Fascism7bak
capt bak 11 25
ESTB 6 25 NAT GUARD ICE RAIDS
MERRI OK
SEE MILITARIZATION DC 8 25 martial law ~ posse comm
EXTRA-JUDICIAL KILLING VENEZ NARCO-TERROR 9 25
SEE RETALIATION DEFUND LEFT XO EXEC ORDER TERROR BS 3
SEE DEATH THREAT EG JUDGE , ELECTION WORKERS
SEE RACISM thom says = 8 25
SEE TEXAS 3 ABBOTT Paxton
see infiltration radicalization
SEE CRUEL PERFORMATIVE PSEUDO-EVENT SADO-POPULISM
ATTACK EXPERT SCIENCE UNIVERSITIES labor econ stats 7 25
ACAD SUPPRESS DEI CRIT THINK FLORIDA STORY 1
SEE VOTER SUPPRESS CLETA EMERGENCY
SEE PRESS SUPPRESS 1ST AMEND // EARTH2
SEE CENSOR WWW MEMORY HOLE STORY 1
SEE CORP BAD ACTORS CAVE LAW FIRMS MEDIA CORPS CONSOLIDATION MERGER
SEE PPL LOSE CONST RIGHTS FLAG BURN BS XO
see SECRET POLICE MARTIAL LAW
SEE COURTS 4 JUDGE ~
BAK CAPT 11 25
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AN 11 25
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) tells the New Republic that “we have all three key ingredients of a strongman state: a rubber-stamp Congress acceding to the president’s desires; a Supreme Court enhancing the president’s powers; and a power-hungry president … disregarding the laws and the checks and balances of our Constitution.”
In this environment, President Donald Trump is using 10 rules out of the “authoritarian playbook” to collapse U.S. democracy.
“The first rule … is to fire the government’s referees,” said Merkley, which Trump began when he fired 17 inspectors general and members of federal oversight commissions and regulatory boards without cause. The second rule is then to “pack your government with loyalists."
“The Senate is supposed to block confirmation of unqualified individuals,” but Merkley said that’s where that “rubber stamp” in the Republican majority comes in handy.
A third rule is to grab the power over the funding of programs from Congress so a single man can decide which programs to fund and at what level. Once you’ve grabbed the funding levers you can pursue the “fourth rule in the authoritarian playbook” by going after centers of power.
“Trump is doing exactly that when he withholds research grants from universities or security clearances from law firms unless they restructure to his will,” Merkley said.
The fifth rule involves an autocrat pushing his influence over the press, which Trump is doing with “lawsuits and his power over broadcast licenses and corporate mergers to pressure newspapers and networks over the content of their reports and broadcasts, and even which late-night comedians they employ.” Merkley said Trump’s already destroyed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and defunded PBS, NPR, and even Voice of America, which was created specifically to counter disinformation from authoritarian regimes around the world.
Rule No. 6 is to disregard due process. “Democracies don’t have secret police,” said Merkley. “But now, unidentified masked federal agents are arresting people off the street … terrorizing communities, zip-tying children, and disappearing people overseas without a fair trial.”
Rule No. 7 — attack and diminish dissent by weaponizing the Department of Justice — is hot on the heels of that with Trump publicly naming enemies and pushing the DOJ to pursue them: James Comey, Letitia James, Adam Schiff, John Bolton.
Soon comes Rule No 8, which involves the “use the military to suppress domestic dissent.”
“Trump is activating Title 10 of the U.S. Code, section 12406, to federalize the National Guard and send them into American cities,” said Merkley. “… A district judge ruled against Trump’s effort to federalize and deploy Oregon National Guard members in Portland … but Trump may yet succeed, because some judges … are arguing that the courts should defer to the president’s discretion.”
“A ninth rule is to use the power of the government to spread propaganda,” said Merkley, which Trump is already doing with “banners with the president’s face hanging off federal buildings; video announcements at airports featuring Homeland Security Secretary Noem blaming Democrats for the government shutdown; federal websites spreading the president’s political messages,” all in violation of the Hatch Act and other rules.
A tenth rule in the authoritarian playbook — and the most dangerous rule of all, said Merkley — is to rig future elections. Trump is already trying to consolidate states’ voter registration files into a national database to make them easier to manipulate in the next election, and he’s gerrymandering states’ congressional districts to increase Republican power in the House of Representatives, possibly with the blessing of the Supreme Court in upcoming months.
It will take “strong citizen resistance” in the autocrat’s first year to derail his effort. After that, the struggle gets considerably harder, if not impossible.
“Let’s ring the alarm bells loud and clear and pass the election test in November 2026 with flying colors,” Merkley said.
Read the full New Republic report at this link.
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Senator Slotkin Delivers Speech on Trump's Authoritarian Playbook
no troops in str act 10 25
14,384 views Oct 29, 2025
I believe that Trump is ready to bring the full weight of the government against Americans he perceives as enemies. Why? Because he has one goal: making sure he and his ilk never have to give up power. Watch my speech on President Trump's authoritarian playbook.
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an 7 25
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an 10 24
miller, basically a threat to any who oppose trump
Anger as 'Trump regime' lackey threatens to arrest Dem governor
Jessica Corbett gov prtiz, set up by fox/ question?
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an 10 25
Using case studies from dead democracies, theNew York Timeseditorial board compiled a list of 12 markers of democratic erosion, with help from scholars who have studied the collapse of democracies. According to the board, under President Donald Trump the United States is staggeringly similar to such cases.
First, a modern authoritarian stifles dissent and speech. Like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Trump and his allies have pressured television stations to stop airing comedians who hurt his feelings. He has also revoked the visas of foreign students for sharing their views on the genocide in Gaza and ordered investigations of liberal nonprofit groups.
Second, autocrats use the power of law enforcement to investigate and imprison people who oppose them, similar to how Trump has ordered his Justice Department to target people who have made him angry with “dubious” accusations, including New York Attorney General Letitia James and former F.B.I. Director James Comey. And Trump has also ordered investigations of Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), among others.
Third, a modern autocrat finds ways to neuter their nation’s legislature, similar to the way Trump commands a legion of lockstep allies in the modern Republican Party, who rubber stamp his every decision.
Number 4, according to the Times, is an autocrat’s need to use the military to control opposition in dissent. Trump deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles, over the outcry of local leaders, and he has made similar attempts in Portland, Ore. and Chicago.
Likewise, the Editorial Board draws similarities to Trump’s defiance of national courts and his penchant for declaring national emergencies to a push his agenda. Like despots elsewhere, Trump has “vilified transgender Americans and barred them from military service,” said the Board. “He has fired women and people of color from leadership posts and ended programs that promote workplace diversity.”
He has also labored to erase Black history by removing books on slavery and segregation from military libraries and pressuring Smithsonian museums to minimize those subjects.
“At the same time, he has suggested that white people and Christians are victims, which echoes the autocratic habit of claiming that majority groups are in fact oppressed,” said the Board.
Also, like a despot, Trump rails against accurate information to guide decision-making, and he works to suppress inconvenient truths. He has already fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for truthfully reporting disappointing job growth, and he has shut down federal data collection efforts related to climate change.
Throw that in with No. 9: An authoritarian’s predictable effort to take over universities and suppress dissident scholars, which Trump has also begun to do by cutting millions of dollars in school grants and attempting to dictate hiring methods and school policies.
Nos. 10, 11, and 12 involve an authoritarian’s cult of personality; his effort to use government levers to personally enrich himself and his family; and his unending crusade to manipulate law to stay in power.
“Authoritarians change election rules to help their party, and they rewrite laws — or violate their spirit — to ignore term limits,” writes the Board, and although Trump’s biggest attempt to follow this playbook failed when he was “unable to undo his election defeat” in 2020, the Board says “he has shown worrisome signs of using his power to entrench the Republican Party’s hold on the government” through gerrymandering extremes and an executive order to interfere with state elections.
“These moves increase the chances that Republicans will keep control of Congress even if most voters want to oust them,” the Board writes, creating a one-party government similar to the single-party misery of the U.S.S.R, which eventually led to Putin.
“The clearest sign that a democracy has died is that a leader and his party make it impossible for their opponents to win an election and hold power. Once that stage is reached, however, the change is extremely difficult to reverse,” the Board said.
Read the New York Times report at this link.
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AN 10 25
For the last few weeks, Republican Party leadership has been carrying out a campaign to, essentially, classify the word “fascist” as hate speech against right-wingers. But while some Republicans shy away from the term, plenty of others, particularly among their base and their influencers, find it edgy and hip. Some have even begun to wear it as a badge of honor.
Most notably, last week, members of the Republican Youth—er, Young Republicans—were caught in a group chat declaring their love of Adolf Hitler and expressing fondness for his policy of mass extermination in gas chambers.
The incident caused some drama and led to some repercussions, but not as much as you might hope. Vice President JD Vance dismissed the story, saying, “Kids do stupid things, especially young boys… They tell edgy, offensive jokes. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a… very offensive, stupid joke is cause to ruin their lives.” By and large, that seems to be the tack most Republicans are taking, certainly from the top down.
Vance’s attempt to downplay the chats as just kids being edgy may work for some, but the truth is that many members of the chat were grown men well into their 30s, nearly Vance’s age, who occupied positions of political influence. Maybe they were joking, but it’s not clear where the irony or the punchlines were—and it’s a poor choice of comedic material if the party wants to shake the fascist label.
“Fascist” as Hate Speech
Ever since President Donald Trump’s takeover of the GOP, Republicans have struggled with this fascist comparison. Actually, the left has used the term to describe far-right policies since long before Trump, but Trump’s Mussolini-like mannerisms, dictatorial ambitions, and cult of personality have made the term feel like a natural fit and brought it into more common use, especially in his second term.
After the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September, Republicans like Trump and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) blamed the casual use of the word for inspiring Kirk’s murder and other acts of violence. Johnson said: “Calling people Nazis and fascists is not helpful… There are some deranged people in society, and when they see leaders using that kind of language… it spurs them on to action. We have to recognize that reality and address it appropriately.”
Simple compassion might, in fact, be regarded as an unlawful, anti-fascist, terrorist thoughtcrime.
It was also around this time that they began to escalate their campaign against “antifa,” characterizing it as a political organization and threatening to go after its organizers and funders. In truth, though, there is no formal group called antifa. Antifa is short for anti-fascism, and it exists only as an opposition to fascism. So Trump’s position of anti-anti-fascism, if you reduce the double negative, is simply fascism.
Maybe the most dramatic step so far in this anti-antifa campaign was Trump’s issuance ofNSPM-7, a presidential memo that accuses people of using the word “fascist” as an excuse to “justify and encourage acts of violent revolution,” and further identifies “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality” as indicia of potential terroristic inclinations and activities.
One can only guess how the administration is defining these terms, but if their actions to date are anything to go by, simple compassion might, in fact, be regarded as an unlawful, anti-fascist, terrorist thoughtcrime, and anyone who holds such views can be subject to, at a minimum, investigation, surveillance, and harassment by law enforcement—all of which sounds like anti-anti-fascism, to be sure.
Fascism defined
At this point, it’s important to examine just what, exactly, fascism is. The term has certainly been abused in America. For many, “fascist” has just become shorthand for “someone I don’t like,” or, more specifically, “someone who’s making me do something I don’t want to do.” To wit: Speed limits are fascism. No-smoking signs are fascism. Mask mandates during a pandemic are fascism. Taxes are fascism. And so on.
Alas, few historians would describe such basic laws or civic norms as fascism. While the word doesn’t have any one universally agreed upon definition, and even self-identified fascist societies differ in significant ways, there are a few hallmarks that distinguish fascism from other philosophies. The more of these qualities a government or a society has, the more fascistic it is:
- The merger of state and corporate power.Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who coined the term fascist, said this was the philosophy’s most defining tenet.
- Authoritarian rule.Power concentrated in a leader with a devoted cult of personality, in whom people see a living embodiment of the nation.
- Police state.A militarized society, including citizen militias and police suppression of protests, speech, and other forms of dissent.
- Propaganda.Rampant propaganda that is rife with lies, conspiracy, and dehumanizing language.
- Censorship.Dissent or open disagreement with official narratives and state policies may be outlawed and punished violently.
- In-group vs. out-group.Hatred of “others,” especially immigrants, religious minorities, and the LGBTQ community, as well as any leftists and academics who support them.
- National and cultural mythology.Desire to preserve or attain “purity” of culture, language, or race and ethnicity, often through appeals to a mythical past.
- War.Jingoism and an aggressive foreign policy.
- Obsession with aesthetics.From architecture to attire, everything intends to give an air of magnificence, superiority, and national pride, no matter how superficial.
Any honest observer can see how much of the definition fits. Not all of it is unique to Trump, but he does tick more boxes than the average politician. Soon enough, though, simply pointing that out might land you in a heap of trouble. Unless, of course, Republicans shift gears and decide to embrace the term, as at least some of them are beginning to do.
Reclaiming Fascism as Something Edgy and Cool
Back in July, before Trump ratcheted up his campaign against antifa, Fox Newscomedian Greg Gutfeld went on a revealing rant about his feelings on the word Nazi and how it relates to him. Gutfeld said on his show: “The criticism doesn’t matter to us when you call us Nazis. Nazi this and Nazi that… We need to learn from the Blacks. The way they were able to remove the power from the n-word by using it. So from now on it’s, ‘What up, my Nazi?’”
Gutfeld’s show is intended as a comedy, though you might not recognize it as one. Still, it’s a peculiar joke to make, and frightening to consider who it might resonate with. And this attitude on the right is being more openly embraced: that fascism is hip or edgy and that all the progress made on freedoms and rights for gays, trans people, minorities, and women needs to be rolled back. For instance:
- The successful far-right influencer Matt Walsh calls himself a “theocratic fascist.” While Walsh has claimed it’s an ironic label used to troll his critics, if you pay any attention to what he says and compare it to what a “theocratic fascist” might say, you’ll find he fits the term quite comfortably.
- Another growing voice on the right, especially among the young, is Nick Fuentes, simply an unapologetic, loud and proud neo-Nazi who has dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
- Trump’s recent nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, Paul Ingrassia, recently had his text messages leaked where he espoused racist attitudes and said, “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it.” Ingrassia’s nomination has since been pulled, a relatively rare rebuke from this administration of that kind of conduct.
- A cadre of right-wing influencers have also been trying to sanitize, justify, and even push for the return of chattel slavery. Chief among these is Joshua Haymes, a former pastor who counted among his congregation Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Haymes recently said, “The institution of slavery is not inherently evil. It is not inherently evil to own another human being. It is very important that every Christian affirm what I just said.”
Republican influencers and the MAGA base are racing to the bottom, fast. It’s known as vice signaling: Each one trying to outdo the next in depravity to prove they are as un-woke and un-PC as possible, even if it reverts them back to plain-old KKK and neo-Nazi hatred and barbarism. It’s hard to say what abuse, constitutional violation, or act of violence they won’t enthusiastically push for, as long as it’s coming from the right side and being inflicted on an enemy. These aren’t ideas we have to debate. This is fascism, and civilized society already won the argument against it in World War II.
Fascism in the USA
Sadly, fascism is probably appealing to a lot of Americans, even if most are still hesitant to embrace the term. It’s in our national DNA. Our Jim Crow laws and citizenship standards even provided a model for Hitler’s antisemitic campaigns. There have always been bigoted, violent people in this country, and they appreciate a ruler who reflects them. And just as they were in the 1930s, the giant industrialists who shape our politics and society are all too happy to ally themselves with fascist forces, because they know a repressive state can protect their own power from being challenged.
But there are also strains of anti-fascism in our DNA. My grandpa, a veteran of World War II, was antifa, as were many members of the Greatest Generation. And it’s heartening to see older folks and veterans
, even in the face of Trump’s threats. It should be a source of pride that we’ve overcome many of our bigotries and xenophobias. Despite all the loud fascist voices in right-wing media and social platforms, I still believe the vast majority of people believe in basic human rights for all. The No Kings protests on October 18 were a good showing of this solidarity.
As this administration goes further off the deep end—deploying the military against American citizens; sending masked Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents to terrorize poor and immigrant communities; profiling, detaining, and abusing people, including American citizens, on mere suspicion of being “illegal;” and disappearing people with no trial to God-knows-where—it’s no accident that they have declared anti-fascism their greatest enemy.
Maybe those 38-year-old kids in the Young Republicans chat were just joking about gas chambers and loving Hitler. But given everything else this administration is doing and everything their propagandists are saying, it falls a bit too close for comfort to, “It’s funny because it’s true.”
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LITERALLY SHIT POSTING ON OFF WH SITES?
AN 10 25
A grim-faced President Donald J. Trump looks out at the reader, under the headline “LAW AND ORDER.” Graffiti pictured in the corner of the White House Facebook post reads “Death to ICE.” Beneath that, a photo of protesters, choking on tear gas. And underneath it all, a smaller headline: “President Trump Deploys 2,000 National Guard After ICE Agents Attacked, No Mercy for Lawless Riots and Looters.”
The official communication from the White House appeared on Facebook in June 2025, after Trump sent in troops to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles. Visually, it is melodramatic, almost campy, resembling a TV promotion.
The post is not an outlier.
In the Trump administration, White House social media posts often blur the lines between politics and entertainment, and between reality and illusion.
The White House has released AI images of Trump as the Pope, as Superman and as a Star Wars Jedi, ready to do battle with “Radical Left Lunatics” who would bring “Murderers, Drug Lords … & well-known MS-13 Gang Members” into the country.
Most recently, on the weekend of the No Kings protests, both Trump and the White House released a video of the president wearing a crown and piloting a fighter jet, from which he dispenses feces onto a crowd of protesters below.
Underpinning it all is a calculated political strategy: an appeal to Trump’s political base – largely white, working-class, rural or small-town, evangelical and culturally conservative.
As scholars who study communication in politics and the media, we believe the White House’s rhetoric and style is part of a broader global change often found in countries experiencing increased polarization and democratic backsliding.
White House style
In the past, national leaders generally favored a professional tone, whether on social or traditional media. Their language was neutral and polished, laced with political jargon.
While populist political communication has become more common along with the proliferation of social media, the communication norms are further altered in Trump White House social media posts.
They are partisan, theatrical and exaggerated. Their tone is almost circuslike. The process of governing is portrayed as a reality TV show, in which political roles are performed with little regard for real-world consequences. Vivid color schemes and stylized imagery convert political messaging into visual spectacle. The language is colloquial, down-to-earth.
Just as other influencers in a variety of domains might create an emotional bond by tailoring social media messages, content, products and services to the needs and likes of individual customers, the White House tailors its content to the beliefs, language and worldview of Trump’s political base.
In doing so, the White House echoes a broad, growing trend in political communication, portraying Trump as “a champion of the people” and using direct and informal communication that appeals to fear and resentment.
Trump White House social media makes no effort to promote social unity or constructive dialogue, or reduce polarization – and often heightens it. Undocumented immigrants, for example, are often portrayed as inherently evil. White House social media amplifies dramatic, emotionally charged content.
In one video, Trump recites a poem about a kind woman who takes in a snake, a stand-in for an immigrant who in reality is a dangerous serpent. “Instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite,” Trump recites.
Talking to the base
While some scholars have called the White House social media style “amateurish,” that hasn’t resulted in change.
The lack of response to negative feedback is partially explained by the strategic goal of these communications: to appeal to the frustrations of Trump’s deeply disaffected political base, which seems to revel in the White House social media style.
Scholars identify a large number of these voters as “the precariat,” a group whose once-stable, union-protected jobs have been outsourced or replaced with low-wage, insecure service work. These workers, many former Democrats, can no longer count on a regular paycheck, benefits or work they can identify with.
As a result, they are more likely to support political candidates whom they believe will respond to their economic instability.
In addition, many of these voters blame a breakdown in what they perceive as the racial pecking order for a loss of social status, especially when compared with more highly educated workers. Many of these workers distrust the media and other elite institutions they feel have failed them. Research shows that they are highly receptive to messages that confirm their grievances and that many regard Trump as their champion.
Trump and the White House social media play to this audience.
On social media, the president is free to violate norms that anger his critics but have little effect on his supporters, who view the current political system as flawed. One example: A White House Valentine’s Day communication that said “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally, and we’ll deport you.”
In addition, Trump and the White House social media use the president’s status as a celebrity, coupled with comedy and spectacle, to immunize the administration from fallout, even among some of its critics.
Trump’s exaggerated gestures, over-the-top language, his lampooning of opponents and his use of caricature to ridicule whole categories of people – including Democrats, the disabled, Muslims, Mexicans and women – is read by his political base as a playful and entertaining take down of political correctness. It may form a sturdy pillar of his support.
But prioritizing entertainment over facts has long-term significance.
Trump’s communication strategies are already setting a global precedent, encouraging other politicians to adopt similar theatrical and polarizing tactics that distort or deny facts.
These methods may energize some audiences but risk alienating others. Informed political engagement is reduced, and democratic backsliding is increasingly a reality.
Although the communication style of the White House is playful and irreverent, it has a serious goal: the diffusion of ideological messages whose intent is to create a sense of strength and righteousness among its supporters.
In simple terms, this is propaganda designed to persuade citizens that the government is strong, its enemies evil and that fellow citizens – “real Americans” – think the same way.
Scholars observe that the White House projection of the often comical images of authority echoes the visual style of authoritarian governments. Both seek to be seen as in control of the social and political order and thereby to discourage dissent.
The chief difference between the two is that in a deeply polarized democracy such as the U.S., citizens interpret these displays of authority in sharply different ways: They build opposition among Trump opponents but support among supporters.
The rising intolerance that results erodes social cohesion, undermines support for democratic norms and weakens trust in institutions. And that opens the door to democratic backsliding.
Andrew Rojecki, Professor of Communication, University of Illinois Chicago and Tanja Aitamurto, Associate Professor of Communication, *University of Illinois Chicago
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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AN 10 25
President Donald Trump has been able to have the Republican-controlled Senate confirm the vast bulk of his nominees — with the lone exception of his appointees for U.S. attorney offices.
Now, Politico is reporting that the president is leaning on his party to bulldoze the last remaining obstacle preventing his handpicked prosecutors from being fully confirmed. Trump told a gathering of Senate Republicans Tuesday that the long-standing "blue slip" procedure — in which senators from a nominee's home state have to submit "blue slips" agreeing to their nomination before it can move forward — was a "problem" that should be scrapped.
"You know, I have 10 U.S. attorneys who are phenomenal," Trump said. "And the problem is, they’re not going to ever be confirmed, I guess. I put them in, they’ll be there for three or four months, whatever it is, and then they have to leave."
The "blue slip" process is done for nominees for U.S. District court judgeships as well as U.S. attorney nominees in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who chairs the committee, has so far refused Trump's demands, and promised to continue it indefinitely after the Senate gained a Republican majority after last November's election. The "blue slip" process has affected some of Trump's more controversial nominees, like Alina Habba for the U.S. Attorney's post in the District of New Jersey, with Sens. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) each declining to return a blue slip.
"Anytime you have a Democrat senator, not even two, just one, they’ll say, because of the time we’re in, ‘we’re not approving that person,'" Trump said during the Tuesday lunch with senators.
“Because of blue slip, I have to tell the person after three months, I’m sorry you’ll have to leave and I’ll put someone else in,” he continued. “This is not constitutional. And I really, I hope you can look at that blue slip thing.”
Tuesday is just the latest example of Trump zeroing in on the "blue slip" tradition. In July, he called out Grassley on his Truth Social platform and slammed the "blue slip" procedure as a "hoax" and a "scam." He complained that despite being in the minority, Democrats had exploited the procedure to impose an "ironclad stoppage" on his nominees coming before the Judiciary Committee.
Click here to read Politico's full report.
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an badash 10 25
Following the launch of a massive federal interagency task force in partnership with state law enforcement, Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee pledged that the “Memphis Safe Task Force” would be a permanent fixture.
Last month, the White House published a presidential memorandum titled “Restoring Law and Order in Memphis,” which orders thirteen federal government agencies and offices to coordinate. It states the “objective shall be to end street and violent crime in Memphis to the greatest possible extent,” and lists actions including “hypervigilant policing, aggressive prosecution, complex investigations, financial enforcement, and large-scale saturation of besieged neighborhoods with law enforcement personnel.”
Memphis is among the most violent cities in the country.
“The Memphis Safe Task Force began operations on September 29, with the National Guard joining efforts this past Friday,” Action5 News reported on Monday.
Governor Lee told reporters on Tuesday, “we’ve just begun,” and said the program will last “for months,” before stating that in some form it will continue “forever.”
“We do know that this is gonna last for months, and we have just begun. In fact, I will tell you that it will last forever,” he said. “Because what we believe will happen is the numbers of law enforcement agents from different agencies will change, depending on the mission at the moment.”
He described a “collaboration that is happening right now between U.S. Marshal Service and the Memphis Police Department, and the FBI, and the DEA, and the Tennessee Highway Patrol.”
“That collaboration will be here from now on,” said Lee. “So this operation, in some ways, may never end.”
Critics blasted the governor.
“As I predicted,” noted authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat, the “aim is a ‘domestic forever war.'”
The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a political scientist, wrote: “Fascist. Pure fascist.”
Columnist and “recovering attorney” Wajahat Ali added, “Forever occupation, eh?”
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MMA
October 13, 2025, edition of MSNBC's *The Weeknight
ALICIA MENENDEZ (CO-HOST): So, Angelo, that is like how it played out here on Earth one. If you were watching the right-wing echo chamber, what were the last few weeks?
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS): Excitement. The vibes are great. They think that this is that, you know, there's this idea that Trump is doing comes to cracking down on these cities, that the backlash reinforces just how dangerous and lethal the Democrats are, liberals, the entire shadow network around them. The media is a big part of that according to them, and that this is Trump saying that he's gonna do what he's gonna do. It's a raw power grab. I think the one thing that is a takeaway, though, is there's this sort of new narrative that's percolating and being revised, something that's, to me, the most concerning piece about the story here.
It's not the excitement that I find disturbing. It's this thing that they've been introducing, this new concept called ordered liberty.
MENENDEZ: Ordered liberty?
CARUSONE: Ordered liberty is what they've been describing it as. That you can't have freedom unless you have intense structural order first or authoritarianism.
And it's this weird thing where they're actually trying to rebrand the notion of authoritarianism to their own people who are the ones that you would think would be the most reflexively opposed to it. That's been the weirdest part about it. That's been the one shift. They've been talking about this Insurrection Act for a long time. They've been fetishizing it since, you know, right after the 2020 election when Trump was still in office.
So five years now, this has been the thing they've been discussing. This is the first time they really meaningfully changed the story around it. And when you introduce a concept like that to an audience like this, that to me is a little bit of a concern because they're preparing them for something, to accept something that they ordinarily would not be willing to accept and giving them the tools to advocate and organize around it. Ordered liberty, it's a disturbing new trend in the right-wing media. So that's been what it's like for them.
...
CARUSONE: I think that if — it's not just — and we shouldn't be academic at this point. It's earlier too we talked about President Obama. If the one thing that people can do now, especially business leaders, is to make sure they're calling Trump, lot of them talk to him, and people that are connected to him and say, by the way, martial law is bad for business. Just make sure that he knows that point because that is a real big — if nothing else, at least he should be aware that that it's bad for business.
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// CRM, FASCISM
Right-wing media have long called for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, he's now considering it
Written by Gideon Taaffe & Sage Hodil
Research contributions from Reed McMaster, Jane Lee & Alex Kaplan
Published 10/09/25 MMA
President Donald Trump recently suggested he may be willing to invoke the Insurrection Act as protests continue in Chicago and Portland against Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity and deployment of National Guard troops.
Right-wing media figures have called on Trump to use the law — which allows the military to be used for domestic law enforcement activities — in response to various demonstrations since at least as far back as 2020.
Conservative media figures endorsed using the act to “put down” Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and “restore order” to cities where demonstrations were occurring. Starting in June of this year, right-wing media renewed their support for the act's use over anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, and as similar protests broke out in Chicago and Portland, calls to “invoke” the act in Democratic-run cities grew.
Trump once again says he might invoke the Insurrection Act in Democratic-run cities
- Protests in Chicago and Portland broke out as National Guard members were deployed to aid ICE officers.Authorities have used tear gas, pepper balls and more against protesters at ICE facilities in both cities. Several people were arrested in both cases, with some facing federal charges. PBS News, [10/6/25]
- On October 6, while talking to reporters about the legal issues with sending in the National Guard to cities around the country, Trump said he would consider invoking the Insurrection Act.He stated, “I’d do it if it was necessary. So far it hasn’t been necessary. But we have an Insurrection Act for a reason. … If people were being killed and courts were holding us up or governors or mayors were holding us up, sure, I'd do that.” He also said, “If you take a look at what’s been going on in Portland, it’s been going on for a long time, and that’s insurrection. I mean, that’s pure insurrection." NBC News, [10/6/25]
- The Insurrection Act allows the military to act as a police force and make arrests.Reuters explained: “The law enables troops to take part in domestic law enforcement activities like making arrests and performing searches, functions they are generally otherwise prohibited from engaging in. The Insurrection Act can be invoked when there are ‘unlawful obstructions, combinations or assemblages or rebellion’ against the U.S. government's authority. When the president deems those conditions have been met, the law gives the president the power to use the armed forces to take actions ‘to enforce those laws or suppress the rebellion.’” Reuters, [10/7/25]
- Trump deployed the National Guard and Marines during anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles earlier this year and called the protesters “insurrectionists,” saying, in response to a question about whether he would invoke the Insurrection Act, “Depends on whether or not there’s an insurrection.”Axios noted, “Without the Insurrection Act, the troops' mission is legally limited to protecting federal agents and property.” Axios, [6/10/25]
- ## Right-wing media figures are calling for Trump to use the Insurrection Act “more liberally” in Democratic-run cities, claiming protesters are “insurrecting”
- Fox News contributor Lisa Boothe claimed Trump “should look at using the Insurrection Act more liberally in cities like Chicago or in cities like Portland, Oregon.” Boothe also remarked that “Portland is a hellhole. … Homeless everywhere, it’s disgusting.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends Weekend*, [10/5/25]
- Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson discussed his ride-along with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in Portland and stated, “I hope they invoke the Insurrection Act. I hope that's something that happens here because these people are clearly insurrecting.”Johnson also claimed that Portland “has been conquered by antifa.” Newsmax, *Finnerty*, [10/7/25]
- Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said Trump “should invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy military assets to protect life and limb and property.”Fitton reacted to protests in Chicago, writing, “This is an insurrection, and @GovPritzker is implicated.” Twitter/X, [10/4/25]
- On Steve Bannon’sWar Roompodcast, right-wing pundit Jack Posobiec said that “the president has black-letter law, Title X authority to be able to deploy the National Guard” to “suppress an insurrection or a rebellion.”Bannon also claimed California Gov. Gavin Newsom is a “neo-Confederate” and claimed Los Angeles is also in “open defiance of the federal government about immigration laws, Jack. I mean, this is going to come down [to] we control the country, they control these big metropolitan areas.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [10/6/25]
- Posobiec also posted, “If Trump were to invoke the insurrection act for reasons like the situation in Portland, Americans would support it.” Twitter/X, [10/6/25]
- In response to a report of a hit put out on a Border Patrol commander, right-wing podcaster Tim Pool posted, “Insurrection Act.”Twitter/X, [10/6/25]
- QAnon influencer Clandestine said of whether Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act: “I’d argue that we are already at that point, and this is soft disclosure of what is to come.” Telegram, [10/6/25; Anti-Defamation League, 4/5/22]
- Fox News contributor Paul Mauro claimed Trump is on “very, very safe ground” to enact the Insurrection Act.Mauro claimed that the Insurrection Act is “a carve-out to posse comitatus. You can use it to protect facilities and you can use it when federal law is being obstructed — that's the operative phrase right there. ICE is trying to enforce federal law. If they’re being obstructed, you can do this. What it means is he’s on very, very safe ground.” Fox News, *The Five*, [10/1/25]
- Fox Business correspondent Charles Gasparino said Trump would be “on pretty solid grounds” to invoke the Insurrection Act “if it is to protect the ICE facilities” from protesters.Gasparino added, “I would love to see federal troops in downtown Manhattan — I don’t care.” Fox News, *Fox News Sunday*, [9/29/25]
- ## In June, right-wing media similarly advocated for the Insurrection Act to crack down on anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles
- Fox News host Laura Ingraham argued it would be Trump’s “right” and “obligation” to invoke the Insurrection Act if he feels the U.S. “is being threatened from within.”She said, “Now Democrats are pretending to be outraged about the prospect of Trump invoking the Insurrection Act, which, of course, is his right. I’d say it's his obligation to do if — and it’s his call — if he feels the United States is being threatened from within by violent, seditionary forces.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [6/10/25]
- Infowars host Harrison Smith argued for utilizing the act during anti-ICE protests in LA, saying, “The Constitution actually provides for solutions to this. It is the Insurrection Act.” He stated, “The Constitution is being destroyed by these people making it unsafe, depriving the people of LA of the ability to live their lives and express themselves, pursue happiness, and all the other freedoms that we're supposed to enjoy are being destroyed by these people. The Constitution actually provides for solutions to this. It is the Insurrection Act. It is shutting down what’s going on with rapidity and aggressiveness to uphold the rights of the American people against this invading foreign force.” [Infowars, American Journal, 6/9/25]
- Students for Trump National Chairman Ryan Fournier posted, “TIME FOR THE INSURRECTION ACT!” in response to a post by Trump about LA.Twitter/X, [6/9/25]
- Conservative podcaster Vince Coglianese said the way to crack down on anti–ICE protests in Los Angeles is “the president wielding the Insurrection Act.”Coglianese: “It strikes me that if we're going to crack down on this using law enforcement, it's just going to have to be the president wielding the Insurrection Act. He's going to have to go in and save American cities from the leadership that's betraying them.” Rumble, *Vince*, [6/9/25; RadioLink, 4/17/25]
- Mackubin T. Owens wrote for Blaze Media that the Insurrection Act empowers the president “to act when mobs attack federal law” and the president “has the duty to restore order.”In a September opinion piece, Owens defended Trump's deployment of National Guard troops to LA, claiming he had the “duty -- and the power -- to act.” Blaze Media, [9/8/25]
- ## Right-wing media hosts and guests also advocated for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell protests in 2020
- Ahead of the 2020 election, Fox host Mark Levin shared his hope Trump would win and then utilize the Insurrection Act to “put down” protests.On September 11, 2020, Levin speculated that if Trump wins “he will dust off the Insurrection Act” and “he will have to use it to put down the enemy. The enemy is antifa, the enemy is Black Lives Matter.” On September 15, 2020, Levin said protesters “need to be put down” and claimed, “It's not illegal, it's not unconstitutional, it's not unethical, it's not immoral for the President to use the Insurrection Act to put down insurrections.” On September 23, 2020, Levin stated, “I pray to God Donald Trump is reelected. And I pray to God that he uses the Insurrection Act and puts this down.” And on October 28, Levin said, “These lootings and riotings and arsons need to be put down. God willing the President will be re-elected, and he'll use the Insurrection Act to bring safety, and peace." Westwood One, *The Mark Levin Show*, [9/11/20, 9/15/20, 9/23/25, 10/28/20]
- Writing for the National Review, Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy discussed the Insurrection Act — saying it “expressly” empowers the president “to suppress domestic violence” — and called on Trump to “restore order” to cities where Black Lives Matter protests were underway, “including by deployment of the military where that is necessary.”McCarthy dismissed concerns about federalism, writing: “Although the Constitution calls for a state to request federal assistance to combat domestic violence before the president acts, that condition is more apparent than real. … When it comes to violent uprisings, though, federalism concerns are beside the point. Washington has an express constitutional obligation to protect the people of the states, and the republican form of government, from attack.” National Review, [5/31/20]
- Conservative lawyer Jeffrey Clark said onWar Roomthat former Attorney General Bill Barr “participated in using the Insurrection Act” in 1992 in LA and asked, “Why wasn’t that same aggressiveness used against the riots that were used all across the country in the summer of 2020?”Real America's Voice, *War Room*, [7/3/23]
- Right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson urged Trump to “invoke the Insurrection Act immediately” during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.Twitter/X, [5/31/20]
- Daily Wire host Ben Shapiro suggested in 2020 that Trump should invoke the act if states failed to get protests under control.He said: “The Insurrection Act is generally invoked when local authorities are not doing their jobs and protecting the civil rights of their citizens. So the president does have the authority to do this sort of stuff. … And the president, by the way, didn’t say he was going to do it. He said if you don’t get your cities and states under control, then I will do it. And guess what? He should. He should. Because guess — because you're an American taxpaying citizen. You have civil rights. Your civil rights are being abridged and violated when you are locked in your home so rioters and looters can roam free.” The Daily Wire, *The Ben Shapiro Show*, [6/2/20]
- Blaze Media senior editor Daniel Horowitz wrote that “Trump should use the Insurrection Act” and “deadly force” against Black Lives Matter protesters.Blaze Media, [6/1/20]
- Ryan Fournier posted, “President Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act to stop the terrorism happening in Seattle.”Twitter/X, [6/11/20]
//
10/08/25 1:26 PM EDT
10/08/25 5:11 PM EDT
10/08/25
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THREAT JAIL PRITZGER CHIC MAYOR
AN 10 25
'Wannabe dictator': Governor dares 'unhinged' Trump to carry out threat to jail him
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AN NO LNX
You cannot debate a liar like Stephen Miller
Stephen Miller, senior advisor to President Donald J. Trump, speaks during a Trump rally at Madison Square Garden, in New York, U.S., October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo
John Stoehr
October 09, 2025
Today, I have a few things to say about that putz Stephen Miller. First, he’s been on TV a lot lately, because that’s how he pours more poison onto the president’s already-poisoned brain. He doesn’t whisper lies into the ear of the old and demented sovereign the way Wormtongue does in Tolkien's epic. King Théoden didn’t have a TV. King Donald can’t stop watching his. So Stephen Miller delivers poison that way.
Over the weekend, the White House advisor wrote on Twitter there’s “a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”
In the days since, Miller has repeated a variation of that “insurrection” theme during numerous TV appearances. Last night, for instance, he told a CNN anchor that ICE protesters are “actually, as we speak, trying to overthrow the core law enforcement function of the federal government. … ICE officers have to street battle against antifa, hand-to-hand combat every night, to come and go from their building.”
Every word here, including “and” and “the,” is a lie.
But today, we saw the fruit of Miller’s labor.
“Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers,” Trump wrote on his social media site. “Governor Pritzker, too.”
I have talked a lot before about how Trump has dementia and how growing public awareness of his disease could make him vulnerable to the allegation that he’s not really in charge – that malicious and unaccountable forces are pulling his strings. But I haven’t talked about how. Well, this is how. And Stephen Miller is doing it in plain sight.
The second thing I want to say about that putz is about his personality, specifically, about the character of a man who goes on TV to goad an old, demented president into invoking the Insurrection Act to impose martial law. (Miller seems to believe if he says “insurrection” on TV enough times, something in Donald Trump’s head will finally click.)
Before they lie to anyone else, liars like Stephen Miller lie to themselves. They must, because they cannot face the truth. However, I don’t mean just any old truth. I mean capital-T truth, which is to say, the whole truth about themselves. If they had to face it, they would die. (They believe they would die, because they have no faith.)
So they lie, as if their lives depend on it.
What truth? In Stephen Miller’s case, I can’t say I know for sure, but it’s probably that he’s a mediocrity. He’s neither exceptionally intelligent nor exceptionally gifted. Let’s say he’s bland-looking. He’s short by Washington standards. (He says he’s 5 foot 10.) Of course, there are plenty of men who are born of average appearance, talent and smarts, but who accept who they are and lead decent, honorable, happy lives.
Not Stephen Miller. Why? Titanic ego. The truth shall never be true! So he lies to himself, about himself. I would surmise that from a very early age, he began living his life as if he were surviving an endless series of traumatizing events. Do this long enough and you end up not knowing who you are, what you want or what you stand for. And because the lies you tell yourself, about yourself, literally prevent you from feeling joy or satisfaction, always present in life is a desperate, junkie need.
I would suggest this junkie need is the root of hatred. Miller looks around at others who are living their best lives according to the truth about themselves. He sees you doing you better than he’s doing him – and it makes him mad. You cannot do that to him. It’s an injustice. You must be stopped. Indeed, the only way he’s going to feel better is if you are forced to accept the lies he tells himself, about himself. The Stephen Millers of the world, including the president of the United States, are not mediocrities. They are not even human. They are gods. You shall obey. And if you refuse, they will “use legitimate state power.”
I’m dwelling on this facet of Stephen Miller’s personality, as well as on the nature of the totalitarian mind, for a reason. What he’s doing – goading an old, demented president through TV appearances into imposing martial law – is scary. But manipulating the president only gets Miller and the rest of the regime so far. If they are going to take control of the republic, which is their objective (make no mistake), they must convince the American people there’s no use in fighting back – that resistance is futile. And they are going to do that by lying.
During TV appearances this week, Stephen Miller made Donald Trump seem like a sovereign lord endowed by the law and the Constitution (and perhaps by God) with the divine right (“plenary authority,” Miller told CNN) to do whatever he wants in the name of his people, and that any opposition to his divine rule is not only pointless but punishable.
Greg Sargent put it this way. Miller “believes that if he supercharges the debate over Trump's abuses of power with enough propaganda, he can polarize it and force low-info voters to embrace authoritarianism.” (Greg’s latest in The New Republic is about how Democratic Governors JB Pritzker and Gavin Newsom are taking Miller’s “theory of fascist power politics” at face value and devising a strategy to combat it.)
In other words, Miller is lying in order to get you (and “low-info voters”) to give up. And he’s doing that, because surrender is strategically vital. That is, without surrender, Miller and the rest of the regime got nothing. They lie, believing that you will believe their lies, and you end up doing their work for them – by conquering yourself.
But they can’t conquer you if you don’t believe them.
The moment you stop believing them is probably their most vulnerable moment, as we saw when Stephen Miller was asked by a Fox host to respond to comments made about him by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In a stream for constituents, AOC discussed the critical role of ridicule in fighting fascism. For instance, she said:
“Laugh at them. Stephen Miller is a clown. I’ve never seen that guy in real life but he looks like he’s 4’ 10”. He looks like he’s angry about the fact that he’s 4’ 10”. He looks like he is so mad that he is 4’ 10” that he’s taking that anger out at any other population possible. Laugh at them.”
Fox’s Laura Ingraham played that clip, right there on live TV. The written word cannot do justice to the face Miller made while watching it. (You have to see it for yourself.) All I can say is he looked wounded, as if AOC had stabbed him, and that’s because the injury was very real.
She did the unforgivable: refused to accept the lies Stephen Miller tells himself, about himself, and she deepened that wound by daring to enjoy herself while doing it. She not only hurt him, emotionally and psychically, but she reminded him of his misery he endures daily.
I’ll close with this. You cannot debate a liar like Stephen Miller. You cannot persuade him with logic or facts. You cannot find common ground with him. There is no compromise. They are too weak to be worthy of trust, and therefore, they can only be opposed. Trump said JB Pritzker should be jailed. In reply, Pritzker said come and get me.
Low-info voters might not understand much.
But they can understand that.
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an 10 25
Inside Trump's plan to have red attack blue states — using a 200-year-old law
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AN 10 25}:
Barbara F. Walter, author of “How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, warned Sunday that democracy in the United States is in decline and President Donald Trump could create "fake emergencies" to intensify his campaign against his opponents.
Speaking ata podcast on*The Bulwark*posted Sunday morning, Walter said, "I think American democracy is in a really sad place, actually. It's in a place of democratic decline. It's probably likely in the near future to be in a place of economic decline. And these are things that are not going to turn around anytime soon. If you look at the underlying conditions for political violence, the United States, unfortunately, has all of them right now."
She continued: "Political violence tends to happen in countries with weak and declining democracy, especially democracies that are changing rapidly and moving more and more towards autocracy. We call those anocracies, and that's actually the most dangerous place to be. Full, healthy democracies almost never experience political violence."
She added that hardcore autocracies rarely experience political violence, and most of the violence happens in the middle.
"And since January 2025 of this year, America's democracy has declined faster than it ever has in its history. And it's declined faster than democracy in any other advanced industrialized democracy in the world," she added.
Likening Trump to a "wannabe dictator," Walter said the president could use "fake emergencies" to "clamp down on citizens."
"These types of sort of fake emergencies allow these wannabe dictators to declare a state of emergency, declare martial law, and basically just clamp down on citizens so that citizens aren't allowed to leave their homes," she said.
She added: "There's curfews. Soldiers are now patrolling the streets. There's roadblocks. And this effectively ends democracy. So people were saying, okay, is theCharlie Kirk murder, and in particular, the Republican Party's reaction to it, that this is almost a declaration of war by the left. People were worried that that would be that type of situation."
Walter also warned that Trump does not see the American constitution as an impediment.
"I don't think Trump sees the Constitution as an impediment in any way. [Viktor] Orban did not see Hungary's Constitution as an impediment. He simply changed it. Netanyahu doesn't see Israel's Constitution as an impediment. You know, these guys are bullies and strongmen, and they just push their way through and see if anybody stops them," she said.
The analyst noted that following conservative activist Charlie Kirk's murder, many expected a war on the left by the Trump administration, but it didn't play out that way. The administration, she argued, is now looking for a bigger reason to ramp up its efforts to go after its opponents.
"The Trump administration isn't ready to declare a state of emergency and to basically take control of the potential hotspots for opposition. Those hotspots for opposition are going to be America's big cities," she said.
Walter added: "It's hard for most Americans to feel deeply threatened because an outspoken activist on the right was killed. They might be horrified by it. They might desperately wish it never happens again, but they don't feel personally threatened by it. And for people to be willing to give up their rights and freedoms to say, 'okay, martial law is okay with me.' They have to be, they have to truly believe that their and their family safety is threatened. And Charlie Kirk's murder didn't do that. So it's going to have to be something bigger than that," she said, noting that Trump is still trying to "create a situation" where he can "suddenly grab all power."
"That's where you have most of the people who disagree with Trump, feel threatened by Trump. And he doesn't have his soldiers in place there. He started to do that in Washington, D.C., in Los Angeles, and he tried to do that in Chicago. But he's not ready for the moment to sort of pull the trigger," she said.
Asked if this democratic backsliding could lead to a civil war in the U.S., Walter said, "So the main point I want to make is that citizens are much more powerful than they think they are. There's over 330 million of us. You know, think back to your time at school in the schoolyard. You know, everybody's seen bullies operate and and they see what happens when the you know, the kids in the schoolyard, dozens of them, just stand up."
She continued: "Bullies tend to wither. We have 300 and, you know, over 330 million Americans. And if we just in our own separate individual ways, simply just started silently and peacefully resisting, not voluntarily complying when we're told that to do something that's illegal .So there's a whole series of things. And then protest is the greatest tool," she added.
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NO LNX
Thom Hartmann
October 06, 2025
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” —Abraham Lincoln
“The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people. To render us again one people, acting as one nation, should be the object of every man really a patriot.”—Thomas Jefferson
People are baffled. Why are Trump and his Republican lickspittles so intent on gutting our government, destroying our alliances and reputation around the world, and screwing working class people while transferring over $50 trillion to the morbidly rich?
Historian Kevin M. Kruse captured the zeitgeist brilliantly, reflecting widespread public bewilderment when he posted over on BlueSky:
“We’ve had ----ups in the White House before, but never a president who seemed so deliberately intent on being a ---up. It’s been said before, but if these people were actual agents of an enemy power seeking to divide, dismantle and destroy the USA they wouldn’t be doing anything different.”
So, let’s engage in a simple thought experiment. If you or I were hired by Vladimir Putin, an angry group of billionaires who want to end democracy, or a wealthy serial killer, and our orders were to tear our country apart and make us vulnerable to foreign takeover, what would we do? What steps would we take?
As I mentioned a few days ago, if we follow the Dictator’s Playbook there actually is a simple, 12-step formula to make that happen.
The first step would be to turn Americans from E Pluribus Unum (“Out of Many, One”) into hate-filled warring factions. Turn us against each other. Divide us by race, religion, gender, region, education, income, and whether we live in cities or rural areas.
In Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace (1795), he described the first three strategies that “despotic moralists” use to rip apart the fabric of a society. They were Fac et excusa (“Act now, and make excuses later”), Si fecisti, nega (“If you commit a crime, deny it”), and Divide et impera (“Divide and conquer”). Jefferson perhaps inspired Kant when, in 1787, he wrote, “Divide et impera [is] the reprobated axiom of tyranny…”
When Hitler claimed that Jews, Gypsies, and queer people weren’t “real Germans,” he was invoking that principle. Joe McCarthy tried to divide us by political ideology. David Duke said we should be separated by skin color.
Its most recent invocation was just this week when Trump and Pete Hegseth told our nation’s generals that most Black, Hispanic, and female officers were only in their positions because of their gender or skin color. “Whiskey Pete” was blunt, claiming that Ronald Reagan’s invocation of America’s traditional belief that “our diversity is our strength” was an “insane fallacy.”
Next, we’d want to immiserate as many Americans as possible, creating a huge pool of mostly white men who are pissed off because they’d been left behind economically and feel locked out of the American Dream.
That strategy would include several steps:
Destroy unions that bind workers together with their employers and raise standards of living.
Gut programs that lift people out of poverty and into the middle class, including high-quality universal public education, low-cost college, and inexpensive access to healthcare.}:
Ship manufacturing overseas to low-wage nations while using incoherent, ever-changing whim-based tariffs to batter the domestic economy.}:
Build media operations that demonize “the other,” telling them Blacks, Hispanics, queer people and women are the cause of their troubles.}:
Ban books that embrace diversity and teachers who use them.}:
Spread hate and conspiracy theories via powerful social media and search engine algorithms that make them seem normal, coarsening the entire culture.}:
Throw people off programs offering healthcare, student debt repayment, and housing subsidies.}:
Third, we’d want to destroy people’s faith in straightforward news. Loudly proclaim that it all has a “leftwing bias” and can’t be trusted, that reporters are elite “enemies of the people,” and attack the media relentlessly.
Fourth, shatter people’s faith in reality itself. Challenge science and expertise. Flood the zone with conspiracy theories. Convince citizens to stop taking commonsense steps to protect themselves and their children including vaccinations, precautions against airborne diseases, or measures to slow climate change. Sow confusion until they no longer know who to believe, and then offer yourself as the only source of truth.
Fifth, deconstruct international alliances that go back centuries by alienating traditional friends and embracing openly hostile foes while tearing up norms of defense, trade, and commerce.
Sixth, fracture citizens’ faith in their elected officials and the government itself. Legalize the practice of morbidly rich people and giant corporations buying legislation and the loyalty of politicians with cash by claiming that “money is speech” and “corporations are persons.” Define opposition political parties as “radical,” “dangerous,” and “outside the mainstream.”
Seventh, turn the military and police forces of the nation against its own people, making them terrified of challenging armed, masked men in the streets, kicking in their doors at midnight. Start with vilified minorities like immigrants and, when they’re “under control,” turn those forces against anybody who dissents from the new single-party rule.
Eighth, demolish faith in the nation’s currency by seizing political control of the central bank while villainizing its leadership.
Ninth, run scams to accumulate as much wealth as possible in the hands of Dear Leader and his close cronies while refusing to raise the minimum wage so as to keep people in poverty.
Tenth, use the power of government to force institutions — corporations, universities, law firms — into complete submission and even explicit collaboration in the enshitification of the nation.
Eleventh, seize control of the legislative and judicial branches so your law-breaking, election-rigging, and bribe-taking is never held to account. Openly and brazenly break laws like the Hatch Act that forbids the use of any government agency or property for political or commercial purposes.
Force agencies to make illegal, partisan statements denigrating the opposition party and defy anybody who calls out that naked criminality. Sneer and laugh at those who demand that people committing crimes in office should be held accountable.
Twelfth, turn the nation’s premiere law enforcement agencies into tools for punishing political enemies while ignoring the crimes of friends of the regime, thus destroying faith in equality under the rule of law and terrorizing anybody who speaks out.
All of these 12 simple steps have been used by every despot in history, from the ancient Roman Empire through the kings of the Dark Ages to the fascists of early 20th century Europe to today’s strongmen including Orbán, Putin, Erdoğan, El-Sisi, Maduro, Netanyahu, and Modi.
Whether Trump has put America on this road at the insistence (or by the payment from) Putin, rightwing American billionaires, or just his own authoritarian impulses and with strategies he’s learned from Orbán and Putin, it doesn’t have to end with America resembling today’s Russia or Hungary.
The good news is that multiple countries have elected men to leadership who tried to run through this list and were stopped before they could finish the job. Instead of letting their leaders turn their nations into permanent autocracies, the people rose up and took the power back for themselves and their democracies.
They include Ukraine, the Philippines, Brazil, Poland, Zambia, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Peru, South Korea, Romania, North Macedonia, Slovakia, Gambia, Malawi, Moldova, and South Africa.
History shows that any democracy can fall into tyranny if its citizens grow cynical, give up, or look away. The question — the only question that matters now — is whether enough of us will choose to stand up, to act, and to reclaim what generations before us fought and bled to pass along, like the citizens of those countries listed above have done in the recent past.
If they can do it, so can we.
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WOLFF DEM AT WORK
9 25
TRUMP SYMPTOM, CAUSE CAP’LISM
SCOTUS SAYS MONEY = SPEECH, COST 1B$ TO RUN PRES.
Economic Update: American Style Fascism
In the second half of today’s show, Professor Wolff interviews attorney Michael S. Smith, co-author of the new book, “From the Flag to the Cross: Fascism American Style.”
https://www.amazon.com/Flag-Cross-Fascism-American-Style-ebook/dp/B0FRG3QQV8}:
Has fascism arrived dressed in stars and stripes? This book offers a sharp analysis of American authoritarianism, how we got here, how to organize, and how to resist.
:{:{"Gangster capitalism," that's how Henry Giroux describes the system where a billionaire class controls the institutions that shape our lives—the media, corporations, universities, courts, and government. But does this centralization of power on behalf of the super-rich mean that fascism has taken over the United States? Certainly, the signs are there: Individuals not charged with a crime are picked up on the street by masked police and "disappeared."}:
Right-wing strongmen like Javier Milei of Argentina or Nayib Bukele of El Salvador are embraced warmly on the steps of the White House. The aptly titled Trump v. United States Supreme Court ruling just handed the president broad immunity for “official acts.” And Elon Musk, the president's unelected scourge of government inefficiency, gave repeated fascist-style salutes at Trump’s inauguration rally. His DOGE have fired tens of thousands of people, and illegally seized private personal data on millions of Americans.}:
So is this fascism, oligarchy, authoritarianism—or all of the above? Is there a special brand of American fascism? And, if so, what direction is it likely to take, and how can it best be resisted? In From the Flag to the Cross: Fascism American Style, seven prominent American socialists explore these questions. They come at the issues from different angles in an enlightening spectrum of opinion. But on one point, they are in unison: Trump is not the disease. He’s the symptom. The real threat is a violent, deeply embedded system—fueled by capitalism, white supremacy, Christian nationalism, and authoritarian rule—that long predates the 47th president.
Contributors: Chris Hedges, Richard Wolff, Dianne Feeley, Henry Giroux, Bill Mullen, Margaret Kimberley, and Kshama Sawant.SEATLE COUNCIL 20 MIN WAGE?
ratner who killed che/ bk
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no lnx
Dictators have a playbook — but the media seems oblivious to it
Thom Hartmann
October 03, 2025
Most jobs have a “playbook,” a sort of instruction manual or checklist for how to do the job right, whether it’s running an assembly line, piloting an aircraft, or redoing a house’s plumbing.
Although our media seems oblivious to it, dictators have a playbook, too.
It’s one that’s been carefully followed in recent times by Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orbán, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Rodrigo Duterte, Jair Bolsonaro, and numerous initially-elected leaders of other smaller nations. In previous generations the Dictator’s Playbook was followed, step-by-step, by Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Francisco Franco, Ferdinand Marcos, Agustin Pinochet, Josef Stalin, and Hideki Tojo (among others).
And now it’s being followed by Donald Trump and JD Vance, who are a bit more than halfway through the list. Trump’s speech on Tuesday before our assembled generals and admirals — telling them they should use our American cities as “training grounds” for the military whose job is to “kill people and break things” — is getting us closer to the final steps.
“We are under invasion from within,” Trump said, “no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don’t wear uniforms. … We’re under invasion from within.”}:
And who is this enemy that’s so bad, so evil, that Trump just declared war against? He was explicit that the “enemies” are his political opponents and average people who live in our big cities:
“The ones that are run by the radical left Democrats ... what they’ve done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they’re very unsafe places. And we’re going to straighten them out one by one. This is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”}:
What’s most astonishing about the reporting on this meeting is that none of the media I follow have even once mentioned that militarizing the nation’s cities is one of the most significant steps in the Dictator’s Playbook.
Combine that with the demand for absolute loyalty to the Dear Leader — Trump told the generals “If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room” THEN ThREateded their careers? — and he’s declared himself the absolute ruler of America wielding the most lethal military in the history of the world against our nation’s own citizens.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow recently laid out five moves that dictators reliably make.
First, they identify an internal enemy to blame for social ills; Trump has spent years turning immigrants, big cities, and universities into scapegoats. Now, like every dictator listed above has done, he’s claiming that the opposition political party, the Democrats, are an “enemy within.”
Second, they turn security forces inward, exactly what Trump’s new call for turning our military against our cities represents. The moment a dictator turns military forces built to destroy foreign adversaries against his own people, the rest of the transformation becomes easier.}:
Third, they criminalize dissent and protest, insisting that when people show up in the streets it is not constitutionally protected free speech and the right “peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances” but a security “threat” to be crushed rather than heard and responded to.}:
Fourth, they intimidate or capture the press and punish truth-telling, as we’re seeing now with rightwing billionaires capturing virtually every major traditional and social media source in America.
Fifth, they seize control of independent institutions like universities, law firms, or the civil service to eliminate any professional standards that interfere with Dear Leader’s will.}:
Overlay that list with the work of historians and political scientists like Timothy Snyder, Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Jason Stanley, and M. Gessen. Their research on how democracies die all point to the same ingredients:
Deny or rewrite election results to delegitimize democracy itself.}:
Declare political opponents enemies of the state.}:
Turn independent institutions like the Department of Justice, the civil service, and the military into personal tools.}:
Flood the public square with lies so thoroughly (Steve Bannon proudly called it “flooding the zone with ----") that reality itself becomes negotiable.}:
Tolerate or celebrate political violence on behalf of the dictator, and demonize violence against his followers and mouthpieces as sedition and treason.
Demand personal loyalty instead of constitutional duty.}:
Invoke a mythic past and promise national rebirth if only the strongman is given total sovereignty.:
Use his office to rapidly enrich himself and his family while creating a patronage network of loyalists who owe their fortunes to him.}:
There is also the money. Autocrats rarely forget to convert state power into private wealth. Trump’s hotels, golf courses, and commercial properties brought in millions from foreign governments during his first time in office, as documented by House Oversight Committee findings.
His son-in-law Jared Kushner secured a two-billion-dollar investment from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund almost immediately after leaving the White House. Ivanka Trump picked up fast-tracked Chinese trademarks while advising her father in government.
Kleptocracy is not a side effect of authoritarianism or fascism: it’s essential, particularly when some of that fortune is shared with those willing to break the law to support Dear Leader. So far, according to reporting, Trump and his family have made at least $5 billion from his 9-month-long presidency. It’s a core feature of the Dictator’s Playbook.
And when people protest the theft of the nation’s resources and the personal enrichment based on handing out favors, dictators go after them in the most brutal ways imaginable. It begins with investigations, but never ends there. Just look at what he’s doing to James Comey and Miles Taylor.
And now Trump has issued a National Security Presidential Memorandum that essentially says Democrats, atheists, Muslims, Jews, socialists, and queer people are terrorists. Not because of anything they’ve done, but because of who they are or what they believe.
It directs the FBI, DOJ, and over 200 Joint Terrorism Task Forces coordinated with police forces across the country to investigate anybody who meet it’s “indica” (indicators) of potential terrorism. They include, as Ken Klippenstein reported:
“[A]nti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States Government, extremism on migration, extremism on race, extremism on gender, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.”
Do any of those sound like you? If Trump and Republicans continue down this road, get ready to have your life turned upside down as they tear apart your social media profiles, search your email and postal mail, surveil you, and one day bang on your door in the middle of the night.
And you don’t have to have actually done a thing. Trump’s order explicitly calls on the FBI and local police coordinating with them to “intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”
To go after you before you do anything, based entirely on who you are, who you love, what you believe, and what you say.
That is not the America our Founders, or the men and women who’ve fought and died to keep us free for 249 years, envisioned. And, again, the mainstream media almost entirely missed it while rightwing media ignored it altogether. Even though one day it may be directed against them if they say or do anything to offend Trump or his henchmen.
When Trump told the generals he would remove anyone who does not “agree with everything I say,” he also embraced the logic of tyrants who treat disagreement as insubordination.
Democracies rely on officers sworn to the Constitution, not to one man. Trump is trying to undo that distinction. He’s demanding personal loyalty backed by the threat of firing, demotion, or public shaming. Civilian control of the military that George Washington and James Madison insisted on becomes a hollow phrase when the civilian in charge demands the military serve his whims.
What once sounded like fringe rhetoric is now proclaimed loudly to the uniformed leadership of the United States. The generals who heard him are not hypothetical. They command forces, oversee operations, and embody the principle that the military does not exist to occupy American streets.
The notion that they should roll tanks into urban neighborhoods to harden troops for foreign war is not law enforcement: it’s preparation for ruling America by force, a force that may well be preparing for the November 2026 elections.
This is the kind of moment historians point back to later with disbelief. The warnings have been clear for years, but now the mask is off.
Even though our media insists on ignoring it, the Dictator’s Playbook has always included using a nation’s biggest cities as the stage for demonstrating power. It’s always required replacing officers and officials who follow the laws and traditions of a nation with loyalists who obey without question. It’s always depended on turning people against one another so Dear Leader and his lickspittles can step in as the only source of safety or authority.
Nobody can say this is a surprise: Trump pretty much campaigned on exactly what he’s doing now, and people from former intelligence, military, and FBI leaders to scholars of fascism warned us this was coming if Republicans suppressed enough votes for him to win. (Without the GOP having prevented 4.2 million registered citizen voters from voting or having their votes counted, Kamala Harris would have won and the House and Senate would today be under Democratic control).
The question now is whether Americans will accept a president who treats their hometowns as battle simulations and sees disagreement by generals and agency leaders as an offense punishable by firing, imprisonment, or exile.
As I point out in my new book The Last American President, it’ll depend on whether we’ll stand up and speak out. Or whether, like our media and so many universities, law firms, media outlets, and giant corporations, we’ll cower in fear and submit to Trump’s demands.
That is not law and order, and it’s not democracy in a free republic. It’s the language of autocracy that yesterday was spoken out loud in front of the armed forces of the United States and is echoed every time Trump attacks a reporter, media outlet, or one of his many “enemies.”
Will American democracy survive this onslaught, straight out of the Dictator’s Playbook? To a large extent, that will depend on you, me, and our elected officials summoning the courage to resist and protest loudly. And our media to call it out for what it is.
The clock is ticking, and these guys are racing for the finish line.
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an 10 25
In a sharply worded ruling delivered Tuesday, U.S. District Judge William Young — a Ronald Reagan appointee — criticized U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents for their use of masks during operations, equating the practice to a tool of intimidation rather than protection.
In his ruling, he wrote that “ICE goes masked for a single reason — to terrorize Americans into quiescence,” and added that “In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police.”
Young ruled that the Trump administration infringed on the First Amendment rights of foreign students.
At the very start of his opinion, the judge reproduced an anonymous postcard he had received, followed by his written reply:
“TRUMP HAS PARDONS AND TANKS... WHAT DO YOU HAVE?”
“Dear Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, Alone, I have nothing but my sense of duty. Together, We the People of the United States — you and me — have our magnificent Constitution. Here’s how that works out in a specific case," he wrote in response to the threat.
The ruling comes amid growing debate over immigration enforcement tactics, the role of transparency in law enforcement, and the balance between security and civil liberties.
Critics of ICE’s methods have long raised concerns about accountability when agents’ faces are obscured during raids or other enforcement actions. Supporters of covert tactics argue that masking helps protect agents’ safety and prevents retaliation or harassment. Judge Young’s ruling signals a judicial pushback against the latter rationale, at least in this particular case.
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an 9 25
Filmmaker Ken Burns, whose latest documentary focuses on the American Revolutionary War, tellsthe New York Times that the greatest existential threat to the United States right now is sitting right in the White House.
"Jefferson says a few phrases after pursuit of happiness," Burns says, in reference to the Declaration of Independence. "He says, 'All experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable.'"
Burns says that Jefferson was referring to authoritarianism, the acceptance of which, he explains, has been around since the founding of the nation.
"He means that everybody heretofore has been subject to an authoritarianrule, and we’ve basically accepted it. It’s been the want of every authoritarian to make sure that people are uneducated, they’re suspicious, they’re a peasantry, they are subjects," Burns says.
When asked " how you think of just how significant the dangers are?" Burns replied, "the increase inexecutive power is perhaps the greatest existential threat to the United States right now."
Burns, who has made over 40 award-winning documentaries about all facets of the American experience, says that this concept of authoritarianism is not new to us, but it is an increasing threat.
"The patriots, the rebels, were mainly selecting against a despot, against an authoritarian. They knew human nature. They knew someone would eventually come along like that, and they were trying to figure out how to guard against it," he said.
"Jefferson, writing from Paris to Madison, said: What if someone should lose anelection but pretend false votes and reap the whirlwind? They weren’t idiots. They were really smart, and they were trying to guard against exactly that," Burns said.
And while Burns does see the glass half full in terms of where the country is headed, he also says that there is cause for great concern.
"I think that in our democratic — small “d” democratic — DNA is everything we need to right the ship. I am optimistic, though I’ve never been as pessimistic as I am right now," he says.
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an 9 25
In between his highly publicized designation of Antifa as a domestic terror organization and his indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, US President Donald Trump signed a little-reported national security memorandum that gives law enforcement new tools to target his critics.
Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) on Thursday. The directive, titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” focuses exclusively on “anti-fascist” or left-wing activities, and mandates a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”
“I don’t want to sound hyperbolic but the plain truth is that NSPM-7 is a declaration of war on anyone who does not support the Trump administration and its agenda,” journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote in a piece raising alarm about the directive on Saturday.
Klippenstein argued that the memorandum was worrying on several fronts. For one, its focus on preventing crimes before they are committed opens the door to rights violations.
“In other words, they’re targeting pre-crime, to reference Minority Report,” Klippenstein wrote.
For another, the memorandum casts a very wide net, targeting groups, individuals, funders, and “entities” and listing several protected beliefs as “indicia” of extremism.
These include:
- “Anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity;
- Support for the overthrow of the United States Government;
- Extremism on migration, race, and gender; and
- Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
What’s more, the memorandum entrusts enforcement to the FBI’s over 4,000-strong Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF), which removes the legal challenges to directing the National Guard or other military forces to quash domestic dissent.
“For the Trump White House, the beauty of using an already existing network is that it bypasses Congressional oversight and scrutiny and even obscures federal activity to governors and legislatures at the state level,” Klippenstein wrote.
The types of activities that will be targeted are also quite broad, with the document defining “organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder” as “domestic terrorist acts.”
The memorandum also targets any individual or group who might fund activity the administration deems terrorism and directs the Internal Revenue Service to “take action to ensure that no tax-exempt entities are directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism,” which could be a means of threatening the status of nonprofits.
Finally, as Drop Site Newspointed out, the memo authorizes the attorney general to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations for the first time in US history.
“By targeting beliefs and protest activity, the directive positions dissent itself as a potential crime,” Drop Sitewrote.
The Trump administration’s focus on violence associated with left-wing beliefs and groups is not supported by the facts. National Institute of Justice data found that right-wing violence had led to 520 deaths since 1990 compared with 78 deaths due to left-wing violence. However, the administration removed that study from the Department of Justice website shortly after Charlie Kirk was killed, The Guardianreported earlier this month.
The administration’s efforts, while accelerated, build on processes that began during the US response to the September 11 attacks, as Klippenstein explained:
A “pre-crime” endeavor, preventing attacks before they happen, is core to the post-9/11 concept of counterterrorism itself. No longer satisfied to investigate acts of terrorism after the fact to bring terrorists to justice, the Bush administration adopted preemption. Overseas, that led to aerial assassination by drones and “special operations” kill missions. Domestically, it led to a counter-terrorism campaign whose hallmark was excessive and illegal government surveillance and the use of undercover agents and “confidential human sources” to trap (and entrap) would-be terrorists.
However, the Trump administration is expanding the War-on-Terror mandate with fewer guardrails.
“Now, with Donald Trump’s directive retooling the counter-terror apparatus to go after Americans at home, this means monitoring political activity, or speech, as an investigative method to discover ‘radicalism,‘” Klippenstein said, noting that the NSPM-7 breaks with post-Watergate national security documents by failing to mention the First Amendment rights to protest and organize.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is already eager to make use of the document.
“We are witnessing domestic terrorist sedition against the federal government,” he wrote on social media on Friday. “The JTTF has been dispatched by the Attorney General, pursuant to NSPM-7. All necessary resources will be utilized.”
In an interview with Greg Sargent for theNew Republic, Trump ally Steve Bannon confirmed that Miller and others in the administration were preparing to go after left-liberal groups and media whose criticism of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could be interpreted as “goading” on violence against the agency.
Referring to Miller’s comments that calling ICE authoritarian incited violence and terrorism, Bannon responded, “Stephen Miller is correct—more importantly he’s in charge.
The threats of investigations put liberal and left-leaning organizations in a tough place. On the one hand, they want to prepare as best they can. On the other, they do not want to obey in advance.
“Officials at these groups tell me they must strike a balance between being clear-eyed about how bad this could get while not letting it discourage political activity,” Sargent wrote. “That latter form of surrender is exactly what Trump and Miller want. And under no circumstances should anybody willingly hand it over to them.”
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AN 9 25 THE CONV
There have been many questions raised about the intentions behind Donald Trump’s spate of radical public statements about Canada, in which he claims trade deficits amount to subsidies, massive amounts of fentanyl are flowing across the border and the country should become the 51st American state, among other things.
The U.S. president’s comments have fuelled speculation about what he means when he makes these kinds of false claims — or whether he means anything at all.
After all, rounded to the nearest percentage point, zero per cent of illicit fentanyl entering the U.S. comes from Canada, trade deficits are not subsidies and annexing Canada is an absurd proposal.
So why say things that are so untrue?
Is Trump serious about any of this?
Ignore Trump? Or fear him?
The aggregate opinion seems to be both an unhelpful no and a yes, so the answer remains unclear.
If we take every provocation seriously, we’re falling for the “flood the zone” strategy as Trump spews out outlandish claims as a form of distraction.
If we shrug off his claims, we’re ignoring the potential danger.
But there are patterns and incentives behind Trump’s flouting of basic communicative norms. One illustrative example dates back to 2018 talks with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, when Trump complained about the U.S. trade deficit with Canada. Later, he told prospective donors in Missouri that he’d made this claim up on the spot.
Why make up a claim like that? And, having done so, why admit and even brag about it, and then renew this knowingly false claim six years later?
My colleague Jennifer Saul and I are scholars in the political philosophy of language. We’re among those who cite this example of Trump bullshit in our work on bullshit in authoritarian political speech and how bullshit can succeed even though everyone recognizes that it is, in fact, bullshit.
Why Trump bullshits
Our notion of bullshit is a refinement of the term that was the subject of American philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s seminal 2005 book *On Bullshit*.
Most liars care enough about the truth to try to conceal it. But simply not caring either way is a different vice, which Frankfurt called bullshitting.
An example would be claiming a trade deficit without having any idea whether that’s true or false. Other examples include uttering falsehoods that are so obvious they couldn’t possibly be intended to deceive anyone.
Really obvious bullshit can succeed politically, we proposed, because there are many audiences in mass communication. Bullshit targeted at Audience A can be a big hit with Audience B, if B thinks A deserves it.
Then it becomes a display of power over A, with B enjoying the spectacle. This overt bullshitting lends itself to authoritarian politics for someone cultivating a strongman image. It marks an opponent for disrespectful treatment, and advertises that the bullshitter cannot be held to account.
So Trump’s admission that he bullshitted Trudeau in 2018 was a successful strategy because he revealed it to a sympathetic audience, who got to see themselves as part of the performance and not as its target. Asking: “Does Trump really mean this?” is often less revealing than: “How does this promote Trump’s image as an authority figure, and to which audience?”
Similarly, Trump falsely remarked in 2019 that Hurricane Dorian’s projected path included Alabama. He responded to fact-checking by showing an official storm track map that he literally altered by hand, with a marker.
Such a ridiculous invention couldn’t be meant to deceive. But it showed Trump’s base, many of whom distrust mainstream information sources, that he couldn’t be made to back down for reporters, no matter the facts.
Some claims appear deceptive lies to one audience and bullshit to another, like Trump’s recent claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a dictator who started the war in Ukraine.
Some audiences might believe it. Others will see it as false and designed to be deceptive, yet recognize it as a threat to treat Ukraine as an aggressor with American demands for Ukraine’s rare earth minerals at stake.
Credibility matters in unexpected ways
Even conservative pundits initially worried that Trump’s propensity to bullshit would diminish the finite resource that is credibility.
They didn’t recognize that credibility is a dubious virtue in strongman politics. Its absence can even be an asset. Acting without credibility is a chance to flex — to show that you can compel others to take you seriously whether they believe you or not.
These incentives link frivolous outbursts of bullshit with very serious doubling-downs. Trump first spoke about Canada becoming the 51st state in a meeting with Trudeau in late November so offhandedly that it was not immediately mentioned in news reports.
Once Fox News seized upon it, Trudeau was forced to publicly dismiss the comment as a joke.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in November 2024. Trudeau apparently thought Trump was just bullshitting when he made mention of Canada becoming a 51st state during the dinner.(X/@JustinTrudeau)
VIDS
A more commentary revealed liberal-leaning Canadians and Americans were angry and even frightened by this sort of talk — conditions that made it attractive for Trump to double down rather than back down.
Combing through Trump’s speech and actions towards Canada to discover what he really means may just be an attempt to “sane-wash” them; meaning trying to figure out if they reflect a stable and sincere attitude, or even a stable and insincere negotiating strategy.
What makes Trump’s bullshit so dangerous is that it rarely reflects fixed, coherent meanings or convictions. It lurches from triviality to deadly seriousness, depending on how his various audiences provide the approval and the outrage Trump seeks for his performances of strength.
Tim Kenyon, Professor, Faculty of Humanities, Brock University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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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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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 9 25
National Security Leaders for America, a bipartisan organization comprising former senior military, diplomatic and intelligence officials, has strongly condemned the Pentagon’s recent directive imposing restrictions on journalists. Thenew policymandates that journalists sign a pledge agreeing not to report any information — even if unclassified — unless it has been authorized by a Pentagon official, under the threat of losing their press credentials.
In a statement releasedto the press Monday, the organization's president and founder, Rear Admiral Mike Smith (Ret.) said: “Demanding journalists adhere across the board to state edicts about what may — or may not — be reported to the public does not project strength. To the contrary, it betrays unsettling insecurities about the legality and effectiveness of Pentagon actions, plans and priorities."
“Our membership includes many former senior Department of Defense political appointees, as well as general and flag officers; we know how frustrating it can be when plans get out before they’re ready. We know how crucial it is to protect classified information and material, especially when its release could put sources and methods at risk. But the idea that only state sanctioned information is all that can ever be reported to the public flies in the face of the crucial role journalism plays in ensuring our armed forces are accountable to the American people," Smith added.
Rear Admiral Tom Jurkowsky (Ret.), former Chief of Navy Information, said: “Journalists at the Pentagon play a critical role, and Secretary Hegseth is being shortsighted in demanding journalists make this pledge. The public has a right and a responsibility to understand what the military is doing in their name, and that is not possible without an aggressive, sometimes adversarial press.”
The statement from the organization called for a "healthy relationship between the fourth state and Pentagon officials," which it said was "essential to communicating critical information about American national security to the public and has, in rare circumstances, uncovered unacceptable activities that might have otherwise remained hidden." The group asserted that "unprecedented disregard for the Constitution, absent any national security considerations, undermines law, good order and effectiveness."
Several journalists' groups and press freedom organization have sounded the alarm over the recent policy.
The Society of Professional Journalists called it “alarming” and said the move “reeks of prior restraint — the most egregious violation of press freedom under the First Amendment.”
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press pointed out ambiguous language in the policy: what counts as “authorized information,” what is “a security or safety risk,” which areas in the Pentagon are covered, etc. The organization warned that such vagueness can lead reporters to self‐censor rather than risk losing access.
Some groups are explicitly calling for the Pentagon to rescind the policy. Others are saying the implementation should at least be paused until the vague terms are clarified and possibly narrowed to avoid overreach.
Meanwhile on Sunday, President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter whether the Pentagon should decide what reporters can report. “No, I don’t think so," he replied.
He added, “Nothing stops reporters.”
Trump's statements appear to express disagreement with the Pentagon policy, but there is no public indication he has ordered it rescinded or formally intervened.
Last week, Trump escalated his rhetoric against media outlets he accused of bias, suggesting that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should revoke the broadcast licenses of networks that provide "negative" coverage.
This comment came a day after ABC suspended "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" following remarks by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel about conservative activist Charlie Kirk's murder.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, had earlier hinted that ABC's broadcast license could be at risk if the network did not take action against Kimmel.
But on Monday, Disney announced that Kimmel would returnto the air on Tuesday, six days after the suspension, citing internal discussions and business considerations. The decision to reinstate the show followed public backlash, including boycotts and protests, and concerns over press freedom and censorship.
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see CLETA SOVERIEGN EMERGENCY BORDER 9 25
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an 9 25
In an article for Salonpublished Sunday, the outlet’s executive editor, Andrew O’Hehir, argues that Americans have been given a harsh reminder: Democracy isn’t guaranteed, and beyond merely consenting to be governed, citizens must take an active role to defend it.
He warned that many of the formal institutions, especially the U.S. Constitution, are showing signs of decay, undermined “from within” by what he sees as encroaching authoritarianism.
O'Hehir writes that the confrontation over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s show is presented not as just a media squabble, but a test case.
"Jimmy Kimmel’s cancellation is a test case, designed to measure the breadth and power of the accelerating authoritarian coup now underway in America," he said.
Late-night comedy and other cultural institutions become battlegrounds, in part because they sit at the intersection of public opinion, dissent, and broad reach, he noted.
O’Hehir added that large media companies, many now under oligarchic ownership or dominated by finance capital and big tech, are becoming more reliant on those in power.
"The MAGA assault on late-night comedy — which is doubly vulnerable, as both a fading cultural institution and the veritable definition of First Amendment-protected speech — represents a kind of pincer movement, bringing together multiple overlapping fascist tendencies," he wrote.
"On one hand, we see the consolidation of mainstream media companies, now increasingly under the oligarchic control of Big Tech and finance capital, and increasingly dependent on the corrupt Trump regime to approve their corrupt cartel-building mergers and acquisitions. On the other, we see the regime’s undisguised campaign to restrict and punish dissent, and to redefine 'free speech' as a conditional benefit conferred only on its most loyal grovelers and forelock-tuggers, and subject to revocation at any time.
He cited Sinclair and Nexstar as examples of companies that pushed against Kimmel, seemingly aligning with Trump-friendly narratives.
The editor argued that many of the pillars of democracy — courts, civil service, justice departments, regulatory agencies — are weakened, co-opted, or acting as enforcers of the regime rather than checks upon it.
"The Supreme Court has given Trump free rein, the FBI and Justice Department have become his enforcers, the civil service has been co-opted and subverted, the public health agencies have been conquered by moonbats and Republican state legislatures are doing their best to rig the midterm elections. As [Bill] Curry puts it, leaders at white-shoe law firms, elite universities and major foundations have repeatedly surrendered without a shot, revealing themselves as 'traitors, cowards, rank opportunists or simply inept.'"
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AN BADASH 9 25
In a fiery declaration, President Donald Trump announced he is designating "antifa" a terrorist organization. Some experts say he lacks the authority to do so and will struggle to enforce such a move — while others warn it could give him sweeping license to target groups or individuals he disfavors.
“I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION,” Trump wrote on social media on Wednesday evening. “I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
As many have noted, antifa is not an organized group. It simply means “anti-fascist,” or “anti-fascism.”
But Trump has taken the step anyway. Here’s what some experts say.
READ MORE: ‘Depraved’: Vance Scorched for ‘Reprehensible’ Joke About Military’s Deadly Boat Strikes
BBC News reports that some legal experts have called into question Trump’s legal authority to declare antifa a terrorist organization.
“The existing rules do allow the government, specifically the State Department, to make a list of ‘foreign terrorist organizations’ which makes it a crime to give funds or other ‘material support’ to those groups.”
“But the key word here is ‘foreign,'” BBC notes, “and those experts we have spoken to pointed out that free speech rights under the US constitution’s first amendment would limit Trump’s ability to ban – or restrict funding for – domestic movements like antifa.”
Rumen Cholakov, an expert in US constitutional law at King’s College London, “told us that if the government were to use its powers against them in the US their actions would be ‘potentially susceptible to constitutional challenges’ in court for violating these rights.”
Professor David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University, told BBC Verify, “Under the First Amendment, no one can be punished for joining a group or giving money to a group.”
Meanwhile, other experts have also weighed in.
READ MORE: ‘We’re Literally Sitting in the Building’: House Democrat Shreds GOP’s Spin on Violence
Attorney and MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski observed, “Since antifa is now designed as a terrorist organization it will be interesting to see how they determine who is a member and how they prove it is an organization.”
Politico senior legal affairs correspondent Kyle Cheney noted, “Trump says he’s designating ‘antifa’ a terrorist group and launching a probe into finding of antifa activities. The FBI has long said antifa doesn’t really have a centralized structure or leadership.”
U.S. Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), an attorney, told CNN Wednesday night that “there is no antifa organization.”
He added, “the point” is that Trump is “using the Charlie Kirk murder as a pretext to go after people that he disagrees with. He, on the very night of Kirk’s murder, you will remember, accused the left of committing the murder — when the murderer had not even been caught or identified. This is all a pretext, and it’s a shame, I think … that Charlie Kirk actually stood for free speech. And instead, they’re using his memory to attack free speech.”
Political scholar Dr. Michael Mackey issued this warning: “‘Antifa’ is an artifact of Russian information warfare and the Kremlin-sponsored MAGA cult. No such entity exists in American civil society. Trump is owned by Putin.”
Intelligence and foreign policy analyst Malcolm Nance, a terrorism expert, said, “You cannot designate an idea as a terrorist group.There is no organization called ANTIFA. There is no leadership or funding path. There is no membership.”
“What he is doing is setting the stage to designate ANY American as a terrorist,” Nance alleged. “That’s Fascism.”
CBS News national security coordinating producer Jim LaPorta, an award-winning journalist, wrote: “It’s unclear how Pres. Trump could designate a group inside the U.S. as a domestic terrorist group. The U.S. does not have a federal crime of domestic terrorism. Additionally, it’s been understood that the Govt. would run into 1st and 4th Amendment issues.”
But those hurdles aside, experts are still issuing warnings.
Olga Lautman, a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), an expert on Russia, and creator and co-host of the Kremlin File podcast series, expressed concern.
“So Trump is designating antifa as a terrorist organization,” she wrote. “Problem is he thinks all Democrats are this so called antifa. He is following Russia’s playbook step by step to crush opposition. Hope everyone wakes up.”
On Substack, Lautman expanded her warning.
She pointed to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s remarks on Monday, after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Calling the “radical left” a “vast domestic terror movement,” Miller said: “With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people.”
“It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name,” he vowed.
“Where have I heard this before?” Lautman said of Miller’s statement. “In Russia, where the Kremlin seizes upon every terrorist attack, bombing, protest, or act of violence (some of which they carry out in false flag operations) to justify new crackdowns, laws, and the systematic destruction of any semblance of independent opposition.”
Lautman continued her stark warning, writing, “what makes the current moment in America so perilous is how closely it now echoes this Soviet/Russian script, with the killing of Charlie Kirk already being transformed from an individual crime into the cornerstone of a supposed vast conspiracy of leftist violence — again, without evidence — a pretext for sweeping crackdowns that will not stop at violent actors but extend to protesters, grassroots organizers, and the infrastructure that sustains them.”
“Groups like Indivisible and MoveOn, platforms like ActBlue, that fund Democratic candidates,” she predicted, “will all be recast as pipelines of extremism, stripped of their democratic role.”
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AN 9 25
History’s path is never linear. But its turns can be very sharp.
It is rare to be able to identify the moment when we can say “this is the point at which everything changed”.
So have we reached the point where we can say the United States is in a constitutional crisis? Has American democracy failed? Has the US descended into authoritarianism?
If the answers to those questions weren’t clear already, they are now.
Yes. It is happening. Right now.
Not because of one incident, but a series of moments and choices, events within familiar historical structures, that are pushing the US over the edge.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk, and the choices made by the administration in its aftermath, is one such moment. It was immediately clear the Trump administration would use Kirk’s murder as a pretext for accelerating its authoritarian project, weaponising it to destroy opponents, both real and imagined.
In a video address from the Oval Office, Trump blamed the “radical left” and promised a crackdown on “organizations” that “contributed” to the crime. His vice president, JD Vance,, effectively making it a tool of state-sponsored media. VID]
On that show, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller promised “we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks”.
In the MAGA-verse, terms such as “radical left”, “networks” and “organisations” are code for any form of opposition or dissent – including the Democratic Party and traditional media. It is worth noting here that “radical left” is now shifting to terms as broad as “left-leaning”, progressive or, even more subversive, liberal.
The Trump administration is promising to go after the fundraising architecture of its opposition, broadly defined. And it will. It is already using the agencies of the federal government – including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service – to threaten, punish and obliterate those who oppose it.
And the moments keep coming. On Wednesday, Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, appeared on another far-right podcast. Carr – a Project 2025 contributor – suggested that broadcasters running the Jimmy Kimmel Live! show were risking “the possibility of fines or licensed revocation from the FCC” due to Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death.
That night, ABC announced that Kimmel’s show would be suspended indefinitely.
Kimmel’s moment follows Stephen Colbert’s. It follows another moment earlier in the week, when Trump berated senior Australian Broadcasting Commission journalist John Lyons, aggressively telling him he was “hurting” Australia and that he would tell the Australian prime minster as much. The ABC has since been barred from Trump’s UK press conference, ostensibly for “logistical reasons”.
In the firehose of these moments, it can be difficult to see them in context. But they are all connected – part of a deliberate, carefully planned program to destroy anyone or anything that opposes or even questions Republican orthodoxy as defined by Trump.
The Kirk moment, the Kimmel moment, and all the rest, must be understood in that broader framework. This week, too, the Trump administration announced it was deploying the National Guard into Memphis, Tennessee. It will likely also send the National Guard into Chicago, as it has long been threatening. It has already despatched the National Guard into Los Angeles and Washington DC.
Trump and his cronies are openly musing about other “Democrat cities”. The point is to sow fear and suppress dissent. It is working.
This month, in the aftermath of a meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, Trump promised to end mail-in voting. The Trump-aligned Supreme Court is poised to gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act intended to prevent racial discrimination. The mid-term elections are still over a year away.
Incredibly, we are only eight months into the second Trump administration. But the moments will keep coming, and the speed at which they arrive will likely accelerate.
Taken together, they paint a very grim picture for the future of US democracy, constrained though it already is. The widespread, coordinated suppression of dissent – and the extended chilling effect that suppression has – are ripping apart the fabric of American political life.
It is here. It is happening. History is being made before our eyes.
This is a monumental change. For the United States. For the world.
Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, *RMIT University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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BONDI HARMEET D INVEST EMPLOYEE REFUSE PRINT KIRK FLYER
AN 9 25
A takedown of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche by a U.S. lawmaker and former federal prosecutor received acclaim by critics of the Trump administration on Wednesday.
U.S. Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.) slammed Blanche for suggesting that the loud protest of President Donald Trump at a D.C. restaurant qualifies for racketeering charges and prosecution.
“RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) is available to all kinds of organizations committing crimes and wrongful acts, not just organized crimes,” Blanche told CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins. “So … is it sheer happenstance that individuals show up at a restaurant where the president is trying to enjoy dinner and accost him with vile words and vile anger? … [I]s it completely random that they show up? Maybe. But to the extent that it’s an organized effort to inflict harm and terror and damage to the United States there’s potential investigation there.”
Trump spoke about being confronted by protesters at a Washington D.C. restaurant last week during a Monday press gaggle in the Oval Office.
READ MORE: Morning Joe predicts Trump’s rhetoric will lead to 'massive Democratic victories next year'
“… [T]hey should be put in jail. What they're doing to this country is really subversive," Trump said of protestors railing against his federalization of law enforcement in the capital city and calling for an end to hostilities in Gaza.
Collins pushed back on Blanche’s claim during his interview. “Were they inflicting harm or terror and damage to the United States ... by shouting in his vicinity?”
“That cannot be a serious question, said Blanche, who was Trump’s personal attorney defending him against multiple criminal indictments, including a case in which Trump was found guilty of using campaign money to bribe a woman for her silence over an alleged sexual escapade.
“People can protest the president,” Collins told Blanche, and Goldman agreed.
“I charged RICO cases. Yelling at the President is not a racketeering act and cannot be the basis for a criminal charge,” Goldman posted on X. “Blanche knows better. He is corrupting the DOJ with ridiculous comments like this.”
READ MORE: 'This is insane': Conservatives demand Trump official’s removal over 'hate speech' blunder BONDI
Social media backed up Goldman’s claim, with one commenter saying on X: “Wondering when it dawns on these guys that Trump will soon be gone and I mean in the permanent sense and what will they do with their careers? Who could possibly take them seriously?”
“To suggest that [Blanche] knows better is naïve, commented another X user, while a third said: “This echoes Trump's 2024 campaign vows to jail opponents, blurring protest with organized crime and chilling dissent.”
Another commenter questioned Blanche’s scope of knowledge: “Maybe he doesn’t know better … His ineffectual defense of Trump at trial certainly suggests either a corrupt or inaccurate understanding of the law.”
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SOME EVIDENCE CRACKDOWN WAS IN THE WORKS, KIRK SHOOT JUST GIVES REICHSTAG PRETEXT?
AN 9 25
Last week's murder of MAGA activist Charlie Kirk has prompted President Donald Trump to use him as a "symbol" to promote his own "political religion," according to a historian and journalist.
In a Tuesday essay for Religion News Service (RNS), former Harvard University professor Mark Silk lamented that Trump was using the shocking public killing of Kirk as an excuse to crack down on his ideological opponents, and accused the president of creating a "political religion" centered around hate and division. He contextualized Trump's response to Kirk's murder in former President Abraham Lincoln's reflection that in the wake of tragedies, presidents should speak "with malice toward none, with charity for all ... to bind up the nation’s wounds."
"Trump has, unsurprisingly, done nothing of the sort in this time of crisis, transgressing civil religious norms with utter self-awareness," Silk wrote.
READ MORE:'Something is wrong': MAGA pundits say Trump is 'lying to us' about Charlie Kirk shooting
In his RNS essay, Silk reminded readers that during an interview with Fox & Friends, Trump passed up an opportunity to be a uniter and instead said he "couldn't care less" about bringing the country together. Silk contrasted Trump's approach with that of Italian historian Emilio Gentile, who said that government should seek to create a "civil religion" that is built on "a plurality of ideas, free competition in the exercise of power and the ability of the governed to dismiss their governments through peaceful and constitutional methods."
"In place of a civil religion that sacralizes the political system to include those with whom we disagree, Trump has embraced a political religion that excludes them — one that, as Gentile put it, 'is intolerant, invasive, and fundamentalist, and ... wishes to permeate every aspect of an individual’s life and of a society’s collective life,'" Silk wrote.
Silk also drew a parallel between Trump's response to Kirk's death with the 1930 death of far-right German paramilitary leader Horst Wessel. After Wessel was shot, his death became a rallying cry for the far-right movement in Germany that led to World War II. Silk worried that Trump's actions were making Charlie Kirk into an American Horst Wessel, to be propagandized for today's far-right movement in the United States.
HIGH RANKING? SS ? OFFICERS SWORN IN ON FLAG WITH HIS BLOOD ON IT?
"Today, the canonization of Charlie Kirk proceeds apace. Tributes to him as a stalwart of free speech rights have come from expected and unexpected quarters, even as some are fired from their jobs for daring to criticize him. There are songs celebrating him as a martyr to a great cause," Silk wrote. "He is fast becoming the Horst Wessel of Trump’s political religion."
READ MORE:'Increasingly senile wackjob': Expert says Trump too broken to destroy democracy on his own
Click here to read Silk's essay in full.
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AN 9 25
404 Media reports the Department of Justice has taken down a study showing white supremacist and far-right violence outpaces “all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” in the United States.
The DOJ website hosted the study, conducted by the National Institute of Justice, until September 12, 2025.
In its place is the message: “The Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs is currently reviewing its websites and materials in accordance with recent Executive Orders and related guidance. During this review, some pages and publications will be unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”
READ MORE: 'Increasingly senile wackjob': Expert says Trump too broken to destroy democracy on his own
The report What NIJ Research Tells Us About Domestic Terrorism revealed “Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.”
The document reports “far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists,” since 1990, “including 227 events that took more than 520 lives.”
In this same period, the report claimed, “far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives.”
“We don’t know why the study about far-right extremist violence was removed recently,” writes 404 Media reporter Emanuel Maiberg, “but it comes immediately after the assassination of conservative personality Charlie Kirk, accusations from the administration that the left is responsible for most of the political violence in the country, and a renewed commitment from the administration to crack down on the ‘radical left.’”
READ MORE: 'Something is wrong': MAGA pundits say Trump is 'lying to us' about Charlie Kirk shooting
The DOJ did not respond to 404 Media’s request for comment.
Read the 404 Media report at this link.
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uae chips deal?! LOOMER?! CORRUPT CRYPTO WORLD LIBERTY
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an 9 25
Far-right MAGA conspiracy theorist and self-described "proud Islamophobe" Laura Loomer was critical of Charlie Kirk near the end of his life. As Loomer saw it, the Turning Point USA founder wasn't pro-Donald Trump enough — even though Kirk was, in fact, an ardent Trump supporter.
In a July 13, 2025 post on X, formerly Twitter, Loomer wrote, "I don't ever want to hear @charliekirk11 claim he is pro-Trump ever again. After this weekend, I'd say he has revealed himself as political opportunist and I have had a front row seat to witness the mental gymnastics these last 10 years. Lately, Charlie has decided to behave like a charlatan, claiming to be pro-Trump one day while he stabs Trump in the back the next."
But after his fatal shooting, Loomer called for the imprisonment of anyone who criticizes Kirk — a proposal that former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan is calling out as "fascism."
READ MORE:'Didn't work for you': CNN analyst confronts Trump's favorite pundit on political violence
In a September 13 post on X, Loomer wrote, "I have to say, I do want President Trump to be the 'dictator' the Left thinks he is, and I want the right to be as devoted to locking up and silencing our violent political enemies as they say we are. I've had enough of the Left only thinking we will defund them, prosecute them, lock them up and dismantle their power for generations to come. It just needs to happen."
Hasan gave a forceful response to that post on September 17, tweeting, "If this isn't a call for open, violent, unadulterated fascism and authoritarianism, from a top adviser to the president, then what is it? Seriously, what the hell is it?"
Hasan isn't the only one on X who is sounding the alarm about Loomer calling for Trump to act like a "dictator."
Journalist Bastian Brauns posted, "It's already well past 10 after 12. 'I do want President Trump to be the 'dictator' the Left thinks he is.' This is written by Laura Loomer, the woman who is allowed to personally whisper to Trump which 'traitors' he should fire from the government next."
READ MORE: 'I'm the one asking the questions': CNN host cuts off Ted Cruz after he shouts over her
Iowa-based writer Raymond Baker tweeted, "You know @LauraLoomer has never studied history nor does she understand what drives men like Stalin, Putin, Kim Jong II, Pol Pot, or Donald Trump. Authoritarian dictators are cruel and once they assume power, they no longer want or need supporters like Loomer."
Activist William Richards wrote, "Laura Loomer wants Trump to be a dictator? She wants to lock up the Left because she believes they are all violent. Mirror politics & projection is what Laura is up to! It's easily demonstrated that the Right are the purveyors of violence in our Country, not the Left.
READ MORE:'Undisputed idiot king': Former NBC journalist calls Eric Trump 'the epitome of stupidity'
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AN 9 25
In an article for Democracy Docket published Tuesday, election attorney Marc Elias argued that President Donald Trump has begun using the machinery of the federal government to target his political opponents, and that these actions threaten democratic norms.
"Trump is quickly changing the nature of politics from adversarial contests to weaponized governance. A president using the power of the state to punish critics — or to condition basic government services on political fealty — is not merely rough politics. It is aimed at crushing dissent and free and fair elections," he wrote.
Elias noted that as soon as Trump was declared the winner of the 2024 election, he warned that the administration would use its various tools — political appointees, career officials, government contracts, IRS audits and criminal investigations — to harass those who opposed him. He added that what he predicted has begun to happen.
READ MORE:'Increasingly senile wackjob': Expert says Trump too broken to destroy democracy on his own
According to Elias, there have been threats and intimidation of elected officials, journalists, institutions and media outlets. He also argued that universities, law firms, nonprofits and the media are being offered ways to gain favor or risk punishment, observing that prosecutors and federal agencies are bending toward political ends rather than functioning as neutral arbiters.
Elias reported that White House officials are discussing measures such as revoking tax‑exempt status for nonprofits, deploying anticorruption statutes, using federal agencies to target groups seen as hostile, and issuing executive orders that undermine voting rights.
Elias framed these steps as explicit efforts to suppress dissent and weaken opposition rather than merely an aggressive political strategy.
Elias claimed Trump’s broader goal is to prevent the political opposition, particularly progressive and Democratic groups, from gathering strength ahead of midterm elections. He pointed to efforts such as redrawing electoral maps, undermining voting rights through executive orders, planning to go after progressive groups and their donors, and using fabricated stories to divide opposition.
READ MORE: British historian explains why he was 'shaken every day' during US visit
He warned that democracy is already showing strain: guardrails are weakening, rule of law is fraying, the fabric of democracy is being torn. But he said the worst is yet to come: targeting of donors, organizations, opposition leaders, with lies intended to make each seem uniquely bad, to divide supporters.
"The idea of an explicit government crackdown on thought and speech would have been unthinkable in the past. A president doing so as part of an election strategy would have been so extraordinary at any other time in our nation’s history it would have led to calls for impeachment," Elias wrore.
He added: "It’s as close to Orwellian as we’ve come. The 'Thought Police' is no longer a fictional warning, but our new, stark reality."
Elias called on those who defend democracy to treat attacks on any Democratic campaign, group or organization as attacks against all, to refuse division among progressive actors, and to stand together in defense of free and fair elections. He argued that preserving elections is the greatest vulnerability of the administration’s efforts to consolidate power, and that these must be protected at all costs or democracy itself may fail.
"Donald Trump’s attack on free and fair elections has only just begun. It is not only his biggest target, but also his greatest vulnerability. We must protect them at all costs. If we succeed, we will likely survive this dark period with democracy weakened but intact. If we fail, we may not have a democracy to come home to," he warned.
READ MORE:Trump’s AG scrambles to do 'damage control' after conservatives rage against free speech threat
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09/15/2025
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Brenden Dilley is a overtly racist, unapologetically misogynistic, and gleefully amoral Trump cultist who has established close ties to the Trump administration and the president himself, thanks to the role he plays in leading a "troll army" that relentlessly promotes Trump and attacks his enemies on social media.
Dilley has openly stated that he doesn’t “give a fuck about being factual” and will “make shit up” if doing so furthers Trump’s political agenda, pledging to "lie, cheat, [and] fucking steal" on behalf of Trump. For this, he has been repeatedly rewarded with meetings with Trump and invitations to the White House.
Dilley has openly issued threats against Trump's enemies, declaring that Trump supporters had better "start developing a stomach for death," proclaiming that his mission to just keep "keep curb-stomping these motherfuckers," and warning that he and others MAGA activists are just waiting until Trump "gives us the green light" to take to the streets and start gunning down activists.
Ignoring his own history of violent rhetoric, Dilley reacted to the murder of Charlie Kirk by calling on Trump to become a dictator and impose martial law on the nation until those on the left whom he deems responsible for Kirk's death have been rooted out and destroyed.
"The time for words is totally over, man," Dilley declared. "The only thing I wanted to hear [from Trump is,] 'Here's what I'm doing to make sure that this shit stops instantly.' I wanted to wake up today and have all of the media outlets banned temporarily; executive order. I'm pulling the licenses of Fox, MSNBC, CNN, CBS, and all other mainstream media until we can sort out what is going on."
"They've been calling Donald Trump a dictator for 10 years," he added. "You already got the name. One man's dictator is another man's patriot. Go full Abe Lincoln; suspend habeas corpus, introduce martial law. Let's actually cut out the cancer from the mainstream media."
"What is it going to take us? 90 days?" Dilley asked. "All I know is that whatever the response is to Charlie's death—and Charlie's death is horrific—must be 100 times more aggressive, deliberate and well-executed. It has to be. Whatever the government's response is to this has to be shock and fucking awe."
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09/15/2025
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- Larry Taunton declares that Democrats wanted Charlie Kirk to be assassinated: "These are sleeper cells that they're creating and setting loose into the culture."
- William Cook says Kirk's murder was "a faint illustration of reasons America is facing Divine judgement": "America will be 'overthrown' if we fail to vanquish abortion, sodomy and sexual perversion from our shores."
- Mark Meckler cheers on the right-wing effort to get people fired for mocking Kirk's death because "they're not decent human beings."
- Elijah Schaffer announces that he'll be launching a tour of colleges to "honor Charlie Kirk's legacy."
- William Wolfe uses the transitive property: "Marxists are violent revolutionaries. Democrats are Marxists. Therefore Democrats are violent revolutionaries."
- Auron MacIntyre lays out his vision for what he wants to see in response to Kirk's death: "Raids, doors kicked in, agents swinging through windows. Leftists ripped out of their beds and thrown in leg irons. The leaders, the foot soldiers, the NGO funders. Get them all."
- Finally, Mario Murillo proclaims that, in the wake of Kirk's murder, "it is high time for a total repudiation of the Left—especially the Democratic Party": "We must weaken them to the point where they lose every election. Why? Because they are no longer a political party. They are deranged radicals. There is no question their rhetoric instilled hatred and murder in thousands of young hearts. And finally, there is Donald Trump. He is the only one out of the last four presidents not beholden to the global elites. That means he has the power to destroy those monstrous pawns of Satan. I pray he does! I pray he does not compromise his destiny! I have asked God to use the assassination of Charlie Kirk to light an unquenchable fire in Trump!"
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In an article for The Hill published Sunday, Kellye Y. Testy, executive director of the Association of American Law Schools, and Austen Parrish, dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law, argued that the U.S. judiciary faces a growing crisis of legitimacy, driven by increasingly intense threats, political attacks, and efforts to delegitimize judges.
They warned that these pressures aren’t just parties complaining about decisions, but rather a deeper assault on the independence of the courts — something essential to democracy.
"American judges are under attack. Approximately one-third of the federal judiciary have received threats over the last year, and the U.S. Marshals Service reports more than 500 threats were made against federal judges over the past 11 months, with a noticeable spike in recent months. The sheer number of threats, including to judges’ families, are unprecedented," they wrote.
READ MORE:How Christianity’s 'kook' fringe went mainstream in Trump's MAGA world
Testy and Parrish argued that many of the attacks come from high‐ranking executive branch officials when courts rule against administration policy, and from Democrats and Republicans alike when they believe justices have acted beyond their preferred political lines. These attacks, they insisted, are not just garden‐variety political heat, but part of a darker escalation in rhetoric, public delegitimization, and disregard for constitutional limits.
They further argued that the implications go far beyond the most visible federal or Supreme Court cases. They pointed out that tens of millions of cases are handled each year in state courts and family courts, contract and property disputes, criminal law, wills, insurance, traffic violations — matters that touch almost every American’s life.
The authors noted that when the judiciary is seen as politicized, under attack, or as lacking legitimacy, trust erodes even in those local and everyday contexts, with ripple effects for individuals, businesses, governments, and for social order more broadly.
To counter this trend, Testy and Parrish urged not just condemnation, but active defense of judicial independence. They called on lawyers, legal educators, bar associations, law firms, and legal organizations to more forcefully correct misinformation, reject ad hominem attacks and violent threats, emphasize competence and integrity rather than ideology in judicial appointments, and help law students and the public understand the importance of courts operating impartially under the rule of law.
READ MORE:'Deciding his own fate': Trump and the GOP want to banish this one Republican
The legal experts argued that ongoing attacks discourage qualified people from seeking the bench, worsening vacancies and undermining fairness of outcomes.
"Make no mistake: what’s occurring in high-profile cases risks having ripple effects in other federal, state and local courts. Our legal system depends on judicial independence and integrity, and it doesn’t function if judges are targets of crass political opportunism. Attempts to intimidate and undermine judges threatens a crisis of legitimacy even on issues that have nothing to do with national politics, jeopardizing well-functioning courts serving families, local governments, organizations and businesses of all sizes," they wrote.
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AN 9 25 CLAIM NO SUPPORT
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller was Vice President JD Vance’s guest on Monday’s edition of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” just days after the right-wing political commentator was assassinated. The suspected gunman’s motives and political beliefs remain unclear, but the vice president pinned the blame for Kirk’s murder on “left-wing extremism.”
“While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies,” Vance declared, “it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far-left.”
The vice president did not define “lunatics,” but statistics from the Cato Institute show that the vast majority of political violence comes from the far-right.
Guest-hosting for the late organizer and activist, Vice President Vance viewers, “I wanted to zoom out and talk with Stephen [Miller] a little bit, and talk about all of the ways that we’re trying to figure out how to prevent this festering violence that you see on the far-left from becoming even more and more mainstream.”
READ MORE: Homeschooling, Religion and Politics Trump Science in Parents’ Vaccine Resistance
The vice president—who placed blame at least in part on the left for Kirk’s death—said, “we have to talk about this incredibly destructive movement of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years, and I believe is part of the reason why Charlie was killed by an assassin’s bullet.”
“We’re gonna talk about how to dismantle that,” he continued, “and how to bring real unity, real unity that can only come when we tell the truth and everybody knows that they can speak their mind about the issues of the day without being cut down by a murderer’s gun.”
Miller, who is considered by many—including some highly respected conservatives—a skilled propagandist, on Friday spoke out against what he called left-wing violent extremism.
“I’ve not shared with anybody, but the last message that Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his Creator in heaven was, he said that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence.”
“That was the last message that he sent me before that assassin stole him from all of us.”
READ MORE: Trump Teases Threat to Defund NYC After Governor’s Endorsement for Mayor
“And we are gonna do that,” Miller vowed. “Under President Trump’s leadership, I don’t care how—it could be a RICO charge, a conspiracy charge, conspiracy against the United States, insurrection—but we are going to do what it takes to dismantle the organizations and the entities that are fomenting riots, that are doxing, that are trying to inspire terrorism, and that are committing acts of wanton violence.”
“It has to stop,” he declared, “and my message is to all of the domestic terrorists in this country spreading this evil hate? You want us to live in fear? We will not live in fear, but you will live in exile. Because the power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and if you’ve broken the law, to take away your freedom.”
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09/11/2025
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- Mark Meckler reacted to the assassination of Charlie Kirk by declaring that "the nation got a taste of the utterly senseless violence radical leftism can — and inevitably will — unleash."
- Todd Starnes blames Democrats for Kirk's murder: "I hold all them responsible for what happened today. They all have blood on their hands today."
- Virginia state legislator Nick Freitas vows that "there will be a reckoning": "My Christian faith requires me to love my enemies and pray for those who curse me. It does not require me to stand idly by in the midst of savagery and barbarism...quite the opposite."
- Brenden Dilley proclaims that "the mainstream media and Democrat party killed Charlie Kirk."
- Finally, Ali Alexander is calling on Trump to "[seize] powers not normally exercised" and use them to ensure that "10% of the left-wing [are] arrested, charged, detained, or made to flee" in reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
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DEFUND LEFT SOROS PAID PROTESTERS domestic TERRORISTS
mma
On the killing of Charlie Kirk, political violence, and the right’s response
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 09/12/25
Charlie Kirk, a powerful right-wing activist, popular podcaster, and close friend and ally to President Donald Trump, was shot and killed while speaking at a college in Utah on Wednesday. Politicians of both parties and commentators across the spectrum, including myself, have responded with condemnations of the act as both the tragic murder of a young husband and father and an act of political violence that must be anathema if we hope to preserve our country as a liberal democracy.
Rational people on all sides of the political spectrum abhor political violence and want to ratchet down the temperature, but this requires an honest assessment of what is happening: There have been far too many cases of political violence in recent years, and the targets are not limited by party, ideology, or creed.
Yet within the right-wing media bubble, long before there was even a suspect in custody, commentators cited Kirk’s killing as proof the left is at war with them. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) on Thursday called out right-wing pundits who took Kirk’s death “as an opportunity to say we're at war so that they could get some of our conservative followers lathered up over this.” He added: “It seems like a cheap, disgusting, awful way to pretend like you're a leader of a conservative movement.”
Tillis cited two commentators in particular, but such rhetoric has been a staple throughout the right-wing media ecosystem since news broke that Kirk had been shot. It is what right-wing audiences are hearing right now — and what they have been hearing, to one extent or another, for quite some time.
“They are at war with us!” Fox News star Jesse Watters said on The Five, his network’s most-watched show, shortly after Kirk’s passing was announced.
“Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us,” he continued. “And what are we gonna do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that’s the question we’re just gonna have to ask ourselves.”
“THIS IS WAR,” posted Libs of TikTok. “Civil war,” was Andrew Tate’s take. “This is war,” commented Ian Miles Cheong. “This is a war, this is a war, this is a war,” Alex Jones said on his livestream. According to Steve Bannon, “We are at war in this country.” “We’re not supposed to say this,” posted Shaun Maguire. “But the truth is we’re at War.”
Many on the right were Kirk’s friends and are mourning his death. Some of them may fear for their own safety. But the narrative they have constructed relies on ignoring the recent spate of attacks targeting Democrats, the gruesome contemporaneous response to those attacks from some of the most influential voices on the right, and the chorus of Democratic officials who have condemned Kirk’s assassination.
There is no war, no righteous, violent struggle between a “left” and a “right.” A man was killed. His killer deserves to be brought to justice. Turning that into a “war” can only make the situation worse.
Terrorists have targeted political leaders of both parties
It is not true, as Eric Trump and
both claimed in right-wing media interviews since Kirk’s slaying, that violence is “only going one way,” or, as right-wing radio host Dana Loesch put it on Watters’ prime-time show, that “it's not the right killing the left, it's the left killing the right.”
It seems both pointless and morally inappropriate to try to weigh attacks against one another to determine who has it “worse,” but it’s impossible to have a conversation if we can’t agree that political violence goes both ways.
The ideology of people who attack political figures doesn’t always map neatly onto a political party, in no small part because the assailant typically suffers from some form of mental illness. But Democrats have certainly been the targets of political violence in recent memory: In October 2022, a man broke into the home of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seeking to kidnap her, and brutally assaulted her husband, Paul. In June, an assassin allegedly murdered a Democratic state legislator and her husband and wounded a second and his wife in Minnesota. Last month’s lethal attackon the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by someone who authorities say “wanted to send a message against COVID-19 vaccines” should also be placed in this category.
It’s worth revisiting how right-wing media covered those domestic terror attacks, as it speaks to how its audience likely interprets them in an increasingly fragmented media landscape in which people can pick and choose news sources that confirm their biases.
After a man broke into the Pelosi residence and attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer, MAGA influencers claimed based on effectively no evidence that the attacker, who turned out to be a deranged individual steeped in right-wing fever swamp conspiracy theories, had actually been let into the speaker’s house by her husband for the purposes of sex and subsequently attacked him as part of a lovers’ quarrel.
Donald Trump Jr. posted a photo of a pair of briefs and a hammer on a bed with the caption: “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.”
For months afterwards, Fox hosts including Watters alluded to such wild claims on their nationally broadcast programs, undeterred by body camera footage from the scene of the attack or basic human dignity.
Prominent MAGA social media influencers likewise responded to the Minnesota shootings by spinning up a false profile of the killer — in reality a Trump supporter who railed against abortion and the LGBTQ community — as a far-left supporter of Gov. Tim Walz. Laura Loomer and Mike Cernovich even suggested Walz might have orchestrated the attacks as political hits.
Fox’s right-wing propagandists, meanwhile, all but buried that story. There were no soul-searching reflections about political violence targeting the left on the programs of Watters, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, or Greg Gutfeld — instead, discussion on those shows the week after the attacks was limited to correspondent reports and headline reads. The week after the CDC shooting, those programs didn’t cover it at all.
Looking further back, the leading lights of the right-wing media aggressively sought to minimize and sanitize the Trump mob’s assault on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, and they alternatively blamed “incivility” from the left for a Trumpist sending mail bombs to a host of left-wing and Democratic targets and suggested those attacks were a “false flag.” And that’s to say nothing of other attacks apparently fueled by right-wing extremism that targeted Jewish, Latino, and Black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Buffalo, New York; and El Paso, Texas.
If you downplay right-wing violence against left-wing targets, it’s much easier to convince your viewers that the violence is all going in the other direction.
- ### MAGA wants “the Left” to be “crushed with the power of the state”
While the repeated declarations that they are at “war” with a murderous left are obviously corrosive, there have not been widespread direct calls for retaliatory violence from prominent right-wing media figures. But many are urging President Donald Trump, his administration, and congressional Republicans to respond with widespread political repression of the left and the Democratic Party.
“We can honor him [Kirk] and honor his memory and make it a living thing that we use this to take down the apparatus that's well-funded that is at the core of this anti-Americanism,” Steve Bannon said on his streaming show Friday. “It has to be a all-of-government approach. ... Let's go kick down some doors and perp walk some folks today.”
Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist and streamer who has Trump’s ear and regularly gets federal officials fired for insufficient demonstrated fealty to the president, declared Wednesday, “It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization.” She later added: “All of the Leftist groups that pay for these radical protests need to be prosecuted. … More people will be murdered if the Left isn’t crushed with the power of the state.”
MAGA influencer Mike Cernovich demanded “congressional hearings now” on Wednesday, which he said should include “every billionaire funding far left wing extremism,” naming George Soros, Bill Gates, and Reid Hoffman. He also called for “massive RICO investigations now” to scrutinize “every dollar” and tagged Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Former GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters echoed Cernovich, adding, “Either we destroy the NGO/donor patronage network that enables and foments” violence, “or it will destroy us.”
Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, posted Wednesday that “the Democrat party is a domestic terrorist organization” and “terrorist Democrats will not stop. … And until they are stopped—until every single nutjob inciting this madness and cheering it on is held accountable and removed from civil society—it will not stop.” His outlet published a piece which declared that Democrats “need to be treated like the domestic terrorists they are.”
“The last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J. Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years,” Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo said. “It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.”
YouTuber Benny Johnson claimed that “the modern Democrat party is a terrorist organization” and that the left-wing movement must be “ripped root and stem from our American republic and thrown into the fire where it belongs.”
Some are even suggesting that because the threat to the right is so clear, if Republican leaders don’t respond with such steps, the result will be some on the right taking matters into their own hands.
Davis posted on Thursday that if congressional Republicans don’t take “proper action” to protect “a population being hunted for sport,” then the result would be “improper reaction,” which he described as “a response that cannot be contained once it is out.”
Likewise, Cernovich wrote: “I’m choosing my words mindfully, don’t twist them. This is a prediction, not a preference. If Congressional GOP and Trump don’t act swiftly and ferociously, there will be retaliatory actions due to lawful means not being used. This is always what happens. RICO these fucks now!”
Trump appears to be responding to these demands for political retribution.
- ### The elephant in the room
It is impossible to have a rational conversation about topics like lowering the political temperature and pushing back against the spread of political violence when the president of the United States is interested in those issues only as a cudgel against his political opponents.
On Wednesday evening, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal urged Trump, himself the victim of two assassination attempts, to take advantage of “an opportunity for leadership” by seeking to lower the tenor of political rhetoric.
Any other president would not need to hear such advice — but Trump’s previous responses to attacks on Democratic targets demonstrate his lack of interest in bringing the country together. He mocked the brutal assault against Pelosi, said following the Minnesota shooting that it would be a “waste of time” to call Gov. Tim Walz because he is “so whacked out,” and completely ignored the CDC attack.
In an Oval Office address a few hours after Kirk was killed, Trump characteristically ignored the Journal’s counsel. He offered a testament to Kirk’s life and promised that the shooter, who at that point had not been publicly identified or taken into custody, would be brought to justice.
But he also attributed blame far beyond the person who took Kirk’s life, saying that the “rhetoric” of “the radical left” was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.” He went on to promise that his administration would go after the individuals and organizations he said “contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence,” adding that “radical-left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.”
Trump did not name the targets of the action he promised to carry out. But a “straightforward reading of his rhetoric,” as The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait noted, is that “the president of the United States is treating the political opposition as accessories to murder and threatening to use the full power of the government to attack it.”
On Friday, Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt pointed to “radicals” on both the right and left and asked the president, “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?”
Trump’s response made clear that he is uninterested in doing so. He excused “radicals on the right” as people who “don’t want to see crime,” saying, “They don't want these people coming in, we don't want you burning our shopping centers, we don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.”
“The radicals on the left are the problem, and they are vicious and they are horrible and they are politically savvy,” he added, before running through a litany of grievances with his critics.
That message is echoing across MAGA media, a powerful information apparatus with a rare and unmediated grasp on its audience. It will fuel more vitriol, making it harder, not easier, to have honest conversations and reduce the threat of political violence in this country.
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AN 9 25
'Why we mounted a revolution': Backlash as Johnson tells Dems to 'yield' to Trump
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AN 9 25
'They will take what they want': 7 ways Trump is already planning to disrupt the midterms
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MMA
The Gateway Pundit's Joe Hoft calls for the National Guard to remove judges and “throw them behind bars”
Hoft: “You cannot have the rulings that these judges have and and be of a sound mind. And you're a criminal. And same with Jerome Powell.”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published 09/05/25
Jim Hoft's website, The Gateway Pundit,“is one of the worst purveyors of false information on the internet.” The website — to which Hoft's brother, Joe, is a contributor — reportedly became “a favorite news source” of President Donald Trump after it “pushed false claims of a stolen election“ for years following the presidential election of 2020.
During Trump's second term, the website has enjoyed access to the administration. In August, Jim Hoft interviewed Vice President JD Vance, during which Vance said the far-right website was “so important,” and a Media Matters review found that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called on The Gateway Pundit 5 times at press briefings during the first three months of Trump's second term, more than The Washington Post (4) or The Associated Press (3).
On September 3, Joe Hoft appeared on For the Love of Freedom with Danielle Walker and said that judges, who he alleges are “sabotaging our legal system,” and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell are “criminal” and need to be held accountable.
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From the September 3, 2025, edition of For the Love of Freedom with Danielle Walker, streamed on Rumble
JOE HOFT (THE GATEWAY PUNDIT): We have to deal with our judges. We have to get rid of these corrupt judges. We have to remove them from office. If it means, in my opinion, and I don't care what people say, if it means we need to send the National Guard in to remove these people from their office and throw them behind bars, then we have to. These people are not working for the country. They are sabotaging our legal system, destroying it by making these judgments that are grabbed out of nowhere because the judge just is a radical, radical, nonethical, disgusting human being. I think the same thing with Jerome Powell.
...
The judges need to be removed from office, and I think it charged. They need to be, we need to hold them accountable. You cannot have the rulings that these judges have and and be of a sound mind. And you're a criminal. And same with Jerome Powell. He's costing this country a trillion dollars a year by not lowering these rates.
Trillion dollars to every, you know, split amongst all Americans. Trillion dollars because he won't lower those rates, which should be lowered significantly to the point that we'd save a trillion. And that would really help the economy. It helped the housing industry and all this. I don't know why real estate agents aren't screaming for this guy to lower the rates.
And he won't because he's a vile, disgusting human being. He did the same thing with Trump his first term, raised the rates, kept raising them, and just crashed the, almost crashed the economy himself. And so these kind of people, we just cannot allow them to continue. They're too damaging and the damage is too severe.
20-Plus Times Jim Hoft And The Gateway Pundit Were Absurdly Wrong
01/25/17
01/03/24 12:58 PM EST
04/25/25
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AN 9 25
Citing state policy on tenure, elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, and the cost of living, Florida faculty laid out their frustrations in a recent survey.
In a Faculty in the South survey conducted by various conferences of the American Association of University Professors, 31% of Florida respondents said they have applied for a job outside of Florida since 2023. That number was 25% among all survey respondents in the South.
The same, 31% of Florida respondents, said they plan to seek employment in another state during the next hiring cycle.
“The governor of Florida threatens at every turn to take funding away so administration at colleges don’t stand up to him or board of education. I no longer have any motivation or creativity to make courses better,” a tenured professor at a public community college wrote.
The survey focused on policy affecting employment, including whether faculty would recommend working in their state to up-and-coming academics, and trends in applications for faculty positions. It included nearly 200 responses from Florida faculty among its nearly 4,000 responses across Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
The survey concluded with an open-ended question asking faculty to provide examples of how “attacks on higher education are directly impacting your work.” It did not report respondents’ identities beyond basic demographics like gender, race, tenure status, years of experience, and type of institution they teach at.
‘Walking on egg shells’
“Students report any classroom discussion they don’t like directly to the Governor’s office. Everyone is afraid all the time,” one woman teaching at a public four-year school wrote. “I have stopped teaching books that might be in any way controversial. I don’t open up general discussion in class but ask only direct questions that will elicit non-controversial answers. I need health insurance so I can’t just quit.”
The state scanning course materials for disfavored viewpoints was a widespread stressor for many faculty.
Florida DOGE to ‘deep dive’ into state universities, ‘prune’ ‘ideological study stuff’
“Most of the courses I’ve taught for decades now violate state and university mandates,” a man teaching at a Florida tier-one research university said.
As of earlier this year, Florida institutions’ general education courses no longer contained “indoctrinating concepts,” State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues proclaimed in January.
Florida universities have conducted a review, required by a 2022 law, of general education courses to ensure that they do not “distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics.”
“I’m continually worried that the content of my clases [sic] will be flagged as “DEI” because I am a historian of the Caribbean, a region mostly populated by non-white people,” one professor said.
One women’s studies professor described the effect as “Constant anxiety, walking on egg shells trying to anticipate what would be used against me/us.”
More than a third, 34%, of Florida respondents said administrators have questioned syllabi or curricula choices for their courses. Among all states surveyed, half as many, 17%, indicated administrators questioned their curricula.
One professor said that since the state and federal government have made illegal “a wide range of Constitutionally protected components of speech and expression,” “I must break the law in order to tell the truth. Because I’m hired to tell the truth, and because I’m much more committed to the truth than to the law, I break the law. This means I am expecting to be arrested in front of a classroom any day, for actions that are illegal only as a result of the right-wing fad of the most recent decade.”
Nearly three in four, 71%, of faculty in Florida who were surveyed said they would not encourage a graduate student to seek employment in Florida.
“I am going to take early retirement despite a great job and salary. The threats are real and I am exhausted, between fighting this and fighting AI and poorly prepared, lazy, unethical students,” a tenured professor at a four-year public university wrote.
Higher education funding cuts have been the subject of nationwide political debate, including Florida State University reporting that it lost $100 million in federal grants, although $83 million of that has since been reinstated, the school’s president said last week.
About one-in-10, 11%, said they have had a federal contract ended by the Trump administration.
“The loss of vital federal grants has removed opportunities from me and my colleagues,” one professor wrote. “Attacks on LGBTQ students, immigrants, and diversity have also made it difficult to recruit promising graduate students or to guarantee their health and safety. Florida colleges being forced to remove diversity languages has destroyed years of valuable work, overturned an incredible general education curriculum, taken power and governance away from faculty, and wasted a lot of valuable time.”
Tenure troubles
Since 2023, professors in Florida with tenure have been subject to post-tenure review, graded on standards crafted by university trustees relating to research performance, teaching, service, and compliance with state laws and university policies.
Of the nearly-one-third who recently applied for an out-of-state job, tenure and DEI issues, academic freedom, the political climate, and cost of living were among the most common concerns.
Respondents said the number of applications for coworkers’ positions, as well as the quality of applicants, have decreased.
“Our department is trying to improve, but we have had several failed searches in recent years because candidates don’t want to move to Florida because of the broad political climate and the fact that tenure protections functionally no longer exist here,” a tenured public university professor said.
Some faculty said they have not experienced problems with “attacks on higher education,” one stating, “I haven’t felt any — Florida is great!.” Another said, “They’re not, and freedom in the classroom still persists, and I am at a public university in… wait for it… FLORIDA…”
“I find that I’m having to spend more time explaining to students why they need to use evidence to support their views and why clear arguments are important,” a professor at a private institution wrote.
One professor complained that “our board of trustees stacked with heritage foundation members, our president was forced out and replaced by a republican politician.” Course materials face heightened scrutiny, this professor added.
“The climate of persecution, retaliation, and ideological imposition makes it impossible to teach my discipline accurately or well without opening oneself to disciplinary measures,” that professor said. “While New College got a lot of headlines, similar invasions of public universities are happening with no national press, leaving those of us who work here isolated and vulnerable to attack.”
‘Academic freedom is on life support,’ say professors surveyed on tenure, censorship
Gov. Ron DeSantis orchestrated a shake-up of the University of West Florida Board of Trustees in a more conservative light earlier this year and that institution is now led by a former GOP lawmaker.
Results for the survey were collected throughout August and more than 60% of respondents said they are tenured. Last year’s iteration of the survey featured responses from about 350 Florida professors.
“There is a lower threshold of critical thinking because everyone is fearful about what is ‘allowed’ vs. ‘banned’ by law. The fear and the self-censorship is widespread. Our administration, now saddled with a governor-imposed, unqualified hire as a President, is understandably more cautious rather than vocal about protecting academic freedom,” one professor wrote.
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no lnx
Behind Trump's latest purge — and why MAGA's no longer pretending
Thom Hartmann August 22, 2025
In his novel 1984, George Orwell warned, “Those who control the present control the past, and those who control the past control the future.” Today, Donald Trump and the GOP have weaponized that prophecy, twisting it into the foundation of their crusade to Make America White Again.
What they are building is not a political movement but a parallel nation — a MAGAstan — where loyalty oaths replace truth, history is scrubbed clean of slavery and racism, and authoritarian obedience is demanded in the name of patriotism.
This is America’s homegrown Taliban, and they’re no longer pretending to hide their intentions.
When the Oklahoma Department of Education rolled out its new “America First” MAGA certification exam for teachers, designed with the help of a rightwing propaganda outlet, it wasn’t about improving education. It was about making sure that any teacher who dares to acknowledge the realities of race, gender, or American history is shut out of the profession.
Applicants from California or New York now must take a test that appears to demand perfect answers on questions about civics, chromosomes, religion, and so-called gender ideology. It’s not an exam, it’s a political loyalty test, and it fits neatly into the larger pattern we are seeing in Republican politics today. They aren’t hiding their racism or misogyny anymore. They’re reveling in it.
That reality was underscored by Trump’s latest tantrum against the Smithsonian and other museums. On his Nazi-infested social media platform, Trump complained that our museums are “out of control” because they talk about “how bad slavery was,” racism, and the struggles of the downtrodden. He whined that there is “nothing about success, nothing about brightness, nothing about the future”
What he really means is that America should stop teaching about slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, and ongoing systemic racism and instead return to a whitewashed myth of national greatness that erases Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized voices.
His words are a plain translation of the GOP’s broader war on what they call “woke.” Being “anti-woke” is just a thinly veiled way of saying, “We’re okay with racism and misogyny.”
And Trump is the perfect avatar for this reinvention of the Confederacy, as I detail in my newest book The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink.
Trump’s and his GOP’s pro-racism neofascist purges go far beyond education and museums; they’ve also gone after the federal workforce with a vengeance. They canceled the government’s annual employee survey, gutted DEI programs across every agency, and are mass-firing federal workers, particularly in agencies that employ large numbers of Black women.
The so-called Department of Government Efficiency — run by a Nazi-saluting white South African immigrant — put more than a quarter of a million jobs on the chopping block, devastating communities where civil service has long been the pathway into the middle class.
Black Americans, particularly Black women, have disproportionately relied on those jobs for stability and upward mobility. Taking them away isn’t about saving taxpayer money: it’s a targeted attack, designed to roll back decades of progress.
At the same time, groups aligned with Trump are publishing watchlists of federal workers they call “subversives,” lists overwhelmingly filled with women and people of color. Those people are now being hounded, relocated, or forced out altogether.
Senior women and Black leaders in the military are being fired or pushed into retirement. Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, NATO’s only woman on its military committee, was removed. Army Lt. Gen. Telita Crosland, who had led military healthcare, was forced to resign after 32 years of service.
These purges are political, not professional. They’re designed to restore the military to a largely all-white, all-male leadership structure. And at the same time, Trump and his enablers are working to rename bases after Confederate generals and restore monuments dedicated to traitors who fought against democracy to preserve slavery.
And now Trump is claiming — against the statistics — that crime in Washington, DC is “out of control.” This is Nixon’s Southern Strategy — blame crime on Black people while turning the country into a police state — on steroids.
Racism is the thread that ties all of this together.
When five Republicans on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, Republicans wasted no time enacting voter suppression laws that disproportionately disenfranchised Black voters. When Republicans on the Court blessed partisan gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause, Republican-controlled states immediately redrew maps to diminish the power of Black communities.
This is about keeping power in the hands of white conservatives, no matter the cost to democracy.
And the cruelty isn’t limited to our own citizens. The Trump administration has begun deporting Afghan translators who risked their lives working alongside American troops, even as they continue to apply for legal protection through Special Immigrant Visa programs. ICE agents recently detained one such interpreter — someone who had helped U.S. soldiers survive the war — because the new GOP priority is to get as many brown people out of the country as possible.
This is not patriotism. It’s ethnic cleansing by bureaucracy.
I used to believe that maybe 20 percent of white Americans were openly racist. That was based on my experience growing up and on the way racism was often hidden behind polite code.
But looking at today’s voting patterns, at the cheering crowds for Trump’s open bigotry, it seems more like 55 to 60 percent. When a majority of white voters willingly support a party that strips voting rights from Black citizens, erases slavery from classrooms and museums, fires Black leaders from government, and deports brown allies, that’s not a fringe problem. That’s a national crisis.
This kind of “othering” of racial and gender minorities is a classic hallmark of fascism. It’s what we saw in Germany in the 1930s and what Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin are doing in Hungary and Russia today. You dehumanize groups of people, define them as enemies of the state, and then strip away their rights until they no longer have the power to resist.
Trump and the GOP are running this playbook right out in the open. And far too many in the media are still treating “anti-woke” rhetoric as a culture-war issue instead of what it really is: a naked declaration of racism, misogyny, and authoritarian intent.
Democrats and people of good conscience cannot let this language go unchallenged.
Every time Republicans sneer about “woke,” it should be called what it is: they’re defending racism and misogyny. They’re trying to drag us back into a world where straight white men hold all the power and everyone else is erased. This is not just an ideological disagreement. It is an attack on the very idea of equality and democracy.
Woke people must stop playing defense and start organizing. We need mass mobilizations — marches, protests, and direct action — to show that Americans will not tolerate a return to white supremacy dressed up as patriotism.
We need to pressure Democrats to go on offense, to stop using mealy-mouthed language and start telling the truth: the GOP is running on racism, period.
And we need to demand that the media stop laundering Republican talking points and call out this agenda for what it is: a fascist project to make racism great again.
The stakes are nothing less than the future of American democracy. If we fail to rise to this challenge, they won’t just win the next election; they’ll win the power to define who counts as an American, whose stories matter, and who has a right to belong.
This is the GOP’s vision of MAGAstan: a land where truth is outlawed, history is erased, dissent is punished, and democracy is reduced to a hollow slogan.
It’s not conservatism. It’s not patriotism. It is the same naked pursuit of power through racism, misogyny, and authoritarian rule that we’ve seen in one country after another throughout history.
And here’s the brutal truth: they’re telling us exactly who they are and exactly what kind of dictatorship they want.
The only question left is whether the rest of us will stand by in silence while America is dragged into its darkest chapter or whether we will rise up, speak out, and refuse to let our country become the authoritarian nightmare Trump and the GOP are building in plain sight.
NOW READ: Trump just crossed a line no other president ever dared to
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LEGAL/JUDICIAL SUPPRESSION?
NOTE COTTON CORNYN SIC FBI ON THEM; REPS LOCKED IN BLDG, DOGGED BY DPS TO GO TO CVS FOR TOOTHBRUSH, PERMISSION SLIPS LIKE hs
AN 8 25
One Democratic state representative in Texas speaking out against the Republican effort to redraw congressional district boundaries was just threatened with a felony charge for speaking to journalists.
That's according to a Wednesday article in the Houston Chronicle, which reported that Rep. Nicole Collier (D) had to abruptly end a press conference she joined from a bathroom at the Texas State Capitol. A video of the moment posted to X shows Collier being interrupted mid-speech while on a Democratic National Committee video stream with California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) while speaking to police.
"Sorry, I have to leave. They said it's a felony for me to do this," Collier said. "Apparently I can't be on the floor or in the bathroom — well, you told me I had to be here in the bathroom — no, hang on. Bye, everybody. I've gotta go."
READ MORE:'Baby out with the bathwater': Red state Trump voters speaking out against this key policy
After Collier left the call, Sen. Booker called it "outrageous" that the Texas Democrat was being forced to stop talking to the media.
"First of all, let me tell you something. Representative Collier in the bathroom has more dignity than Donald Trump in the Oval Office," Booker said. "...What they're trying to do right there is silence an American leader. Silence a Black woman. And that is outrageous. I hope everybody took note of that."
"The fact that she can't even let her voice be heard is freakin' outrageous. And this is what we're fighting for," he continued. "This is ultimately what this is about. What we just witnessed: Them trying to shut her down and say it's illegal for her to be in the bathroom and on this call? This is the lengths that they're going to in Texas."
Watch the video of the moment below, or byclicking this link.
READ MORE:Aides sat 'helpless' as 'incoherent' Trump
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last wd lawrence no dep cos ever spoke longer than vp 8 25
an 8 25
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller lashed out at Washington, D.C. residents protesting President Donald Trump’s takeover of the Metropolitan Police Department and his deployment of more than a thousand federal agents — including FBI, DEA, DHS, ATF, and ICE — to patrol the Capital’s streets. In striking remarks, Miller cast the demonstrators as white and the victims of crime as Black. His charges conflict with a new survey just released that shows the vast majority of D.C. residents oppose the Trump administration’s takeover and feel safe in their neighborhoods.
Miller told reporters that the people protesting the Trump administration’s federal takeover of the city’s streets are “elderly white hippies,” “stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old,” and, “crazy communists” who “have no roots, they have no connections to the city, they have no families they are raising in this city, they have no one that they are sending to school in this city, they have no jobs in this city, they have no connections to this community at all.”
Those people, Miller alleged, are “the ones who’ve been advocating for the one percent: the criminals, the killers, the rapists, the drug dealers.”
READ MORE: Trump’s Border Wall to Get $500M+ ‘Hot’ Makeover Experts Say Won’t Work
Whereas, Miller claimed, “residents who lived in Washington, D.C. their entire lives, their parents lived here, their grandparents lived here, and they have lived for generations in intolerable conditions of crime and decay.”
“There are hundreds of residents of this city who are shot in street violence every single year, making [it] one the most violent cities on planet Earth,” he claimed, which is not supported by evidence.
“And by the way, most of the citizens who live in Washington, D.C are Black,” Miller alleged, inaccurately. About 43 percent of D.C.’s residents are Black.
“This is not a city that has had any safety for its Black citizens, for generations,” he claimed. “And President Trump is the one who is fixing that with the support of the Metropolitan Police Department to support the National Guard and our federal law enforcement officers.”
“So we’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old, and we’re going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington, D.C.,” Miller said.
READ MORE: ‘They Want Control’: Pirro Slammed for Ending D.C. Rifle Law Enforcement
A damning Washington Post poll released Wednesday, however, found 79 percent of D.C. residents oppose Trump’s decision to take over the Metropolitan Police, and to deploy National Guard troops and federal law enforcement agents onto D.C. city streets.
“On Monday, Trump said Washington had been ‘the most unsafe place anywhere,’ but 78 percent of residents say they feel very or somewhat safe in their neighborhoods,” the Post reported.
Watch the video below or at this link.
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the conv an 8 25
When people use the term “Orwellian,” it’s not a good sign.
It usually characterizes an action, an individual or a society that is suppressing freedom, particularly the freedom of expression. It can also describe something perverted by tyrannical power.
It’s a term used primarily to describe the present, but whose implications inevitably connect to both the future and the past.
In his second term, President Donald Trump has revealed his ambitions to rewrite America’s official history to, in the words of the Organization of American Historians, “reflect a glorified narrative … while suppressing the voices of historically excluded groups.”
This ambition was manifested in efforts by the Department of Education to eradicate a “DEI agenda” from school curricula. It also included a high-profile assault on what detractors saw as “woke” universities, which culminated in Columbia University’s agreement to submit to a review of the faculty and curriculum of its Middle Eastern Studies department, with the aim of eradicating alleged pro-Palestinian bias.
Now, the administration has shifted its sights from formal educational institutions to one of the key sites of public history-making: the Smithsonian, a collection of 21 museums, the National Zoo and associated research centers, principally centered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
On Aug. 12, 2025, the Smithsonian’s director, Lonnie Bunch III, received a letter from the White House announcing its intent to carry out a systematic review of the institution’s holdings and exhibitions in the advance of the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026.
The review’s stated aim is to ensure that museum content adequately reflects “Americanism” through a commitment to “celebrate American exceptionalism, [and] remove divisive or partisan narratives.”
On Aug. 19, 2025, Trump escalated his attack on the Smithsonian. “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was…” he wrote in a Truth Social post. “Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. We are not going to allow this to happen.”
Such ambitions may sound benign, but they are deeply Orwellian. Here’s how.
Winners write the history
Author George Orwell believed in objective, historical truth. Writing in 1946, he attributed his youthful desire to become an author in part to a “historical impulse,” or “the desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.”
But while Orwell believed in the existence of an objective truth about history, he did not necessarily believe that truth would prevail.
Truth, Orwell recognized, was best served by free speech and dialogue. Yet absolute power, Orwell appreciated, allowed those who possessed it to silence or censor opposing narratives, quashing the possibility of productive dialogue about history that could ultimately allow truth to come out.
As Orwell wrote in “1984,” his final, dystopian novel, “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
Historian Malgorzata Rymsza-Pawlowska has written about America’s bicentennial celebrations that took place in 1976. Then, she says, “Americans across the nation helped contribute to a pluralistic and inclusive commemoration … using it as a moment to question who had been left out of the legacies of the American Revolution, to tell more inclusive stories about the history of the United States.”
This was an example of the kind of productive dialogue encouraged in a free society. “By contrast,” writes Rymsza-Pawlowska, “the 250th is shaping up to be a top-down affair that advances a relatively narrow and celebratory idea of Americanism.” The newly announced Smithsonian review aims to purge counternarratives that challenge that celebratory idea.
The Ministry of Truth
The desire to eradicate counternarratives drives Winston Smith’s job at the ironically named Ministry of Truth in “1984.”
The novel is set in Oceania, a geographical entity covering North America and the British Isles and which governs much of the Global South.
Oceania is an absolute tyranny governed by Big Brother, the leader of a political party whose only goal is the perpetuation of its own power. In this society, truth is what Big Brother and the party say it is.
The regime imposes near total censorship so that not only dissident speech but subversive private reflection, or “thought crime,” is viciously prosecuted. In this way, it controls the present.
But it also controls the past. As the party’s protean policy evolves, Smith and his colleagues are tasked with systematically destroying any historical records that conflict with the current version of history. Smith literally disposes of artifacts of inexpedient history by throwing them down “memory holes,” where they are “wiped … out of existence and out of memory.”
At a key point in the novel, Smith recalls briefly holding on to a newspaper clipping that proved that an enemy of the regime had not actually committed the crime he had been accused of. Smith recognizes the power over the regime that this clipping gives him, but he simultaneously fears that power will make him a target. In the end, fear of retaliation leads him to drop the slip of newsprint down a memory hole.
The contemporary U.S. is a far cry from Orwell’s Oceania. Yet the Trump administration is doing its best to exert control over the present and the past.
Down the memory hole
Even before the Trump administration announced its review of the Smithsonian, officials in departments across government had taken unprecedented steps to rewrite the nation’s official history, attempting to purge parts of the historical narrative down Orwellian memory holes.
Comically, those efforts included the temporary removal from government websites of information about the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The plane was unwittingly caught up in a mass purge of references to “gay” and LGBTQ+ content on government websites.
Other erasures have included the deletion of content on government sites related to the life ofHarriet Tubman, the Maryland woman who escaped slavery and then played a pioneering role as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, helping enslaved people escape to freedom.
Public outcry led to the restoration of most of the deleted content.
Over at the Smithsonian, which earlier in the year had been criticized by Trump for its “divisive, race-centered ideology,” staff removed a temporary placard with references to President Trump’s two impeachment trials from a display case on impeachment that formed part of the National Museum of American History exhibition on the American presidency. The references to Trump’s two impeachments were modified, with some details removed, in a newly installed placard in the updated display.
Responding to questions, the Smithsonian stated that the placard’s removal was not in response to political pressure: “The placard, which was meant to be a temporary addition to a 25-year-old exhibition, did not meet the museum’s standards in appearance, location, timeline, and overall presentation.”
Repressing thought
Orwell’s “1984” ends with an appendix on the history of “Newspeak,” Oceania’s official language, which, while it had not yet superseded “Oldspeak” or standard English, was rapidly gaining ground as both a written and spoken dialect.
According to the appendix, “The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the worldview and mental habits proper to the devotees of [the Party], but to make all other modes of thought impossible.”
Orwell, as so often in his writing, makes the abstract theory concrete: “The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds.’ … political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts.”
The goal of this language streamlining was total control over past, present and future.
If it is illegal to even speak of systemic racism, for example, let alone discuss its causes and possible remedies, it constrains the potential for, even prohibits, social change.
It has become a cliché that those who do not understand history are bound to repeat it.
As George Orwell appreciated, the correlate is that social and historical progress require an awareness of, and receptivity to, both historical fact and competing historical narratives.
*This story is an updated version of an article originally published on June 9, 2025.
*The Smithsonian is a member of The Conversation U.S.
Laura Beers, Professor of History, American University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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msnbc 8 20 25
todd blanche ordered arrest of nj mayor
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an 8 25
New Republic reporter Timothy Noah said seven out of the ten top donors to the presidential race last year gave to Trump — and now their favored president is turning on them
“… The White House keep[ing] scorecards measuring the loyalty of 553 corporations to President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful reconciliation bill demonstrates that the relationship between private wealth and this presidential administration isn’t as happy as you might think,” said Noah.
Trump is certainly making corporations happy by “chucking health care for the poor so it can cut taxes for the rich,” said Noah, and he’s also “dismantling regulatory agencies created to check corporate power.” Trump lowering taxes and deregulation “are what oligarchs desire more than anything else,” Noah adds, which is why “people like Elon Musk, Timothy Mellon, and Miriam Adelson supported Trump in 2024.”
READ MORE: 'Complete 180' and 'hot mic moment': Brutal CNN supercut reveals how Trump got played by Putin
However, “Trump’s pathological attachment to high tariffs, his never-ending threats to destabilize the Federal Reserve, and, increasingly, his demands that corporations bend the knee are all more than these plutocrats likely bargained for,” Noah said.
Even as Trump dismantles regulatory agencies legitimately created by Congress, he is introducing a new, “more chaotic regulatory regime dictated by his own whims,” said Noah. “Trump appears intent on ripping up business regulations" and “replacing them with himself.”
Consider the president allowing chip-maker Nvidia to sell AI chips to China. Trump had previously blocked those sales on national security grounds, but Noah said Trump changed his mind and allowed sales, providing Nvidia turned over 15 percent of the resultant revenues to the United States Treasury.
The Constitution does not grant a president the right to demand Invidia surrender a portion of its revenues from Chinese sales to the U.S. Treasury, said Noah, “Nor does the Constitution encourage a president to tell Goldman Sachs to fire its chief economistor Intel to fire its chief executive."
READ MORE: buckle up: Former Trump attorney Alina Habba may be in office for awhile
And then there’s the issue of Trump approving the merger of Nippon and U.S. Steel — provided the federal government retain a “golden share” that allows it to veto certain future actions affecting workers. Language in that agreement refers unnecessarily to Trump by name,which strikes Noah as “unsettlingly authoritarian.”
And now comes the news that Trump has loyalty “scorecards” on corporations that rank their support as “strong, moderate, or low” based on whether and how they supported passage of the Big Beautiful Bill through “social media posts, press releases, video testimonials, ads, [or] attendance at White House events.” The most obedient companies, said Noah, appear to be AT&T, Airlines for America, Cisco, Delta, DoorDash, the Steel Manufacturers Association, Uber and United.
“[I]f history is any guide, businesses don’t fight fascist corporatism; they just grope their way toward accommodating it,” writes Noah. “That’s certainly what we’re seeing thus far. Even when Trump bullies American oligarchs, they can’t see their way to judging him anything other than their guy.”
Read the full New Republic report at this link.
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Trump's cult of loyalty breeds incompetence and corruption - Alternet.org
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Salon Senior Writer Chauncey DeVega says President Donald Trump’s DC takeover is just Trump doing exactly what he’d planned to do all along.
“During the 2024 election, Donald Trump promised to be a dictator on ‘day one.’ Seven months after his return to power, he is earnestly expanding that promise,” writes DeVega.
Trump’s concerns about “law and order” in DC are “self-interested and wholly circumstantial,” said DeVega. He noted that Trump did not deploy the DC National Guard when an armed mob was laying siege to the U.S. Capitol in 2021 to try to help him hold on to power.
READ MORE: Trump's worst crimes and destructions haven't even happened yet
DeVega went on to write that, similar to other authoritarians, Trump is willing to manufacture statistics and public emergencies that do not exist. There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia, he writes. Violent crime in DC is at a 30-year low, and is down another 26 percent so far this year.
But autocrats and demagogues use false claims of crime and disorder as pretexts to “declare a permanent state of emergency and to suspend the rule of law, along with civil rights and liberties," writes DeVega. Salon democracy expert Katherine Stewart called the tactic “one of the most frequently telegraphed stunts in the authoritarian canon.”
Trump’s war on the homeless and the poor is yet another example of an authoritarian at work, says DeVega, explaining that they are “human proof of how a government and its leaders have failed the people,” and they are “a form of narcissistic injury to an authoritarian who presents himself as being all-powerful and perfect.” He referenced Trump’s social media announcement of the DC takeover, in which he promised “Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will DISAPPEAR. I will, MAKE OUR CAPITAL GREAT AGAIN!”
“Inconvenient” and “disposable” people must be removed or erased because “they are an affront to the Great Leader, the Party and the myth of national greatness,” says DeVega, adding it’s a category that “inevitably expands to include political ‘enemies.’”
READ MORE: 'Not plausible': Trump-appointed judge hands him major loss in court
DeVega added that simply “being American” may not be the antidote that political observers hope it will be.
Read DeVega's full Salon essay at this link.
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rww
08/12/2025
by
- Michael Luciano @ Mediaite: After Trump Deploys National Guard in D.C., Jeanine Pirro Declares, ‘This Is Just the Beginning’
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said on Monday night that President Donald Trump is just getting warmed up when using federal agents and troops in Washington, D.C.
- Janna Brancolini @ The Daily Beast: Fuming Loomer Goes Nuclear on Marjorie Taylor Greene in All-Night Attack
The far-right influencer, who has the ear of President Trump, called the Georgia lawmaker a “lying fake Christian whore.”
- Michelle Goldberg @ The New York Times: A Right-Wing Influencer Tried to Be a Tradwife. It Almost Broke Her.
Being an antifeminist, it turns out, is no shield against abusive male power.
- Ben Makuch @ The Guardian: Trump stirs far-right rage despite FBI deprioritizing extremist threat
Donald Trump has faced an onslaught of criticism from opponents and Maga diehards alike, on issues such as Jeffrey Epstein, the war with Iran, and his steadfast alliance with Israel in the face of genocide. But among the ever dangerous far right, which has generally applauded Trump’s efforts to deport thousands of people a day, his actions of late have stirred rage among a group experts say has benefited greatly from his administration’s law-enforcement pivots.
- Tess Owen @ Wired: The Trump Administration Is Using Memes to Turn Mass Deportation Into One Big Joke
Memes shared by the White House, DHS, and ICE have used catchy TikTok tunes to normalize mass deportation and Christian nationalist narratives. Experts say that’s the point.
- Jemar Tisby: Douglas Wilson’s Theology Predicted Today’s Politics
What happens in politics is downstream of what happens in the church.
- Dan McClellan: Responding to Frank Turek & Charlie Kirk slavery BS
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RWW
08/11/2025
by
- Devin Dwyer @ ABC News: Supreme Court formally asked to overturn landmark same-sex marriage ruling
Ten years after the Supreme Court extended marriage rights to same-sex couples nationwide, the justices this fall will consider for the first time whether to take up a case that explicitly asks them to overturn that decision.
- Katie Francis @ The Daily Beast: Laura Loomer Stuns MAGA Vets With ‘Despicable’ Rant Against Medal of Honor Recipient
Republicans raged against the conspiracy theorist after she targeted a former U.S. Army captain.
- J.D. Wolf @ MeidasTouch Network: GOP Oversight Member Suggests Smithsonian Hiding Bones of Giants
In June, Rep. Eric Burlison, a Missouri Republican serving on the House Oversight Committee, appeared on BlazeTV’s Prime Time with Alex Stein, where he discussed his belief that giants once existed. Burlison told Stein he was scheduled to be at “NephCon 2025,” a conference focused on fringe topics including the biblical Nephilim —figures in Genesis that some interpret as the giant offspring of angels and human women.
- Ian Word @ Politico: The Online Right’s Favorite Nativist Slogan Is Gaining Traction in the Real World
Daniel Boone, burial plots and no birthright citizen: Welcome to the MAGA world of “Heritage America.”
- Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Trump to deploy the National Guard to D.C., place local police under federal control
If crime rates in the nation’s capital are already at their lowest levels in decades, why is the White House launching yet another power grab?
- David Edwards @ Raw Story: 'Roll in the tanks!' Charlie Kirk goes full fascist in support of Trump's DC takeover
MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk encouraged President Donald Trump to deploy tanks and Marines onto the streets of Washington, D.C.
- Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling @ The New Republic: Trump Warns Fascist D.C. Takeover Is Just the Beginning
Donald Trump has seized control of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department.
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dublin jial shut dn for bad conds; not so many arrests in BA
million marg okuzumi sp bruce Hahne 8/11/25
www.nokings.org/rise indiv
jrnl charge felony rioting; 50?
uk tourist leaving arested/jailed eliz? burke?
loomer 65 mill gator meals
ice raid church ~ lawsuits
doj sys no birthrt cit nat am
= 1937 germany
slave labor “owner responsibility” ~ snyder ceo pledge
ct ruled nj cd not block pvt prisons
gaza tech thermal drone, fac recog, unlock phone
doj wants state voter rolls
bias monitors in media corps?
martial law DC
anti slav soc 1k chaps 150k ppl = 1% of pop
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SEN ALEX PADILLA FLOOR HANDCUFF AT PRESS CONF NOEM, nyc comptroller
NOEM SAID PURPOSE OF NG USMC WAS LIBERATE FROM SOCIALIST GOV
TRUMP FLA SHERIFF PROTEST MET W/ VIOLENCE 6 25
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MMA
August 11, 2025, edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, streamed on Rumble
CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): This is President Donald Trump saying once we liberate DC — and by the way, I guarantee the crime's gonna go whoop. It's gonna go way down.
And then the media will say, oh, it's only going down because he brought in the military. Exactly. We need full military occupation of these cities until the crime desists. Period.
We need a desisting of crime in our cities. We're not gooing to put up with it. I want to be able to walk Magnificent Mile in Chicago without having to look over my shoulder. Do you know crime is so bad in Chicago that if you get a fender bender — there's a new thing that the youths are doing. Remember, we have a big teenage problem of crime in our country, that teenagers will bang the back of your car as a fender bender. You come out to go trade insurance, and then they steal your car. In Chicago, the new guidance is that if you get a fender bender, drive to the nearest police station to trade insurance just in case they're there to steal your car. It's a real thing. It's happening all the time. By the way, get a burner. We advertise it all the time here on our program.
I don't want to live in that country. You shouldn't either. Simple fix. You steal a car, 25 years in prison. I don't care if you're a teenager. I don't care if — well, I was raised without a dad. Well, you're going to go meet a new dad in jail. We're done. We're not putting up with it. We need more prisons, and we need more prisoners.
:{:{Enough of this — and I honestly you know, I was once part of this whole prison reform thing. I look back at it, and I just cringe at myself. It's a totally wrong premise. We are soft on crime in this country. We need discipline. We need — honestly, we need the humiliation of criminals. We need order. You don't live in a nation if you can't walk the streets of San Francisco at night. You don't live in a country when young teenage girls can't walk the streets of LA. How is that a free society? You are appeasing the criminals.}:
Stop coddling criminals because they happen to be a protected class. We don't believe in protected classes anymore, by the way. We're done with that. Game over. No more protected classes. We are all citizens made in the image of God. Oh, you're protected class because, you know, different skin color. Wrong. That regime was defeated back in November. That whole worldview was gone. Over. Done. Kaput. Sayonara. Instead, a new worldview has ascended, which is we're not going to make accommodations for criminals. We're going through mass deportations. If you're Black and commit a crime, you go to jail. If you're white and you commit a crime, you go to jail. Human equality, doesn't matter. Doesn't matter your background. We are all treated equal under the law, and that is a biblical principle.}:
So once we liberate Washington DC, and we will liberate it. Now, again, I want to say, President Donald Trump, he's gotta go play to win here. The one piece of caution we'd have to say is that if we just kind of do this symbolically, we will lose. The criminals will win. We got to go hard. We gotta go big league. We're talking national guard, tanks — every street, you need military.
And if people are afraid, oh, well, Donald Trump is a fascist because he's bringing the military. Well, you're an anarchist. We're not fascist. We're order. Call them a name right back. You're an anarchist. You want the criminals, the thugs, the gang members, and the worst of society to run the streets of DC. We're not going to put up with it.
By the way, spare me the lecture. You guys militarized Washington DC after January 6, but you wouldn't move them a couple blocks north to the criminals because you acted as if, oh, all the people in on January 6 are the greatest threat ever because they went in with a pocket Constitution to go say a prayer in the US Capitol. Once we liberate DC, you better believe it — Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco. We got a big military. We should be willing to use it.
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https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/yale-history-professor-torches-trump-s-political-war-on-american-history-244558405971
mSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell is joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, historian, and Yale University professor David Blight who is calling out Donald Trump's attacks on the facts of U.S. history and the flawed scholarship of Kevin Roberts of the conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation, who is behind Project 2025 that is seemingly guiding many of the Trump administration's actions.
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AN 8 25
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The one big reason why most Republicans are acting irrationally — without consequences
Sarah Davis of Lincoln, Nebraska, shouts after asking U.S. Representative Mike Flood (R-NE) a question during a town hall in Lincoln, Nebraska, U.S., August 4, 2025. REUTERS/Scott Morgan
John Stoehr A ugust 07, 2025
If you consume mainstream news, you might think the Republicans are in trouble ahead of next year’s congressional elections. In a recent report by CNN, for instance, Republican Congressman Mike Flood of Nebraska is met with a barrage of boos and jeers at a town hall.
They should be in trouble. Though the president’s policy agenda is dramatically unpopular, Flood and the Republicans have gone along with him. Donald Trump’s net approval is now -15 percent, according to the latest numbers by The Economist, with 55 percent disapproving. Gallup’s are worse. His rating among independent voters is 29 percent.
You’d think a congressman like Mike Flood, who represents a district that’s evenly split, would at the very least pretend to be contrite, knowing that being on the good side of voters is the key to remaining in office. You’d think he would behave like he knows he’s in trouble.
But he’s not. In that CNN report, Flood gives the impression that the opinions of his constituents, whose outrage is abundantly clear, are immaterial to his goal of staying in power – which is to say, he’s behaving as if he has no fear of democracy holding him accountable.
In that, he’s following the president’s lead. In a recent CNBC interview, as Joe Walsh put it, Trump said that “won the 2020 election (he didn’t). He has a 71 percent approval rating (he doesn’t). The jobs numbers were rigged (they weren’t). I could say something funny here, but I won’t. It’s just so damn dangerous to have him in the White House.”
In the same interview, Trump said he would “probably not” run for office again, understanding full well that the Constitution limits presidents to two terms, whether or not those terms are consecutive.
Walsh is often right, but here he’s doubly so. It’s so damn dangerous when a president and his party act like democracy doesn’t matter.
In 2009, after they passed into law the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama and the Democrats faced the prospect of a wipeout in the following year’s midterms. The law started out unpopular and grew more unpopular by the day. But they didn’t try to change the rules of democracy to avoid the consequences of their choices, even though the consequences were catastrophic. The Democrats lost 63 seats in the House and six in the Senate. Obama’s presidency never recovered.
Donald Trump and the Republicans, however, are trying to change the rules of democracy to avoid the consequences of their choices. I don’t think there’s any one source of disapproval, like the ACA used to be for the Democrats. Instead, public ire seems to have multiple layers, with the deepest being the gigantic sales tax, in the form of tariffs, that the president has unilaterally imposed on everyone. And Trump knows it. That’s why, in anticipation of a wipeout, he asked legislators in Texas to redraw its congressional districts to give his party five more seats.
This should be damning. And the Republicans should be running from the idea, in the same way that some Democrats ran from Obamacare. But most are doubling down. Texas is going to try gerrymandering its districts to give Trump the advantage, as likely will any state controlled by the GOP that has at least one big blue city in it. (Perhaps this is why Mike Flood can shout down constituents with impunity. Nebraska Republicans could choose to redraw his district to ensure reelection.)
But the Republicans are doing more than changing the rules of democracy. They are creating the conditions for criminalizing it.
Democratic legislators in Texas left the state to deny a quorum for Republican efforts to redraw its congressional districts. The state’s attorney general declared the move illegal. The state’s governor ordered state law enforcement agencies to arrest and return them. Texas has no jurisdiction in Illinois, where some Texas Democrats decamped, but that didn’t stop vigilantes from issuing bomb threats.
This is in addition to the Justice Department opening an investigation into alleged tampering of the 2016 election by Barack Obama and his administration. (The allegations are completely imaginary.) There is, moreover, the fact that two Democrats have been arrested and are pending trial; two Democrats were manhandled and arrested; one Democrat was assassinated; not to mention the president ordering the (short-lived) military occupation of the city of Los Angeles. More recently, three House Democrats were “in essence, incarcerated,” after a masked ICE agent locked them in a room at a detention center.
The goal is silencing dissent, and elected Democrats are not the only targets. All of us are. Even as Trump and the GOP do things that make people angry – like taking away their food money, taking away their vaccines, taking away their jobs, all while forcing them to pay more and more for the essentials of life – people can’t vent their anger.
The heart of democracy is our ability to petition the government for a redress of grievances. But the Republicans are creating conditions nationally, after having done so locally, in which that’s not possible.
They are either gerrymandering voters out of existence, their judges are narrowing the right to vote to the point of extinction, or they are preparing to prosecute people for their opinions. At the rate we’re going, it won’t be long before being a liberal is a criminal offense.
The only Republicans acting rationally are those who represent districts in blue states. “What Texas is doing is wrong and I’m opposed to it,” New York Congressman Mike Lawler told Politico, adding that “he’s sponsoring a bill with fellow blue state Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley of California that would ban gerrymandering nationwide.”
But they are only acting rationally, because their party cannot change the rules of democracy to avoid being held accountable by their constituents for their choices. Blue states like New York and California are now considering redrawing their congressional maps in reaction to potential moves by Texas, Florida and others to do the same. In other words, blue-state Republicans have an immediate incentive to behave themselves while the rest of the GOP, including its leader, does not.
That fact alone should be damning.
NOW READ: 'Really strange vibe': Visitors to bizarre Island say 'skeevy' Epstein gave them the creeps
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an 8 25
What could possibly go wrong?' Outrage as Trump admin recruits teens to join 'the Gestapo'
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AN 8 25
FASCISM
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has agreed to a request from U.S. Senator John Cornyn to locate the Texas Democratic state lawmakers who exited the state in an effort to deny Republicans a quorum—part of a broader attempt to block Governor Greg Abbott and President Donald Trump’s push to redraw congressional maps and boost GOP-held House seats, the Texas Republican announced Thursday.
“We cannot allow these rogue legislators to avoid their constitutional responsibilities,” Senator Cornyn said in a statement that referred to the Texas Democrats as “supposed lawmakers.”
Axios reported that “Texas issued civil warrants for the Democratic lawmakers, but local law enforcement can’t make arrests outside the state.”
The Texas Democrats are in Illinois, according to that state’s Democratic governor, JB Pritzker.
READ MORE: Governor Wants Maps to Reflect State’s ‘Christian Conservative Majority’ Says GOP Lawmaker
Legal and political experts are blasting the move.
“There’s literally no federal law applicable to this situation. None,” Governor Pritzker
Jessica Yellin on Wednesday, according to Axios.
“The key question here is on what grounds would the FBI be doing this,” wrote MSNBC Justice and Intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian. “What is the crime they are investigating? The FBI can’t just use its vast surveillance powers to locate random citizens. In fact, that’s what conservatives have long been so concerned about re FISA authorities.”
“This is a patently unlawful, unconstitutional abuse of federal power,” constitutional law professor and political scientist Anthony Michael Kreis said on Thursday.
READ MORE: Trump Revives Constitutionally Conflicting Census Overhaul Plan
“We are in a deeply dangerous, illiberal place in America when the federal government will deploy law enforcement to force state legislators to act on legislation that’s contrary to their conscience and an attempt to undermine free elections,” Kreis added.
The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a political scientist, addressed Senator Cornyn: “John, I understand your need to tilt crazy right to counter your lunatic primary challenger. But calling on the FBI to act illegally and wrongly to go after Texas Democrats is beneath you, and simply shameful. You used to believe in the law and the Constitution.”
Asking what “criminal interest” the FBI could have in this, U.S. Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY) called it “yet another disgusting partisan abuse of power by the FBI,” and said that “any agent asked to assist should refuse to do so.”
Watch video of Governor Pritzker below or at this link.
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AN 8 25
The ironic term "Good Germans" is used to describe Germans who, during the 1930s and 1940s, didn't actively support Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime but looked the other way and downplayed or ignored the atrocities that were taking place. Often, "Good Germans" would argue that sure, Hitler is brash, but his opponents are overreacting to his inflammatory speeches.
Salon's Chauncey DeVega, in an article published on July 18, fears that in 2025, too many "Good Americans" — not unlike the "Good Germans" of the 1930s and 1940s — are downplaying the most disturbing parts of Donald Trump's second presidency.
"I have studied accounts from people who lived through authoritarian and fascist regimes in places like Chile, Argentina and Germany," DeVega warns. "One of the common threads is how citizens compromised their ethics and, in the end, were stained in ways both large and small. For some, this took the form of actively working with the regime against their family, friends and neighbors. They raised high the banner of patriotism! Law and order! The Dear Leader is always right! Other denizens chose denial and willful ignorance, turning inward to a fantasyland where, somehow, everything was normal, even when it was not."
READ MORE: 'People are going to be shocked': Backlash predicted for GOP as disaster looms
DeVega continues, "Those 'Good Germans.' How could they ever do such things? We 'Good Americans' will, in all probability, not be much different."
Americans, DeVega laments, "are being intentionally spun out of control by Trump and the larger right-wing anti-democracy movement."
"These last few weeks have seen Trump's reign as a wannabe king and aspiring dictator made even more secure by a series of decisions by the right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court, who have neutered the ability of the federal courts to slow down the (Trump) Administration's assaults on the rule of law and democracy," DeVega observes. "In violation of decades — and centuries — of norms and precedents, Trump has expanded the use of the military and federalized National Guard as part of his mass deportation campaign. He is also claiming the right to nullify and generally ignore any law he does not agree with."
DeVega adds, "According to a recent whistleblower report, Justice Department official Emil Bove, who Trump has nominated for a federal judgeship, suggested telling courts that ruled against the (Trump) Administration 'f——— you' and then 'ignor(ing) their orders.' This is part of a much larger pattern where Trump, his staffers and other mouthpieces have argued he does not have to obey the Constitution and its protections for civil and human rights. The president and his agents are becoming even louder with their threats to arrest and imprison members of the Democratic Party for 'crimes.'"
READ MORE:'Worse by the day': Analyst reveals how Trump is rapidly losing backing of far-right media
Despite the massive No Kings Day protests of June 14, DeVega observes, the Trump Administration's "attempts to end multiracial pluralistic democracy" are "accelerating with little effective resistance from civil society or the mass public."
"To ignore these dimensions of our current national emergency is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the existential danger we are facing," DeVega explains. "To wit: Public opinion polls, focus groups and other data consistently show that the vertigo we are experiencing during this Age of Trump is getting worse…. Ultimately, Americans are quickly running out of time to stop our democracy and society from spinning out of control. However the Age of Trump may end, I fear it will show that too many Americans, along with their 'responsible' mainstream leaders and other elites, did not pay close attention when the flight crew told them about the escape doors and flotation devices."
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AN 7 25
According to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures released on Friday, August 1, U.S. employment was at 4.2 percent in July. The U.S., according to economists, still isn't in a recession, but the BLS report was a disappointment in terms of job creation.
According to BLS data, "Among the unemployed, the number of new entrants increased by 275,000 in July to 985,000. New entrants are unemployed people who are looking for their first job…. In July, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) increased by 179,000 to 1.8 million. The long-term unemployed accounted for 24.9 percent of all unemployed people."
Trump responded angrily to the report, firing BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer and accusing her of "rigging" the data against him.
READ MORE: Donald Trump just debunked his own lie — and it should get him sued
In a sobering article published on August 5, Salon's Chauncey DeVega warns that thanks to "MAGA's culture of cruelty and gangster capitalism," Americans are likely to suffer economic pain in a variety of ways in the months ahead — from rising unemployment to inflation to a weakened safety net."
"On Friday," DeVega explains, "the bleak economic figures released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed the truth about what is happening in Donald Trump’s America…. Friday's numbers indicate the likelihood of stronger economic turbulence that would impact all of us, from the middle-class to the men I encountered on the street. They, and so many others like them, no longer have much of a social safety net. In an economy strangled by inflation, low wages and rising inequality, the number of homeless Americans will almost certainly grow."
DeVega continues, "The (Trump) Administration seems to be preparing for that possibility. In a grossly underreported story, on July 24, Trump signed an executive order designed to remove people from the streets, including institutionalizing or sending homeless people to mental health or addiction treatment without their consent, marking a policy shift away from 20 years of a housing-first approach."
To make matters worse, DeVega laments, millions of Americans are expected to lose their health insurance.
READ MORE: Trump official reminds the world that the US now has a 'national position' on a single word
"Based on all available evidence and historical precedent," DeVega warns, "the Big Ugly Bill, along with the (Trump) Administration's other cuts to the social safety net, looks likely to trigger a sharp rise in homelessness. The legislation strips away billions of dollars in food assistance. Nursing homes and end-of-life hospice care will face funding shortfalls. With the Big Ugly Bill’s cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, it has been estimated that nearly 12 million Americans will lose their health care. That number will likely rise: In 2026, more than 24 million Americans will see their premiums increase, with some facing spikes as high as 15 percent, according to the nonpartisan health policy and advocacy organization KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation."
DeVega argues that Trump's economic policies are designed to promote an "authoritarian" agenda.
"A healthy democracy depends on a humane society — and a robust social safety net. Autocrats and authoritarians know this," DeVega writes. "That’s why they attack and attempt to destroy social programs. They want to eliminate every possibility of a real social democracy to cement their rule forever. Donald Trump is well on his way."
READ MORE: 'Desperation': Nicolle Wallace says Trump’s been poked at 'his greatest political weakness'
*Chauncey DeVega's full Salon article is available at this link.
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7 25 note no f word but he got there
neoconservative writer Bill Kristol says President Donald Trump’s firing of the Commissioner of Labor Statistics over her department’s accurately reported numbers was moving the U.S. into “third world” territory.
“My alarm scale is pretty high,” Kristol told podcaster Tim Miller. “It’s been pretty high for quite a while, but it’s ticking higher.”
The furious president fired Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after a dismal June jobs report showing only 73,000 new jobs added and downward revisions of more than 250,000 for April and May.
READ MORE: Donald Trump just debunked his own lie — and it should get him sued
“She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “… The Economy is BOOMING under “TRUMP.”
Kristol said past presidents often spun bad numbers with claims that ‘it’s complicated” or "these adjustments are a little bigger than usual."
“That would’ve been a normal political reaction,” Kristol said. “But spin is not OK anymore. I guess we just have to have pure propaganda. You can’t report the facts if they run counter to the narrative of America First, that everything is fantastic, everything that Trump does has instantaneously great results and there will never be another disappointment or a down month in the economy as long as Trump is president.”
Read more: 'Uncle Sam owns it now': Michigan auto CEO says Trump 'roadblocks' could kill his company
“The numbers weren’t even outright recessionary,” added Kristol, but now Trump has amplified them to shake confidence in everything now coming out of the administration.
Miller called the firing a "don’t believe your lying eyes-authoritarian creep" and agreed that McEntarfer lost her job “because she reported the facts.” This will signal that nobody will now be able to take as truth any “facts” coming from the administration, whether it’s economic numbers or the details of a hurricane.
“The economy is based on trust and the belief that institutions will pay their bills, that the numbers they report will be accurate and there will not be a corrupt scheme that hyperinflates or deflates the value of the dollar,” said Miller. “This is the reason the U.S. has the world’s reserve currency, why the U.S. is still la trusted world harbor for investment for people around the world It is because our institutions are strong and legitimate. If you delegitimize our institutions that puts you on a path of having an economy that looks like Argentina.
Miller asked why anybody would invest in the U.S. if they suspect the government is going to put out “fake numbers to please the despot.”
READ MORE: Trump official reminds the world that the US now has a 'national position' on a single word
And it is to please the despot, said Kristol. The abrupt nature of the firing proved that.
“They want the intimidation. They want the sense that the whole government works for Donald Trump,” Kristol said, adding that the all caps “Trump” in Trump’s Truth Social post was “revealing.”
Hear the Bulwark podcast at this link.
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SEE PRESS SUPPR 1ST AMEND SULLIVAN COURTS 4
an 7 25
former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-California) hasn't been shy about filing defamation lawsuits that many legal experts considered frivolous according to the standards outlined in U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1964 ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan. In April 2023, U.S. District Court Judge C.J. Williams threw out a Nunes lawsuit against Esquire. And in 2020, Judge John Marshall ruled that Nunes couldn't sue two parody accounts on X, formerly Twitter (one of which was named Devin Nunes' Cow and mocked him from the perspective of a fictional cow).
Nunes also sued NBC/Universal in response to comments from top-rated host Rachel Maddow. But on Friday, August 1, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel dismissed that lawsuit, ruling that Nunes failed to show actual malice.
In New York Times v. Sullivan, the Warren Court ruled that libel has to involve actual malice — a ruling that, 61 years ago, countless journalists and legal experts hailed as a major victory for the First Amendment and freedom of the press.
READ MORE: Don't 'have any other choice': Outrage grows in the midwest as political crisis spirals
Castel's ruling is generating a lot of comments on X, formerly Twitter.
Reuters Jonathan Landay noted that Nunes' lawsuit involved "a comment by Rachel Maddow about his dealings with a suspected Russian agent."
X user EJW commented, "Perpetual Loser Nunes — loses again."
Another X user, Sadie NYC, wrote, "Sucks to be you dude. Trump Media CEO Nunes loses defamation lawsuit over Rachel Maddow show."
READ MORE:'Middle-aged Manson girls': Far-right 'bloodthirsty' MAGA women mocked in scathing take-down
Politico's Josh Gerstein observed, "BREAKING: Judge tosses fmr Rep. Nunes' libel suit re MSNBC report on handling of package from Russia-linked legislator. Maddow & producer said they relied on POLITICO report suggesting Nunes sat on package, didn't see later 1 saying he gave it to FBI."
X user Bill Thatcher wrote, "@DevinNunes Such an insecure little weenie. Did she hurt your little feelings?! Devin, the continuing poster boy for thin-skin, low IQ, politically deaf white boys."
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an 7 25 fired labor stats
'Banana republic territory': Krugman says Trump's latest move follows dictator 'playbook'
//
MMA
After Steve Bannon called for “a MAGA Republican” to run the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Trump fired its commissioner
Trump took this action following a weak jobs report with major downward revisions. Economists say this move will create mistrust about economic data.
Written by Zachary Pleat
Published 08/01/25
On the August 1 edition of former Trump strategist Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, he and Heritage Foundation’s E.J. Antoni called for getting rid of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner following a weak July jobs report.
Hours later, President Donald Trump said and NBC News confirmed that he had fired BLS Commissioner Dr. Erika McEntarfer. Economists quickly spoke up about how this action, which would decrease confidence in economic data and seriously risk politicizing it outright, poses a grave threat to the entire American economy.
The BLS reported this morning that in July, only 73,000 jobs were created, and job creation in May and June were revised downward by a combined 258,000 jobs.
In response, Bannon claimed to be concerned about “whether we get accurate numbers” from the BLS, adding: “What in the hell is going on there? And have we put in our own person into BLS? Is a MAGA Republican, that President Trump knows and trusts, are they running the Bureau of Labor Statistics yet?” Antoni replied, “No, unfortunately, Steve, we still haven’t gotten there. And I think that’s part of the reason why we continue to have all of these different data problems.” Antoni also talked up a previous BLS commissioner, and added: “He’s been replaced by someone who, frankly, I think is incompetent. And that shows with the fact that the problems in the statistics — that first became evident all the way back in the spring of 2022 — those problems are still there.”
Video
Citation
From the August 1, 2025, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
Hours later, citing the July jobs report and a conspiracy theory about the BLS from the 2024 election cycle, Trump posted on Truth Social: “I was just informed that our Country’s ‘Jobs Numbers’ are being produced by a Biden Appointee, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, who faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala’s chances of Victory. … I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY. She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified.”
Economists reacted to Trump’s firing of the BLS commissioner by explaining that the revisions weren’t political, and that Trump could damage trust in the accuracy of economic statistics moving forward.
Ernie Tedeschi, the director of economics for Yale’s Budget Lab, wrote: “Every economist who knows the 1st thing about labor data knows this has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the challenges of real-time jobs estimation in the world's biggest economy.”
Navy Federal chief economist and Washington Post columnist Heather Long wrote: “This is basically unprecedented and will raise concerns about US data integrity going forward.”
Employ America executive director Skanda Amarnath wrote: “Even if nothing in BLS processes actually changes, public trust is permanently harmed when the BLS commissioner is fired after one bad jobs report. The optics are terrible and collective perception matters. So does reality.”
MEF Associates senior research associate Matt Darling simply replied: “Banana Republic hours.”
Some conservative economists also expressed alarm over Trump’s action.
Manhattan Institute senior fellow Jessica Riedl wrote: “Trump firing the BLS director for a bad jobs report - days after demanding the Smithsonian remove him from the list of impeached presidents - is banana republic stuff.” She added in a follow-up post: “Trump just ensured that we should not trust any government data coming out of his administration. Why should we trust data from agencies in which the director's job depends on altering any bad economic news? Any Republicans with a spine need to speak out.”
American Enterprise Institute director of economic policy studies Michael R. Strain wrote: “Erika McEntarfer has devoted her career to public service. She has conducted herself as BLS Commissioner with great integrity. There is no evidence whatsoever that BLS data are politically biased. By incorrectly asserting that the data are biased, President Trump is undermining the integrity of the information that policymakers, businesses, households, and investors use to make important decisions that affect the welfare of the nation. It is imperative that decisionmakers understand that government statistics are unbiased and of the highest quality. By casting doubt on that, the President is damaging the United States.”
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This new capitulation to Trump is grotesque — and the most dangerous yet
Thom Hartmann July 31, 2025
The media’s job in a democratic society is to speak truth to power, not to suck up to it. But last week, CBS and its parent company Paramount waved the white flag, handing Donald Trump a $16 million bribe and agreeing to censor their own newsroom to curry favor with a twice-impeached, multiply-indicted rapist authoritarian who lost the popular vote twice.
That is not journalism. That’s capitulation. And it’s devastating to democracies.
The Paramount merger with Skydance should never have been a political issue. In normal times, regulatory agencies like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) operate independently, applying laws without fear or favor. But these are not normal times.
Trump’s FCC — under the control of far-right ideologue Brendan Carr, who helped draft the fascism-friendly blueprint known as Project 2025 — made it clear they’d block the deal unless CBS “cleaned house.”
Carr even bragged on CNBC that the merger only went through because Skydance promised to remove “bias” from CBS News. By “bias,” of course, he means “truth.”
Trump and Carr appear to be demanding that CBS stop telling the truth about the GOP’s fascist drift, stop investigating corruption, and stop airing facts that make Trump and the MAGA movement look bad. And CBS didn’t just roll over: they cut a personal check to Trump for $16 million, reportedly threw in an equal amount in free advertising, canceled Stephen Colbert’s show to eliminate critical comedy, and agreed to install a literal “monitor” in their newsroom to hunt down and eliminate so-called “leftwing bias.”
This is not just grotesque. It’s dangerous.
Installing government-friendly “monitors” in newsrooms to silence dissent is one of the first things authoritarians do when they take power. It happened in Hungary under Viktor Orbán. It happened in Russia under Vladimir Putin. In Germany in the early 1930s, Adolf Hitler handed control of the media to Joseph Goebbels and banned reporting that contradicted Nazi talking points.
What Trump and Carr are doing is textbook fascism: co-opting the press, criminalizing dissent, and demanding personal loyalty above all else across both government and the media.
The problem, of course, is that reality has a well-known leftwing bias. That’s because reality, unlike rightwing ideology, is rooted in facts. For example:
Trickle-down economics has never helped the working class — it’s a scam to transfer wealth to the rich.
Immigrants are not more likely to commit crimes — they’re less likely.
Late-term abortions are rare and almost always involve severe fetal abnormalities or risks to the mother — women don’t “love getting abortions” or do so with little thought.
Unions raise wages and reduce inequality — they don’t “steal from workers.”
Climate change is real and accelerating, and fossil fuel companies and Republicans have known it — and spent billions to cover it up — for decades.
Renewable energy is cheaper than coal, gas, or oil in most of the world.
People on public assistance are usually not “lazy” but are either disabled, working or actively seeking work, or living in areas where there is no work.
Raising the minimum wage doesn’t increase unemployment — it boosts the economym, which increases employment.
Universal healthcare works in every other developed nation — it’s not “impossible” to implement here in America.
The U.S. was not founded as a Christian nation, but as a secular republic.
Yet when these facts and others become “too political” for CBS to air — when truth is treated as liberal bias — we’re in real trouble. If CBS can’t push back on obvious lies because it’s afraid of offending Trump’s FCC, how long before every newsroom falls in line?
This is exactly how freedom of the press — and then freedom for everybody — dies: not with a bang, but with a checkbook and a veiled threat. When media companies start self-censoring to avoid regulatory retribution, they become lapdogs, not watchdogs.
And Trump isn’t even trying to hide this. He’s bragging about it.
Last week, the White House even released a full-on tantrum of a statement attacking South Park for mocking Trump. The show dared to suggest that combining the powers of the presidency with lawsuits and bribes might be a bad thing for democracy. In response, Trump’s staff accused the show of being “irrelevant” and “desperate for attention.”
Can you name any other president in American history who issued a press release attacking a cartoon?
But Trump’s not just punching down with his words: he’s using the full weight of the federal government to go after anyone who defies him. He’s already targeted universities, law firms, prosecutors, and journalists with bogus DOJ investigations and regulatory harassment. Now he’s turned the FCC into his personal censorship bureau.
The bribes paid by CBS and ABC weren’t one-offs, they were the first installment in a classic protection racket.
That’s not America. That’s a mob state being run by a man who behaves like a mob boss.
So what do we do? First, we must stop pretending this is normal. It’s not. CBS didn’t make a “business decision,” they submitted to a political shakedown. And the rest of the media should not let them get away with it.
Second, we must speak out, loudly and relentlessly. Let CBS know that rolling over for a wannabe strongman is unacceptable. Tell your local stations you want truth, not Trump-approved propaganda. Support independent journalism and media outlets willing to tell the truth even when it’s unpopular. Subscribe. Donate. Amplify their work.
And finally, we need to get serious about defending our democracy. That means voting like our freedoms depend on it, because they do. It means rejecting candidates who would silence the press and stack the courts and install “monitors” in our newsrooms. It means recognizing authoritarianism when it’s right in front of us and calling it what it is. It means getting inside your local Democratic Party and fighting for real progressive change and the survival of our republic.
Trump has shown us, again and again, that he will use every lever of power to silence his critics and punish his enemies. Now he has the FCC and a major news network doing his bidding. If we stay silent now, we may not get another chance.
Democracy dies when people stop caring. Let’s prove that we still do.
NOW READ: 'You guys made this happen': Dems find a way to stick it to a furious GOP
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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
Progressive firebrand and former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan recently debated "20 far-right Republicans" as part of the Jubilee series "Surrounded." One of them went way beyond identifying as conservative and admitted to being an outright "fascist."
When Hasan asked Connor, who goes by "Pinesap" online, if he considered himself a fascist, he replied, "Yeah, I am."
Connor also told Hasan he supports "autocracy" and said, "I, frankly, don't care being called a Nazi at all."
READ MORE:This White House lie shows they know Trump is in trouble
According to the Daily Beast's Ewan Palmer, Connor says he was fired from his job after publicly making those statements and "has launched a fundraising page on GiveSendGo, a Christian crowdfunding site" that has "faced criticism for hosting extremist causes."
On his GiveSendGo page, Connor writes, "I'm raising money as an emergency fund and for other expenses while I look for a new job. Unfortunately, voicing fully legal traditional right-wing political views results in real consequences. This is cancel culture and political discrimination on full display."
Connor's fundraising campaign is drawing a lot of responses on X, formerly Twitter.
Attorney Ari Cohn wrote, "The pathetic grifty crybabyness of 'I said I am a fascist and lost my job, give me money' is just wild. So f—————— soft. Have fun not getting any insurance/benefits from the government because you're too busy begging for handouts instead of applying for a new job, loser."
READ MORE:The implications of Rupert Murdoch toppling Donald Trump are head-spinning
X user Chris America mockingly posted, "OPer: I was fired for going on Jubilee and saying that I was a facist! My first amendment rights! Business: Thanks to the same GOP, we can fire you for any reason to protect ourselves. GOPer: The woke people did this to me! I need to raise money now! Grift. Grift. Grift."
X user Keith Edwards tweeted, "The literal fascist who got exposed on Jubilee has been fired from his job. Love that for him."
Edwards also wrote, "he doesn't believe in the First Amendment, so."
Another user Stanislav Birko posted, "This loser coming out as fascist on television thanks to Hasan and then raising more than 20 grand (seemingly in much less than a day) due to getting fired perfectly encapsulates the political moment we are living in."
X user Kennedy Pivnick wrote, "Ok but the actual answer is that unless he worked for the government or a company running a company town, no it isn't First Amendment stuff."
Similarly, Rob Braun posted, "First Amendment protects your right to free speech, he won’t be arrested or jailed. But most states are at will employment and can fire you for any reason they see fit."
READ MORE:'Frantic' Karoline Leavitt suggests new scapegoat to take the fall for Trump’s Epstein mess
*Watch the Mehdi Hasan video below or at this link.
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AN 7 25
The Trump regime’s battle with Harvard University will be aired in court today when a federal judge hears arguments in Harvard’s lawsuit challenging Trump’s attack on it.
At stake is not just $2.2 billion in grants for scientific research, but the larger question of whether Trump can impose his agenda on independent universities in America — forcing them to bring their admissions, disciplinary procedures, academic hiring, and curricula in line with his priorities.
With the Trump regime ramping up its attacks on colleges and universities across America — using the pretexts of “DEI,” antisemitism, and transgender athletes to undermine academic freedom — it would seem more important than ever for universities to join together to stop him.
There is strength in solidarity. If each college and university seeks only to protect itself, the dictator-in-chief can pick off one after another — as he’s trying to do with law firms, the media, judges, and every other institution of civil society.
Which brings me to Dartmouth College.
I graduated from Dartmouth in 1968. It gave me a wonderful education. I was also a Dartmouth trustee in the 1980s when its president, James O. Freedman, who was Jewish, endured the antisemitic barbs of an ascendant right-wing student group that included such people as Laura Ingraham, Dinesh D’Souza, and Harmeet Dhillon.
Now, Dartmouth is headed by Sian Beilock, who has turned Dartmouth into a Trumpy academic outpost.
Beilock declined to join more than 600 other academic institutions —including all of Dartmouth’s Ivy League peers — in signing a letter in defense of Harvard, which proclaimed “one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.”
This March, as Trump escalated his threats against universities, Beilock hired the former top lawyer at the Republican National Committee, Matt Raymer, as the college’s general counsel. (Raymer is a Dartmouth alumnus who, as recently as January, argued in a conservative online publication called The Federalist that Trump was right about birthright citizenship.)
Around the time Beilock declined to sign the letter defending Harvard, Beilock met with Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s recently confirmed assistant attorney general for civil rights, who posted on X after their meeting: “I was so impressed to learn how Dartmouth (my alma mater) is getting it right, after all these years. Kudos to Dartmouth!”
In 1988, as editor of The Dartmouth Review, Dhillon became momentarily notorious for publishing a column depicting Dartmouth’s then president Freedman as Adolf Hitler under the headline “Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Freedmann” — a play on a Nazi slogan, “One Empire, One People, One Leader,” but substituting and misspelling Freedman’s name for “Fuhrer.”
Using the analogy of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, the column satirically described how “Der Freedmann” and his associates rid the campus of conservatives. The column referred to the “‘Final Solution’ of the Conservative Problem” and to “survivors” of the Dartmouth “holocaust” and described Dartmouth conservatives being “deported in cattle cars in the night.”
A drawing on the cover of the following issue, on October 26, also depicted Freedman, who had been critical of The Review, as Hitler.
As I said, I was a trustee of Dartmouth at the time. I saw up close how much Dhillon’s publication hurt Freedman. The student newspaper The Dartmouthtook The Reviewto task: “The column is anti-Semitic; its impact rings through this community today and will remain long after its publishers have completed their stints in Hanover.”
Several faculty members wrote to outside advisers of The Review, asking them to reconsider allowing their names to be associated with the publication. The regional office of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, in Boston, condemned the column.
Now, twenty-seven years later, as assistant attorney general for civil rights, Dhillon is investigating most of the Ivy League for antisemitism. Notably, she is not investigating Dartmouth.
Dartmouth has so far avoided the sort of threats Trump has leveled against Harvard, which are being litigated today. In fact, Dartmouth is the only Ivy aside from Yale to escape targeted attacks to its funding.
Presumably that’s because Beilock has appeased Trump, at least for now.
This week’s New Yorker contains a piece by Rob Wolfe titled “How Dartmouth Became the Ivy League’s Switzerland.” I don’t think the analogy holds. Dartmouth isn’t like Switzerland, which stayed neutral in World War II. It’s more like Neville Chamberlain’s Great Britain just before the war, which sought to appease the tyrant.
As the world painfully learned, tyrants can’t be appeased. Tyrants view appeasement as weakness, and always want more.
Were it not for FDR’s United States and Winston Churchill’s Britain, Hitler might have won, and both Dartmouth and Harvard might now be teaching Nazi versions of history, science, and everything else.
Which is why Sian Beilock gets this week’s Neville Chamberlain award.
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The first victims of Trump's hit list
Thom Hartmann January 17, 2025
It may seem counter-intuitive, given that most people think of dictators as bad guys themselves, but the simple reality is that without proclaiming enemies — larger than life enemies — dictators have a hard time hanging onto power and accomplishing the things they want to do.
Hitler had Jews. Mussolini had the Italian Socialist Party. For Duterte it was drug dealers. Stalin vilified the “Kulaks” (wealthy peasants) as a threat to the Soviet Union. Mao blamed the bourgeoisie. Pol Pot said intellectuals were the enemy and so ordered everybody who could read killed. Idi Amin blamed Indians and Asians for the problems of Uganda. Robert Mugabe said white farmers were destroying Zimbabwe. Slobodan Milošević pointed to the Kosovo Albanians. Pinochet blamed the trade unions for Chile’s struggles.
Trump has flirted with condemning several different groups over the years, primarily using brown-skinned immigrants as his bogeymen, although the GOP has also vilified queer people, Black people, academics, journalists, teachers, and liberals to motivate the hatred of their base.
I learned about the importance of a good enemy when taking a creative writing class from the late Robert B. Parker in the 1970s. At the time, he was working on his third Spenser novel and hadn’t yet really hit it big, so a few of us who signed up for his weekend seminar were able to sit at his feet and learn from the man who became one of America’s great masters of fiction.
While the hero of the story is important, Parker told us, it’s the antihero — the bad guy or antagonist — who makes real for the reader the goodness of the hero.
He said that Superman, for example, would have just been a boring guy who stopped bank robberies if it weren’t for Lex Luthor. Batman would only be a rich guy with a fancy car and a weird outfit if it weren’t for the Joker. Without Moby Dick, Captain Ahab was merely another whaler. Sherlock Holmes would have been a weird but boring private eye were it not for Professor Moriarty, “the Napoleon of Crime.”
You get the idea. The hero can only be as good as the bad guy is bad. Every superhero requires a super-antihero. A larger-than-life bad guy. Genuine evil.
Even beginning novelists and screenwriters know this. And so does every dictator, including wannabe dictator Trump. It was a lesson George W. Bush learned and used after 9/11 to lie us into two unnecessary wars, make billions for Cheney’s near-bankrupt Halliburton, and destroy our reputation around the world.
Today, it’s why the GOP is making such a big deal about Laken Riley, the white woman killed by an Hispanic “illegal” immigrant, going so far as to name legislation after her. See how terrible these “invaders” are? They try to rape white women and when they don’t get their way, they kill them!
It’s why Trump, when he first announced his candidacy in 2015, characterized Latino immigrants as rapists and murderers. Its why Nancy Mace is constantly talking about “predators with penises” being in women’s restrooms. It’s why rightwingers claim books in our schools are “indoctrinating” our children. It’s why Trump still claims the Central Park Five should have been executed.
When a dictator wants to rally the people — particularly so they’ll support him in doing something dreadful — he must first convince them that the common enemy he’s identified is super evil.
To successfully claim to fight evil, he must first identify that evil in terms everybody understands. And it can’t be ordinary evil; his opponents must be super-evil incarnate: Monstrous. Depraved. Malefic. Diabolical. Satanic.
When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 the first group he and his Nazis went after weren’t the Jews or even the communists. There were supporters of both groups across the country at the time, and he needed a genuinely “other” minority group to attack first, one that only a small handful of people would ever rise to defend.
So, he went after trans people. The famous book-burning picture is from in front of the Berlin Institute of Sexology, where Magnus Hirschfield was supporting trans people undergoing the first sexual reassignment surgeries in the modern world.
Fascists always start by declaring themselves the victims of evil “others.” Victimhood is essential to the fascist worldview; it’s at its core. And it’s their excuse for destroying other people’s lives.
They then cast the weakest and least popular minorities in a society as the victimizers of the fascists. Fascism is never directed against the rich or powerful, but always against those least able to defend themselves. It’s bullying turned into a political movement.
Trump has gone after multiple groups during his political career, including trans people, Black Haitian immigrants, Central- and South American immigrants, teachers, librarians, Muslims, Black Lives Matter protestors, the media, and Democrats generally.
To really turn America into a hotbed of violence and retribution, though, he’s going to need to infamize groups one at a time.
Where will he begin? Who will he turn into the first super-villains?
Will it be members of the press, dragged before congressional committees and subject to millions in lawsuits? Will he join Nancy Mace in demonizing queer people? Will he join Putin in calling Ukrainians Nazis? Can he convince enough people that Democrats are a danger to America that elected officials will shut up and hide the way so many did in 1930s Germany?
Trump and his bully boys have big plans for America, and getting people behind more tax cuts for billionaires, mass deportations, killing Obamacare and Medicaid, imprisoning the press, and gutting our civil and human rights will be a big lift. He’s going to have to identify his enemies in terms that are so stark that few Americans will dare speak up.
So, where do you think he’ll begin? Who will be his first victims, justifying his going beyond the law and the Constitution?
Post your thoughts below in our comments section.
NOW READ: A new ugly streak in American politics
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https://substack.com/@kimlanelaw
jimmy kimmelfrom
framing comes from Professor
of Princeton, whose work on authoritarianism has helped me—and so many others—make sense of what we’re seeing. Because we’re not watching this happen in theory. We’re living it.
Step 1: You have a free and fair election—but it’s the last one. Because once that person wins, they have no intention of letting go of power. Not for anyone. Not ever.
Step 2 :They exceed the bounds of executive power. You’ll see a flurry of executive orders, each one claiming new and expansive authority that goes well beyond what the Constitution allows.
Step 3 :They weaken competing powers. Congress forgets it has a job to do. The judiciary becomes either complicit or irrelevant—because courts don’t have enforcement power. If the executive stops playing by the rules, the judiciary can’t force them to.
Step 4 :They gut the government. Fire the experts. Dismantle agencies. Break public trust in the institutions people rely on every day—until democracy no longer feels worth defending.
Step 5: They install loyalists. Not public servants. Loyalists. People who will follow orders, not the law. People who won’t hire anyone who dares to think independently. And they place them in powerful positions across the system.
Step 6 :They go after the media. First, they demonize and discredit legitimate journalism, so the public loses trust. Then they build an echo chamber, pumping out propaganda and calling it truth—even when it’s not. Especially when it’s not.
Step 7: They pick scapegoats and weaponize DEI because it protects us. Women. Children. People of color. Immigrants. The disabled. Anyone who looks or thinks differently becomes the villain. It’s intentional. Because if we’re fighting each other, we’re not fighting for democracy.
Step 8: They target civil society that exists to defend our rights. Sue the lawyers. Attack philanthropies. Dismantle universities. Smear community organizers. Undermine the very people doing the work to hold the line.
Step 9: They incentivize private violence. Maybe they send in the National Guard or militarize federal agents. Maybe they abduct protestors or arrest elected officials in the opposition. The goal is the same: make people afraid to speak up. Make civic participation feel dangerous. Make silence feel safer than truth.
Step 10: And then—it’s over. Step 10 is the endgame. You make sure no one ever votes again. Because now, people are scared. They’re poor. They’re exhausted. And the autocrat has all the power.
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AN 7 25
After just six months into his second term, President Donald Trump has already left a significant mark on American society and severely crippled the ability of institutions like Congress and the courts to check him. But some experts say democracy is still far from over and maintain that Trump is still vulnerable.
On Tuesday, New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall detailed the various ways Trump has eroded traditional democratic checks and balances, wielded the executive branch's power against his political opponents, fired government employees who aren't fully on board with his agenda and demoralized the opposition. University of Toronto political scientist Lucan Way — along with Harvard University political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt acknowledged that "the cost of opposing the government" has risen significantly under Trump, meaning that the United States may have very well "crossed the line into authoritarianism" under Trump.
However, one of the various academics and experts Edsall interviewed emphasized that Americans who believe in democracy still have many tools at its disposal.
READ MORE:(Opinion) Stick a fork in him: Trump finally faces the threat of retribution – from MAGA
Harvard professor of government and sociology Theda Skocpol told Edsall that Trump had created a new governing system called "competitive sycophancy," in which various interests attempt to curry favor with the administration through flattery and manipulation. He also described it using the phrase "patrimonial corruption."
"Thanks to the fawning of the GOP and of most elite-run U.S. institutions, he already basically has this system in place," Skocpol said. "One part of it that is a possible route to pure coercive authoritarianism is the new ICE-centered private army run without limits by Stephen Miller — and there will be constant efforts to push that into a centralizing and terrifying threat against all political opposition."
However, Skocpol noted that Trump critics have an adherent advantage due to the "sheer inefficiency and incompetence" of top administration officials. He also stressed that Trump's actions now are likely to harm both him and his party in the long run.
"Trump owns it all now; that is the silver lining in all of this," he said. "Let him get all the blame for the messes that will unfold, let his childish efforts to shift blame look more and more desperate, silly and weak. Weak is the key."
READ MORE:'Good evidence': New data shows the 'surest sign' Trump policies are making inflation rise
Click here to read Edsall's full column in the Times, or by clicking this link (subscription required).
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NO LNX
A cult leader shows how Trump is taking America to a very dark place
:
Thom Hartmann July 13, 2025
Former FBI agent Michael Fienberg has gone public, pointing out that the agency, under the leadership of Dan Bongino and Kash Patel, is purging itself of people who are not members of the Trump cult (my phrase, not his).
Similar cult-like behavior is on vivid display with the White House press secretary, the head of DHS, and the head of the Department of Justice — among numerous other administration officials and elected Republicans — regularly spouting lies and half-truths that target women, immigrants, and Democrats.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is implying that the children who died in the Texas floods were the victims of a nefarious plot — presumably by Democrats or Jews who operate space lasers — to modify the weather, completely ignoring the fact that Republican-aligned fossil fuel billionaires have been engaged in a half-century-long scheme to sabotage our atmosphere with their carbon dioxide emissions in exchange for trillions of dollars in profits. Some of which, no doubt, have been shared with Greene or her campaign.
Multiple administration officials, elected Republicans, and rightwing media cult leaders on platforms like Fox “News” have been amplifying the racist, antisemitic “Great Replacement Theory,” that wealthy Jews are paying to “replace” white people in America with Blacks, Mexicans, and other people of color. This has led to ICE becoming the largest police force in America, with a budget larger than that of the entire Russian military, soon to be sweeping a neighborhood near you in their never-ending hunt for brown-skinned people.
Donald Trump didn’t need to lure his followers into a remote jungle, like Jim Jones did in Guyana. He didn’t need to physically isolate them from the rest of the world. Instead, Trump built his Jonestown right here at home, within the boundaries of our republic, brick by brick. He did it using over 30,000 documented lies, fear, rage, and the intoxicating promise of belonging.
Today, tens of millions of Americans are trapped inside Trump’s reality-warping cult. And just as Jones’ followers drank poisoned Kool-Aid believing it was salvation, Trump’s followers have swallowed his Big Lies and are now willing to sacrifice our Constitution, our democracy, and our future on the altar of one man’s insatiable ego.
This is an old story in new packaging.
Jim Jones wasn’t always a madman. In the beginning, he offered something people desperately wanted: community, belonging, equality. He drew in the lonely, the marginalized, the disillusioned. He offered them meaning, dignity, and the hope of a better world. But slowly, he twisted that hope into a tool of control, weaponizing his followers’ trust for his own wealth, power, and self-aggrandizement.
Donald Trump followed a similar cult leader’s path.
He didn’t invent the grievances he exploited. For decades, America’s middle class was gutted by Reaganomics and neoliberal trade policies. Jobs were shipped overseas. Unions were crushed. Wages stagnated while billionaires like Trump amassed obscene wealth.
Trump didn’t cause that pain, but he channeled it. He told working-class Americans that he alone could restore their lost greatness. At the 2016 Republican National Convention, he bellowed: “I alone can fix it.”
That wasn’t a campaign promise. It was a cult leader’s declaration. Like Jones, Trump positioned himself not as a servant of the people, but as their savior, the one indispensable man without whom all hope would be lost.
All cults, whether religious or political, thrive on division and a sense of victimhood. Jim Jones taught his followers that outsiders were out to destroy them, that they were surrounded by enemies, traitors, and saboteurs. He warned that the CIA, the media, and shadowy conspirators would annihilate Jonestown unless his people followed him without question.
Trump operates from the same playbook.
His enemies list is long: immigrants, Black voters, Muslims, women, Democrats, journalists, scientists, the “deep state,” election officials, even members of his own party who dare to tell the truth. He has spent years feeding his followers a steady diet of paranoia, victimhood, and grievance, convincing them that the only thing standing between them and ruin is him.
And just as Jones’ followers were taught to see dissent as treason, Trump’s followers are conditioned to see any criticism of him as an attack on themselves. They’ve surrendered their own personal identities to him and his cult. When he tells them that an election they lost was stolen, they believe it; not because the evidence says so, but because Trump says so. And in a cult, the cult leader’s word is truth.
Jones kept his followers in a physical jungle, cut off from the outside world. Trump does the same psychologically with the help of billionaire-backed media. His repeated attacks on the press as “the enemy of the people” are no accident: they are a deliberate strategy to isolate his followers in an information silo, where only his voice matters.
Fox “News,” Truth Social, MAGA podcasts, and a network of social media influencers form the walls of this new Jonestown. Alternative facts replace real ones. And when reality intrudes — when courts reject Trump’s lawsuits, when audits confirm his losses — his followers simply double down. “That’s just what the enemy wants us to believe.”
It’s classic cult behavior. And it’s why millions remain convinced that Trump won in 2020, that the COVID vaccine was a hoax or a plot, that January 6th was “legitimate political discourse.” Like Jones, Trump has taught his followers to see the world not as it is, but as he tells them it is.
When Jones’ utopia began to crumble — when defections and investigations threatened his power and a congressional delegation arrived to expose his lies and manipulations — he led his followers into mass suicide. Over 900 men, women, and children perished, drinking poisoned Kool-Aid to prove their loyalty.
Trump, faced with the reality of defeat in 2020, incited his followers to violence rather than admit loss. January 6th was America’s political Jonestown: a desperate, delusional last stand to keep their messiah in power. Trump didn’t just sit back as the Capitol was attacked. He watched with satisfaction, refusing to act for hours, while the very heart of our democracy was desecrated in his name.
And to this day, he defends that insurrection, calling those convicted of violent crimes “hostages,” giving pardons, and encouraging more violence if he’s indicted or loses again. Jones destroyed his followers; Trump is willing to destroy our nation.
I wrote about this back in the summer of 2023 in an article titled, “Will America Face “Narcissistic Collapse” as Trump Descends into Legal Hell?” Narcissistic collapse is what happens when psychopathic narcissists face defeat and humiliation and strike out against the world around them.
Think Hitler in his bunker when my old friend Armin Lehmann, then a 16-year-old Hitler Youth, handed him the news that the war was lost. Armin wrote a book about his experience, In Hitler’s Bunker: A Boy Soldier’s Eyewitness Account of the Fuhrer’s Last Days, which we discussed extensively when he was writing it and during the three years we traveled the world together, lecturing mostly across Europe and the Far East.
Hitler, in those final weeks — Armin told me and the historical record verifies — actually welcomed the destruction of Germany by American and Soviet bombs and tanks.
He hadn’t failed: his narcissism and the cult he had created and surrounded himself with wouldn’t let him confront that.
Instead, in his mind, the German people had failed, his generals had failed, his soldiers had failed. They had failed Germany, but, more importantly they had failed him and his cult — and he wanted them punished for failing him.
When he was finally pushed into full-blown narcissistic collapse — those final days that Armin spent with him — he succumbed to the fate of many severe narcissists who experience a failure so undeniable that it provokes full-blown narcissistic collapse: he killed his wife and then turned the gun on himself.
In the final stages of narcissistic collapse, long before suicide becomes an option, first comes the blaming and the attempts to punish others.
We see this now with Trump blaming the media, the courts, and the Democrats he now openly brags that he “hates” and encourages his cult followers to hate as well.
Historians and political scientists have long warned us about men like Trump. In Strongmen and on her Lucid Substack newsletter, Ruth Ben-Ghiat traces the path of authoritarians like Mussolini, Putin, and Trump: they all consistently cultivate a cult of personality, demonize opponents, destroy the press, capture the courts, collaborate with oligarchs, and use violence as a political tool.
Trump has followed that playbook to the letter.
Jason Stanley, in How Fascism Works and on his Forward Substack, identifies Trump’s tactics: appeals to a mythic past, relentless lying, glorification of violence, and the creation of a “victim” identity for the dominant group. Steven Hassan, one of America’s foremost experts on cults, calls Trumpism a “destructive political cult” in his book The Cult of Trump and on his Substack newsletter Freedom of Mind.
These aren’t wild theories. They’re the sober assessments of professional scholars and historians who’ve studied how democracies fall and how cults rise.
It’s easy to see Jones’ Kool-Aid as the symbol of his evil, but let’s not forget: Trump’s lies have already cost real lives.
His downplaying of COVID, his undermining of vaccines and masks, his promotion of quack cures like hydroxychloroquine and bleach weren’t just irresponsible: they were deadly. Hundreds of thousands of Americans would be alive today if Trump hadn’t turned public health into a culture war battlefield.
And now, his Big Lies about the election and the “deep state” are poisoning faith in our democracy itself. In poll after poll, a majority of Republicans say they believe Trump won in 2020. They believe it so deeply that they’re passing laws to suppress votes, installing loyalists to oversee elections, and preparing to reject any future result that doesn’t favor their Dear Leader. The poison is spreading and fast.
So what comes next?
Jim Jones didn’t start out plotting mass suicide. He got there one lie, one power grab, one act of cruelty at a time. Trump’s path is no different. His first term tested the boundaries. His second is breaking them.
Already, Trump openly promised dictatorship “on day one.” He’s already pursuing “retribution,” purging the government, and rounding up immigrants into camps. He’s gutted the civil service, weaponized the justice department, and is today using the military for domestic crackdowns.
This isn’t hyperbole. It’s all on the record. And it’s what happens when a cult leader gains the reins of state power, as the world has seen repeatedly throughout history.
We don’t have to follow Trump into the abyss. We can refuse the poison. We can choose the hard work of repairing our democracy, telling the truth, and holding this would-be strongman accountable.
But time is short. The cult is deep, and its leader is relentless.
History tells us where this path ends. Jonestown. Berlin 1933. Rome in 1922. Moscow in 2020. The question is whether we have the courage to change course before it’s too late.
Trump may not have led us into a jungle, but he has led millions into a psychological wilderness, where lies are truth, enemies are everywhere, and only he can lead the way out. Jim Jones led his people to destruction, all in the name of salvation. Trump is leading America down the same road.
We must say no. We must tell the truth. And we must do it now.
NOW READ: The most dangerous guy at Fox News is probably not who you think
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AN SN 7 25
Do you think concentration camps are cool?
Does your heart fill with mean-spirited joy at the thought of human beings stuffed into tents and FEMA trailers parked on a disused airstrip in the heart of the Everglades in the middle of a Florida summer?
Do you get off on the idea of alligators and snakes killing people and admire bully capitalism hawking camo beverage coolers, stickers, and T-shirts with grinning reptiles proclaiming, “Nowhere to Run; Nowhere to Hide”?
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier certainly does: He’s raising campaign cash on his own little merch site.
Other paid-up members of the Cruelty is the Point cult do, too.
Celebrating the erection of Florida’s own gulag, known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” the state Republican Party bosses trilled, “Don’t forget to pick up your swag to support our efforts to undo all of Joe Biden’s failures!”
We are ruled by sociopaths.
This prison, parked in the middle of Big Cypress National Preserve, has already received hundreds of detainees, packed into rough-and-ready structures that have not had to meet any building or environmental codes and may not be able to withstand a tropical storm.
Cult leaders can’t decide if the place is Devil’s Island or a charmingly rustic resort.
Showing Donald Trump around the place, Ron DeSantis pointed to the razor wire, iron bunk beds, and bright new Astroturf on the ground.
The first batch of detainees don’t seem especially grateful. Those who’ve managed to make a phone call to the outside world say the guards have served them maggot-laced food, refused them medical attention, kept bright lights on all night, and either crank up the air conditioning until the detainees freeze or cut it off and let them swelter.
One alleged foreign malefactor says guards confiscated his Bible.
Gators in ICE caps
Trump loves this. He fantasizes about terrified detainees chased by Burmese pythons and “cops that are in the form of alligators.”
The White House has put out a Trump meme with a gaggle of gators in ICE caps.
The Trump administration is proud of this latest monument to hatred and gets very upset if anyone criticizes it.
Stephen Miller, architect of Trump’s immigration policy, flew into a tantrum the other day when a reporter told him inhabitants of the human world were calling the South Florida stalag “dehumanizing.”
“American citizens are stripped of their rights and their liberties by the invasion of illegal aliens!” he replied. “What’s ‘dehumanizing’ is when Democrats let illegal alien rapistsinto the country to attack our children. That is ‘dehumanizing’!”
He failed to explain exactly how people fleeing murderous dictatorships in Venezuela, El Salvador, and Nicaragua take rights and liberties from citizens.
As for those hideous assaults alleged by Miller, American citizens commit far more crimesthan undocumented immigrants.
The administration knows this. Until a few weeks ago, a Department of Justice website contained information confirming it.
Attorney General Pam Bondi shut down the website for “review” in “accordance with recent Executive Orders and related guidance.”
Why let data get in the way of propaganda?
‘Not safe’
Miller, Trump, and DeSantis insist the people ICE rounds up are “the worst of the worst, the most heinous of the most heinous.”
Again, the data show this is not true. Only 8%of undocumented detainees have been convicted of violent crimes.
This country is still — nominally — a nation of laws, and everyone thrown into an ICE dungeon is entitled to due process.
Even our supine Supreme Court agrees.
But Florida’s tropical tent prison makes it nearly impossible for detainees to consult with attorneys, meaning they could be deported without fair hearings.
A group of lawmakers, including Rep. Anna Eskamani and Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, tried to visit the facility a couple of weeks ago. Inmates from the Orange County jail — which is in Eskamani’s and Smith’s districts — had been transferred there without being charged with anything.
Legislators pointed out Florida Statute 944.23 allows them to visit state facilities “at their pleasure.”
But DeSantis’ people insist the Everglades prison camp is not technically a state facility, not under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections.
Even though the state of Florida’s paying for it.
‘Emergency’ powers
Actually, the Trump administration admits it’s a state facility.
In a filing asking a federal judge to deny a request by Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biodiversity to halt construction in Big Cypress, the administration argues the plaintiffs’ claim depends on showing a final federal “agency action,” which they can’t because the feds haven’t “implemented, authorized, directed or funded Florida’s temporary detention center.”
Indeed, they insist, “Florida is constructing and operating the facility using state funds on state lands.”
DeSantis, Uthmeier, and Pam Bondi need to get their stories straight.
By last Saturday, legal problems had been overcome and the gulag had miraculously become “safe.”
A group of legislators got a curated tour, during which what you saw depended on who you were—and whether you gave a damn about the human beings locked up in there.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida) took a thermometer with her, reporting an indoor temperature of at least 83 degrees.
Another Democratic lawmaker said some detainees were shackled to benches.
Republican state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia insisted it’s pretty nice: “I actually laid down in one of the beds and it was really comfortable.”
Sure. And everybody’s talked to a lawyer, there are no mosquitoes, and tropical storms? No problem!
Meanwhile back in reality, DeSantis’ vanity project has already flooded at least once.
Big Cypress is 96% wetlands. It’s wetlands’ job to flood.
When Ron DeSantis, claiming “emergency” powers, seized 39 square miles of Everglades land (nearly 25,000 acres) he claimed, “The environmental impact will be zero.”
DeSantis and the attorney general contend they’re merely taking over what Uthmeier calls “an old, virtually abandoned” airstrip.”
That airstrip is abandoned for a reason. It’s a relic of one of the most boneheaded ideas anyone in Florida ever had.
The Phoenix’s own Craig Pittmanrecently recounted how in 1968 a really stupid plan to build a huge airport in the Everglades galvanized support for preserving Florida’s River of Grass.
Fun fact: It was Florida’s then-Gov. Claude Kirk and his top aide Nathaniel Reed — who went on to help pass the Clean Water Act in 1972 and co-write the Endangered Species Act in 1973 — who led the fight to save Big Cypress.
Both were Republicans.
Vandals
Back then, some conservatives wanted to conserve, not destroy.
DeSantis and Uthmeier belong to a new generation of environmental vandals.
They want us to believe Big Cypress is wasted space with a few snakes, some bugs, a cadre of demonic alligators programmed to chase brown folks.
Inconsequential. Nothing to see there.
The ignorance is embarrassing.
To the Miccosukee and the Seminoles, the land is holy: “We live here. Our ancestors fought and died here. They are buried here,” said one tribal leader. “The Big Cypress is part of us, and we are a part of it.”
The land is not empty, or “abandoned.”
Manatees and dolphins give birth to their young in the estuaries on the eastern side. Mullet, trout, grouper, silver perch, spiny lobster, oysters, and clams thrive amongst the mangrove roots.
The mangrove branches harbor herons, pelicans, and egrets; there are red cockaded woodpeckers, fox squirrels, and Florida panthers in the pinelands, and some of the world’s rarest orchidsin the cypress swamps.
The land is a vital ecosystem for plants and animals and humans, too. Its water flows are essential to the aquifer on which South Floridians depend for their drinking water.
DeSantis likes to cast himself as the savior of the River of Grass and waxes petulant if you suggest his pet prison will damage the ecosystem: “I’m the governor who’s poured more money into Everglades restoration than anyone!”
And now he’s poured more money into Everglades destruction than anyone.
The camp will cost $450 milliona year to run.
Don’t be gaslit
Don’t let the man gaslight you: Claims they’re not desecrating Big Cypress are complete rubbish.
Friends of the Everglades has aerialphotographs showing the building of new roads and paving once-wild areas.
Runoff from asphalt pollutes. The huge trucks lumbering in and out of the site, carrying construction materials, also pollute.
You can’t house and feed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people, without terrible damage to already fragile nature.
They’ll need pesticides to keep the Everglades’ vigorous mosquitoes at bay; they’ll need generators and microwaves and machinery to pump out the sewage.
The gulag is even sullying the night sky.
One of the lawsuitsfiled by conservation groups points out the huge prison lights make the place “look like Yankee Stadium, visible from 15-miles away.”
Big Cypress has been designated an International Dark Sky Place. You used to be able to see the Milky Way arching over the marshes and hammocks like a necklace of diamonds and pearls.
Trumpists probably don’t look up at the heavens. They don’t look down at the wonders of the earth.
So why would they care if one of Florida’s greatest treasures gets trashed?
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
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AN 7 25 ROBT
I keep asking myself when Trump’s authoritarian fascism will become so intolerable to the vast majority of Americans that they rise up against it — not only massively protest but put enough pressure on Republicans in Congress that they join with Democrats in impeaching and convicting him.
In other words, what’s the tipping point for ridding us of this menace?
I thought we’d reached that tipping point when he went to war with Iran without congressional approval. Or when he sent active military troops into Los Angeles. Or when he imposed tariffs on all products imported to the United States, essentially raising taxes on Americans. Or when he forced out the president of the University of Virginia for insufficiently rooting out DEI. Or when he attacked major law firms for employing lawyers who once tried to hold him legally accountable.
Obviously, we haven’t reached the tipping point yet. So what will it take? Several possibilities come to mind:
1. He raises tariffs 25 percent on almost all products imported into the United States, resulting in substantial price increases across the economy.Americans who pay no attention to politics now find they’re struggling to pay the bills.
2. He stations active military troops in every major American city to “protect” ICE agents who are going house to house, apartment to apartment, demanding proof of citizenship.Americans who haven’t before been affected by Trump’s police state are now aware of it, as many of their relatives or friends get caught up in the dragnet.
3. He builds a gulag of detention centers across America into which he sends Americans who criticize him, prior to revoking their citizenship and expelling them to prisons in foreign nations.Americans who haven’t been concerned about his actions against immigrants now find that he is silencing all criticism about him or his regime.
4. He announces that the Supreme Court is intruding on presidential powers and he is therefore not bound by the court.Americans who haven’t paid attention to his lawlessness are now forced to confront his constitutional coup.
Hence today’s Office Hours question: What actions by Trump and his lackeys do you believe will trigger such a massive upheaval in America that even Republican lawmakers who have supported him will join with Democrats to impeach and convict him? Where’s the tipping point?
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an 7 25
A network of former intelligence, military, and national security officials on Tuesday launched the Profiles in Cowardice Award and urged the public to vote for nominees who are "silent in the face of the country's descent into fascism," a march led by U.S. President Donald Trump.
"We are in a constitutional crisis," says the Eisenhower Media Network's (EMN) website for the award. "Trump is amassing power in the executive branch, ignoring Congress and the courts. Meanwhile, leaders who have sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution are sitting on their hands."
The new honor is the inverse of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, created by the late president's family "to recognize and celebrate the quality of political courage that he admired most." This year's recipient is Trump's former vice president, Mike Pence, "for putting his life and career on the line to ensure the constitutional transfer of presidential power on January 6, 2021," when Trump incited an insurrection and his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.
"We, the American people, are here to remind them of who they serve, and that it's time to do their constitutional duty by standing up to this administration and its authoritarian bent."
Nominees for the inaugural Profiles in Cowardice Award are former President George W. Bush, former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), retired Gens. David Petraeus and Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"The 'Profiles in Cowardice' Award was created to call out those weak souls who are failing to engage in efforts to keep our country from sleepwalking into fascism," said EMN's director, retired Maj. Gen. (ret.) Dennis Laich, in a statement.
"These leaders, both past and present, took an oath to 'support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,'" he noted. "Through their actions, or inaction, they are violating that oath. We, the American people, are here to remind them of who they serve, and that it's time to do their constitutional duty by standing up to this administration and its authoritarian bent."
The public can vote at ProfilesInCowardice.org until August 1, after which the award will be presented to the winner "at the most inconvenient time possible," according to the website.
The site lays out why people were nominated as "cowards." For example, "Bush has a long and storied history of cowardice" and "is solidifying his legacy" by retreating rather than serving as a leader in the Republican Party and standing up to Trump.
In Congress, "Mace is a one-woman culture war content machine—exactly how the military-industrial complex and mainstream media like it," the site continues. Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, "has chosen to push through Trump's agenda of unfettered militarism and confirm unqualified MAGA loyalists like Pete Hegseth," the defense secretary. Republicans on that committee also "rubber-stamped Pete Hegseth to cater to Trump and his blindly loyal MAGA cronies."
Among former military leaders, the site says, "Milley attempted to make a principled stand after the January 6th insurrection—but cowardice won out in the end," and Petraeus said at a conference that "the world was in for 'exciting times' under Trump."
"The Joint Chiefs of Staff are tasked with defending the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic," the site notes. "But as reckless U.S. military actions push the world closer to nuclear catastrophe, they've chosen silence over service. No resignations. No public warnings."
As for Blinken, who served under former President Joe Biden, "he ignored a flood of real-time reports detailing Israeli human rights violations—and now we know his public claims of 'working overtime' on cease-fires were outright lies," the site adds. "With American diplomacy in free fall, Blinken chose complicity and cover stories over truth and action."
Christian Sorenson, EMN's associate director, said that "it takes courage to do the right thing... It takes even more courage to do the right thing when the system itself fosters militarism and war profiteering."
"Targeting 'leaders' in the nation's capital, Profiles in Cowardice highlights the craven and the pushovers, as well as those who eagerly abet authoritarianism and nonstop war for personal and professional gain," Sorenson added. "Virtue and public service will arrive in D.C. one way or another. Profiles in Cowardice is part of that broader effort."
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an 725
President Donald Trump toured “Alligator Alcatraz” on Tuesday, the federal immigration detention facility in the Florida Everglades that boasts alligators as part of a natural escape barrier. Now, Trump is vowing to renovate the original Alcatraz, just off the coast of California, a former federal maximum security prison that he claims is, or will be, “surrounded by sharks.”
Before jetting off to Florida, Trump joked with reporters (video below) about detainees facing deportation who would have to navigate around the alligators in the Everglades should they try to escape.
Later in the day, Trump posted to his social media website about his new inspiration.
“Because of the Violence and Criminality I have seen due to the Open Border Policy of Sleepy Joe Biden, in particular allowing millions of people into our Country who shouldn’t be here, I wanted something representative to show how we fight back, and then, it happened,” the President wrote.
READ MORE: ‘This Is Fascism’: Trump Sparks Fury After Calling to Deport U.S. Citizens
“I saw a picture of ALCATRAZ looking so foreboding, and I said, ‘We’re going to look into renovating and rebuilding the famous ALCATRAZ Prison sitting high on the Bay, surrounded by sharks. What a symbol it is, and will be!’ Conceptual work started six months ago, and various prison development firms are looking at doing it with us. Still a little early, but lots of promise!”
CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere remarked, “the president says he’s looking into spending federal money, in part, to put sharks into the San Francisco Bay.”
If Trump actually wants Alcatraz to be surrounded by truly dangerous sharks, as Dovere notes he may have to bring them there. The ones currently surrounding the tiny island reportedly may not be especially dangerous, according to the Pacific Open Water Swim Co.
Other critics blasted Trump’s remarks.
Investment banker Evaristus Odinikaeze remarked, “So we’re rebuilding Alcatraz based on… a vibe?”
“Trump saw a moody picture of a defunct prison and decided that’s the future of immigration policy, locking up desperate families on a shark-surrounded island like a Bond villain with zoning permits,” he added. “This cruel and reckless governance is nothing but a cinematic cosplay with real human lives at stake.”
READ MORE: Trump Pushes Census Do-Over to Exclude Non-Citizens — and to Immediately Redistrict House
Another social media user wrote: “Trump wants to bring back Alcatraz. Not to house mob bosses or war criminals, but to make a ‘symbol’ out of locking up desperate migrants. Sharks and spectacle. This isn’t immigration policy. It’s a twisted cruelty straight out of a 1930s Germany. You don’t rebuild a prison for the camera unless cruelty is the point. That’s not ‘fighting back’, that’s feeding fear and hatred to your base and calling it leadership. History already wrote this playbook, and it ends in concentration camps, not justice. We are better than this, no?”
Watch the video below or at this link.
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no lnx
The danger of getting used to the unthinkable
Thom Hartmann June 18, 2025
It wasn’t all at once (although sometimes the last three months seem that way). Authoritarianism never is. It happens drip by drip, crisis by crisis, until people forget what normal even felt like.
This is how fascism seduces a nation: not by storming the gates, but by wearing down our ability to be outraged. And Donald Trump, more than any political figure in modern American history, has weaponized this steady march into moral and civic numbness.
Ten years ago, if you’d told Americans a U.S. president would attempt to overturn an election, openly praise dictators, take naked bribes from both foreign potentates and drug dealers, call the press the “enemy of the people,” cage children, pardon traitors and war criminals, and promise to act as a dictator on his first day in office, they’d have laughed. They would’ve told you, “That can’t happen here.”
But it did. And now the real danger is that we’re getting used to it.
Let’s not forget:
— When Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power in 2020, the political class gasped. Now it’s barely discussed.
— When he orchestrated an attempted coup on January 6, 2021, it was the top story in the world. Today, most Republicans call it “a protest” or a “tour” of Congress.
— Had any previous president invited an immigrant billionaire who promotes fascist memes to rip the guts out of the Social Security Administration and shut down USAID (handing our soft power to the Russians and Chinese) there would have been hell to pay. Now Elon Musk’s extraordinary damage to our government is barely discussed.
— When Trump began calling undocumented immigrants “animals” and labeling judges and prosecutors as “scum,” it horrified the media. Now it’s part of the daily churn.
— When a federal judge’s son was murdered by a Trump campaign volunteer it shocked America; now judges are routinely threatened and Republicans won’t even give the judiciary control over the US Marshall’s Service to protect them.
— When Trump praised Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán and suggested suspending the Constitution, the headlines flared, but then faded fast.
— When he arrested a Tufts University student for having co-written an op-ed in the student paper critical of Benjamin Netanyahu and threw her into prison for months, the country was appalled. Now he’s rolling out loyalty tests for civil servants and investigating the social media posts of American citizens returning to the country and nobody’s even discussing it.
— When ICE agents showed up in Portland in 2020 in unmarked vans without uniforms and their ID missing, kidnapping people off the streets without warrants, Americans and the media were shocked. Now seeing jackbooted thugs with masks covering their faces and refusing to identify themselves has become “normal.”
This is the playbook. Fascism doesn’t arrive with jackboots; it arrives with media and voter fatigue. As the political theorist Hannah Arendt warned, the very banality and ordinariness of evil is its greatest weapon.
Victor Klemperer, a Jew who converted to Lutheranism and chronicled the rise of Nazism in Germany, saw how average people learned to live with, to adapt to, to bear the unbearable. In his 1942 diary he wrote:
“Today over breakfast we talked about the extraordinary capacity of human beings to bear and become accustomed to things. The fantastic hideousness of our existence... and yet still hours of pleasure... and so we go on eking out a bare existence and go on hoping.”
Sebastian Haffner, another German observer, noted in Defying Hitler that even he, a staunch anti-Nazi, found himself one day saluting, wearing a uniform, and marching (and even secretly enjoying the feeling of authority associated with it). As the historian Robert Paxton wrote:
“To resist seemed pointless … finally, with astonishment, he observed himself raising his arm, fitted with a swastika armband, in the Nazi salute.”
And Milton Mayer, in They Thought They Were Free, described how good, decent Germans came to accept fascism. He was a Chicago reporter who, following World War II, went to Germany to interview “average Germans” to try to learn how such a terrible thing could have happened and, hopefully, thus prevent it from ever happening here.
“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security....”
He wrote about living there and the ten Germans he befriended: I found his description of a college professor to be the most poignant. As Mayer’s professor friend noted, and Mayer recorded in his book:
:{:{“This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter...}:
“To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it — please try to believe me — unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.”}:
In this conversation, Mayer’s friend suggests that he wasn’t making an excuse for not resisting the rise of the fascists, but was simply pointing out what happens when you keep your head down and just “do your job” without engaging in politics.
“You see,” Mayer’s friend continued, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next.“You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not? Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
“Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows…
“But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and the smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked — if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33.
“But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
“And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jew swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose.
“The world you live in — your nation, your people — is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays.
“But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God.”
Sound familiar?
Stephen Miller’s recent musing about suspending habeas corpus to lock up immigrants and even protestors without trial? That would’ve sparked emergency hearings a decade ago. Now it’s barely a blip.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a blueprint to purge civil servants and replace them with regime loyalists in complete defiance of the Pendelton Civil Service Act (and the reasons it came into being), should be setting off alarm bells. Instead, it’s getting the same treatment Trump gave COVID and his multiple defiances of the law and the courts: denial, deflection, delay.
It all comes back to normalization, as M. Gessen so brilliantly chronicles in The New York Times:
“And so just when we most need to act — while there is indeed room for action and some momentum to the resistance — we tend to be lulled into complacency by the sense of relief on the one hand and boredom on the other.“Think of the trajectory of the so-called travel ban during Trump’s first term. Its first iteration drew thousands into the streets. The courts blocked it. The second iteration didn’t attract nearly as much attention, and most people didn’t notice when the third iteration of the travel ban, which had hardly changed, went into effect. Now Trump’s administration is drafting a new travel ban that targets more than five times as many countries.”
When we stop being shocked, we stop reacting. And when we stop reacting, democracy dies.
But there is a path forward.
The antidote to normalization is resistance. Not just in voting booths, but in the streets, in courtrooms, in classrooms, in boardrooms, in pulpits, and at dinner tables.
Thucydides, who had one of the clearest eyes in history about the dangers faced by democracies, said:
“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet nonetheless go out to meet it.”
We must regain our vision and resensitize ourselves. We must reclaim our capacity to be appalled.
That means when Trump calls Democrats “vermin,” we don’t say, “That’s just Trump being Trump.” We say: “That’s fascist rhetoric.”
When he promises to use the military against American citizens and sends out immigration officers dressed up like soldiers at war, we don’t shrug; we organize.
When Project 2025 tries to turn federal agencies into tools of vengeance, we don’t wait and see. We fight back now.
When armed federal agents hide their identification and their faces the way terroristic police do in dictatorships as they kidnap people off our streets, we call them out.
History won’t forgive us for sleepwalking into tyranny. And our children won’t either.
This is the time to remember that democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires outrage. It demands vigilance. And sometimes, it needs us in the streets with our fists in the air and our boots on the pavement.
If we still believe in this republic, in its ideals, and in the sacred value of a free and fair society, then our answer to Trump’s authoritarianism must be more than words. It must be peaceful action.
Don’t get used to fascism.
Get loud. Get active. Get in its way.
NOW READ: White House has insiders convinced Trump is unfit for job: whistleblower
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AN 6 25
In his 2022 book "The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future," Canadian journalist/author Stephen Marche argued that the U.S. was on its way to becoming a far-right dictatorship. And his view of the United States' political environment hasn't grown any more optimistic since then.
Marche, in an op-ed published by The Guardian on June 16, points to the weekend of June 14-15 as a troubling demonstration of the "political violence" that is accelerating in the U.S. And he views President Donald Trump's military/birthday parade as an example of threatening imagery.
"Do not confuse Trump's debased parade with a joke or an innocent piece of entertainment," Marche warns. "The Trump parade took place in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Melissa Hortman, a Minnesota state representative. While it was underway, security forces were firing teargas on protesters in Los Angeles. Violence is coming to define American political life — spectacular violence, including the parade and real violence like the assassination of Hortman."
READ MORE:'We held our ground: CA health clinic describes close encounter with Trump's agents
Marche continues, "Political destabilization is arriving far too quickly to be perceived in its entirety. So much is happening so fast that it’s impossible to keep track of the decline. Increasingly, the question is becoming: when are we going to start calling this what it is?"
According to Marche, "American political life" is "moving away from discourse altogether."
"Don't like what the senators of the other party are saying? Handcuff them," Marche laments. "Don't like protestors? Send in the Marines. Don't like the makeup of the House of Representatives in Minnesota? Kill the top Democrat."
The Canadian journalist/author adds, "The political purpose of the parade, from Trump's point of view, was to demonstrate his mastery of the means of violence. He needed to show, to the military and to the American people both, that he can make the army do what he tells it, and established traditions and the rule of law will not alter his will. But the primary effect of the parade was to demonstrate an immense weakness, in Trump and in the American people."
READ MORE:Trump and the 2020 election: We’re witnessing the rewriting of history in the making
*Stephen Marche's full op-ed for The Guardian is available at this link.
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an 6 25
Navy vet shakes with rage over 'grotesque MAGA merchandise'
D. Earl Stephens June 14, 2025 }:}:
By now, you have most likely heard of the disgraceful appearance by Donald Trump at Fort Bragg in North Carolina on Tuesday.
The convicted felon’s remarks to Army personnel were partisan, incendiary, anti-American and belong in a dumpster and/or Mar-a-Lago, not a United States military base.
Except it was even worse than any of us thought ...
Thanks to some stellar reporting by Military.com, we are learning today that U.S. taxpayers essentially funded a vulgar MAGA rally at a U.S. Army facility.
The appearance by the president of the United States of America had NOTHING TO DO with the morale and good order of our troops and everything to do with HIM, as he stirred these young men and women into a partisan frenzy.
Things were so out of hand, that there were actually booths set up to sell grotesque MAGA merchandise and memorabilia to our troops. This didn’t just cross a line, it obliterated it, and was against myriad Defense Department regulations.
From military.com reporting:
substackcdn.com
I am admittedly shaking with rage as I type this, friends, because as a veteran I could have never conceived of something like this in my lifetime. These are the kinds of things that happen in other troubled countries — many of which WE actually have helped to liberate with our blood in the past.
I want to keep this missive brief, because I encourage you to read and share widely the comprehensive piece that I linked to above. Please do this.
As the retired managing editor of Stars and Stripes, the editorially independent newspaper that serves the troops and their families overseas, I want to commend the continued good work the folks at Military.com are continuing to do stateside. I assure you they are experts on the military, and wedded to top-notch journalism. Their work has never been more important as the U.S. slides toward fascism.
We are in the most precarious moment in our nation’s history since the beginning of the Civil War. Anybody who is not reporting it this way is dangerous, completely out of their depth, and should not be taken seriously.
Since day one of this anti-American administration I have been warning with some precision that we were heading toward this terrible juncture, and I wish nothing more than to report to you that I was wrong.
Turns out, I actually underestimated the pace of our descent into authoritarianism. Unless there is some significant pushback by our military, fellow citizens, the press, the Democrats and the reprehensible Republican Party, it is hard to see how we survive this.
Before signing out, I am again calling on our military leadership past and present, and fellow veterans everywhere, to speak out loudly against this ongoing attack THAT WE KNOW IS WRONG.
For now, stay strong, lean on each other, and call your political representatives (202-224-3121) to make your voices heard.
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AN 6 25
On Thursday, June 12, many Democrats — and quite a few Never Trump conservatives as well — were horrified when Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California) was physically removed from a briefing by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Although Padilla was not threatening in any way, he was thrown to the ground and handcuffed. Padilla, however, was released and is not facing any charges.
After the incident, Padilla commented that if MAGA Republicans are willing to treat a U.S. senator that way, imagine the fear that farm workers are feeling as the Trump Administration carries out aggressive deportation raids.
The incident with Padilla comes during a time of considerable tension in the United States, from the ongoing protests in Downtown Los Angeles to the military/birthday parade President Donald Trump is planning in Washington, DC on Saturday, June 14. Countless "No Kings" demonstrations in opposition to the parade and Trump's policies will be held in cities all over the United States.
READ MORE:'I have to go through hell': Trump complains about 'No Kings' protests during his parade
During a presidential historian Jon Meacham pointed to the treatment of Padilla as a prime example of why so many Americans are feeling a sense of "menace' during Trump's second presidency.
[VID]
Meacham told MSNBC's Willie Geist, his colleague Katty Kay and Never Trump conservative David French (who was also featured as a guest), "It is a real tactile sense of menace in the country…. The last time it was this bad — not to shake everybody's Friday morning even more than it's already shaken given what's going on — was the pre-Civil War period. You had an extraordinary amount of political violence. And we know how the 1850s turned out. And so, there are signs of a deeper condition within the country — which is a fraying, I believe, of a kind of consensus not about policy, but about politics not as total war, but as a mediation of differences."
The historian addressed fears of growing political unrest in the U.S.
Meacham told the panel, "That's what a democracy, that's what a constitutional system should be. And the prevalence of violence is politically useful for, in this case, the (Trump) Administration, and very dangerous."
READ MORE:'Scams, corruption and cover-ups': Republicans just declared 'open season for wealthy tax cheats'
*Watch the full video below or at this link.
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OMG 6 25
"Sen. Alex Padilla is forcibly removed from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's news conference in Los Angeles," NBC News, June 12, 2025
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MMA
Right-wing media call for “overwhelming force” and arrests in LA protests
Written by Chloe Simon & Reed McMaster
Published 06/12/25
Protests in Los Angeles have been ongoing as Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids continue to target migrant communities. In response, right-wing media have urged the Trump administration and law enforcement to crack down harder on protesters, called for Democratic officials to be arrested, and suggested the protesters were funded by outside groups.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham and others encouraged President Donald Trump to employ the Insurrection Act against protesters while Daily Wire host Matt Walsh said Trump should use “overwhelming force.” Fox host Sean Hannity and War Room host Steve Bannon have called for arrests of Democratic officials, and The Daily Caller blamed a “Pro-Chinese Communist Millionaire” for funding the protests.
Protests erupted after the Trump administration conducted ICE raids in LA and sent in troops
- In late May, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller demanded ICE officials begin targeting migrants at places of work, specifically noting stores like Home Depot and 7-Eleven. In an emergency meeting, Miller reportedly berated officials, according to three current and former immigration officials. One told The Washington Examiner, “They’ve been threatened, told they’re watching their emails and texts and Signals. That’s what is horrible about things right now. It’s a fearful environment. Everybody in leadership is afraid. … There’s no morale. Everybody is demoralized.” One official said Miller asked, “Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?” Washington Examiner, [5/30/25]
- Protests erupted in LA following ICE raids on businesses in the area on Friday, June 6, and have continued after the Trump administration sent in the National Guard and Marines. The protests spread from the garment district, where agents were first spotted searching for migrants, and have been “largely peaceful.” The New York Times, [6/11/25]
- CNN reports “Trump is building a political case to use American troops not in a foreign conflict, but at home, to bolster his mass deportation sweeps.”CNN described Trump’s strategy as “conjuring a narrative of invasion and insurrection,” adding: “He’s exaggerating disorder in the relatively contained unrest, looting and protests in Los Angeles. And he’s implying that, to keep the country safe, he’s ready to deploy soldiers across the country.” CNN, [6/11/25]
- ## Right-wing pundits urged Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, arrest protesters, or utilize “overwhelming force” to put down protests
- Fox News legal analyst Kerri Kupec Urbahn suggested the protests could give Trump a path to invoke the Insurrection Act. She claimed, “What the Trump administration could do, and there’s gonna be a lot of conversation about that publicly and I'm sure it’s happening right now behind the scenes, is invoking the Insurrection Act, which allows the United States government to send in military when there is an obstruction happening of federal law enforcement with or without the state's consent. So I think that may be where this is headed if this doesn't quiet down.” Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [6/9/25]
- In an op-ed for The Daily Wire, host Matt Walsh wrote, “The only solution, of course, is to treat them like the terrorists they are. Use overwhelming force to put down the riots.” He added: “Charge and convict the rioters and send them to prison for years. … Any illegal foreign invader involved in a riot should be shipped immediately to Guantanamo Bay.” The Daily Wire, [6/9/25]
- Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk suggested invoking the Insurrection Act. He claimed, “Los Angeles does not feel like a protest, what's happening there. It's an entire city that's declaring open rebellion to American sovereignty and authority.” Rumble, *The Charlie Kirk Show*, [6/9/25]
- Fox News host Laura Ingraham argued it would be Trump’s “right” and “obligation” to invoke the Insurrection Act if he feels the U.S. “is being threatened from within.” She said, “Now Democrats are pretending to be outraged about the prospect of Trump invoking the Insurrection Act. Which, of course, is his right. I’d say it's his obligation to do if — and it's his call — if he feels the United States is being threatened from within by violent, seditionary forces.” Fox News, *The Ingraham Angle*, [6/10/25]
- White nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes urged the Trump administration to use the protests “to federalize a National Guard and send it into the cities. Take over law enforcement. And above all else, use it to arrest thousands of people every day to be deported.” He also added, “If we're not doing that, then we're wasting our time here. It's just a big stunt.” Rumble, *America First with Nick Fuentes*, [6/10/25]
- Zach Hoyt, one of Twitch's most popular streamers who goes by “Asmongold,” called for the Trump administration to enact martial law and put protestors in “little camps.” Hoyt stated, “They just need to completely fucking, like, stomp this shit out.” He added, “Bring in the military, bring in the National Guard, fucking martial law, curfews — arrest all these people. Make the little camps where you can hold them in. Do the entire fucking thing.” Twitch, ZackRawrr, [6/9/25; The Atlantic, 4/25/25]
- ## Some commentators demanded Trump arrest Democratic politicians such as Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass
- War Roomhost Steve Bannon called for Bass’ arrest and accused officials of “getting in between ICE and other law enforcement.” He stated, “Right there, LAPD. The mayor is involved in this and having the stand down. She ought to be arrested today. Immediately.” Real Americas' Voice, *War Room*, [6/9/25]
- On his radio show, Fox News host Sean Hannity said Newsom “should be arrested for obstructing U.S. immigration law.” Premiere Radio Networks, *The Sean Hannity Show*, [6/9/25]
- In an interview with “border czar” Tom Homan, Trump ally Laura Loomer asked if he would criminally charge Democratic politicians like Newsom or Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for “obstructionist behavior.” Loomer: “Are you having any discussions with DHS, with the DOJ, or with the Trump administration to possibly bring criminal charges for harboring of illegal aliens by people like Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, or mayor Karen Bass, or people like Nancy Pelosi or Maxine Waters, because this would really fit the bill of what you described as obstructionist behavior. It's incitement, in my opinion. They are inciting violence by fanning the flames of violence against ICE officials and people like yourself. What qualifies as obstructionist behavior, and will we see any Democrat lawmakers or the governor himself be criminally charged?” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [6/9/25]
- ## Some right-wing figures also suggested the protesters were paid and funded by China, billionaires, or church groups
- Fox & Friendshost Brian Kilmeade alleged that “the opposition” in Los Angeles includes groups “supported by the state, the government, and the Chinese government.” Kilmeade later claimed that “they are getting paid.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [6/10/25]
- Bannon: “This thing is organized, it’s another huge thing financed by the Walton family and all these billionaires.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [6/10/25]
- On Bannon’s podcast, conservative personality Ben Bergquam claimed Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services are behind the LA protests. He stated, “As soon as you start going after the organizations that are behind this, whether that's Catholic Charities, or Lutheran Social Services, or any of these organizations. The communist groups in our country that are working intentionally to undermine this nation, the liberation theology pastors in our country, all of this, that's the root of it.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [6/9/25]
- The Daily Caller published an article headlined “Group Stoking Anti-ICE LA Riots Tied To Pro-Chinese Communist Millionaire.” The piece went on to allege that the “Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) spoke out in support of the mob rioting against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over the weekend, posted to X to call for more action on Sunday and created signs that protesters were seen carrying. The PSL shares personnel overlap with groups funded by American tech mogul Neville Singham, whom The New York Times described in August 2023 as sitting at the center of a ‘lavishly funded influence campaign’ promoting pro-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda.” The Daily Caller, [6/9/25]
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an 6 25
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem reportedly requested that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth grant law enforcement powers—including the authority to detain and arrest—to the thousands of military troops President Donald Trump deployed to Los Angeles to suppress anti-deportation protests. Such powers are typically barred under federal law, and experts warn the move marks another step toward the administration invoking the Insurrection Act.
In a memo, Secretary Noem alleged protestors included "invasive, violent, insurrectionist mobs that seek to protect invaders and military aged males belonging to identified foreign terrorist organizations, and who seek to prevent the deportation of criminal aliens,” as the San Francisco Chronicle first reported.
"The military is generally barred under federal laws from taking part in domestic law enforcement. Noem’s request may be a step toward the administration sidestepping those laws by invoking the Insurrection Act, two legal experts said in interviews," the Chronicle added.
RELATED: ‘Looking for an Excuse’: Trump Under Fire for Violent Slogan as He Sends Marines to LA
Syracuse University Professor of Law Emeritus William Banks told the Chronicle that Noem's move is "a grave escalation" that "may presage the invocation of the Insurrection Act.” Professor Banks is an internationally recognized scholar on constitutional law, national security and counterterrorism law, as well as emergency powers and government surveillance and privacy, according to his biography.
Secretary Noem also requested “drone surveillance support” and weapons and logistics assistance. President Donald Trump has ordered 700 U.S. Marines and federalized up to 4,000 National Guard troops to go to Los Angeles to help tamp down the protests.
The Associated Press on Monday suggested the protest area itself was small: “Protests over the president’s immigration crackdown spared much of Los Angeles from violence. Weekend clashes swept through several downtown blocks and a handful of other places.”
Other experts weighed in as well.
READ MORE: House Republicans Quietly Slip Anti-LGBTQ ‘Religious Freedom’ Clause Into Funding Bill
Vermont Law and Graduate School professor emeritus Stephen Dycus, an expert in national security law and the Insurrection Act, told the Chronicle that "this could be viewed as a preparation for invoking the Insurrection Act, or it could be viewed as part of a larger effort to frighten people who otherwise would exercise their first amendment guarantee of free speech and protest.”
California Democratic state Senator Tom Umberg, a retired Army colonel and JAG officer, "said he found the letter’s requests alarming."
“It looks like a preparation for a military assault,” Umberg said. “This looks like a subterfuge to create some sort of rationale for some sort of invocation of the Insurrection Act.”
Attorney Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration expert and senior fellow at the American Immigration Council explained that the "reason that there is civil unrest in multiple cities throughout the country is because the Trump administration ordered ICE to engage in near-indiscriminate arrests, rounding up otherwise law-abiding people with no criminal records."
Political scientist Dr. Norman Ornstein, a contributing editor for the Atlantic, wrote, "this is a prelude to invoking the insurrection act and declaring martial law."
READ MORE: ‘Completely Obliterated’: Trump Claims LA Saved From Ruin by His National Guard Action
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scot g kara pivot US brkup into econ zones 6/ 10/ 25
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AHA STRICT FR MACHO BS FASCISM
ice PROTESTS LA
mma
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- ### OutKick's Dan Dakich says Simone Biles “showed her stupidity” by defending trans inclusion in sports
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AN 6 25
President Donald Trump's critics, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, are deeply troubled by his response to the tense protests that are rocking Downtown L.A. in response to immigration raids being carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.
Trump ordered 2000 California National Guardian troops to the area, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is talking about sending in 500 U.S. Marines. According to Trump's critics, he is crossing a dangerous line by federalizing National Guard troops — whose deployment to Downtown L.A., they argue, should only be ordered by Newsom if he decides it is necessary.
New York Times national security reporter Helene Cooper discussed the [VID] volatile situation during a expressing fears that things could turn ugly if Trump uses the military against civilians.
READ MORE:'Can't you just shoot them?' Inside Trump's threat to deal with 'radical left thugs' in America
During his first presidency, Cooper noted, traditional conservatives in the White House would push back against his worst ideas—whereas now, he is surrounded by loyalists who encourage him.
Cooper told "Morning" host Mika Brzezinski, "I'm a little worried this is not heading anywhere good…. President Trump doesn't have (former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman) Mark Milley or (Defense Secretary) Mark Esper or any of the people from his previous administration who sort of acted as the brakes on this. Pete Hegseth…. sort of made up that Marines are on high alert, which is not necessarily a formal thing. He tweeted that on Saturday, (June 7) and then doubled down on Sunday, saying Marines are standing by."
The Times reporter continued, "We know that to put active-duty troops on the streets…. President Trump would have to — most likely have to — invoke the Insurrection Act, which to my knowledge, he has not done yet."
During the interview, Cooper drew a distinction between the "political Pentagon" and Trump loyalists like Hegseth and the "military people and career Pentagon."
READ MORE:Trump's latest move is a danger to all of us
Cooper told Brzezinski, "The Pentagon was sort of scrambling last night to figure out what to do. The last thing they want is active- duty troops taking on protesters on American streets. They fought mightily against that during the George Floyd protests…. There's a very real worry, again, among the career and professional military of this sort of look that we are militarizing the country…. If you get to the point where American troops are being asked or tasked with shooting protesters, you will then see this discomfort manufacture in public."
Cooper noted that Los Angeles is heavily Latino and that the military is also racially diverse.
Cooper told Brzezinski, "Right now, the orders are lawful. Right now, they have not been asked to do anything that I can see that could be interpreted as an unlawful order, but I think things could come to a head pretty quickly. You talk about the demographic demographics of Los Angeles — well, the demographic of the American military is pretty diverse, despite all of Pete Hegseth's attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion and DEI and so-called woke policies. You're looking at one of the most, if not the most diverse, institutions that America has. So, you know, there's going to be a lot of conflict there when you start dragging troops who are not prepared to do law enforcement, domestic law enforcement on the streets of America into this."
READ MORE:'It's pathetic': Right-wing red state Republicans are being ripped apart — by football
*Watch the full video below or at this link.
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AN 6 25
Salon Senior writer Chauncey Devega warns the authoritarian tide is “rising very quickly in America,” with President Donald Trump threatening to use his "big beautiful bill" as a weapon or revenge against his enemies, namely the Democratic Party.
During a recent trip to Capitol Hill to whip up support for his “big beautiful” budget bill, the president admitted to reporters that “We're going to make a couple of tweaks….I mean, we don't want to benefit Democrat governors.”
“… We want to help all the states, but we have governors that are from the Democrat [sic] party, let's say New York, Illinois, big ones, and let's say Gavin 'Newscum,' who's done a horrible job in California. We want to benefit Republicans. They are the ones that are going to make America great again….The Democrats are destroying our country," Trump said.
READ MORE: 'Can't you just shoot them?' Inside Trump's threat to deal with 'radical left thugs' in America
Devega points out presidents didn’t do this before Trump because a two-party system is essential to democracy. But last week Trump escalated threats to terminate federal funding from the state of California, forgetting that “Democrat-led blue states contribute more money to the federal government in terms of tax dollars and other resources than Republican-led red parts of the country,” as Devega explains.
When Governor Gavin Newsom responded by suggesting California could retaliate by cutting off tax payments from the state to the federal government, Trump’s administration went ballistic. United States Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent warned Newsom that he would be guilty of “criminal tax evasion” over such a move.
But this escalation is just the beginning for our “first elected autocrat and aspiring dictator,” Devega says. In addition to series of “Truth Social propaganda platform” posts where Devega says :{Trump shared conspiracy theories and menacing images of retaliation against judges who stymied his immigration policies, the administration is also harassing Democratic members of Congress with arrest.}:
Department of Homeland Security police recently handcuffed an aide to U.S. Rep. Representative Jerry Nadler, (D-N.Y.), which makes the second time in less than a month the Trump administration has used law enforcement to directly target Congress. And for the second time in less than a month, Congress doesn’t have the desire or ability to defend itself.
READ MORE: 'I didn’t vote for this': Pro-Trump Appalachians are 'living on the edge'
Atlantic columnist David Graham writes: “The Constitution’s checks and balances are premised on each branch wantingto protect its powers. What happens if that’s not the case?”
Republicans are largely unwilling to stand up to Trump, Graham argues, while Democrats are incapable of exerting formal or informal political power.
With Trump announcing he was federalizing the California National Guard—against the wishes of Gov. Newsom—after ICE raids over the weekend, the authoritarian tide is rising, Devega warns. But the American people and their leaders “had numerous opportunities to ‘drown-proof’ their democracy at the ballot box.”
They also had ample time to deal with the problem through the rule of law and by addressing the deep societal problems that birthed Trumpism, MAGA, authoritarian populism and the larger antidemocracy movement. Instead, he says they put “a man who announced he would be a ‘dictator on day one’ back” in the White House.
READ MORE:How this horrid show ends
Read the full Salon report at this link.
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ref gothamist
In a dramatic incident captured on video, U.S. Department of Homeland Security police Wednesday handcuffed one of Rep. Jerry Nadler aides in the congressmember's Manhattan office, which is in the same federal office building as an immigration courthouse.
In the video, which was shared with Gothamist and filmed by a person who was monitoring activity in immigration court, DHS officers entered Nadler’s district office and accused staff members of “harboring rioters.” A Nadler staffer is seen crying and being handcuffed. Another officer is at a door trying to enter a private area of the office while a staffer asks for a warrant.
DHS later said in a statement that “one individual” — the woman seen being handcuffed — had blocked police from performing a security check they intended to do based on information there were protesters in the lawmaker’s office. Later that day, protesters gathered outside of the federal building, demonstrating against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. [vid]
The staff member was not arrested and not charged with any crime, both Nadler's office and a DHS spokesperson confirmed. In a brief telephone interview, the staffer who'd been handcuffed said that “everything resolved” and declined to comment further.
Initially, Nadler’s office would not comment on what led up to the chaotic incident. But after Gothamist broke the story Friday, the congressman posted a statement on X.
“While no arrests were made and the situation was quickly deescalated, I am alarmed by the aggressive and heavy-handed tactics DHS is employing in New York City and across the country," the statement said. "The decision to enter a congressional office and detain a staff member demonstrates a deeply troubling disregard for proper legal boundaries."
Two people who were at the courthouse to monitor ICE activity said the confrontation came after ICE officers threatened to arrest them and other advocates, and a Nadler staffer invited the advocates inside.
Nadler’s office is on the sixth floor in the same Varick Street building as federal immigration court, which is on the fifth floor. The building also houses DHS and other federal offices.
{Last week, Robert Gottheim, Nadler’s co-chief of staff, confirmed there was no arrest but otherwise declined to comment on the unusual event that resulted in federal agents entering the office of a Democratic member of Congress, accusing office staffers of criminal wrongdoing and handcuffing a staffer.}:
The incident comes at a time of heightened tension between Democratic lawmakers and the executive branch over federal immigration enforcement, including Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Rep. LaMonica McIver arrests earlier this month in connection with protests outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention center in Newark.
There have been an increasing number of arrests at immigration courthouses across the country in recent days. The Trump administration, promising the largest deportation effort in the nation’s history, announced in January it would no longer treat venues such as courthouses and schools as “protected” sites off-limits to immigration enforcement.
At another immigration courthouse in the city, at 290 Broadway, ICE officers last week arrested a 20-year-old Bronx high school student after an immigration judge dismissed the student’s pending deportation case. The student, from Venezuela, is the first New York City public school student to be detained by ICE during Trump’s second term, according to the city education department.
Hours after the confrontation involving the Nadler staffers and DHS police, around 6:30 p.m., police arrested nearly two dozen demonstrators they allege blocked traffic outside the building, an NYPD spokesperson said.
In the demonstration, mutual aid volunteers assisting immigrants tried to block ICE vans transporting detained immigrants from leaving the building, according to organizers. Eighteen protesters were issued criminal summons, and five people were arrested and charged, the NYPD spokesperson said.
In the video of the confrontation at Nadler’s office, the handcuffed staff member says that there were constituents present in the office for a meeting. Those constituents later identified themselves in interviews with Gothamist as immigrant rights advocates monitoring activities in the building, including outside the federal immigration courtrooms.
The video does not capture any interactions between Nadler’s staff and DHS police before the staffer was handcuffed. But two advocates who were present as the events unfolded described officers questioning people as they left immigration court and threatening advocates as they intervened. Both people asked Gothamist not to use their names, saying they fear retaliation by the federal government.
The advocates said they were outside an immigration courtroom where plainclothes ICE officers were questioning people as they were leaving their court appearances. The advocates said they were advising the immigrants of their rights. The officers, in turn, threatened the advocates with arrest for loitering, according to the two advocates who spoke with Gothamist.
According to the two advocates, ICE officers then arrested one of the advocates in the courthouse; DHS did not respond to further inquiries about what transpired. Then, the two advocates said, a Nadler staffer invited them and a third advocate up to the lawmaker’s office, which is on the floor above the courthouse. They were there for about 20 minutes before the DHS police entered, the two advocates said.
An officer is heard in the video of the encounter claiming the handcuffed Nadler aide, seen crying, had pushed a DHS officer. Another officer is also seen entering an area of the lawmaker’s office, over the objections of a Nadler aide, who asked for a warrant before acceding to the demand.
The advocates said they did not witness any staff member pushing a DHS officer. They said the aide who was handcuffed had declined the officer entry to a more private part of the office. The courthouse as well as the government offices are generally open to the public.
The video shows the handcuffed staff member asking officers, “What’s your problem?” She adds, without further clarifying, “They’re here for a meeting. They’re constituents.”
A DHS officer urged her, “Do not resist. Stop resisting.”
The DHS statement on Thursday made no mention of Nadler’s office harboring rioters, as the DHS officer claims in the video. Thursday’s statement said that DHS officers were responding to information that protesters were inside Nadler’s office. Out of concern for Nadler’s employees, the statement said, the officers went to the lawmaker’s office “to ensure the safety and wellbeing of those present.”
The statement said the officers “were granted entry and encountered four individuals,” but did not specify who the four were. After stating their intent to conduct a “security check,” the statement said, one of the individuals became “confrontational and physically blocked” access to the office and had to be detained in the hallway in the federal building. But the statement says that no arrests were made and all “were released without further incident.”
*Ben Feuerherd contributed reporting.
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WHY TON OF BLANKS SPACES // 6?