, in a series of decisions — the first written by that notorious corporatist Lewis Powell (of “Powell Memo” fame) — Republicans on the Court have functionally legalized bribery of politicians and judges by both the morbidly rich and massive corporations.
This started with Powell’s 1978 Bellotti opinion, which opened the door (already cracked a bit) to the idea that corporations are not only “persons” under the Constitution, but, more radically, are entitled to the human rights the Framers wrote into the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments).
Using that rationale, Powell asserted that corporations, like rich people (from the Buckley decision that preceded Belotti by two years), are entitled to the First Amendment right of free speech. But he took it a radical step farther, ruling that because corporations don’t have mouths they can use to speak with, their use of money to spend supporting politicians or carpet-bombing advertising for a candidate or issue is free speech that can’t be tightly regulated.
Citizens United (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/citizens-united), another all-Republican decision with Clarence Thomas (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/clarence-thomas) the deciding vote (after taking millions in bribes), expanded that doctrine for both corporations and rich people, creating new “dark money” systems that wealthy donors and companies can use to hide their involvement in their efforts to get the political/legal/legislative outcomes they seek.
Last week the Republicans on the Court took even that a huge step farther, declaring that when companies or wealthy people give money to politicians in exchange for contracts, legislation, or other favors, as long as the cash is paid out after the deed is done it’s not a bribe but a simple “gratuity.”
So, first off, they’ve overthrown over 240 years of American law and legalized bribery.
Last week they also gutted the ability of federal regulatory agencies to protect average people, voters, employees, and even the environment from corporations that seek to exploit, pollute, or even engage in wage theft. This shifted power across the economic spectrum from a government elected by we the people to the CEOs and boards of directors of some of America’s most predatory and poisonous companies.
Finally, in the Trump immunity case, the Court ruled that presidents are immune from prosecution under criminal law, regardless of the crimes they commit, so long as they assert those crimes are done as part of their “official” responsibilities. And who decides what’s “official”? The six Republicans on the Supreme Court.
These actions — corporate personhood, money as speech, ending the Chevron deference to regulatory agencies, and giving the president life-and-death powers that historically have only been held by kings, shahs, mullahs, dictators, and popes — have fundamentally altered the nature of our nation.
It’s almost impossible to overstate the significance of this, or its consequences. We no longer live in America 1.0; this is a new America, one more closely resembling the old Confederacy, where wealthy families and giant companies make the rules, enforce the rules, and punish those who irritate or try to obstruct them.
Jul 05, 2024 Common Dreams (_https://www.commondreams.org/_) endit
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an 2 24
Sen. Ron Wyden and privacy rights advocates this week are sounding the alarm about an anti-abortion group using cellphone location data to send misinformation to people who visited hundreds of Planned Parenthood clinics across the country.
"If a data broker could track Americans' cellphones to help extremists target misinformation to people at hundreds of Planned Parenthood locations across the United States, a right-wing prosecutor could use that same information to put women in jail," Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a statement Tuesday.
"Federal watchdogs should hold the data broker accountable for abusing Americans' private information," he added. "And Congress needs to step up as soon as possible to ensure extremist politicians can't buy this kind of sensitive data without a warrant."
"That data brokers can track people visiting Planned Parenthood is terrifying enough. That law enforcement agencies can simply buy this type of sensitive data—rather than getting a warrant—is even worse."
Since the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court reversedRoe v. Wade with its June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, anti-choice state policymakers have ramped up attacks on abortion rights, elevating concerns about patient privacy.
Wyden explained in a Tuesday letter that his office launched an investigation after The Wall Street Journalreported last May that the Veritas Society, a nonprofit established by Wisconsin Right to Life, hired the advertising agency Recrue Media for an anti-abortion ad campaign targeting clinic visitors, whose locations were tracked by the data broker Near Intelligence.
As Wyden wrote to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler:
My staff spoke with Steven Bogue, the co-founder and managing principal of Recrue Media on May 19, 2023, who revealed that to target these ads, his employees used Near's website to draw a line around the building and parking lot of each targeted facility. On May 26, 2023, my staff spoke with Near's chief privacy officer, Jay Angelo, who confirmed that, until the summer of 2022, the company did not have any technical controls in place to prevent its customers targeting people who visited sensitive facilities, such as reproductive health clinics. On a webpage that has since been taken down, but was saved by the Internet Archive, the Veritas Society stated that in 2020 in Wisconsin alone, it delivered 14.3 million ads to people who visited abortion clinics, and "served ads to those devices across the women's social pages, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat." The scale of this invasive surveillance-enabled ad campaign remains unknown, however, Mr. Bogue told my staff that the company used Near to target ads to people who had visited 600 Planned Parenthood locations in the lower 48 states.
Justin Sherman, who studies data brokers at Duke University, toldPolitico that "this is the largest targeting campaign we've seen to date against reproductive health clinics based on brokered data."
In case you missed this yesterday, I discovered that data brokers are helping anti-abortion extremists exploit location data to target patients. The prospect of how red-state prosecutors could abuse this information should terrify every single American with a smartphone.
— (@)
Wyden also highlighted Journalreporting from October about Near selling location data to defense contractors that resold it to U.S. Defense Department and intelligence agencies. He wrote that Angelo, the privacy officer, "confirmed that the company had for three years sold location data to the defense contractor AELIUS Exploitation Technologies."
"Mr. Angelo revealed that after joining Near in June of 2022, he conducted a review of the company's practices and discovered that the company was facilitating the sale of location data to the U.S. government that had been obtained without user consent," the senator continued, noting the removal of "misleading statements" from Near's website.
"The former executives that led Near during the period in which it engaged in these egregious violations of Americans' privacy are now under criminal investigation, according to a statement made by the company's lawyer during a December 11, 2023, bankruptcy hearing. But prosecuting those individuals for engaging in financial fraud will not address Near's corporate abuses," Wyden argued, urging the FTC and SEC to take various actions over the company's "outrageous conduct" that "recklessly harmed the public and investors."
Wyden's letter comes as the Republican-controlled U.S. House plans to take up the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act, which would reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), spying powers temporarily extended late last year that agencies—especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)—have abused.
Section 702 only allows warrantless surveillance targeting foreigners located outside the United States, but Americans' data is also swept up, and privacy advocates within and outside of Congress—including Wyden—have long been pushing for warrant protections, a key issue in this week's debates about the Republican-led reform bill.
A shocking invasion of privacy that lays bare just how far forced-birth extremists will go to track, monitor, intimidate & scare women.\n\nI am deeply concerned with how this data could be used by states that criminalize abortion. This must be investigated. \nhttps://t.co/TO0Y2QMgx4
— (@)
Responding to Wyden's letter, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that "this is outrageous. Americans' most personal private health data is being bought and sold for politics. Major surveillance changes are needed. i.e. If Congress acts, reforms from our Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act must be part of a FISA reform."
Reintroduced by Lofgren, Wyden, and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers last July, that bill would require the U.S. government to get a court order compelling data brokers to disclose information as well as bar law enforcement and intelligence agencies from buying data on people in the U.S. and Americans abroad if it was obtained from a user's account or device, or deceptive practices.
Privacy rights campaigners and experts also responded to Wyden's letter with renewed calls for closing the data broker loophole.
"That data brokers can track people visiting Planned Parenthood is terrifying enough. That law enforcement agencies can simply buy this type of sensitive data—rather than getting a warrant—is even worse," said Ashley Gorski, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's National Security Project. "This Thursday, Congress must vote to close the loophole for law enforcement purchases from data brokers. The government shouldn't be able to buy its way around the Fourth Amendment."
The organizations Demand Progress and EPIC concurred in social media posts sharing Politico's reporting on the letter.
"The continued sale of our most sensitive information to and by shady data brokers not only fuels harmful surveillance advertising systems, but enables government agencies—from local police departments to state attorneys general to the FBI—to sidestep the Fourth Amendment," said EPIC counsel Sara Geoghegan in a statement. "We urgently need to rein in data brokers and enact comprehensive privacy rules to protect us from these grave harms in the post-Roe era we live in."
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kaplan ~ donziger //
Freedom of association vs. law & order in NY (2010)
United States District Court for the Southern District of New York*
*Five Borough Bicycle Club, et al., v. The City of New York 1:07-cv-02448-LAK
Judge Kaplan ruled on February 16, 2010, that the City of New York did not violate the First Amendment when the New York Police Department instituted a new rule that would let them ticket or arrest any "recognizable group" of 50 or more cyclists riding together without first obtaining a parade permit from the Police Department.[7]
One of the groups most affected was the organizers of "Critical Mass," a group that held frequent "bike protests" in the city. In 2004, during the Republican National Convention, over 100 cyclists were arrested for disorderly conduct after a group of roughly 5,000 of them rode past Madison Square Garden in protest against former President George W. Bush.[7]^
After the law was passed, the Five Borough Bicycle Club (5BBC) sued the city in 2007, describing the process of obtaining permits as a "bureaucratic nightmare," and challenging the NYPD's assertion that it would ticket or arrest a group of 50 cyclists or more without a permit. The 5BBC asserted that the requirement violated its members' constitutional rights of expressive association, free speech, and to travel; several individual plaintiffs also asserted that the NYPD retaliated and selectively enforced regulations against those who participated in the Critical Mass rides.[7]^
Judge Kaplan asserted his sympathy for the cycling groups' position and acknowledged the inconvenience of the law. Nonetheless, he found that the City of New York had a sufficient interest in facilitating traffic flow and protecting the interests of those on the road, and therefore, that there was no violation of the First Amendment.[7]^
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/scotus-republicans-end-democratic-presidencies/
The Supreme Court may be within a few months of ending democracy in the United States and turning the White House over to a group of billionaires who’ve already funded the GOP takeover of multiple state legislatures
.
But don’t just take my word for it. Consider these sources:
Law & Crime: Election Law Experts Sound the Alarm About ‘Extremely Dangerous’ Voting Rights Case the Supreme Court Just Agreed to Hear
Demand Justice: Republican Supreme Court to Decide If Democrats Are Allowed to Win Elections Anymore
The Atlantic: Is Democracy Constitutional?
MSNBC: Moore v. Harper Could Upend Elections as We Know Them
And Moore v Harper is just the latest in a long string of naked assaults on American democracy and the rights of average American citizens, particularly when they conflict with the rights of billionaires and giant corporations.
So, how the hell did we end up here?
Of the six-vote hard-right majority on the Supreme Court, only one of them was appointed by a president who actually won his election (Thomas: Bush Sr.). The other five were appointed by George W. Bush (lost in 2000 by about a half-million votes) and Trump (lost in 2016 by over 3 million votes).
The urgency and ferocity with which they’re ripping our Constitution to shreds seems driven by their knowledge of their own illegitimacy.
Republican appointees across our federal court system are trying to “deconstruct the administrative state” of America, to quote Steve Bannon. Most recently, the majority-Trump-appointed 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding mechanism is unconstitutional. That case will appear at the Supreme Court soon, in all probability.
The most concerning case right now, however, isMoore v Harper which considers the bizarre theory Trump was pushing Pence to accept, that voters don’t determine who becomes president via the Electoral College but that individual state legislatures can simply award their Electoral votes to whichever candidate strikes their fancy.
It’s loosely based on language in the Constitution, but defies two centuries of precedent and turns pretty much every part of elections over to state legislatures with no oversight whatsoever by either governors or the people, and can’t be appealed to any court, including the Supreme Court.
Judge Michael Luttig — the famous and credible conservative judge, the Edmund Burke of this era — has joined the team fighting the potential outcome of this decision.
Luttig suggests this theory, if adopted by the Court, could very well signal the end of Democratic presidents so long as more than 25 of our 50 states have Republican-controlled legislatures (and their governors can’t even veto their legislatures, according to this theory). Today 30 states’ legislatures are fully under GOP control, up from 14 in 2009.
Luttig, the elders among us may remember, personally ran Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court hearing and worked for years side-by-side with John Roberts in the Reagan Justice Department. He’s friends with both men and is considered one of the top conservative judges in contemporary America.
The “Independent State Legislature theory” at the core of Moore v Harper is, according to Luttig:
[A]ntithetical to the Framers’ intent, the text, and the Constitution’s fundamental design and architecture.
But that’s just the beginning of the out-of-control and dangerous behavior of the far-right radicals on today’s court. Since there’s been a conservative majority on the Court it has, among other things:
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*Handed the 2000 election to George W. Bush
*Radically cut back the rights of unions to organize and represent workers
*Declared that billionaires buying politicians is merely “free speech”
*Gutted the power of the EPA to regulate planet-destroying carbon pollution
*And ripped the heart out of both the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
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In just the past year this Court, now stacked with 3 new and deeply unqualified (but young!) hard-right Trump-humping activists, has already ruled to:
*End the 6th Amendment right of prisoners to challenge convictions when their lawyers were demonstrably corrupt or incompetent (Shinn v Ramirez. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote, “The Court’s decision will leave many people who were convicted in violation of the Sixth Amendment to face incarceration or even execution without any meaningful chance to vindicate their right to counsel.”
*Further gut Americans’ right to vote. In 3 separate cases, Merrill v Milligan, Wisconsin Legislature v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, and Ardoin v. Robinson the six rightwing justices endorsed three separate Republican gerrymanders and voting maps in Wisconsin, Louisiana, and Alabama that were each unabashedly based on efforts to enhance the electoral power of white voters.
*Remove from US citizens who move to (or live in) Puerto Rico the right to receive certain Social Security benefitsin their US v Vaello-Madero case. Whacking the rights of over 300,000 Americans living in PR, the six crazies on the Court ruled that only Congress could fix the damage they themselves were doing. The problem with that, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in her dissent, is that because PR isn’t yet a state and has no member of Congress to fight on their behalf the Court was simply “punishing disparities suffered by citizen residents of Puerto Rico under Congress’ unequal treatment.”
*Take away your Miranda rights to remain silent, avoid self-incrimination, and know you have access to a lawyer. Americans cannot, the 6 “conservatives” on the Court ruled in Vega v. Tekoh, sue police officers who fail to tell them their Miranda rights.
*Eliminate many non-citizens’ rights under the Constitution when abused by the federal government. While the Constitution refers to “persons” rather than “citizens” in most critical places (like the 14th Amendment guaranteeingequal protection under the law), the Court decided in two cases, Garland v. Gonzalez and in Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez, that noncitizens often are not entitled to bond hearings or class-wide injunctive relief when screwed by the feds.
*Rip away 4th Amendment privacy rights against unreasonable search and seizure for all persons living within 100 miles of an ocean or our borders with Mexico or Canada (that’s two out of three American citizens – even here in Portland, I’m within 100 miles of the Pacific Ocean). In Egbert v Boule, the six rightwingers on the Court ruled that border patrol and other federal officers can search you, your home, or your vehicle for any old reason they want because you live in the vicinity of a border or ocean and they consider you suspicious. No warrant necessary anymore.
*Give police officers who use excessive force immunity from accountability. In Rivas-Villegas v. Cortesluna and City of Tahlequah, OK v. Bond the Court upheld its own invention, the doctrine of “qualified immunity,” that makes it almost impossible to sue cops when they wail on you or even kill you (in the Tahlequah case they killed a man in his own garage) for little or no reason.
*Kill the power of the EPA under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon pollution or protect communities from having their water supplies poisoned by industry seeking profits. West Virginia v EPA ended that agency’s power to regulate carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, and Louisiana v American Rivers handed polluters, overturning 50 years of precedent, the power to overrule states’ and tribes’ rules against pollution of their waterways.
That was last year, and apparently it was just a warm-up:
*Now the Court, in addition to taking on Moore v Harper that could guarantee no Democrat in our lifetimes will ever again become president, is planning to take a second large bite out of the Voting Rights Act in Merrill v Mulligan.
*In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admission v. University of North Carolina the 6-judge majority will probably end affirmative action.
*In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District the Court allowed a coach to impose prayer on public school students because “religious liberty.”
*Even as guns have become the leading cause of death among American children and gun-related crime is washing over our country like a poisonous bloody tide, the Court is preparing to unleash even more weapons on our nation by gutting gun owner licensure laws in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
Virtually every one of these decisions are or will be based on the power the Court gave itself to overturn laws passed by Congress and signed by the President in its 1803 Marbury v Madison case.
That case caused such a backlash that the next time the Court ruled on a major constitutional issue was in 1856 with Dred Scott v Sanford, which arguably kicked off the Civil War and President Lincoln refused to recognize.
From the founding of our republic until the post-Reconstruction era, the Court rarely ruled to strike down or modified laws based on their reading of Constitution. Mostly it just did its job as the final court of appeals; after all, the buck has to stop somewhere.
That’s how it’s designed in the Constitution: when different judges disagree or cases go back-and-forth on appeal, the Supreme Court makes the final decision about who wins and who loses.
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Back in the early days of the republic the Court was sometimes referred to as the “chickens and dogs court” because so many cases had to do with disputes between farmers (most of America was agricultural at the time).
The idea of deciding cases on the basis of the Constitution was considered exotic or bizarre, and the idea of striking down laws made by Congress and signed by the president was so unthinkable it was only done twice in major cases during the first century of this nation’s history.
When the Court voted in 1803 to give itself the power to claim the Constitution as its excuse to overturn Congress’ laws, then-President Jefferson reflected the outrage of the nation.
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There is literally nothing in the Constitution that gives the Supreme Court the exclusive right to decide what the Constitution says or means and impose it on the other two branches of government, or on the rest of America. That is a power the Supreme Court took onto itself in that 1803 decision of its own, Marbury v Madison.
It was such a radical step that it drove then-President Jefferson to declare:
[O]ur Constitution…has given — according to this opinion — to one of [the three branches of government] alone the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others; and to that one, too, which is unelected by and independent of the nation…
The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the Judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.
The popular outrage was so intense that, after that 1803 Marbury decision, the Supreme Court only ruled twice between the founding of our nation and the 1860s on a constitutional issue, and in each case both Congress and the president at the time ignored the ruling.
The first was President Andrew Jackson when the Court ruled the Second National Bank was constitutional and Jackson shut it down anyway, claiming it wasn’t. He said:
The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others… The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both.
A generation later, President Abraham Lincoln chose to explicitly ignore the Supreme Court’s expansion of chattel slavery in its 1856 Dred Scott v Sanford decision, as did Congress, and even went on to free enslaved Americans before the Court could weigh in again.
Instead of putting the Supreme Court in charge of American laws, the Framers of the Constitution did the opposite: they put Congress in charge of the Supreme Court.
As they wrote in Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution:
[T]he Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.
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Republicans know this well. When John Roberts worked as an attorney for Ronald Reagan, he suggested that both Brown v Board and Roe v Wade could be overturned by Congress by simply stripping from the Court the power to decide on issues of race or abortion (as I detail in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America).
Most recently, in the wake of the Obergefell gay marriage decision, Republicans in Congress offered a law stripping from the Court its power to rule that gay people could get married. The Marriage Protection Act, which passed the House of Representatives on July 22, 2004 but failed in the Senate, explicitly says:
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No court created by Act of Congress shall have any jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court shall have no appellate jurisdiction, to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of, or the validity under the Constitution of, section 1738C or this section.
While this sort of court-stripping is likely to meet resistance both from Congress and from the Supreme Court, a much easier step is to simply reduce the power of the Court to go off on these wild excursions based on their mind-reading of the Founders.
That could be accomplished by Congress creating an “regulation” for the Court that says all decisions involving Constitutional matters must be decided by consensus (the most strict) or with no fewer than 7 out of 9 notes.
Other options include expanding the size of the Court, term-limiting the Court, or — what FDR had proposed — moving all over-70 justices (Alito, Thomas, and Roberts in 3 years) to “emeritus” status so they can continue to participate in deliberations but lose their vote (or all the emeritus members’ votes are consolidated into one when there’s consensus).
Republicans are already talking out loud about state legislatures legally handing the 2024 election to Trump or DeSantis regardless of who wins, no insurrection necessary this time, because they’re assuming the Court will rule their way.
So, with Moore v Harper and even more toxic and democracy-hobbling or even democracy-destroying decisions coming before the Court, what can we do?
At the very least, Congress should mandate that the Court abide by the same ethics rules that every other federal court and judge must follow, and that all arguments and decisions be televised. This would increase the power of dissenters on the Court and raise the integrity-focusing power of the spotlight of public opinion.
All of these options are within the power of Congress, should it choose to end the filibuster and exercise that power.
Whatever strategy Democratic leadership and the Biden administration choose, America is today in the midst of a severe constitutional crisis and action is needed right now or, at the very least, in the weeks immediately after this November’s election.
If we fail, 2024 may be this nation’s last election for president.
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1021 an
no lnx
Justice Alito lashes out at a journalist's criticism as 'ridiculous'
Cody Fenwick September 30, 2021
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito singled out a specific journalist for criticism on Thursday during a defensive speech at the University of Notre Dame. He used the event to respond to growing outrage about the court's use of the "shadow docket," in which it weighs in on ongoing cases without oral arguments or extended opinions
Adam Serwer of the Atlantic has been among those to recently call out the court's increasingly aggressive use of the shadow docket. Writing about its recent decision to allow a Texas law banning abortions after 6 weeks of pregnancy to go into effect, Serwer wrote: "The conservative majority on the Supreme Court was so eager to nullify Roe v. Wade, the 1973 precedent securing the right to abortion, that it didn't even wait for oral arguments."
Without naming Serwer or the Atlantic, Alito latched on to this quotation and attempted to refute it.
"Put aside the false and inflammatory claim that we nullified Roe v. Wade," Alito said. "We did no such thing, and we said that expressly in our order. I quote: 'The applicants now before us have raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue. ... this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas's law...'"
He continued: "So, the statement is flatly wrong, and the suggestion that we should've held oral argument is ridiculous."
Here is Justice Alito condemning @AdamSerwer’s Atlantic article about the Texas abortion order as “false,” “inflamm… https://t.co/DxItCd85D6
— Mark Joseph Stern (@Mark Joseph Stern) 1633027821.0
Alito's response is wholly unresponsive to Serwer's actual claim.First, most clearly, Serwer did not suggest that the justices should've held oral argument before issuing their order. His point, quite obviously, is that at the very least the court should wait to hold oral arguments and before doing something as upending precedent on abortion law. That's what the court did by allowing the Texas ban to go into effect based on a technicality, even though there were clear immediate harms caused by the obviously unconstitutional law. Alito's cheap shot here shows either a lack of interest in taking criticism seriously or poor critical reading skills, neither of which are qualities one would hope to see in a Supreme Court justice.
More to the point, though, Alito's claim that the court didn't nullify Roe v. Wade because it didn't address the constitutionality of abortion bans doesn't hold up either. If Serwer had claimed that the court had overturned Roe, Alito would arguably be right on a technicality. But nullifying isn't the same as formally overturning precedent. Serwer's point is that the court effectively rendered Roe's protections void in Texas, which is undoubtedly true. The Texas ban, which clearly flies in the face of Roe, is in force and is in fact impeding the ability of women to get abortions. That's what it means for the protection of a legal right to be nullified.
Alito's argument that the majority in the Texas case claimed it wasn't making a decision on the constitutionality of the law doesn't change the fact that rights have been nullified. And the claim that the decision was solely based on the technical aspects of the law, and not the justices' beliefs about the merits of case, doesn't pass the laugh test. There's no serious doubt that the court would've acted differently if, for example, Massachusetts had used a similarly structured law to ban gun ownership.
Serwer, responding to Alito, noted that the justice's comments offered more evidence for an argument he made in a separate article.
More seriously, it’s not often the justices make your point for you. So thanks. https://t.co/ySFCF7q5uu https://t.co/aXYISPFfbQ
— Adam Serwer ?? (@Adam Serwer ??) 1633035101.0
In that piece, Serwer wrote:
The current makeup of the Roberts Court is itself the outcome of a partisan battle that has spanned decades, one in which the conservative legal movement has won a tremendous victory that is certain to shape American life for generations to come.Anticipating their future triumphs, though, the very justices championed by this movement have taken to denying both this victory and its implications, insisting that this casino is resolutely opposed to gambling—in fact, it's not a casino; it's a church, and its critics are engaging in acts of civil blasphemy. With absolute control of the Court, the conservative legal movement's main obstacle is the fact that its extreme views are unpopular. When those views are imposed on the public in the future, the justices want to be able to claim that their decisions are the result of impartial legal reasoning, rather than motivated reasoning by committed right-wing ideologues. But that doesn't make the proposition that the justices are free of partisanship any less ridiculous.
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