HYPE 4 THREAT FEAR
MEBBE redumbdant to fascism and retaliation; TRIFECTA
SEE BAD TRINITY eg 20235 midterm commies
SEE CONSPIRACY
SEE APOCALYPSE DOMINIONIST TECHNOFASCIST
SEE TABLOID MURDOCH
SEE CULT WAR DRAG ANTI-COMMIE COMING FOR KIDS
coming for kids
SEE CARAVAN XENO MIGRANT CRIME GT REPLACEMENT
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Rep. Randy Fine Says Everyone Should Be Afraid After Sweeping Democratic Midterm Wins
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NOTE CARAVAN BS BEFORE EVRY ELECTION
MMA
Within hours of Republican midterm loss, right-wing media began fearmongering about a migrant caravan
Conservative pundits revived the narrative almost immediately, illustrating the centrality of xenophobia to their coverage
Written by John Knefel
Research contributions from Alex Kaplan
Published 11/06/26
Mere hours after Democrats notched massive wins in the midterms, right-wing media dusted off an old playbook and began fearmongering about a supposedly looming migrant “caravan” heading toward the southern border.
Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade mentioned it, as did former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and conservative lawyer and pundit Peter Ticktin. Right-wing media have spent years ominously warning about caravans or a so-called “invasion” at the southern border, often (but not exclusively) at the height of an election cycle.
It’s especially noteworthy that Bannon and Ticktin jumped on this new narrative so quickly, as both are key figures in the election denial movement. Bannon’s War Room podcast has been a central hub for pushing false claims about voter fraud and stolen elections, and Ticktin is a lawyer for former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters, a hero to that movement. And although Fox News has eased back from overt election denial following a lawsuit concerning its 2020 coverage, the network’s history of demonizing immigrants is well documented.
On November 4, Ingraham told her primetime audience about “the least shocking development since the blue tsunami.”
“A new caravan forming in Honduras,” Ingraham continued. “They are marching right for the U.S. border as Democrats took control of Congress.”
The implication for her was obvious, which was that “while Republicans still have control of Congress for the rest of the year, they must use this so-called lame duck session to codify Trump's border agenda into law.”
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From the November 4, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
The following morning, her colleague Brian Kilmeade picked up the baton on Fox & Friends, albeit only in passing.
“There’s another caravan coming — plus Republicans searching for answers after their midterm losses,” Kilmeade said.
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From the November 5, 2026, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends
Both Ingraham and Fox & Friends had seeded the threat of a supposed caravan in late September in anticipation of Republican losses, and Ingraham did again on October 21.
“Right on cue, a massive migrant caravan marching through Mexico toward the U.S. border,” she said, adding that “it’s almost as if they know, or they think, the Democrats are going to win Congress.”
Like the two Fox hosts, Bannon mentioned the caravan the day after midterms only briefly, without sourcing. His comments weren’t surprising because Bannon is one of the most consistently anti-immigrant voices in right-wing media. He has spent years championing indiscriminate mass deportations, in addition to his history of election denial. But the midterm results were such a massive repudiation of Trump and the losses were so large that even Bannon couldn’t plausibly allege mass voter fraud, so he returned to the familiar refuge of scapegoating immigrants.
“They've already got caravans coming up,” Bannon said on November 4. “They're all excited down in Central America that the gates are open again.”
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From the November 4, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
The same day, Ticktin appeared on the livestream of Wayne Allyn Root, a longtime sputtering satellite in Trump’s orbit, and — like Ticktin himself — a key figure in the election denial movement.
“Why is there a caravan going up through Mexico?” Ticktin asked. “Who told these people that they're going to be able to get into this impenetrable fortress of the United States where we have this wall that goes around it?”
“Somebody did,” he continued. “Somebody with enough convincing power or enough money or whatever it was to get everybody to get organized and start coming up, because that's what's coming next.”
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From the November 4, 2026, edition of War Zone LIVE! with Wayne Allyn Root, streamed on Rumble
The comments from Bannon and Ticktin help illustrate how xenophobia and election denial — two central pillars of the MAGA movement — are inextricably bound together by the same impulse, namely to define who is and who is not considered a citizen with equal rights. The racist “great replacement” theory, which, to use its own terms, states that globalist elites are importing “Third World immigrants” to replace white voters, is the most common rhetorical mechanism that links these two subjects.
Right-wing website The Daily Caller aggregated news of the supposed caravan, and conspiracy theory site The Gateway Pundit warned in the abstract that the midterm results were “a signal for border-busting caravans to start their engines,” citing analysis from Fox News’ Bill Melugin, a reporter with a history of producing anti-immigrant coverage. Alex Jones’ website hyped the manufactured threat as well.
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From AlexJonesLive.com, posted November 4, 2026
It’s not unusual for right-wing media to propagandize the supposed danger of an approaching migrant “caravan.” But by pivoting to such fearmongering immediately after historic, era-defining losses for Republicans in the midterms, these figures and outlets reveal how desperate they are to change the subject away from Democratic victories and to avoid any hint of blame for President Donald Trump. Instead, they’ve returned to the well-worn conservative songbook of demonizing and scapegoating immigrants — it’s an old tune, and they all have the same sheet music at the ready.
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The election denial movement failed — but it will be back
11/05/26
Brian Kilmeade says JD Vance is “the person who did the most damage to the war effort” in Iran
11/05/26
Some right-wing media figures say midterm losses are a death knell for a JD Vance 2028 run
11/04/26
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“Sadly now, it’s too late and America is over,” posted Loomer on X the day after the Democrat wave. “Plan for your survival. Stock up on supplies, finalize your will in case massive political violence erupts, and temper the expectations of your children and grandchildren who will never know the American Dream. Make sure your children have food and shelter, but aside from that, most people’s kids are not going to have a future full of aspirations.”
“We are going to watch our country implode in the next five years,” she continued. “Eight jihadi candidates will now be headed to Congress after last night’s election. They will take their oath of office on the Quran, which explicitly causes for the killing of non-Muslims. They will have access to classified information and they will leak that information to America’s enemies and sleeper cells in our country who will without a doubt work to kill Americans. I’m glad that I was able to predict America’s future because it gave me time to plan. But aside from just trying to stay alive every single day, most Americans will not be experiencing much joy in the coming future. If you think things are bad now because gas is a dollar more expensive, you are in for a serious rude awakening.”
“Oh, my God. ‘Just Let me die,’ basically,” said Stein, describing her post. “Are people trying to talk her off the ledge? This kind of looks like a cry for help.”
“She tends to go to a dark place anyhow,” said Sommer. “She made statements during past Republican defeats where she’s said, ‘I can’t have a family. I’ve destroyed my life for Donald Trump’ …. So, she’s one who kind of puts the pathos out there a little more than most.”
“It makes sense that she’s out of reach, but she’s not the only one,” said Stein, who then quickly added that her “foe, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is clearly having the time of her life because she gets to say ‘I told you so.”
And MTG did just that, posting an AI image of herself holding court as a queen while Loomer bawls her eyes out behind her.
“Good morning, everyone. Except Laura Loomer,” posted MTG on X. “An insane woman, two-time congressional loser, who has zero real life experience. Yet Natalie Harp somehow helped Laura become Trump’s crazy train late-night advisor. Make her the press secretary! Make her chief of staff! Give Laura something! Please entertain me!”...
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The midterm results are a crushing rebuke to Fox News’ Trump propaganda
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 11/04/26
The massive bet Fox News made on Donald Trump’s political success turned to ash last night.
The right-wing network’s executives and stars, after boosting his return to the White House in the 2024 election, clearly calculated that if they showered the president with praise, propagandized for his administration, and shielded their viewers from its scandals, both the network and the political party it exists to promote would reap the rewards.
Last night was a historic rebuke to Fox’s effort. The midterm elections in which the network had desperately sought to prop up GOP candidates marked a resounding defeat for the president and his party, one which is being variously described by political analysts, strategists, and reporters as a “Blue-nami,” a “Republican cataclysm,” a “generational wipeout,” and the “biggest incumbent-party defeat since Watergate.”
For Fox’s troubles, the network received a significant drop in viewership leading up to Election Day — one apparently triggered by disaffected Republicans changing the channel — and election night attacks from a president who called in and lashed out at the network for being insufficiently supportive.
Consider the network and its personalities’ depravities over the past two years:
- They filled out the Trump administration with more than two dozen former Foxers hired to key positions — including Pete Hegseth, who was elevated from weekend morning host to defense secretary.
- They helped Hegseth and other extremist nominees overcome skepticism from Senate Republicans and gain confirmation.
- They touted the Trump administration’s purge of federal law enforcement and looked past his pardons of violent January 6 insurrectionists.
- They hired the president’s daughter-in-law to host a weekly program that she used to interview and propagandize for the Trump administration’s leaders.
- They spun for the administration’s unconscionable effort to send undocumented immigrants to a foreign prison notorious for torturing inmates and his acceptance of a $400 million plane from a foreign government.
- They cheered Trump’s war on the press and lashed out at its critics.
- They turned to Sean Hannity, a Trump operative who also hosts a show on the network, to lead special coverage of everything from the United States’ strikes on Iran to the GOP’s midterm “convention.”
- They obeyed Trump’s diktat to shut up about his old friend Jeffrey Epstein amid revelations of his deep relationship with the notorious deceased sex offender.
- They ignored and thus concealed from viewers a wide array of stories demonstrating the massive corruption of Trump, his family, and members of his administration.
- They downplayed the president’s historic unpopularity with the public.
- They justified the execution of Minnesota intensive care nurse Alex Pretti by federal law enforcement.
- They helped convince Trump to launch a war with Iran, then quickly declared that he had won it — and when it became a quagmire, the network stopped talking about it.
- They spent months ginning up “fear porn” about Democratic midterm candidates, most notably their explicitly anti-Muslim attacks on Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and their bizarely homophobic attacks on Senate candidate James Talarico in Texas. (Both won on Tuesday.)
Fox traditionally molds itself in the image of the leading elements of the GOP, and its influence historically waxes when that party is out of power. But with Trump, his MAGA movement, and the Republican Party discredited at the ballot box, the network’s stars will be crawling out of a very deep hole that they dug themselves into.
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ROUGHLY TWENTY-FOUR HOURS FROM NOW, the Republican party could be looking at a set of catastrophic results in the midterm elections. If polls are to be believed, the party’s defeat could be severe enough to represent a repudiation of the party’s entire direction over the past decade.
Yet pro-Trump media figures are urging their audiences to focus their attention on an even more dire possibility: a total global apocalypse. Whether it’s the prospect of a world-ending war, a debilitating cyberattack, or some other kind of catastrophe, luminaries on the right increasingly feel the end may be nigh.
Much of these media figures’ focus for the past week has been on the idea that Western governments are hiding the fact that an unnamed apocalyptic event unrelated to the midterms is imminent.
“I want to tell you to prepare for impact,” podcaster Glenn Beck warned his audience on Wednesday.
The apocalypse fever sweeping the right has been embraced by pundits like Beck and former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, and has prompted one Republican congressman to try to allay those fears by insisting that no sort of “shit hitting the fan” scenario is about to occur.
Still, the pervasive idea of coming civilizational collapse has prompted a wave of prepping advice on the conservative internet.
The disaster watch began in late October after
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MAGA media: If Democrats take power in Congress, they will “trans your kids”
Written by Helena Hind
Published 10/29/26
Ahead of the midterms, MAGA media figures are trotting out their usual attacks against Democrats, including one particularly familiar argument: Vote Republican because Democrats want to “trans your kids, cut the genitals off your children.” Echoing anti-trans campaign rhetoric from 2024, some right-wing hosts and guests have repeated this narrative, warning their audiences, “You let those people get into power, you don’t have a country anymore.”
Several have specifically attacked Democratic Texas Senate nominee James Talarico for his public statements supporting transgender people.
The current anti-trans approach is an apparent rehash of a 2024 attack line. That year, Fox News significantly boosted its anti-trans coverage, airing at least 47 segments mentioning trans athletes in October 2024 compared to just six such segments in September 2024, an increase of more than 683%. A Trump campaign ad similarly attacking then-Vice President Kamala Harris for her support of gender-affirming care aired more than 30,000 times before Election Day.
GOP losses in 2025 gubernatorial elections, however, suggested that the anti-trans strategy was unreliable. Right-wing media portrayed the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races as further referendums on trans issues, and both Republican candidates lost. As Media Matters previously explained, those losses demonstrate that “the supposed backlash vote exists mainly in right-wing media rhetoric, not in voter behavior.”
Nevertheless, Republican candidates and organizations that support them have reportedly spent over $180 million on anti-trans political ads attacking Democratic candidates during the 2026 midterm cycle, even though few voters have ranked trans issues among their top concerns in recent polls. And with Republicans trailing in the polls, right-wing media have been getting more desperate and extreme in their attacks against Democrats, including by resorting to their same old anti-trans strategy.
Podcaster Steven Crowder: “We have a two-party system. One of them wants to trans your kids.” Crowder then played various clips of trans-affirming statements from Talarico and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). [Rumble, Louder with Crowder, 10/21/26]
Podcaster Andrew Kolvet attacked Democrats’ education policies and claimed, “They want to trans your kids.” Kolvet: “Let’s go through the list. What is the left better on, exactly? Are they better on the border? No, no, objectively no. Are they better on education? They want to indoctrinate your kids. They want to trans your kids. They don’t want to let you get school choice or vouchers to take your kids to a Christian school or a classical education school. No. So they’re not better there. Schools are failing.” [Real America’s Voice, The Charlie Kirk Show, 10/20/26]
Right-wing commentator Chad Prather claimed “Democrat socialists” want to “trans your kids, cut the genitals off your children,” warning, “You let those people get into power, you don’t have a country anymore.” Prather: “These people running on the progressive left side, these Democrat socialists that are out there — I mean, if [Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul] El-Sayed is not evidence of that — if these people out there that want to put you on train cars that are dancing on the grave of Charlie Kirk that literally are wishing death upon conservatives in America. These people who want to trans your kids, cut the genitals off your children, these people, they want to abort babies up into toddlerhood — you let those people get into power, you don't have a country anymore. And I'm not overstating that. They've literally come out and said what they intend to do, what they want to do.” [BlazeTV, Sara Gonzales Unfiltered, 10/6/26]
Federalist CEO Sean Davis said Republicans should frame the midterms as “a choice between” Republicans and “people who want to cut off your kids' genitals, people who want to trans your kids.” Asked by podcaster Benny Johnson what he would like to see as a “closing midterm message” from Republicans, Davis replied: “I think it would be important for them to make clear that people have a choice, and you have a choice between a guy, Donald Trump, and Republicans, who really have done incredible work, even if they've not done everything we've wanted, and the choice between that and people who want to cut off your kids' genitals, people who want to trans your kids, people who want to import infinity Third-World Islamic jihadist radicals.” Johnson added, “We can put that on a shirt: godless American communists that want to cut your … children's genitals off.” [YouTube, The Benny Show, 9/29/26]
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From the September 29, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, streamed on YouTube
On War Room, guest Danielle Buck said Talarico “wants to trans our kids,” adding, “This man is going to ruin our state.” Buck stated, “He wants to open our borders. He wants to trans our kids. He believes that there are six genders. He believes that God is nonbinary. Like, this man is going to ruin our state.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 9/23/26]
Blaze Media’s Glenn Beck claimed Democrats started “telling you that you got to trans your kid” after the 2020 election, adding, “They win this election, they're going to double down again.” Beck: “They’re going to double down after this election. They’re going to double down. You think it was bad then? Do you remember what it was like under Obama? And then Trump lost in 2020 and all of a sudden you’re like, oh my gosh, these people are monsters. What are they doing? All of a sudden, they're telling you that you got to trans your kid. And you're like, wait a minute, I didn't vote for any of that. You thought that was bad? They win this election, they’re going to double down again.” [Blaze Media, The Glenn Beck Program, 10/22/26]
PBD Podcast panelist Adam Sosnick: “They're going to trans your kids. They're going to Talarico your kids, and that's what's basically the Democratic brand is at this point.” Sosnick said the Democrats used to be “the party of the working man. Now they are the party of the working woman — the college-educated, liberal ideology, go to school in your ivory towers. The only thing that’s masculine about the Democratic Party these days are the Abdul El-Sayeds that want to put women in hijabs. That’s about as masculine as it gets. Other than that, they’re going to trans your kids. They’re going to Talarico your kids, and that’s what's basically the Democratic brand is at this point.” [Valuetainment, PBD Podcast, 10/19/26]
On his podcast, Donald Trump Jr. said that if Democrats come into power, there will be “trans kids back in school” and “trans agendas back in school, in your classrooms, with your children.” [Rumble, Triggered with Donald Trump Jr., 10/12/26]
Article III Project founder Mike Davis urged War Room viewers to vote Republican, asking, “Do you want Democrats funding trans surgeries for kids? Or do you want Trump blocking that?” Davis continued, “We need to … make a very rational decision here. It is team America versus team Mohammad.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 10/23/26]
Daily Wire host Michael Knowles said Democrats “want to send CPS to your house to take your kids away if you don't want to trans your kids.” Answering the question “What could the Republicans focus on” in the midterms, Knowles listed immigration, violence, and supposed “predations” on Christians as issues Republicans could talk about before saying, “Let's talk about transing your kids. That's a major social issue. Let's talk about the LGBT indoctrination in kindergarten. Let's talk about all of those issues that we win on. Those are the 80-20 issues. Those are the 90-10 issues.” [The Daily Wire, The Michael Knowles Show, 9/28/26]
Fox News host Greg Gutfeld attacked Talarico: “The moment we get a Democrat president, he might just flip back again and start cutting up kids all over again.” Gutfeld also called Talarico “disturbing” and accused him of “demonic trickery.” [Fox News, The Five, 10/15/26]
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Two-thirds of Fox segments about James Talarico included anti-LGBTQ attacks
06/16/26 10:12 AM EDT
11/06/25 5:23 PM EST
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Laura Ingraham claims there is a leftist “plan” to “overthrow” the government. What in the world is she talking about?
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 10/22/26
Republicans are panicking and right-wing media are desperately churning out “fear porn” as polls continue to point to a devastating midterm environment for their party with less than two weeks remaining before election day. From presidential rallies to Fox News primetime, MAGA stalwarts are trying to bolster their party’s turnout by warning Republican voters that if they do not go to the polls, their freedom and very lives may be at stake.
That increasingly deranged environment is generating a level of demagoguery that at times becomes simply absurd.
Fox host Laura Ingraham, for example, announced on her show Wednesday that if Democrats win control of the U.S. House and Senate, a leftist cabal of activists, journalists, “top former staffers” in the Obama and Biden administrations, and even Democratic governors will carry out a plot to force President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act as a mechanism to “dissolve” the U.S. Constitution and “crush their enemies.”
The argument that the left is planning to destroy the federal government if and only if Democrats triumph in the midterms makes a lot of sense as an attempt to scare Republicans to the polls but none at all as a plot in its own right.
Questions abound: Why in the world is this plan only enacted after Democrats achieve actual congressional power for the first time in Trump's second term? If there is clear evidence of a sweeping plot including “top” Obama and Biden officials, why is the best example Ingraham can point to former Obama White House ethics lawyer Norm Eisen talking about protecting the Constitution with legal action? Why does the plan revolve around getting Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act — an outcome MAGA pundits like Ingraham herself have been lobbying for and Democrats have publicly opposed?
Lastly, why does Ingraham think this grand conspiracy is underway? We don’t really know — she cited no direct evidence for what on-screen Fox graphics described as “The Left’s Plan To Overthrow The U.S. Gov’t.”
But Ingraham’s claims align with a conspiracy theory that Jennica Pounds, a right-wing influencer who goes by the pseudonym DataRepublican and briefly worked for the Defense Department this year, floated over the weekend based on videos of activist meetings she obtained. Pounds’ claim of a leftist “operational plan” seems to be much less than advertised — but has nonetheless been trumpeted this week by prominent MAGA figures like Glenn Beck, Vince Coglianese, Jesse Kelly, and podcaster-turned-deputy-FBI-director-turned-podcaster Dan Bongino.
It’s the sort of wildly incendiary claim that should demand copious evidence before making it to the airwaves of a major news outlet — but Fox is a MAGA propaganda network devoted to Republican electoral victory at any cost.
Unpacking Ingraham’s evidence-free claim of a leftist plot
Ingraham built her conspiracy-minded edifice on a faulty foundation.
She began her opening monologue on Wednesday by using a deceptively cropped video snippet of Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) to allege that the former CIA officer had promised “punishment for young conservatives.”
While many on the right have tried to generate outrage based on that false interpretation, Slotkin had actually been discussing how providing “accountability” for mid-level enablers of the Trump administration’s corruption could disincentivize similar behavior in the future.
From there, Ingraham pivoted to arguing that Democratic victories would hasten the downfall of the republic. “If voters give Democrats control of the House and even the House and the Senate, the punishment that Slotkin alludes to will be severe,” she claimed, adding that such punishment would be “meted out not only against individuals and corporations that work with Trump, but against the democratic system itself.”
After explaining that an unnamed leftist “they” intend to “force Trump's hand and use Paris riots, perhaps, as their guide,” Ingraham laid out her understanding of the “plan.”
“Now, the radical left's current thinking is that if they're able to mobilize in huge numbers in the streets, President Trump, if it's nationwide, will decide to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows him to deploy the U.S. military for domestic law enforcement,” she said. “Activists will then claim widespread abuses as the military struggles to restore law and order. Then the press will collaborate with activists, amplifying their wild claims with video snippets on social media.”
“Then blue state governors — this is their dream — seeing the chaos, will unite to try to override federal authority, take over federal functions, and eventually even rewrite our Constitution or just dissolve it altogether,” she continued.
Ingraham went on to claim that “this scenario is being openly discussed among top former staffers of Obama and Biden, former government employees of agencies like USAID, and of course community organizers” — but provided no examples of anyone actually discussing such a scheme.
Instead, Ingraham claimed that the plot’s adherents say they’re “reforming the government” rather than “overthrowing it,” adding, “former USAID staffer Danielle Reiff makes it sound like utopia.” Ingraham then played a brief clip of Reiff appearing on a December edition of Dr. Paul Zeitz’s Revolutionary Optimism Podcast and saying: “You have to reform your institutions so that it, you know, that becomes the foundational framework for society. And so, we're going to have to, if we want to live in peace and deeper democracy, reform our legal frameworks to foster collaboration across divides and unity and diversity.”
The Fox host later described Eisen as “one of the godfathers of this effort” because he “advances the fraudulent claims that democracy is in crisis.” But she provided no evidence actually linking him to the supposed “plan,” instead airing a clip in which Eisen is asked if he thinks of his work as part of a “war” and replies, “Yes — peaceful, lawful, vigorous battle, you do have to think of it in those terms to stop what Donald Trump began after the 2020 election and has continued a coup against the Constitution.”
Ingraham concluded her monologue by suggesting that “the real tyrant” is not Trump but “Democrats like Slotkin, who want to remake the government to crush their enemies.”
Ingraham then brought on Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), telling him, “These conversations, this playbook, is real. They might not be able to get there in the next year or so, but they have that plot cooking.”
Schmitt replied in part that “their march through the institutions is almost complete” and “the goal is absolute and total control” with “no room for dissent.”
“When you go vote, there’s a lot of issues that are on the table that you’re voting on, but I think a central issue is what the Democrats are willing to do with power,” he added. “They’re telling us all over again, and I think it’s terrifying and why this election is so important.”
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From the October 21, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle.
What “conversations”? What “playbook”? Who is supposed to be behind this “plan,” and how developed is it?
Ingraham didn’t say.
Where we think this is coming from
Jennica Pounds is a MAGA influencer with nearly 1 million followers who posts online under the moniker DataRepublican and is perhaps best known for accusing a Trump administration official who was attempting to hand her a scoop of trying to entrap her to commit a crime. Following that August debacle, she and the Pentagon disclosed that she had been secretly working as a special government employee for the Defense Department (according to Pounds, she applied for a credential as a “journalist” in the Pentagon press corps, received a press pass in April, held it until June, and joined the administration in July).
Soon after her Pentagon role became public, Pounds launched a website mapping left-wing groups called “DSA Explorer.” And on Sunday, Pounds (“fresh off her brief stint as a Special Government Employee with the Pentagon,” according to RedState’s writeup), claimed online that she had obtained access to a vast trove of transcripts and recordings of online meetings of progressive activists.
She then laid out a narrative that closely resembled what Ingraham ran with on Wednesday:
You've heard that the DSA is proposing structural reforms to America, including abolishing the Senate and imposing term limits.
What you not have heard is - there is an operational plan to put it all into action. If the Democratic Party sweeps 2026, then DSA will become “foot soldiers” in constant clashes with the administration to cross a “red line” or invoke a “doomsday scenario” - meaning, President Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, probably sometime in 2027.
Then, a lot of coordinated responses kick off, including delegitimizing the federal government itself and handing that legitimacy to Democratic governors. 2028 then becomes a vote on whether to keep America governance as-is or to burn it all down to appease a “young and brown” demographic.
But the 1-minute video snippet Pounds appended to her post does not show anything like a well-developed “operational plan” to do anything at all, much less one involving DSA “foot soldiers” plotting to force an invocation of the Insurrection Act.
Indeed, Pounds appears to be taking a series of disaggregated remarks from different people at different calls and events and weaving them together into a single coherent apocalyptic narrative. By her own subsequent admission, “almost nobody knows the ‘grand plan’ so to speak,” the various parties “simply agree to play a role.”
The video attached to Pounds’ original post, titled “April 10, 2026 - R2T core team call,” shows Reiff and Zeitz, from the podcast clip Ingraham aired, on an online video call with three other individuals. Zeitz recounts a recent meeting he and Reiff had with more influential figures at Governors Safeguarding Democracy, described as “a forum that convenes Democratic governors,” to discuss their “work around the emergency scenario planning.”
Reiff then says that they were asked in the meeting to develop “a panel of a couple of people who could talk to the governors, who could do a briefing for the governors and walk them through like the doomsday scenario and help them think through what their options are as a response,” and adds that such an opportunity would be “a huge breakthrough for us.”
That video and others Pounds released triggered a firestorm on the right, with influencers and podcasters largely adopting her narrative.
But Tim Pool, of all people, suggested she’d gotten out over her skis.
“Many people have asked me my thoughts on this and asked me what I think is going on, and I’ve said, listen, DataRepublican, with all due respect, coming out and just saying I have this data is not enough to launch a story,” he said on his show on Tuesday. “I cannot just come out and say hey, guys, someone says they’ve seen stuff the DSA is doing.”
That’s apparently a higher standard than Fox requires — because if Ingraham were aware of hard evidence of the leftist plot to destroy the country she claimed exists, she surely would have aired it. Instead, her coverage leaves so many obvious questions unanswered that it only emphasizes just how frenzied the network has become as it tries to concoct enough “fear porn” to save the GOP from electoral devastation.
Is it possible Pounds has a recording of random activists proposing something resembling her above plan? Sure, but that wouldn't be evidence of a grand conspiracy involving people with actual power and influence — and says nothing about the plausibility of such a plot, which in this author's opinion is frankly nonsensical.
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Fox News is peddling election “fear porn” about Democrats to rescue Republicans
10/16/26
10/22/26
Peter Navarro rails at Fox News personalities: “Turn Fox off”
10/20/26
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French riots are the new Hunter’s laptop which was the new migrant caravan which was the new Ebola
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Tim Pool: “If you are right wing and the left wins, you're dead”
10/19/26
PIX BO IHLAN
October 19, 2026, edition of Timcast, uploaded to YouTube
TIM POOL (HOST): You familiar with Pascal's wager? Well, I have one, and it's the culture war wager or, you know, come up with the name for it. I don't know. The idea is this. If you are left wing and the right wins, you're fine. If you are left wing and the left wins, you're fine. You're great. If you are right wing and the right wins, you're fine. If you are right wing and the left wins, you're dead. You're dead or in jail or in the gulag, whatever. This is the modern political wager.
Thus, for most people, they will default to liberal because that's where you'll get left alone for the most part. That's what they believe, at least, until the left gets their way, and then it's not going to be so pretty.
You know, I don't care about your arguments. I don't care about your opinions. I care about the truth. And the truth is very simply, Donald Trump was heavily investigated, his associates, his lawyers in numerous states. Trump supporters were hunted down across this country for misdemeanor trespass. Antifa, we've gotten some charges. Don't get me wrong. There have been some victories under the Trump administration. Nothing wide scale. The — what was it, the M29 insurrection at the White House where they firebombed the White House grounds and forced the president to a bunker and nearly tore — they they set fire to St. John's Church. It was not an insurrection? No. Not in the eyes of Democrats or the corporate press. So I just say hypocrisy and lies.
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mma
Fox News is peddling election “fear porn” about Democrats to rescue Republicans
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 10/16/26
Fox News host Jesse Watters effectively summed up his network’s recent election coverage on Thursday when he said that Republicans need to churn out “fear porn” that paints Democrats as “scary and dangerous” in order to avoid calamity in the midterms.
Watters told his fellow panelists on The Five that “polling” shows “MAGA is engaged, it’s the non-MAGA faction and independents that the Republicans are worried about” in the midterms. He then pointed to an interview he conducted with Caroline Sunshine, a former Disney star turned MAGA political operative, saying, “She said you can't just go out and sell all the great stuff Trump did. It's been great, but it doesn't motivate."
“You got to go out and have fear porn,” Watters continued. “You have to say, these people are going to take your healthcare, they're going to let in the Third World, they’re going to jack up your taxes, and that’s what’s going to get people to come out to vote. You have to say, these people are scary and dangerous, you know what we're all about. And that’s really a choice."
Greg Gutfeld praised Watters’ analysis, saying, “Good for you, fear porn."
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From the October 15, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Five
“Fear porn” is an apt characterization of the tenor of Fox demagoguery as the midterms approach and polls show Democrats poised for a wave of victories even in deep red states.
The network’s stars — apparently finding that their hagiographic coverage of the Trump administration isn’t doing enough to help the president’s party — are trying to inculcate a sense of panic in their viewers. They are warning in the strongest possible terms that if Democrats take control of Congress, their prosperity, freedom, and very lives are at risk.
Watters himself, for example, warned last month that “the Democrat party and its communist base are running against America” and “want to shatter the pillars of Western civilization.”
“They want to abolish the Senate, police, ICE, and of course the border,” he explained on the September 9 broadcast of his show. “Some of them are even calling for reparations and rent control. Others have a little bit of a problem with whites, and a majority of Democrats don't prefer capitalism. It's like we're fighting the Cold War here in our own country.”
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From the September 9, 2026, edition of Fox News' Jesse Watters Primetime
For Watters’ colleague Sean Hannity, the Trump political operative with a Fox primetime show, this is “the single most important, consequential midterm election in our lifetime” and “the stakes, they couldn’t be any higher, nor could the choice be any more clear.”
“We can vote to build on the successes of President Trump, his first two years in office, or you can shred your Constitution, allow our country to be taken hostage by this new radicalized leftist democratic socialist communist movement and their far-left extremist candidates,” Hannity claimed on his September 28 show.
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From the September 28, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
According to Hannity, Republicans may be “imperfect” and even “pathetically weak,” but “Democrats are completely insane.”
“They want to abolish, now, the family,” he told his Fox audience on September 17. “They want to seize your assets, they want to control the means of production, they want to control your healthcare, your food” as well as “your decisions, your children.” He went on to invoke “the 574 ‘mostly peaceful’ riots in the summer of 2020” before warning viewers not to “let perfect be the enemy of good, especially when the alternative is socialism, communism, statism, shredding our Constitution, and outright insanity.”
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From the September 17, 2026, edition of Fox News' Hannity
Fox’s Laura Ingraham warned on Wednesday that Democrats are demanding the public “submit or be crushed.” She told her viewers that voting for them due to concerns about affordability “will only make things worse” because Democrats will “keep prices high permanently,” “want a war with Russia,” and have “horrid tax-and-spend policies.”
“While voting Democrat or not at all may punish Trump politically, the people you'll really be punishing are yourselves,” she added. “Oh, yes, the punishment is coming. They can't eliminate conservatives altogether, but they can and they will make your life as miserable as possible by taxing you, canceling you, and restricting you.”
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From the October 14, 2026, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle
Ingraham alleged last month that “Democrats are rethinking democracy.” According to Ingraham, “If the Democrats win the House, take the Senate, they intend to shred the Constitution and punish the country.”
She later added that the party’s leaders are “acting as mini-tyrants,” claiming: “If they had their druthers and they were in office, there would be no Fox News. They would regulate that out of existence. There would be no talk radio. There would be no alternative media.”
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an 10 26 lie gaslt immigr crime bs?
Trump caught 'juicing the stats' to fake tough-on-crime claims
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AN 10 26
Trump enjoys inciting a crowd with talk, whether or not it has any ground beneath it. Much, of it, say critics, has to do with insulting others. And Trump’s insults came hot and fast in San Antonio, Texas, at a rally with Senate candidate Ken Paxton and House candidate Carlos De La Cruz.
Paxton is running a close race against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in one of the highest-profile matches of the midterms. And Trump lit into Talarico and his fellow Democrats by calling them ‘Dirty.”
But not just dirty — filthy in every sense of the word.
No. 1. Dems Dirty Doorknobs.
“Texas has been the state people flee to escape the economic and social collapse of Democrat run California, New York, and other failing blue states, but if Talarico and the Democrats get their way, all of that squalor and misery, poverty, homelessness [will come to Texas],” Trump told the roaring crowd.
“When the blues get in everything becomes dirty,” said Trump. “The streets become dirty. The doorknobs going into stores are dirty. Sidewalks are filthy dirty. Everything becomes dirty and has a bad smell, but we're going to escape all that lawlessness corruption and dysfunction that's coming to destroy your beloved state of Texas.”
Trump added that “a vote for Talarico” will turn Texas into a “dirty, crime-riddled Third World dumping ground, and a vote for Ken Paxton is a vote to save Texas, defend Texas and defend everything that makes Texas great and makes America great. I want you to know the extreme danger of having someone like this Democrat in charge.”...
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RWW 9 26
- Finally, Brenden Dilley appears to be panicking about the GOP's prospects in the midterm elections: "THE DEMS WERE CUTTING KIDS DICKS OFF, ALLOWING ILLEGALS TO INVADE, MURDER AND LIVE OFF OF YOUR TAX DOLLARS, ALL THE WHILE THE MILITARY WAS IN TOTAL WOKE DISARRAY! FUCK YOUR GAS PRICES! IT'S REPUBLICAN OR COMMUNISM!"
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rww 8 26
Mark Meckler Thinks The DSA Is Trying To 'Take Your Children Away From You'
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RWW
08/17/2026
by
Rep. Brandon Gill is a first-term MAGA member of Congress from Texas and the son-in-law of discredited election conspiracist Dinesh D’Souza. And he’s the beneficiary of a remarkable faux-intimate fundraising email from Vice President J.D. Vance.
“It feels like I typed & re-typed this note 100 times,” reads the subject line.
The email goes on to say that the message “is more personal and from the heart than most messages, because it's going to patriots that I feel I can trust as our movement’s closest confidants.”
There’s a lot more:
Every time I stand behind the resolute desk, or walk into a critical cabinet meeting to make a decision surrounded by the most dedicated and fearless men and women in our country, I feel the very weight of our country’s survival in my hands and the responsibility of what it represents — a thin, fragile line between the America we love and the America the radical left is determined to build in its place.
And when I sit alone with my thoughts and my prayers the question I ask myself constantly is “what more can I do?”
That’s when I decided I needed to write this message.
At the end of my life, I want to stand before God Almighty and be able to say with a clear conscience that I gave everything I had to protect the soul of this country.
And all that is just part of a plea to follow a link to read Vance’s “urgent briefing,” which opens with this:
My fellow Americans – this is JD Vance.
Today, I’m coming to you with all my cards on the table, not as “The Vice President.”
I’m coming to you simply as JD, the small-town Ohio hillbilly who loves God, cherishes his family, and somewhere along the way ended up being tasked with a critical mission at one of the most critical moments in American history.
The “briefing” repeats some of the email language about Vance sitting alone with his thoughts and prayers asking what more he can do, before going into now-standard Republican smears about Democrats and progressives:
This isn't about Republicans versus Democrats anymore. I need you to understand that what we are facing is something deeper and more dangerous than a partisan election fight.
We are watching the deliberate, systematic infiltration of American institutions by people who genuinely despise this country's history, who mock our values, who want to dismantle Western civilization itself and replace it with something unrecognizable.
A legion of radical socialist candidates is being recruited, funded, and deployed to take over Congress. And their movement is gaining horrifying momentum as we speak.
Gill is no stranger to that kind of inflammatory rhetoric. Last year, when he was urging the defunding of public broadcasting, he claimed that everyone who works at National Public Radio hates Christians, conservatives, and this country. You'd never know from reading this email that Vance and Gill were both on Fox a couple months ago urging Democrats to tone down their political rhetoric.
Vance goes on. He warns that people who hate Trump and Republicans are filling “Democrat war chests.” It is unintentionally hilarious to have Vance—whose career in public life was sponsored and funded by Peter Thiel—warning that “Big Tech billionaires” are backing Democrats. Still, the stakes he portrays are dire:
If we lose the House this November, there is nothing left to protect us from what these deranged leftists and their socialist agenda will do. The America you and I grew up in — the one we are fighting to hand to our children — will not survive what comes next.
I'll be completely and uncomfortably honest with you: I cannot fight this fight alone.
After more paragraphs praising donors’ commitment and patriotism, Vance finally gets to the point:
I'm teaming up with Congressman Brandon Gill — the youngest House Republican in America, a fighter who takes on the radical left every single day in the hearing rooms and on the House floor with a ferocity I deeply admire — and together we are assembling 10,000 of the most dedicated MAGA patriots in the GOP's top donor files to build the firewall this majority needs to survive November.
Vance signs off with, “For God and for the America we refuse to give up on.”
The fine print reveals that unless a donor directs otherwise, 90 percent of their contribution will go to Brandon Gill for Texas, and 10 percent to Trump National Committee. And the finer print reports that funds going to TNC are allocated 77.5 percent to Never Surrender (Donald Trump’s PAC), 17.5% to the Republican National Committee, and 5 percent to Working for Ohio, Vance’s leadership PAC.
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MMA VID WEDDING W KNIVES?
Newsmax guest: "Where Islam grows, freedom dies"
August 11, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Finnerty
ROB FINNERTY (HOST): We've been forced to accept a lot of change. Small American cities and towns all across the country have been changed completely over the last two decades. This is a wedding in Hamtramck, Michigan. Notice the knives. Amy Mekelburg is the founder of the RAIR Foundation. She is one of the only journalists in the country who's has been covering this slow erosion of Western culture across America.
Amy, appreciate you being here. I want to focus on the small city of Hamtramck, Michigan. So, it's right outside Detroit. It's a couple miles away from the Ford international headquarters, what used to be. Now it's a Muslim majority city, which is fine, but can you tell me what life is like now in Hamtramck?
AMY MEKELBURG (GUEST): Hi, it's nice to be here with you tonight. Yeah, so Hamtramck is a captured city, like I like to call it. It is an Islamic city that is operating in the United States. The city council, the mayors, all of the elected officials are Islamic. They do things as you would see in an Islamic country.
For example, they will have now halal slaughters that are allowed in their front yards and their backyards. The call to prayer rings out. So you can actually be in America and go to a city in Michigan that does not even resemble the United States any longer.
FINNERTY: OK.
MEKELBURG: As I just — yeah.
FINNERTY: No, would you call this, so again, it's not an anti-Muslim thing, but would you call Hamtramck, which is like five miles away from downtown Detroit, would you call this city a no-go zone for people of other religions? And I ask you that, because you've been.
MEKELBURG: Yeah, so I would absolutely say it's a no-go zone for non-Muslims. And unfortunately, what happens in any place that Islam comes in, the freedom starts to die. So, I always say, where Islam grows, freedom dies. And that's what America is known for, it's freedom, and that's being stripped.
Right here, in our cities across America, there are places that are operating now as complete little mini cities under Islamic control.
After HuffPost profile of anti-Muslim Twitter crusader, 4chan trolls begin organizing database of “leftist journos”
- 06/01/18
Newsmax's Michael Savage: “ICE is not going after the worst of the worst. ... They're going after innocent people.”
- 08/10/26
Right-wing media ramp up Islamophobic campaign against Abdul El-Sayed
- 08/06/26
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Newsmax host: “If you people in DC don't start hearing us, you're going to foster a monsoon to water the tree of liberty. I am done sugarcoating this.”
07/29/26
chyron dems care about pwr not ppl
July 28, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie: Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): Nope. I'm — oh, Carl, you seem super — I am so angry about this stuff. Conservatives get the shaft on literally everything because the people we stick our neck out for, that we send to office, that we donate to, we knock on doors for, we make phone calls, and we put the stickers on our car — they don't do a damn thing when they get there.
Republicans have the trifecta of government right now, and we can't pass something that 80% of the nation wants, which is voter ID. Yet when Democrats are charge, they ram through things that we don't want. You — 60% of America didn't want universal health care. By the way, that tripled the price of health care while they lock up grandma for praying silently outside of an abortion clinic.
How many times do we have to sit here and just take this two-tiered system? Because if you people in DC don't start hearing us, you're going to foster a monsoon to water the tree of liberty. I am done sugarcoating this.
You — do you even realize how pissed off we are? They're just like, nope. Taking a 37-day vacation. These people don't care. It's always about the narrative for them. When they're proven to have lied, they will literally just, like, lie to your face. And then when you call them out, they just change the subject or make it about some emotional thing to to try to make you feel bad for them, just like we showed you last night. They get bad polling about, no, abolish ICE is polling bad. What — you — oh, you know what? We'll just say that never happened. Even though there is video of them doing this every single day.
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mma
Leader of constitutional sheriffs group: “I don't blame Trump for not following the Constitution to the letter because he has no Congress that he can rely on or trust”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 04/03/26
As Media Matters previously reported last October about Richard Mack, leader of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association:
Mack is a former Arizona county sheriff and the founder of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, an organization which subscribes to the ideology that sheriffs “should be the ultimate law enforcement authority in the U.S.” The organization claims that sheriffs have the “Constitutional authority to check and balance all levels of government,” superseding “any agent, officer, elected official or employee from any level of government when in the jurisdiction of the county.” Constitutional scholars and other experts dispute this assertion, with some noting that the Constitution doesn’t mention sheriffs at all.
Mack and CSPOA have pushed for sheriffs to get involved with mass deportation efforts, even holding the organization’s November national conference in Washington state in part because its attorney general is suing a sheriff for aiding the Trump administration’s deportation efforts. Mack also said he has been talking to Homan about “getting sheriffs involved in deportation.”
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From the March 30, 2026, edition of FreedomTalk, streamed on YouTube
RICHARD MACK (FOUNDER, CONSTITUTIONAL SHERIFFS AND PEACE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION): I think he’s always having to play defense, except maybe with the Iran war. Obviously, he took that offensive approach. And even on that, the Democrats and some Republicans have gone after him. And I don't blame Trump for not following the Constitution to the letter because he has no Congress that he can rely on or trust.
KELLY JOHN WALKER (HOST): Yeah.
MACK: He cannot. And so if he had gone to them before he invaded Iran, there's lots of Democrats in there that would have informed Iran.
WALKER: Yeah.
MACK: And it would have cost the lives of a lot of people and maybe even cost the entire operation. And when you have an enemy Congress like that, that obviously are traitors to America. And I'm not talking about, not, oh if they don't go along with Trump, then they're traitors. No. That's not what I'm talking about. This is far beyond just not going along, or going against the president. It's far beyond that. They will do anything, including compromise the safety and security of Americans.
...
This is obvious that they are enemy and they bring in enemy combatants so they're the same as. They're the ones who brought in terrorists. They're the ones that brought in the cartels and that's the most dangerous situation in American history right now what they have done.
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09/27/24
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AN 8 25
There are nearly 25 million naturalized citizens in the United States, accounting for 7% of the total population. Each and every one of them should be laser-focused on the Trump administration’s plans to denaturalize and deport as many of them as possible.
*This story originally appeared at Truthdig.
Denaturalization is the process by which the federal government revokes the citizenship of persons born outside of the country who became citizens by meeting the standards set by Congress in the Immigration and Nationality Act, which include swearing an oath of allegiance to the United States, and demonstrating “good moral character.”
Although denaturalization rates have declined over the past several decades, there is ample historical precedent for the revival President Donald Trump is planning. Between 1906 and 1967 — when the Supreme Court stepped in to tighten the legal requirements — more than 22,000 Americans were denaturalized. Many were left-wing activists who were singled out during the two Red Scares of the 20^th century. A common method to denaturalize them was to accuse them of fraud in taking their oaths of allegiance. In 1919, in perhaps the most famous case of all, the government deported Emma Goldman to Russia under the Anarchist Exclusion Act after revoking her naturalized citizenship. In the 1950s, the government tried but failed to denaturalize labor leader Harry Bridges.
On June 11, Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate wrote a memorandum that lists denaturalization as one of the Department of Justice’s top legal objectives to further Trump’s political goals. The memo was directed to the DOJ’s Civil Division, the department’s largest litigating component, which represents the United States and its executive agencies, members of Congress, cabinet officers and other federal employees in thousands of legal matters each year. It instructed the division’s attorneys to “prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence,” focusing on 10 broad categories of enforcement actions:
- Cases against individuals who pose a potential danger to national security, including those with a nexus to terrorism, espionage, or the unlawful export from the United States of sensitive goods, technology, or information raising national security concerns;*
- Cases against individuals who engaged in torture, war crimes, or other human rights violations;
- Cases against individuals who further or furthered the unlawful enterprise of criminal gangs, transnational criminal organizations, and drug cartels;
- Cases against individuals who committed felonies that were not disclosed during the naturalization process;
- Cases against individuals who committed human trafficking, sex offenses, or violent crimes;
- Cases against individuals who engaged in various forms of financial fraud against the United States (including Paycheck Protection Program [“PPP”] loan fraud and Medicaid/Medicare fraud);
- Cases against individuals who engaged in fraud against private individuals, funds, or corporations;
- Cases against individuals who acquired naturalization through government corruption, fraud, or material misrepresentations, not otherwise addressed by another priority category;
- Cases referred by a United States Attorney’s Office or in connection with pending criminal charges, if those charges do not fit within one of the other priorities; and
- Any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the Division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.
The first nine categories are generally consistent with the government’s existing powers, reflecting Trump’s penchant for exploiting the loopholes and weak links in current law whenever feasible. The 10th category, however, is a wildcard that could expand those powers exponentially and lead to a Red Scare encore.
And as dark and dangerous as that possibility sounds, it may be perfectly legal.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 4 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to establish a “uniform Rule of Naturalization.” Pursuant to this authority, Congress passed the first naturalization act in 1790, and ratified additional acts well into the late 19^th century. But it was not until the passage of the Naturalization Act of 1906 that Congress federalized naturalization procedures.
The act incorporated earlier race-based legislation that limited naturalization to white people and those with African origins. It also created the Bureau of Immigration Services, the precursor of the present-day U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, which promulgated uniform application forms, and began the process of moving naturalization jurisdiction to the federal courts. (Prior to 1906, immigrants were able to apply for citizenship before any court of record, including state and municipal courts. In 1990, Congress shifted jurisdiction from the federal courts to the executive branch, where it remains to this day, although naturalization ceremonies are still conducted by federal district court judges.)
The Naturalization Act of 1906 was also the first federal law that provided for denaturalization, centered on individuals who had obtained citizenship by fraud, were racially ineligible and lacked “good moral character.” The act was amended on several occasions, most notably in 1952 by the McCarthy-era McCarran-Walter Act, which added provisions for denaturalization based on activities deemed subversive or connected to communist or communist-front organizations.
Today’s denaturalization procedures are set forth in two sections of Title 8 of the U.S. Code. Section 1451 authorizes the Department of Justice to institute civil proceedings, alleging that citizenship was “illegally procured” or obtained “by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.” The section also mandates denaturalization for individuals who refuse to testify before a congressional committee concerning their alleged subversive activities in cases where they have been convicted of contempt for such refusals.
Section 1425 of Title 8 authorizes criminal prosecutions, making it a felony punishable by 25 years in prison to knowingly procure, “contrary to law, the naturalization of any person.” A conviction results in automatic denaturalization.
Once denaturalized under either section, a person returns to their immigration status before becoming a citizen, rendering them vulnerable to deportation.
It’s easy to see why Trump and his advisers have opted to emphasize civil denaturalization proceedings over criminal prosecutions. In civil cases, there is no right to a jury trial or court appointed counsel, and there is no statute of limitations. The standard of proof is also lower. According to the Supreme Court’s precedent decisions, to prevail, the government must present “clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence” that the targeted individual obtained citizenship illegally or willfully misrepresented a material fact during the naturalization process. That is a rigorous test, but one far lower than the “beyond a reasonable” doubt standard for criminal prosecutions.
The first Trump administration attempted to make denaturalization a priority, launching an initiative dubbed “Second Look,” which built upon a similar Obama administration program called “Operation Janus” to identify alleged terrorists and fraudsters who had naturalized. In the end, however, Trump 1.0 filed a mere 102 denaturalization cases, amounting to an annual rate higher than the 16 cases per year filed under Obama, and eclipsing the total of 24 cases filed under Biden, but still miniscule. This time around, Trump 2.0 is pledging to bring the resources of the entire DOJ civil division behind the effort, reviving the specter of mass denaturalization.
The Shumate memo had largely flown under the media’s radar until Trump started talking in early July about deporting former best bro Elon Musk and New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, and stripping comedian and longtime celebrity nemesis Rosie O’Donnell of her citizenship.
O’Donnell, who is seeking dual citizenship in Ireland, appears safe from Trump’s clutches as she was born in Commack, New York, and enjoys birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment. Even Trump’s January executive order attacking birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants would leave her unscathed.
Musk and Mamdani are another story, as both are naturalized citizens. Musk, born in South Africa, naturalized in 2002. Mamdani, born in Uganda to Indian parents, naturalized in 1998. Musk allegedly worked illegally in the U.S. in violation of his student visa after leaving Stanford University in 1995. Mamdani has been accused of posting comments on X quoting rap lyrics suggesting support for Hamas.
Even if Trump’s threats against O’Donnell, Musk and Mamdani are basically performative, thousands of less affluent naturalized citizens will likely be caught up in the coming denaturalization dragnet. Millions more who are not targeted will be intimidated from exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech and full political engagement. The net result will be a society less diverse and less free for the vast majority, exactly what Donald Trump and his cohorts want.
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MMA June 19, 2025, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
ALICIA MENENDEZ (ANCHOR): As Donald Trump flirts with the greater American involvement in the conflict, it's caused deep division in the MAGA movement, upsetting some of his most influential America first figures, the likes of Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, who was spotted today outside the White House. Bannon has warned against any American involvement in the conflict. Joining the conversation, president of Media Matters for America, Angelo Carusone, Claire McCaskill, is still with us. Angelo, describe this division between the two factions of MAGA here.
ANGELO CARUSONE (PRESIDENT, MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA): Yeah, I think it's so big that it then — it even expands out to the larger sort of right wing media echo chamber because, as you noted, Fox is pretty heavily in the, you go to war with Iran camp. They've been pushing this for a very long time. This they see as an opportunity, and they know know that they have Trump's ear. I mean, even though the last election, there's much to be made about the podcast and the inner, you know, these online shows that Trump deployed and used, that's not his go-to day to day. The lens through which he sees the world, even still as president, is cable news, and Fox News is the main vehicle for that. That's why when he was criticizing Carlson, he said, look, tell him to get a TV network, and then maybe people will listen to what he has to say because that's still the mindset. And so Fox is all in on this, and they are reflective of a part of the MAGA base.
MENENDEZ: But why? Why, Angelo? Why are they all in on this?
CARUSONE: I mean, look. Part of it is straight bigotry. I mean, they really — they have really spun this narrative, we shouldn't forget about that, that Islam is a fundamental problem, that we are in a battle for good and evil. And even though has been a little bit sidelined in terms of his day-to-day involvement in this particular decision, let's not forget that Pete Hegseth, who is very reflective of the Fox News worldview, was somebody that described the great conflict, not as one between the United States and China or other great powers, but as between Christianity and Islam, and that we had to go out there and do everything we can, including using our military, to put that back in check.
So they see this larger geopolitical world through that framework, and that is something that they've been pushing for a very long time aside from just having — that is also part of their their foreign policy. They don't believe that you should democratize other countries. They're just — they're warmongers.
They believe in might makes right. And even though they are repeating Trump's line of peace through strength, they actually don't mean peace through strength. They mean, strength first and then, you know, have peace because you have nothing left after that. I mean, that's honestly what they're actually saying, and it's core to the Fox News base. It also plays really well on TV. Like, we shouldn't lose the sight of that.
Rupert Murdoch cut his teeth in the tabloids, and one of the big things that he always did was find the most horrible, horrific things that he could tell stories about crimes, violent things, and exaggerate them, but also lay them into a demographic fight. That's part of how he came to be. He sees news through that storytelling perspective. And then you have people like Carlson and Bannon who have their own world view, and a lot of it is hyper nationalist, and we shouldn't be celebrating that in that even though they are taking a position here that seems more reasonable, it's coming from a really scary place. It is coming from either straight up bigotry, you know, antisemitism, or a real deep intense nationalism, that is — even if they get to a destination there that seems peaceful, it's because they want to turn their energy internally on what they see as domestic enemy.
That's the part that doesn't get sort of carried through here is that they see the real threat not as foreign entities, not as these foreign entanglements, but as you and me, as members of the media and as advocates and people that are participating in civic spaces. That's who they see as the real target right now as enemy number one. So we shouldn't lose sight of why they're advocating for peace, but the net effect of all of this, though, and this I think Claire McCaskill really illustrated this well in the first segment is that this is the confusion. This is why Trump is on the sidelines.
If Bannon and Tucker were either quiet or were in uniform with this idea that he should be bombing Iran, it would have happened already. And because part of how he sees the world is through these stories, he's trying to see how this particular chronicle plays out a little bit. You know, who wins in this narrative for hearts and minds for audience share. And that's a big part of this, is seeing how the story plays out, because he honestly isn't sure there's something grounding him. And now it's just what's going to end up capturing the imagination of his base, of his audience, and where is he going to get the best ratings for himself.
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no lnx
America's biggest threat is coming from inside the house
Thom Hartmann April 21, 2025
America is under siege, but not by foreign armies or rogue terrorists. Instead, the threat is coming from inside the house: unelected billionaires who are quietly hijacking our democratic institutions from within.
Although it’s entirely possible that they are collaborating with foreign autocrats, including Vladimir Putin, who are also billionaires and thus share their unique authoritarian worldview.
And thanks to the bravery of a whistleblower named Daniel Berulis, we now have a window into what may well be one of the most brazen and dangerous power grabs in American history.
This isn’t cheap or even ordinary corruption: this is the sort of thing that happens in Third World countries, like when Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines used cronies and spies to infiltrate government agencies and neutralize political opponents, or when Vladimir Putin installed former KGB allies into key Russian institutions to crush whistleblowers and rig judicial outcomes, or when Guatemala’s President Jimmy Morales dismantled anti-corruption agencies and handed sensitive state information to business elites.
It’s the sort of corruption that destroys democracies from the inside out.
Berulis risked his career, his safety, even his life to reveal what’s happening inside Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE — a name that sounds innocuous enough, until you understand what they’re actually doing.
DOGE, according to Berulis’ bombshell disclosure, managed to breach the National Labor Relations Board’s computer systems and extract what he described as “the equivalent to a section of the New York Public Library” in sensitive data. This isn’t just bureaucratic overreach — it’s a digital smash-and-grab, right out of the authoritarian playbook.
And make no mistake: this is not some crackpot theory. Shortly after DOGE operatives created accounts inside the NLRB system, a login attempt came from a Russian IP address using one of those accounts — with the correct credentials. Within minutes of the breach, the data may have already been in the hands of the Putin government.
That’s the same Vladimir Putin who press reports say has been in regular telephone contact with both Donald Trump and Elon Musk for the past two years.
What’s being looted here isn’t just random bureaucratic files. We’re talking about the private information of whistleblowers, union organizers, witnesses in federal cases, proprietary corporate data, and labor rights enforcement strategies. Including complaints and complainants against Elon Musk’s companies.
In other words, the raw materials for dismantling organized labor in America — and for targeting, harassing, or discrediting anyone trying to stand up to corporate power, including Elon Musk’s multiple efforts to stop or break unionization attempts in his own companies.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. It’s the naked truth, verified by a growing number of insiders and corroborated by NPR, which reports that at least eleven government officials and staffers have confirmed their fears about DOGE’s data exfiltration campaign.
Here’s the conflict of interest that should make every American’s hair stand on end: Elon Musk’s companies — Tesla, SpaceX, and X — were themselves under investigation by the NLRB for alleged labor violations. At least until Musk’s underlings fired the people investigating him and his companies.
Musk now has his own handpicked operatives inside the very agency tasked with holding him accountable. It’s like giving the bank robber a master key to the bank and letting him wander the halls at night. It’s a grotesque perversion of the rule of law, a corruption of the most fundamental principle of American justice that no one is above the law.
And if the information DOGE extracted gets used in court — or even leaked selectively — it could permanently tilt the scales of justice in favor of Musk and his corporate cronies. Labor law experts are already sounding the alarm, warning that even the possibility of access will have a chilling effect on union organizing and whistleblowing.
Just imagine you’re a worker trying to form a union. Would you still speak out, knowing your employer might now know your name, your address, your testimony, and your strategy — thanks to a government program run by that very employer’s billionaire CEO?
But it gets worse. Much worse. According to longtime employees within the Department of Labor and other agencies, the DOGE teams aren’t seasoned experts or trained cybersecurity professionals. They’re “new arrivals,” many of them with no vetting, no security clearance, and no relevant experience. Some have even worked with criminal hackers, and another reportedly runs a website based in Russia.
Yet they were granted sweeping access to some of the most sensitive data systems in the federal government. It’s a digital coup executed not by hackers, but by political loyalists and tech-bro mercenaries handed the keys to the kingdom by billionaire benefactors.
When Berulis tried to do the right thing — when he and his colleagues reached out to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to report the breach — they were stonewalled. Their alert was “disrupted by higher-ups without explanation.” And Berulis himself received a specific threat reminiscent of KGB strategies.
Internal cybersecurity teams were told by the Trump administration to stand down. One furious staffer at the Interior Department confessed that “every single alarm system we have regarding insider threats is going off,” but they were ordered to ignore them. That’s not just a red flag; it’s the flashing neon sign of a government being gutted from within. Or being turned over to Russian intelligence.
And don’t let the bureaucratic language of “data breaches” and “access credentials” lull you into thinking this is harmless IT stuff. These are national security breaches.
If this is what it appears to be, the Rosenbergs went to the electric chair for far less.
This is a modern Watergate, but instead of burglars breaking into a filing cabinet, they’re downloading 10 gigabytes of information with a keystroke. Instead of physical threats, DOGE’s enforcers are using drones to photograph whistleblowers, and notes are being taped to front doors like something out of a dystopian thriller.
Yet that’s exactly what happened to Berulis: a threatening note, drone surveillance, and an unmistakable message — shut up or we’ll make your life hell.
This is how authoritarianism functions in the 21st century. It doesn’t need a dictator in a military uniform when it has billionaires in boardrooms, access to surveillance technology, and cronies embedded deep within the machinery of government. It replaces accountability with loyalty. It replaces oversight with secrecy.
And it replaces democracy with intimidation and control, just like in Hungary and Russia.
Even if Musk and DOGE never use the data they’ve extracted, the damage is already done. The fear is out there. As labor expert Kate Bronfenbrenner put it, “Just saying that they have access to the data is intimidating.” And that’s the point.
This isn’t just about controlling government agencies and the courts; it’s about creating a culture of fear so pervasive that no one dares to challenge power. Workers won’t organize. Regulators won’t enforce. Whistleblowers won’t come forward. Democracy withers not with a bang, but with a whimper of silence and complicity.
And let’s not pretend this is all just theoretical. DOGE’s operations are still underway, expanding into other agencies, extracting more data, disabling more security protocols, silencing more voices.
Congress is beginning to stir — Rep. Gerald Connolly is calling for an investigation — but the clock is ticking. While bureaucrats write memos and hold hearings, the digital pillaging continues unchecked.
This is not some far-off threat. It’s happening here, now, and it’s being orchestrated by some of the richest men in the world who have zero accountability to the American people.
The same billionaires who already own our social media platforms, our space infrastructure, and our news cycles now want direct access to our government’s innermost workings. And they’re getting it.
The soul of American democracy is on the line. The question now is: will we let it be sold to the highest bidder, or will we stand up, speak out, and reclaim it?
Berulis showed us what courage looks like. Now it’s our turn.
Because if we don’t stop this now, it won’t just be our data they’re coming for — it’ll be our freedom.
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