ACTIV SUPPRESS 5 825
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MERRI OK
SEE DOJ 3 BONDI PIRRO
SEE WATCHLIST DATABASE
SEE RENEE GOOD MINNE --> SPIKE UP? EVANG?
SEE CRIMINALIZATION
SEE PPL LOSE 1ST AMEND EG VIDEO COPS/ICE 2ND AMEND?!
SEE CRC WH ANTIFA MTG 10 25 TERROR 3 BS
SEE AI 3 DATA CTR
SEE GAZA PALESTINE STUDENT SUPPRESS
SEE PAID PROTESTOR SOROS AGITATOR
BENNY 1 26 PRETTI AGITATOR reboot, meld w paid protestor soros BS // antifa 4 terror 3 BS
BANNON
violent rhet?
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NeEDS IMPORT from main
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DN? 10 22? 26
3 SPKR PROT ~ ai Thrown to gd, injured; not allowed to spk until after the vote
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Political showdown in NC as HOAs ban election signs
an 10 26
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Trump says protesters would vote for him if their parents 'slap 'em around'
an 10 26
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DN 9 26 1 MIN TO SPK; NOT GAZA BC BUDGET MTG?
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an 7 26
A Colorado-based storm chaser was visited by the FBI after cracking a joke about introducing algae spores into the "paint" a Virginia company used on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Patrick Pineda, a photographer of severe weather, motion designer and video game developer, cracked a joke on social media that was so scientifically absurd, he presumably assumed his audience would know it was a joke. The FBI did not.
"I am the leftist who put algae in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. This plan was months in the making. I introduced spores into the paint used by the contractors who repainted the pool. It was me the whole time," said Pineda, in a since-deleted BlueSky post.
Right Wash, a professional render cleaning service, has a section on its website that explains that algae in a swimming pool can be eliminated by painting over it. It isn't the "best" solution for a number of reasons, it explains, but paint can eliminate an algae problem. But the pool wasn't merely painted.
In a June release, Rhino Linings claimed it was the company that provided an epoxy primer, elastomeric waterproofing and a protective finish coating, tinted American Flag Blue.
"This project demonstrates how modern protective coating systems can help extend the lifespan of aging infrastructure while reducing maintenance requirements and preserving public spaces for future generations," the company said.
To cure, the epoxy needs a low-moisture and chemically hostile surface to adhere. Living organisms like algae need water, light, and nutrients to grow, Florida Atlantic University explains. It simply can't grow in paint, much less the chemicals used for the pricey lining used on the Reflecting Pool.
A swimming pool expert explained that keeping algae out of the reflecting pool will be impossible unless the government uses strong chemicals, which could significantly damage the new liner.
After coming into office, President Donald Trump appointed Kash Patel to lead the FBI. Among his first actions was to fire scores of experienced directors, agents, and other staff, the *New York Times*reported. It has left the department short-staffed. PBS News explained that this has left both the Justice Department and the FBI in a tough spot as it desperately tries to rebuild.
According to Forbes, leaders are now "easing hiring requirements and accelerating recruitment in ways that some current and former officials see as a lowering of long-accepted standards." The report also said that some current and former agents "say the FBI is promoting into positions of leadership employees with less experience than would be customary for the jobs."
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NEW AN 7 26
A new report has revealed that top Florida officials had a 77-year-old Army veteran investigated for mailing a postcard to the state's chief financial officer that said nothing but "You lack values."
According to Reason, “James O'Gara, a resident of Largo, Florida, was interviewed by detectives from the criminal division of the Florida Department of Financial Services (DFS) last September after he mailed the postcard to Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia's office. The police encounter led to accusations of First Amendment retaliation and government bullying by Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration… An audio recording of detectives' interview with O'Gara shows that they didn't think there was anything wrong with his statement and quickly closed their investigation.”
But when word of the incident began to spread, so did O’Gara’s message. Soon, Ingoglia's office received dozens of postcards from across the country bearing the message: "You lack values."
The investigation was launched on September 15, 2025, when the then-director of the Criminal Investigations Division, Simon Blank, emailed the division's assistant director and lieutenant colonel, saying, “The attached was mailed to the CFO. Can you have someone look into the name and do a threat assessment?" Two weeks later, Lt. Col. James Evangelina wrote to Darrell Wilson, the former chief of the division's Bureau of Fire, Arson and Explosives Investigations, “I'd like a member of our team to arrange a meeting with the individual mentioned to discuss potential avenues for assistance. Additionally, if possible, please verify the sender's identity and evaluate any potential threat level associated with the information provided."
Two detectives visited O’Gara a few days later, telling him, “Look, you didn't do anything wrong. I understand that right now our country's in a very interesting position politically. Everything's polarized and whatnot."
"I have a right to voice my opinion, and I will do so all the more reciprocally because they sent you guys out," said O'Gara.
"I completely support the First Amendment, 100 percent,” the detective replied. “Just being how things are polarized right now politically, anything that's going on with anybody disagreeing with whatever, they're having us check things, stuff like that."
According to Reason, “O'Gara said he'd sent 200 similar postcards to other politicians but had never had any problems before. The detectives remained courteous throughout the interview, comparing Army service records with O'Gara and repeating several times during the conversation that they hadn't seen a threat in his postcard.”
"Yeah, like I said, they're making us check up on things," said one detective. "I looked at your postcard and was like, you didn't do anything wrong."
"I'm pissed that they sent you here," noted O'Gara. "I know it's not your fault. This is totally inappropriate, totally inappropriate."
The detectives left then interviewed two of his neighbors, asking about his behavior. In their report, they said they found “no credible threat,” noting O’Gara’s “displeasure” at being investigated, and concluding, “As a result, he will be sending further correspondence to express his 1st amendment right. He has no intention on escalating to actual threats and will continue to let the CFO know this is wrong."
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nspm 7
Jun 25, 2026 MPU
We Uncovered A New Government Watchlist. Are You Their Next Target?
You could end up on a watchlist for fighting back in the class war. The feds now consider opposition to data centers, inequality, and Big Tech as potential domestic terrorism. We uncovered how the FBI is colluding with corporate America to surveil ordinary Americans.
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PRAIRIELAND 100 YRS
30 YRS CONSPIR FOR MOVING BOX OF ZINES, NOT AT NOISE PROTEST; WIFE GOT YEARS FOR ASKING TO MOVE
TRESSPass and --- can be basis in future
ANTIFA TERROR
Prairieland Nine: Texas ICE Protesters Get Up to 100 Years in Prison as Trump Targets Anti-Fascists
Jun 25, 2026 Latest Shows
:{A group of anti-ICE protesters in Texas were sentenced to 30 to 100 years in jail on Tuesday, after federal prosecutors accused them of being an "antifa terror cell." The activists attended a protest outside the Prairieland ICE jail in Alvarado, Texas, on July 4 of last year, during which fireworks were set off and a police officer was shot and wounded. All nine defendants were found guilty after being tried before a federal judge in Texas.
Matt Sledge, political reporter for The Intercept, warns that "we just have to watch for this playbook to be applied elsewhere." "Now anyone engaged in basic protests with the wrong political beliefs can be labeled a domestic terrorist, when they have no intention of violence, not engaged in any violence, not interested in any violence," says Sufia Khalid, deputy director of the National Security Criminal Defense Center, who represents one of the Prairieland defendants.}:}:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RafuYcUolY4
THOM 6 22 26
15 PL MINNE IMPEDE CONSPIR
DANIEL ROSEN GIVES AS REASON FOR ARREST
DAVID BEARD CATO ONLY 1 CASE KNOCKED NOTEBK OUT OF HAND OF ICE
RELIG STUD MCCALLISTER COLLEGE DAVD KING MIS ATTR BY TRUMP
WE NEED TO BECOME UNGOVERNABLE
SUBST EMOT DISTRESS OF ICE AGENT
LIVES OF OTHERS PUTIN SILENCE
The Knock on the Door Has Arrived... - YouTube
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Trump's DOJ Spreads Fear With ANTIFA Charges | Ken Klippenstein | TMR - YouTube
nspm 7
Trump's DOJ Spreads Fear With ANTIFA Charges | Ken Klippenstein | TMR
Jun 18, 2026 The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder
Emma Vigeland welcomes Ken Klippenstein, an independent journalist covering security and US politics at KlipNews, discussing the 15 anti-ICE activists indicted by the Justice Department. More from Ken: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/ Watch the Majority Report live Monday–Friday at 12pm EST on YouTube or http://www.Majority.fm To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. You can use this number to connect with either the US Senate or the House of Representatives. Send us IM messages during the live-stream with our free Majority Report App: http://majority.fm/app Subscribe to MR's daily AM Quickie newsletter: https://am-quickie.ghost.io
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AN 6 26
President Donald Trump is closely aligned with Silicon Valley oligarchs, from directly receiving their largesse in campaign donations to aggressively pushing their AI technology on Americans. Yet a recent report in The Hill reveals that, despite these ties, some of those same oligarchs feel awkward about their relationship with the president.
“While several tech leaders are making their relations — both good and bad — with the president public, [OpenAI CEO Sam] Altman has largely kept quiet about the president and the extent of his relationship with him,” reported The Hill's Miranda Nazzaro on Sunday. “It comes as OpenAI prepares an initial public offering, and Altman faces his own blowback from the anti-AI movement.”
Similarly X CEO Elon Musk, despite relying on Trump for government contracts, had a public falling out with the president after clashing over spending bills and blame for political failures. Eventually the two reconciled, with each walking back their negative statements about the other, and Nazzaro noted that “in the largest and latest sign of reconciliation, Musk was one of two executives aboard Air Force One with Trump for the China state visit earlier this month."
Dario Amodei, a founder of Anthropic, wound up on Trump’s bad side when he refused to allow his AI to break ethical codes in its work with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and his Pentagon. Amodei even later said, in a memo leaked by the Trump administration, that he believed Trump had targeted him because Anthropic neither donated to his campaign nor engaged in “dictator-style” praise of Trump, as did many of his competitors. Amodei later apologized to investors for his split with Trump and has since reconciled with the president, remaining in the loop on AI policy.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos started out as anti-Trump, particularly through his leadership of The Washington Post during his first term, but later revealed himself as pro-Trump when he killed an op-ed supporting Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. Bezos has subsequently gone out of his way to praise Trump, earlier this month describing Trump’s second term as “more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term.”
He later told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that “Trump has lots of good ideas. He’s been right about a lot of things. You have to give him credit where credit is due.”
Nazzaro also talks about Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, both of whom have also cultivated ties with Trump to advance their business interests. By contrast venture capitalist David Sacks is one of Trump's closest AI advisers, and is widely regarded as pushing Trump to support the AI CEOs agenda.
Indeed, as protests against AI have surged, Trump has worked toward making it illegal to protest the development of AI.
“In the wake of attacks on CEOs, a nationwide protest movement targeting data centers, and increasing concerns about AI job replacement, federal intelligence agencies and domestic law enforcement are circulating reports with a new domestic target in mind: anti-technology extremists,” wrote Wired's Daniel Boguslaw on Sunday. “More than 1,000 pages of unpublished reports from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and fusion centers obtained by WIRED show a national shift taking place to surveil this new and worryingly broad category of people and activities deemed an emerging threat.”
Despite the attempts to suppress anti-AI sentiment, AI proponents like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield and music executive Scott Borchetta were roundly booed when they promoted AI during college commencement speeches. Semafor recently reported that anti-AI sentiment in America is overwhelming, suggesting that the college students’ hostility mirrors that of the American public at large.
“Polls show that 70% of Americans think AI is moving too fast, over 50% have negative views of it, and just 18% of young people say they feel hopeful about it,” Semafor reported. “Partly, they are turned off by AI’s upending of the job market. ‘Every other day, a new AI agent is being released in the market,’ said Vaishali Hireraddi, 23, a University of California, Davis, graduate student who’s applied to 500 jobs so far. ‘What am I doing with my life?’”
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ACTIV SUPPR HUFFPO 5 26
Man Loses Global Entry After Watching Immigration Agents | HuffPost Latest News
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an 5 26
A Canadian critic of President Donald Trump is fighting to block the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from obtaining their personal and location information from Google.
A press release from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that DHS issued an "administrative demand" after "John Doe" posted criticisms of the death of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti. The individuals were killed earlier this year by federal officers who shot them during the so-called "Operation Metro Surge," in which agents were sent into Minneapolis and faced protests.
Doe's posts on X received over 100,000 views. The X account is connected to a Google account, which identifies who the individual is. However, he isn't a U.S. resident and hasn't even been in the U.S. for over a decade.
Google told the man that it can't hold out forever, but it's raising questions about the Trump administration using the power of the federal government to go after critics.
The ACLU’s complaint said that the demand for information is “a transparent gambit to chill speech the government doesn’t like.”
“I have long admired the United States for its commitment to free speech,”the plaintiff said. “Never in a million years did I think that, after criticizing the US government, I would be targeted with a summons seeking to find out who I am, where I live, where I go and what I read online.”
The ACLU's senior staff attorney, Michael Perloff, attacked the DHS effort, saying that "consequences of its potential release go beyond one individual, whether they are in the United States or elsewhere.”
Trump and his allies are known for doxing individuals, but it doesn't scare them into compliance. It has happened to federal judges who rule against the Trump administration. In one case, Trump pal Rudy Giuliani targeted two Fulton County, GA vote counters who faced death threats and harassment. They won a lawsuit, forcing Giuliani to pay millions in damages.
So far, DHS has demanded information on individuals from Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta, the New York Times reported in February, citing four people who are aware of the requests. In each case, the requests were sent directly to the tech companies, and there was no court order granting a warrant. In the past, DHS and ICE have been known to use what's called "Administrative subpoenas," which are simply written up by the departments and not issued by a court.
*The Washington Post* reported earlier this year that DHS is increasingly relying on the use of administrative subpoenas to get such personal information from companies. The report cited former officials and experts who estimate there have been thousands, possibly even tens of thousands of these kinds of subpoenas that are approved by mid-level staff who have no public accountability.
One such subpoena was issued for an individual who emailed an ICE attorney asking that they "[a]pply principles of common sense and decency" in immigration cases. The individual who sent the email filed a motion to quash, saying that the administrative subpoena was motivated by his speech and violated his First Amendment rights.
“Not satisfied with trying to suppress speech at home, the Trump administration is now targeting dissenters abroad,” the ACLU's Perloff said of the latest case of the Canadian.
Google said it requires that government requests not be overly broad.
“When we receive a subpoena, our review process is designed to protect user privacy while meeting our legal obligations,” a spokesperson told CBC News. “We inform users when their accounts have been subpoenaed, unless under legal order not to.”
Google didn't comment on whether it requires the subpoenas to come from a court or whether it accepts the made-up subpoenas issued by DHS.
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an 5 26
After 37-year-old Alex Pretti — an intensive care nurse for the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) — was fatally shot by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in Minneapolis on January 24, protests were held not only in that city, but in many other U.S. cities as well. One of them was Augusta, Georgia, where VA recreational therapist Becky Halioua was among the demonstrators.
Now, CNN's Brian Todd is reporting that Halioua was the subject of a VA internal investigation because of her involvement in those protests.
"Her supervisor informed her that an internal probe had been launched into whether she violated agency rules regarding employee interviews with the news media — a probe that could result in disciplinary action," Todd explains in an article published on May 5. "Halioua is not alone, several sources familiar with the matter told CNN. At least three other VA employees have been investigated for their interactions with the press, including at least one other related to Alex Pretti, according to one of the sources."
Todd adds, "As part of her investigation, Halioua says investigators e-mailed her photos of herself at the vigil from news coverage, which also included a brief interaction with a local newspaper. Someone had drawn a line around her image in some photographs, labeled with her name."
Halioua told CNN, "It really gave me an uneasy feeling," adding that seeing her face circled in photos of protests seemed "very stalker-like."
Pretti's death followed the fatal shooting of another Minneapolis resident, Renée Good, by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (ICE) agents on January 7.
"In the case of the VA workers," Todd notes, "the interviews touched on an issue that sparked a national discussion. Pretti's killing, along with that of another protester, Renee Good, became political flashpoints in debates over immigration enforcement and free speech following a surge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Minneapolis in January. Within hours of their deaths, officials from the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, claimed, without evidence, that Pretti and Good were domestic terrorists, sparking outrage. Protests and vigils, like the one Halioua attended, popped up across the country."
The union National Nurses United, which helped organize the vigil for Pretti that Halioua attended, told CNN, "It is despicable and immoral to come after any federal employee who participates in a vigil for a fellow worker."
Halioua described the probe of her as a "scare tactic," telling CNN, "I think that it is a method really to silence the employees with the loudest voices."
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DHS? BUYS LESS LETHAL INTERCEPT
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A Redditor Criticized ICE. Trump Is Trying to Unmask Them by Dragging the Company to a Secret Grand Jury.
Ryan Devereaux
An ICE summons to get the user’s identity failed. Advocates worry the move to a grand jury signals an escalation of the war on dissent.
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ALSO NOEM PLANE?
AN 3 26
The Wall Street Journal— hardly an outpost of left-wing propaganda — reported yesterday on the results of an investigation conducted by the Journal’sHannah Critchfield and her team.
I’m summarizing it below because it deserves your attention.
Critchfield and her team found that 279 people have been accused online by the Trump administration of assaulting federal ICE and Border Patrol agents, and more than half of these people — 64 percent — are American citizens.
Of the 181 American citizens that the Trump administration has accused of attacking federal ICE and Border Patrol officers, close to half have never been charged, and none have been convicted at trial. But the public charges alone have caused them significant harm.
The investigation
The Journal’s team analyzed more than 200 videos associated with allegations of assault against ICE and Border Patrol agents, using both police body camera footage and bystander recordings from social media. Many of the videos cast doubt on the federal government’s claims that agents were assaulted.
The Journal also reviewed more than 100,000 posts on X, posts made in the last year by accounts linked to government agencies and senior government officials.
Each time the government identified a person on a post, theJournal tracked that case through the legal system to see what charges were brought, under what statute, whether the charges were later modified, and what happened to the person in the case.
One of the cases they investigated was that of Sydney Lori Reid, a 44-year-old veterinary assistant in D.C. and a U.S. citizen.
In July, Reid went to a jail to witness an immigration enforcement action. Federal officers had gone there to arrest two migrant men, and Reid said she felt a duty to document it.
As Reid began videotaping, an agent grabbed her and pinned her to a wall. Reid was then surrounded by several federal law enforcement officials. One of them was an FBI agent wearing a face covering and an FBI vest. Two others were ICE officers, dressed in plain clothes, plaid shirts, and khaki pants.
Reid was handcuffed and told she was being arrested for interfering with their operation. Videos reviewed by Critchfield and her team cast doubt on the agents’ claims.
Reid was then placed in a government vehicle and transferred to federal custody. Like many American citizens who wind up in the crosshairs of DHS, she was accused of assault.
The government alleges she assaulted an FBI agent on the basis of scrapes on the agent’s hands, but the scrapes occurred in the process of putting handcuffs on Reid.
The government later charged Reid with felony assault of a federal official, a charge punishable with up to 20 years in prison — a serious federal charge that’s being applied far more broadly now than at any time in recent history.
When Reid was being arrested, she dropped her phone, but the phone was still recording. An agent picked up the phone and put it into the same vehicle that she was riding in on her way to detention.
One officer says: “We’re at the D.C. jail. We’re at the D.C. jail. We have an agitator in custody for ...”
Reid was handcuffed in the backseat. You can hear agents going back and forth about exactly how Reid had assaulted them. First, it was a raised knee, then an elbow.
Another officer: “Yeah, it appeared that there was an elbow that was ... When she was resisting, but she definitely interfered. So we have interfering and I’m going to get ...”
One of the ICE agents called her a stupid female as he was talking to a colleague: “Hey brother, are you good? I have to return to 1D and process this stupid female now that I f------ don’t want to process her.”
Reid was held by federal authorities for roughly two days. She wasn’t allowed to make a phone call during that time.
In the aftermath of her arrest, prosecutors tried to indict her, but that needed to be done through a grand jury, and the grand jury declined to indict her. They tried again before another grand jury, which also declined to indict her. Then they went back to a third grand jury, which declined to indict her.
This is almost unheard of. It showed both the resistance from the public to charge her based on the evidence and the government’s determination to bring charges in this case.
Prosecutors ultimately charged Reid with misdemeanor assault of an officer, a lesser offense that doesn’t require going through a grand jury. Reid was acquitted of that misdemeanor charge at trial.
The Trump Administration’s Strategy
Critchfield and her Journal team found that the push to charge more people for assaulting federal officers — as happened to Reid — is an administration-wide strategy.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and her Department of Justice have pledged to prosecute these cases aggressively. From the very beginning of Bondi’s tenure, starting on her first day in office, she issued a flurry of memos, including one that encouraged prosecutors to aggressively investigate any instances of violence against law enforcement or obstruction of law enforcement.
Gregory Bovino, then the head of Border Patrol, directed his agents to arrest anyone who touched them. “Arrest as many people that touch you as you want to. Those are the general orders all the way to the top, everybody f------ gets it if they touch you. You hear what I’m saying?”
In addition to an increasing number of prosecutions, the Department of Homeland Security has been using social media to exaggerate these alleged attacks, often with a warning to the public: “Don’t be like this person. If you behave in this way, we will come for you.” And they have posted people’s pictures and their full names, seeking to make an example out of these people even before they’re convicted of a crime.
This happened to Reid. A week after she was arrested, her mug shot and name went up on the official ICE account on X, along with the fact that she’s based in Washington, D.C., and a post that said, “Assault an officer or agent get arrested. It’s not rocket science.”
ICE also publicly alleged that Reid assaulted federal agents on behalf of two alleged international gang members.
The Purpose of This Strategy
The Journal’s investigation makes clear that the purpose of this strategy has been to intimidate and silence Americans who might otherwise protest what ICE and Border Patrol are doing.
ICE publicly describes many of these protesters as rioters, agitators, thugs, and terrorists.
Here’s Vice President JD Vance speaking of Renee Good’s death:
“I can believe that her death is a tragedy while also recognizing that it’s a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of the far left who has marshaled an entire movement, a lunatic fringe against our law enforcement officers.”
And here’s then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on the death of Alex Pretti:
“This individual who came with weapons and ammunition to stop a law enforcement operation of federal law enforcement officers committed an act of domestic terrorism, that’s the facts.”
Renee Good was in her car when she was killed. Critchfield and her team found that federal government officials have accused 32 U.S. citizens of intentionally using their vehicles as weapons. DHS considers a vehicle to be a deadly weapon, justifying the use of force. Of those 32 drivers, only one pleaded guilty to an assault charge. Three had their cases dismissed; the rest were never charged.
TheJournal investigation found that in most cases where citizens were accused by the government, the outcome was similar to Reid’s.
181 citizens were accused by the government on X of attacking federal officers, but close to half of them were never even charged at all. When people werecharged, more often than not, the cases fell apart. Either they were acquitted or found not guilty at trial.
Fifteen people mentioned in government posts pleaded guilty before going to trial. Ten of whom pleaded guilty for lesser offenses than what the government initially charged them with.
Videos have often played major roles in contradicting the government’s case. Critchfield and her team viewed videos that repeatedly cast doubt on the government’s allegations. Protesters were often called violent rioters or professional agitators and accused of making physical contact in some way with agents, but video footage often showed immigration agents being the first to lay their hands on demonstrators...MORE
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AN 3 26
When President Donald Trump and his allies targeted pro-Palestinian activists for deportation, civil libertarians were quick to sound the alarm. Trump, they stressed, had every right to criticize their views, but targeting them for deportation because of those views was anti-First Amendment.
Now, a federal judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan, Judge William G. Young, is taking the Trump administration to task.
In a ruling handed down on Wednesday, March 11, Young ruled that targeting pro-Palestinian activists for deportation because of their views "was unconstitutional, abhorrent to a society that cherishes free speech."
Young wrote, "As this Court recognizes, the entire theory of this administration is that of a unitary executive with no agency independence where every single employee within the Article II executive dances to the tune of the President…. This conduct must never happen again."
President Reagan first nominated Young, now 85, for the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts in September 1984 during his reelection campaign. Reagan enjoyed a landslide victory that year, winning 525 electoral votes and defeating Democratic nominee Walter Mondale by 18 percent in the national popular vote. And Young was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in April 1985 a few months into Reagan's second term.
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BRUCE SPRINGSEEN
1 26 STREETS MINNE
BILL O SAYS GO AFTER DENIRO
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AN 2 26
On Thursday, February 26, the Trump-era U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) case against journalist and former CNN host Don Lemon took on a Philadelphia element when Jerome Richardson — a Minnesota native now attending Philly's Temple University — was recognized by members of the Philadelphia City Council. Richardson is facing charges as part of the same DOJ case against Lemon, who was arrested after covering a protest inside an evangelical fundamentalist church in Minneapolis. And the case continued to evolve and expand on Friday, February 27, when Politico's Josh Gerstein reported on new defendants.
Late Friday morning, Gerstein — in a post on X — reported, "DEVELOPING: Superseding indictment returned in Don Lemon Minnesota church protest case. Local press says more defendants added and arrested. Awaiting more details."
According to Samantha Fischer, a reporter for KARE Channel 11 in Minneapolis, "KARE 11 confirmed at least nine more people were arrested in connection with a St. Paul church protest last month that already saw the high-profile arrests of journalists Georgia Fort and Don Lemon, as well as attorney and activist Nekima Levy Armstrong. KARE's Lou Raguse said sources reported those arrested were taken to the federal courthouse in St. Paul, where they're expected to make their first court appearances Friday afternoon."
Gerstein tweeted a copy of a federal court document in *United States of America v. Nekima Valdez Levyarmstrong, Et Al.
In the document, Harmeet K. Dhillon — assistant U.S. attorney general in DOJ's Civil Rights Division — and other federal prosecutors write, "The United States of America, by and through its undersigned attorneys, hereby moves the Court for an order to unseal the Superseding Indictment in the above-referenced matter."
Lemon and his allies maintain that the Trump DOJ case him has no merit, as he wasn't part of the demonstration inside the Minneapolis church and was strictly there as a journalist.
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2 26
Secretive Tactic DHS Is Using to Target You (With Steve Loney)
[
27.9K subscribers
Feb 20, 2026 Lever Time
On this video episode of Lever Time, David Sirota sits down with ACLU attorney Steve Loney to ask some big questions: How are federal agencies obtaining your private data without a warrant? How are tech giants like Google enabling them? And what should you do if the feds come knocking on your door?
The Secretive Tactic DHS Is Using to Target You (With Steve Loney) - YouTube
mma
02/17/26
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an 2 26
Leading officials in the Trump administration have been aware of the skyrocketing use of violent force by federal agents, according to newly unearthed emails, with the trend being known well before two U.S. citizens were gunned down in Minnesota.
According to a Tuesday report from Politico, the emails were obtained by American Oversight — a "liberal leaning watchdog nonprofit" — using Freedom of Information Act requests. They reveal that instances of "lethal force or non-lethal efforts to physically restrain or subdue people or neutralize threats" began to increase "rapidly" among federal immigration officers after Trump's return to the White House, and that officials in charge of these agents were aware of it.
The Department of Homeland Security has maintained over the last year, in the face of mounting reports of ICE agents' harassment and brutal physical tactics, that its agents were acting in accordance with the standards set during training and using "incredible restraint" to avoid force in the field.
"Our ICE agents are following the law and are running their operations according to training," DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said last month, following the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at the hands of ICE and CBP agents.
The emails, however, show that instances of violent force quadrupled in the early months of Trump's second term.
"Caleb Vitello, at the time the official tasked with overseeing field and enforcement operations at ICE, was informed on March 20 that ICE officers had reported 67 incidents where they had used force in the first two months of Trump’s term, according to the emails," Politico's report detailed. "In the same time frame in 2024, that number was 17 incidents, representing a nearly four-fold increase. Days before, Vitello was informed that the use of force in the first two weeks of March alone had quadrupled compared with the same timeframe the year before, per another email."
The emails also reveal the priorities of those in charge when faced with this trend. According to Politico, ICE officials had no "particular urgency" as far as addressing the use of force by agents. Instead, they were more interested in shifting the narrative to assaults on ICE agents, which were also up more than fourfold in the early months of 2025. Officials also deflected blame onto Democratic leaders in the cities where their agents operated, accusing them of "stoking tensions."
"The email indicated that ICE leadership was keen to prosecute those cases," Politico explained. "With a unit chief writing to Vitello that a team in a regional office could 'package up a summary of the needed elements of the crime, definitions of what constitutes assault, etc with the intent of broadcasting to the workforce in an effort to drive more presentations for prosecution.'”
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The Trump administration is using secretive orders to crackdown on dissent
SARAH MCL
Imagine finding out that the government is issuing secretive orders to unearth your personal information and then sending federal agents to question you — all because you sent an email criticizing the life-or-death decisions the government makes.
That sounds like something out of China, Russia or the increasingly dystopian United Kingdom, right? Well this time, it’s happening here.
The Trump administration is reportedly abusing oversight-free administrative subpoenas to chill protected speech. Recent targets include a man who sent an email criticizing efforts to deport an Afghan man on humanitarian parole seeking asylum.
Our right to express ourselves, particularly in ways that displease the government, is under attack — sometimes echoing authoritarian censorship efforts abroad.
While subpoenas have been used to chill speech across numerous presidencies, the way this administration is using them, and the broader repressive pattern they are part of, should disturb all Americans. As The Washington Post reported this week, a Philadelphia-area retiree wrote an email to a federal prosecutor last year asking him to “[a]pply principles of common sense and decency” to the deportation case of an Afghan man, who feared death at the hands of the Taliban. Only the retiree’s first name, Jon, is given, as he fears for his safety.
Only hours later, to Jon’s shock, he received a notice from Google that the company had received a subpoena compelling the release of identifying information, including older account activity and his physical address. The Department of Homeland Security issued an administrative subpoena, which doesn’t require the oversight of a judge or grand jury, to get Jon’s information. DHS attempted a similar stunt to target internet commenters who posted about Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
That was not Jon’s only brush with DHS. Agents would also soon show up at his door with a copy of the email he’d sent and ask him to explain himself.
There is no better guarantee of the right to speak and criticize our government than the First Amendment, which stands as guard between us and the power of the state. But our right to express ourselves, particularly in ways that displease the government, is under attack — sometimes echoing authoritarian censorship efforts abroad. Americans must understand that with enough time and pressure, even the strongest of foundations can weather down to dust.
These administrative subpoenas intended to unmask critics of government action are just the tip of the speech-chilling iceberg.
Between these disturbing allegations, recent alarming on-camera encounters between civilians and law enforcement and the ceaseless incursions from the Trump administration against our First Amendment rights, Americans must recognize that the United States is failing as a bulwark for liberty in a world increasingly bereft of it.
Alex Pretti’s death at the hands of federal agents in Minneapolis last month was deeply alarming. Rather than immediately commit to an intensive investigation of what took place, officials such as Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem spread the unfounded claim that Pretti tried to “kill” law enforcement. Senior adviser Stephen Miller called Pretti an “assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents.” The administration has since started to shy away from these fantastical claims after Americans could watch the video for themselves.
Their narrative might still stand, however, had protesters nearby not caught the shooting on camera from multiple angles. But that First Amendment right to film law enforcement is increasingly under attack. DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said filming and posting videos of ICE is “doxing our agents” and the government “will prosecute those who illegally harass ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law.” Pretti himself had been recording agents with his cell phone moments before he was killed.
U.S. federal agents also appear to be creating a database to track protesters and observers who are legally and peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights. In an encounter a woman filmed in Maine, an ICE agent told her he’s recording her information for a “nice little database” for “domestic terrorists” like her. A CNN report confirms a DHS memo informing agents to “capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.” News of this database follows in the footsteps of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s plan to crack down on “domestic terror organizations,” using a framework that targets broad ideologies such as “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” as markers of political violence rather than constitutionally protected beliefs.
You may be familiar with lists of alleged anti-government activists from their other iterations in Belarus, Russia and China. The lists are frightening. What governments do with them is usually even worse.
The distance between freedom and tyranny is shrinking fast — and so is our window to combat it.
And many Americans were rightfully shocked by a “60 Minutes” exposé of German censorship last year, which included raids on the homes of social media users who had insulted politicians, and by regular reports from other nations such as the U.K., where a late-night knock at the door from police has become disturbingly commonplace. In Germany, the government treats insults to politicians more, not less, harshly than other forms of insult, essentially exempting the powerful from upsetting speech.
That’s the opposite of how we view political speech in the U.S. — with great power must come a thick skin.
But the Trump administration doesn’t see it that way. In fact, ICE and DHS leadership have undertaken a concerted effort in recent months to pervert the concept of “doxing,” the sharing of identifying information about an individual, into one so broad it includes simply saying the name of the men and women who serve as armed agents of the state. Administration officials have repeatedly — and wrongly — suggested this “doxing” is illegal.
Imagine a United States in which federal agents have the authority to fire their weapons as representatives of the government, and yet everyday Americans aren’t even free to state clearly who or where those agents are. Even worse, those same Americans may find themselves on a clandestine government database for engaging in protected speech. Or, like Jon, they could even face a secretive administrative subpoena followed by a knock at the door from DHS agents.
“Secret police” cannot be a necessary term in the American vernacular, but if we do not stem the tide of these First Amendment violations and transgressions, it may become one. The distance between freedom and tyranny is shrinking fast — and so is our window to combat it.
The post The Trump administration is using secretive orders to crackdown on dissent appeared first on MS NOW.
This article was originally published on ms.now
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MMA
Right-wing media figures are furious at activists for using whistles during ICE activity
Written by Payton Armstrong
Published 02/03/26
Right-wing media figures are lashing out at community members in Minnesota for using whistles to alert others of federal immigration enforcement in the area, asserting that whistles should be “considered a violent weapon” and that their use constitutes “interference” with immigration enforcement operations or even “assault.”
Activists and residents have explained that whistles are “a way to quickly draw witnesses and cameras when enforcement activity happens in neighborhoods.” Bystander video, which has sometimes contradicted official Department of Homeland Security statements, has become critical in multiple recent incidents like the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, whom DHS officials initially baselessly accused of being domestic terrorists.
- ### Bystanders using whistles have become ubiquitous with immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis — in part as “a way to quickly draw witnesses and cameras”
- ICE operations in Minneapolis have transformed everyday life for residents with the killing of two U.S. citizens, the detainment of thousands of migrants and community members, and reports of widespread use of force and chemical irritants like pepper balls and tear gas on crowds.NBC News reported that “since December, the surge of federal immigration personnel to Minnesota led to the apprehensions of more than 3,000 migrants in what the Department of Homeland Security has called ‘the largest immigration enforcement operation ever.’” During that time, two U.S. citizens — Alex Pretti and Renee Good — were shot and killed by masked federal agents just weeks apart; at least four children were apprehended by ICE, two while they were on their way to school; and federal agents have “regularly deploy[ed] chemical irritants to deter observers and protesters.” NBC News, [1/27/26; MPR News, 1/28/26; CNN, 1/20/26]
- The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that “the sight and sound of whistles have become common around the Twin Cities amid the ongoing immigration operation and organized resistance.”CBS News reported that “organizers and volunteers say the whistles are meant to be an attention grabber and a way to quickly draw witnesses and cameras when enforcement activity happens in neighborhoods.” Community members and local businesses, including a toy store and a bar, have reportedly given away thousands. The Minnesota Star Tribune, [1/20/26; CBS News, 1/14/26; MinnPost, 12/15/25]
- Stella Carlson, who recorded critical video of agents shooting and killing Pretti, told CNN that she decided to come to the scene after hearing whistles while driving to work.Carlson’s video contradicted initial DHS statements that Pretti “brandished” a gun at agents, and according to CNN, “Carlson’s video, and the ensuing outrage surrounding Pretti’s killing, placed the Trump administration under immense pressure that eventually led to the White House pulling Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official who had led the surge in Minneapolis and several other American cities, out of Minnesota.” Carlson explained to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper why she personally carries a whistle, saying: “When we walk around with the whistles around our neck, it's not that we have — like we know we can't do much. But what we do know is that we can let our community at large know when we're walking around, like, I see you. And if you're stuck in your apartment, I want you to see me. I'm another person walking around who is here to protect you as best I can with my whistle and my phone.” CNN, [1/28/26, 1/25/26]
- :{:{Attorney Tracy Roy told The Minnesota Star Tribune that while physically intervening with ICE activity is illegal, “bystanders certainly can make noise, blow whistles and alert presence.” The Minnesota Star Tribune, [1/20/26]}:
- }:
- ### Right-wing media figures claimed whistles “should be considered a violent weapon” and that their use amounts to “interference” or possibly “assault”
- Right-wing podcaster Megyn Kelly claimed that people blowing whistles constituted “interference” and “contributed to the chaotic atmosphere that ultimately led Alex Pretti to die.” Kelly said: “We don't know if Alex Pretti was sent to that area specifically by these anti-ICE agitators or whether he was officially part of the group. But some on that street were because they had the telltale signal of whistleblowing, which is their favorite thing. And by the way, that needs to stop. Now, some are saying that's fine. That actually is interference. You — if you came out on your front lawn and just blew a coach's whistle at the top of your lungs all day, you would be cited by the police under the local noise ordinances. It would be a disturbance of the peace. That's what these people are doing. And no doubt they contributed to the chaotic atmosphere that ultimately led Alex Pretti to die.” SiriusXM, *The Megyn Kelly Show*, [1/26/26]
- :{:{Right-wing streamer Steven Crowder said that women on the scene of Pretti’s killing had “arguably commit[ed] assault against the officers with whistles in the ears.”Crowder: “Those women absolutely went out of their way to cross the street and arguably commit assault against the officers with whistles in the ears.” Rumble,:(style="background-color:#ffbb16ff"):}: *Louder with Crowder*, [1/26/26]}:
- Right-wing influencer Mike Cernovich said that whistles used by activists “should be considered a violent weapon.”Cernovich reportedly posted on social media: “From smoke alarms to those hearing loss causing machines that terrorists use against ICE. Tbh those things should be considered a violent weapon. They damage hearing for life.” The Independent, [1/26/26]
- Conservative radio host Buck Sexton reportedly replied to Cernovich’s post and wrote, “All true.” The Independent, [1/26/26]
- Director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation, Lora Ries, also reportedly replied to Cernovich’s post and said that whistles “are NOT speech.”The Independent, [1/26/26]
- White nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes said protesters “blowing whistles” creates a “confusing, dangerous environment when you can't hear, when you can't see.” Fuentes: “You're asking ICE officers to go and fight these animals and potentially die, potentially get shot in the face. They're being put in an impossible situation. They go out there, they're being chased, they're being harassed, they're being overwhelmed. Protesters are blowing whistles. It's a confusing, dangerous environment when you can't hear, when you can't see.” Rumble, *America First*, [1/27/26; Media Matters, 12/19/25]
- The host of the right-wing Spanish language programMucho Que Decirsaid that “blowing whistles” constitutes “being an obstructionist.” Discussing the killing of Alex Pretti, the host said, “It is presumed that he was monitoring ICE duties and then saw some illegal immigrants, wanted to warn them by blowing whistles, being an obstructionist as usual. And had a close encounter with ICE agents, they knocked him down and broke his rib, but not content with that, he continued on the rampage. In other words, this man was not just a pedestrian filming what was going on in Minneapolis." La Nueva Poderosa, *Mucho Que Decir*, [1/27/26]
- The Washington Times editorial board criticized “antifa-style agitators” blowing whistles “to obstruct immigration enforcement,” saying that “paid provocateurs are tracking ICE operations and deliberately interfering.” The Washington Times, [1/26/26]
- Right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec lamented that “agitators” are “blowing the whistles.”Posobiec’s guest, Andrew Branca, suggested federal agents were justified in shooting Pretti, saying that “the law of self-defense doesn't require perfect decision-making,” and agents had to make decisions in a “very stressful, life-threatening, compressed timeframe.” Posobiec replied: “In reality, in this situation, what these activists have done — and by the way, what these agitators are doing on purpose and deliberately. They're blowing the whistles. They're getting in the street. They're getting in the way.” Real America’s Voice, *Human Events Daily*, [1/26/26]
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01/30/26
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AN 1 26
Despite denials from a senior Trump administration official, secret watchlists of Americans are being used by federal agencies to track and categorize US citizens—especially protesters, activists, and critics of law enforcement—as “domestic terrorists,” investigative journalist Ken Klippenstein reported Wednesday.
Klippenstein said that two senior national security officials speaking on condition of anonymity told him that there are over a dozen “secret and obscure” watchlists that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI are using to track anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and pro-Palestine protesters, antifa-affiliated individuals, and “others who are promiscuously labeled ‘domestic terrorists.’”
“I can reveal for the first time,” he wrote, “that some of the secret lists and applications go by codenames like Bluekey, Grapevine, Hummingbird, Reaper, Sandcastle, Sienna, Slipstream, and Sparta (including the ominous sounding HEL-A and HEL-C reports generated by Sparta).”
“Some of these, like Hummingbird, were created to vet and track immigrants, in this case Afghans seeking to settle in the United States,” Klippenstein explained. “Slipstream is a classified social media repository. Others are tools used to link people on the streets together, including collecting on friends and families who have nothing to do with any purported lawbreaking.”
“There’s practically nothing available that further describes what these watchlists do, how large they are, or what they entail,” he added.
Klippenstein’s revelation seemingly flies in the face of DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin’s recent denial that the administration has a database containing the names of people accused of domestic terrorism.
“There’s just one problem: She’s lying,” wrote Klippenstein.
Many observers already thought as much, especially after a masked federal enforcer taunted an anti-ICE protester in Maine by telling her that “we have a nice little database, and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”
White House “border czar” Tom Homan—who was recently sent to Minnesota to oversee the anti-immigrant blitz following the departure of Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino amid outrage over the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti—also said this month that “we’re going to create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding, and assault, we’re going to make them famous.”
Reporting Tuesday that Pretti—the nurse who was disarmed and then shot dead by federal enforcers in Minneapolis last week—was known to Trump officials after a previous encounter in which agentsbroke his rib raised further questions about government watchlists.
“We came out of 9/11 with the notion that we would have a single ‘terrorist’ watch list to eliminate confusion, duplication, and avoid bad communications, but ever since January 6, not only have we expanded exponentially into purely domestic watchlisting, but we have also created a highly secretive and compartmented superstructure that few even understand,” a DHS attorney “intimately familiar” with the matter told Klippenstein on condition of anonymity, referring to the deadly January 2021 Capitol insurrection.
According to Klippenstein:
Prior to 9/11, there were nine federal agencies that maintained 12 separate watchlists. Now, officially there are just three: a watch list of 1.1 million international terrorists, a watch list of more than 10,000 domestic terrorists maintained by the FBI, and a new watch list of transnational criminals, built up to more than 85,000 over the past decade...Among other functions, the new watchlists process tips, situation reports, and collected photographs and video submitted by both the public and from agents in the field; they create a “common operating picture” in places like Minneapolis; they allow task forces to target individuals for surveillance and arrest; and they create the capacity for intelligence people to link individuals together through geographic proximity or what is labeled “call chaining” by processing telephone numbers, emails, and other contact information.
Asked about how the Trump administration might try to legally justify these watchlists, Rachel Levinson-Waldman, the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program director, cited President Donald Trump’s National Security Presidential Memo 7 (NSPM-7), which 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.”
Levinson-Waldman also noted Attorney General Pam Bondi’s December 5 memo directing federal agencies to expand the investigation and prosecution of “domestic terrorism,” including groups “aligned” with antifa, an anti-fascist ideology that does not exist as an organization.
One senior intelligence official who confirmed the existence of the watchlists warned Klippenstein: “Lists of this and that—this social media post, that video taken of someone videoing ICE, the mere attendance at a protest—gets pulsed by federal cops on the beat to check for criminality but eventually just becomes a list itself of criminality, with the cops thinking that indeed they are dealing with criminals and terrorists. Watchlists, and the whole watchlisting process, should be as transparent as possible, not the other way around.”
“If we don’t explore more why all of these secret lists exist,” the official added, there could be “even more of an environment of paranoia on the ground and more tragic killings.”
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RWW
01/26/2026
by
- David Gilbert @ Wired: The Instant Smear Campaign Against Border Patrol Shooting Victim Alex PrettI
Within minutes of the shooting, the Trump administration and right-wing influencers began disparaging the man shot by a federal immigration officer on Saturday in Minneapolis.
- Zack Beauchamp @ Vox: So what if Alex Pretti had a gun?
The unbearable hypocrisy of pro-gun conservatives defending the Minneapolis killing.
- Peter Baker @ The New York Times: For Trump, the Truth in Minneapolis Is What He Says It Is
The Trump team has advanced one-sided narratives to justify each of the killings, even when bystander video shows something else entirely.
- Malcolm Ferguson @ The New Republic: Steve Bannon and Co. Declare War on Minnesota After Pretti Shooting
President Trump’s onetime adviser is urging him to crack down harder in Minneapolis following a federal agent’s killing of Alex Pretti.
- Abby Vesoulis and Ari Berman @ Mother Jones: DOJ’s “Ransom” Letter to Minnesota Reveals How Trump Plans to Rig the Midterms
After a Border Patrol agent killed Alex Pretti, Attorney General Pam Bondi tells Minnesota to hand over its voter roll to “bring an end to the chaos.”
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PRETTI
MMA
- ### Megyn Kelly: Minnesota protesters are “terrorists” who must “behave well and submit immediately”
01/26/26
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MMA
01/26/26
January 26, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, streamed to YouTube
BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): This is incredible to hear, and this has now been exposed with some of these Signal chat leaks, the independent journalist who had done the exposing was just on right before you and wanted to ask about this. He says that he has submitted some of the information that was available. There are top level leaders inside of the political infrastructure of Minnesota who are on these chats, and, obviously, you can't conspire in order to attack federal agents. This is something that is at scale. They have license plate readers. They're able to identify these agents. They're able to dox them, find out where they're sleeping at night. Is any of this legal, Kash?
KASH PATEL (FBI DIRECTOR): That's exactly what we're investigating. Look, again, the First Amendment, you wanna go peacefully protest, do it. You wanna bring your firearm, under the law, you're allowed to bring it as long as you don't incite violence and or commit another crime in doing so.
What we're asking people to do, what I'm asking people to do is on the ground in Minnesota is, why would you bring a firearm in a situation that is so volatile right now, where so many arrests have been made, where so many people are coordinating to attack and expose federal law enforcement officers? That is just not smart. It is just not going to lead to a good scenario. And so we need everybody to tamp down, obviously, on that side.
But you're right, some of the best reporting has been through you, and, I think Mr. Higby was just on before I was, and other individuals. Just so you guys know, we look at all this stuff. As soon as Higby put that post out, I opened an investigation on it.
Just like any other case, when we say, hey, quote, unquote, there was an attack in downtown Seattle. Does the public have information? We, the FBI, are looking to the public for information on these events. We immediately opened up that investigation because that sort of Signal chat being coordinated with individuals, not just locally in Minnesota, but maybe even around the country, if that leads to a break in the federal statute or a violation of some law, then we are going to arrest people. You cannot create a scenario that illegally entraps and puts law enforcement in harm's way.
Now, we will balance the First and Second Amendment constantly, but we have to let the community know that we will not tolerate acts of violence and an escalation and a violation of the federal code. There has to be a break point, and you've seen it broken in Minneapolis time and time again.
01/26/26
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AGITATOR reboot, meld w paid protestor soros BS // antifa 4 terror 3 BS
MMA
01/26/26 4:56 PM EST
01/26/26 3:52 PM EST
- ### Megyn Kelly: Minnesota protesters are “terrorists” who must “behave well and submit immediately”
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- ### Newsmax's senior judicial analyst on Alex Pretti shooting: “To me, their shooting is indefensible”
01/26/26 10:54 AM EST
01/26/26 10:34 AM EST
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MMA
January 24, 2026, edition of The Benny Show, posted to YouTube
BENNY JOHNSON (HOST): You need to pray for Border Patrol, federal law enforcement, and ICE right now as Minneapolis is about to pop off. Another deadly shooting.
This time, a left-wing protester attempted to pull this Sig Sauer handgun on federal officers and commit a mass murder, potentially killing many of them because there were quite a few around during an arrest situation where a left-wing agitator, probably a professional paid agitator, 51 years-old, was reaching for this firearm.
Federal law enforcement put him down, but a Border Patrol member shot and killed an individual in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the intersection of 26th Street, Nicollet Avenue. This is the same avenue that the Quality Learning center is on. Goodness gracious. What started it all, and now we're learning so much more about what the left is willing to do.
This would be the second time that a leftist paid protester, agitator, terrorist has been killed in self-defense by federal law enforcement for attempting to commit murder. Renee Good tried to run over federal officers, and this individual tried to shoot federal officers. You can see here in this video -- what you'll see is federal officers tussling, attempting to apprehend the agitator and then the individual showed his firearm. And you can hear the discharge of a weapon. And the reactions from inside of whatever establishment was filming this -- again, well, stop resisting arrest. Stop fighting federal law enforcement.
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AN 1 26
Following the recent shooting of Renee Good by an agent for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States, the Donald Trump administration’s latest narrative suggests that “deluded wine moms” are to blame for the violence in ICE-related demonstrations in Minneapolis and across the country.
This mother-blaming is nothing more than an old trick with a new spin.
Organized gangs of ‘wine moms’
A Fox News columnist recently wrote that “organized gangs of wine moms” are using “antifa tactics” to “harass and impede” ICE activity. In the opinion piece, he claimed that “confusion” over the what constitutes civil disobedience is what “got 37-year-old Renee Good killed.”
Similarly, Vice-President J.D. Vance called Good a “deranged leftist” while a new acronym, AWFUL — Affluent White Female Urban Liberal — has appeared on social media.
In framing protesters like Good, a mother of three, as confused, aggressive and “delusional,” this narrative delegitimizes and pathologizes maternal activism.
This strategy aims to divert blame from the U.S. government and its heavy-handed approach to immigration — which has resulted in yet another slaying of a protester by ICE agents in Minneapolis, this time a male nurse who was reportedly coming to the aid of a female demonstrator — while also drawing on a centuries-old strategy of blaming mothers for social problems.
What makes a ‘wine mom?’
The term “wine mom” emerged over the last two decades as a cultural symbol of the contemporary white, suburban mother who turns to a nightly glass of wine (or two) to cope with the stresses of daily life.
The archetype goes back much further, reflected in literature, film and television characters, such as the wily Lucille Bluth of Arrested Development.
Yet, this motif is less light-hearted than assumed: a recent systematic review reveals a strong link between maternal drinking and stress, especially for working mothers.
While it would be easy to view problematic drinking as another example of maternal failure, it is important not to. Here’s why.
Mother-blame in history
Throughout history, mothers have found themselves in the midst of what American sociologist Linda Blum calls a “mother-valor/mother-blame binary.”
When behaving in accordance with socially acceptable and desirable parameters — that is with warmth, femininity and selflessness — mothers are viewed as “good.” When mothers violate these norms, whether by choice, circumstance or by virtue of their race or class position, they’re “bad mothers.”
Mother-blame ultimately reflects the belief that mothers are solely responsible for their children’s behaviour and outcomes, along with the cultural tendency to blame them when things go wrong. Yet, as Blum points out, “mother-blame also serves as a metaphor for a range of political fears.”
Perhaps the most striking example of this is the suffrage movement, which represented a direct challenge to patriarchal notions that women belonged in the domestic sphere and lacked the intelligence to engage in political discourse.
Suffragettes in the United Kingdom — many of them mothers — occasionally used extreme tactics, such as window-smashing and arson, while women in the U.S. obstructed traffic and waged hunger strikes.
These activists were framed as threatening to not only the establishment, but also to families and the moral fabric of society.
Ironically, despite the fact that women’s entry into politics led to increased spending and improved outcomes related to women, children, families and health care, scholars have found that mother-blaming was as common after the women’s movement as it was before.
Contemporary mother-blame
Beyond political matters, contemporary mother-blame is rampant in other domains.
Mothers have been blamed for a wide variety of their children’s psychological problems, including anxiety, depression and inherited trauma. In media and literature, mothers are often blamed for criminality and violence, reflecting the notion that “mothers make monsters.”
When children struggle in school, educators and administrators may blame the mother. Mothers risk being called “too passive” if they don’t advocate for their children or “too aggressive” when they do.
Similarly, the “crazy woman” or “hysterical mother” is a well-known trope in custody law, and mothers may be blamed even when their children are abused by others. Mass shootings? Mom’s failure. The list goes on.
By setting up mothering as a high-stakes endeavour, the cultural norm of mother-blame also serves to “divide and conquer.”
In my sociology research, I found that mothers on Facebook worked to align themselves with like-minded “superior” mothers, while distancing themselves from perceived “inferior” mothers. This feeds into the cultural norm of “combative mothering,” which pits mothers against each other.
An old trick with a new spin
The “wine mom” narrative builds on this historical pattern of mother-blame. It is meant to trivialize, delegitimize, divide and denigrate mothers who are, in fact, well-organized and motivated activists concerned for their communities.
While there are legitimate concerns around maternal drinking as a coping mechanism, the “wine mom” label has begun to represent something different. Mothers are reclaiming the title to expand their cause.
As @sara_wiles, promoting the activist group @redwineblueusa stated on Instagram: “They meant to scare us back into the kitchen, but our actual response is, ‘Oh, I want to join!’”
We should acknowledge that rather than causing societal problems, mothers have a long history of trying to fix them, even if imperfectly. Mothers like Renee Good are no exception.
Darryn DiFrancesco, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing, Faculty of Human and Health Sciences, *University of Northern British Columbia
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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AN 1 26
Roughly two and one-half weeks after the fatal January 7 shooting of motorist Renee Nicole Good by a U.S. Immigration and Enforcement (ICE) agent, yet another Minneapolis resident was fatally shot during a protest in the city: 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti, who worked in an internal care unit in a Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House adviser Stephen Miller are claiming that Pretti was shot by U.S. Border Patrol agents in self-defense, noting that he was carrying a concealed weapon. But critics of President Donald Trump's ICE raids in Minneapolis are countering Pretti never pointed the gun at Border Patrol agents and that he was shot after being forced onto the ground and disarmed.
In an article published on Monday, January 26 — two days after Pretti's death — Salon's Amanda Marcotte offers a blistering critique of the response that far-right white evangelicals have had to the unrest in Minneapolis.
"The Christian Right will never turn down an opportunity to make false accusations of religious persecution," Marcotte argues. "These days, they're especially eager to play the victim. Doing so allows them to distract from the ugly reality that they, in voting for Donald Trump, have helped to unleash in Minnesota: A woman killed in front of her wife, children ripped from their parents, a baby nearly killed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents firing tear gas at a family driving home from a basketball game. On Saturday, there was another unjustifiable shooting. Video appears to show 37-year-old Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an intensive-care unit nurse at a Veterans Affairs hospital, helping a woman to her feet when Border Patrol agents swarm and pepper-spray him — and then shoot him in the head."
Marcotte adds, "All this, though, apparently pales in comparison to a more serious form of oppression: right-wing Christians being told it's immoral to support a brutal, racist assault on their neighbors."
The Salon journalist is referring to a Sunday, January 18 protest in which activists disrupted a service at the evangelical Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota because one of the pastors, David Easterwood, is an ICE field director in the area. MAGA Republicans, from Noem to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, described that disruption as an attack on religious freedom — an argument Marcotte considers disingenuous.
Tim Whitaker, a former Christian nationalist, told Salon, "Cities Church is part of the Southern Baptist Convention, which was founded in 1845 over the right to own slaves. This church should be disrupted. As far as I'm concerned, Jesus would've been right with those protesters…. (Cities Church) is home to a pastor that works for a federal agency kidnapping brown-skinned immigrants and killing unarmed citizens."
Marcotte notes that one of the protesters arrested during the January 18 protest at Cities Church is herself an ordained Christian minister.
"Unfortunately, the right's histrionic language about 'religious freedom' has cowed many centrists and even liberals into thinking the protesters who interrupted a single church service are in the wrong," Marcotte writes. "Instead, they should be applauded as following the tradition of Jesus himself confronting the moneychangers in the temple."
Religious freedom means the right to worship as you see fit. By the same token, it also allows everyone else the right to question what churches are teaching — especially when they impact people and communities outside the church doors."
Marcotte adds, "In an era when Christian churches are condoning outright evil actions such as ICE’s deadly rampage through Minnesota, it’s more important than ever to not allow this dishonest definition of 'religious freedom' browbeat the rest of us into silence over spiritual oppression."
:{Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.}
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CONTEXT
2ND MURDER PRETTI 1ST AND 2ND AMEND
AN 26
A leading Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota has withdrawn from the race, citing the Republican Party’s “stated retribution on the citizens of our state,” and saying he cannot count himself a member of a party that would do so.
Chris Madel’s announcement Monday morning, just two days after federal agents shot and killed a second U.S. citizen in Minneapolis in under three weeks, was deemed “stunning” by the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Madel recorded a nearly eleven-minute video explaining his decision to withdraw.
“United States citizens, particularly those of color, live in fear,” he told supporters. “United States citizens are carrying papers to prove their citizenship. That’s wrong.”
“ICE has authorized its agents to raid homes using a civil warrant that need only be signed by a border patrol agent. That’s unconstitutional, it’s wrong. Weaponizing criminal investigations against political opponents is unconstitutional, regardless of who is in power,” he continued.
Madel also pointed to the “countless United States citizens who have been detained in Minnesota due to the color of their skin. I personally have spoken to several law enforcement officers, some Hispanic, and some Asian who have been pulled over by ice on pretextual stops,” he said.
“Driving while Hispanic is not a crime,” Madel added. “Neither is driving while Asian.”
The Star Tribune reported that Madel “launched his campaign for governor as a staunch defender of law enforcement and had **:{recently provided legal counsel to Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.”}:
“I do this because I believe the constitutional right to counsel is sacrosanct,” he said.
He also called the federal operation in Minnesota, Operation Metro Surge, “an unmitigated disaster.”
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AN 1 26
Donald Trump's ego appears to be driving a conflict with the various "hardcore nationalists" in his administration, according to a new analysis from The i Paper, with his desire to be "loved and thanked" conflicting with their desire to go further in cracking down on immigration and protestors.
The administration is facing mounting unrest in Minnesota, where over the weekend, federal officers killed another American citizen, intensive care nurse Alex Pretti. This death, only weeks after the killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer, has soured more and more Americans on Trump's immigration crackdown plans, which were already tanking the president's approval on immigration, one of his key issues overall.
Writing for The i Paper on Monday, James Ball wrote that the administration is largely uninterested in discontent and protests from Democratic voters, and in fact seems to "relish" causing them pain and distress. The killing of Pretti, however, is driving away increasing numbers of independents and even some Republicans. This has created a conflict, Ball argued, between Trump's desire to be popular with non-Democratic voters and the desires of key figures in his administration to go as far as possible with the immigration crackdowns, as part of their plot to fundamentally remake the U.S.
"The problem for Trump in responding to this self-inflicted crisis is that while most of the American public hates what they are seeing in Minneapolis, some in his White House love it. This is what they came into office to do," Ball wrote. "Trump is surrounded by hardcore nationalists who see him as their vehicle to rebuild America – and mass deportations are the first step in doing that. A faction led by Stephen Miller, and represented by the ambitious US Vice President J.D. Vance, is leading this hardline movement. They are urging the President to go further, all but openly seeking an excuse to activate the Insurrection Act, enabling them to send in American troops into American cities."
Trump, meanwhile, wants on some level to be seen as a unifying figure and as a great president, typified by his recent focus on legacy projects. This instinct, Ball argued, will cause him to pull back on issues like Minnesota when they become toxically unpopular, despite the ambitions of his top officials.
"The main obstacle standing in their way is Trump himself, who, on some level, still wants to be loved and thanked by the nation he so divisively leads. Even now, he complains about the difficulties of building the new White House ballroom, wondering plaintively why anyone would mount legal challenges against a building project he sees as his legacy," Ball wrote.
He continued: "Trump is a petty and vindictive man who wants revenge on his enemies, but he still wants to be seen as a unifying figure – he has more than once spoken of his wish to one day be represented alongside other great presidents on Mount Rushmore. Trump doesn’t look at the footage out of Minnesota and feel horror in the same way most of us do, but he understands that it’s bad for him – trapping him between the hardliners he’s surrounded himself with, and his own political instincts."
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RWW 1 26 Shane Vaughn declares that "there is no freedom to protest in America."
// RENEE GOOD
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AN 1 26
A federal appeals court has now lifted restrictions on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in how they're meant to deal with local protesters in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Politico legal correspondent Kyle Cheney reported Wednesday that the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals — whose jurisdiction encompasses Minnesota along with six other states — has now granted a motion by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to impose a stay on a temporary restraining order (TRO) put in place by U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez (an appointee of former President Joe Biden). This means that the restrictions will no longer be in place while the DHS appeals them to the circuit court.
After Judge Menendez's TRO was stayed, this means that ICE agents will now once again be allowed to use less-than-lethal munitions on protesters, like flash-bang grenades and tear gas, and make arrests. Politico reported that the TRO was initially put in place following a lawsuit filed over DHS' heavy-handed response to protests that unfolded in the wake of the fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Renee Good.
DHS and ICE had previously been prohibited from "using pepper-spray or similar nonlethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools against persons who are engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity." Judge Menendez's order also forbade federal agents from pulling over citizens for following them, as long as they were keeping an "appropriate" distance.
The overturning of Menendez's TRO comes on the heels of the Trump administration telling military personnel to prepare for a "possible mobilization to Minneapolis." The Department of Justice (DOJ) has also announced federal investigations into Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz – who have encouraged citizens to film and document ICE actions — for allegedly impeding law enforcement operations.
Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance recently compared the Trump administration's handling of Minneapolis protesters to former Birmingham, Alabama Sheriff Bull Connor's treatment of protesters during the Civil Rights Movement. She also condemned the DOJ for objecting to Judge Menendez's order, writing on her Substack: "DOJ has stopped being the independent gem in the crown of the American rule of law."
"Now, it’s just Trump’s law firm," she wrote. "He’s finally found his Roy Cohn, a number of them."
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MMA
01/20/2026
by
- Eric Metaxas says the anti-ICE protestors who disrupted a church service were "following in the footsteps of the KGB" and the Gestapo.
- Will Chamberlain claims that the protest was "the closest thing we've had for left-wing protesters doing something akin to Jan. 6."
- Joshua Haymes used his Martin Luther King Jr. Day program to explain that King was "worse than Stalin."
- North Dakota state Rep. Nico Rios declares that King "was a communist pos."
- Rep. Eric Burlison thinks that "if we had had four more years of Joe Biden, we really were at the precipice of no longer recognizing this country."
- Rick Green gushes that the last year under President Donald Trump was "remarkable" and that, if he had to nitpick, he could find fault with "maybe five percent of the things that he did."
- Finally, Nick Fuentes proclaims that Jeffrey Epstein "was cool as fuck."
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context divert blame
mma
airbaGs went off, doors locked auto; bystanders had to pull out; baby lAST, NOT BREATHING MOM MOUTH TO MOUTH; ICE BLOCKED EMT?
NOTE PAWN // PAID PROTESTOR: VICTIM NOT OF STATE THUGS BUT DERSERVE HARM BECAUSE DUMB ENOUGH TO BE MANIPULATED BY EXTREME LEFT LUNATICS?
January 15, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Carl Higbie Frontline
CARL HIGBIE (HOST): And to counter that, though, the liberal media is trying to go out and tell, like the most insane thing — like, here, about this six-month-old who unfortunately got tear gassed by ICE. Well, like, that sucks. But why was the six-month-old, even exposed or near tear gas in the first place? Huh?
I mean, this has become such a problem that people are using their children as political pawns that DHS had to tweet this out. We told you about this other day. Do not bring your baby to a violent riot. The fact that you have to tell someone that — you should be — your kids should be taken away from you. But that baby was exposed to tear gas because the mob — baby was in the mob in a car — the mob was attacking the ICE agents. They didn't aim the tear gas. They weren't like, hey, check out that six month-old. Let me shoot him in the face. Not at all. That's not at all what happened. They were aiming at the crowd where, for some reason, the car with this six month-old was. Now, if the crowd — I don't know. And I'm just spitballing ideas here — If they listened to law enforcement, no one would have gotten shot with tear gas.
Also showing stuff like this. Kids skipping school to protest ICE turns into violent mosh pits and all this stuff. Here the kids are just piling out of classes like, hey, no, no, they should probably not be in class at all. It's just unbelievable. The only reason that kids would protest ICE because they were taught to protest ICE by liberal teachers in Tim Walz's school districts.
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AN 1 26
A Reagan-appointed judge just shot a warning flare up into the night
:{Thom Hartmann January 21, 2026
Nebraska mom Jamie Bonkiewicz filmed her interaction with Secret Service agents and police who came to her door because of a tweet.
“The Secret Service came to my door today because of a tweet. No threats. No violence. Just words. That’s where we are now.”
Meanwhile, the Justice Department is going after multiple Democratic members of the House and Senate, the governors of two states, the mayor of Minneapolis, and any Republican who speaks against Trump or his lickspittles:
Jerome Powell, Lisa Cook, Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin, Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan, Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, Chris Christie, Jack Smith, Christopher Krebs, James Comey, Letitia James, John Bolton, Tim Walz, Jacob Frey, Miles Taylor…
Are we really losing our fundamental freedoms under Donald Trump?
Back in 1994, I was invited by a parents group in Singapore to speak about education and ADHD; my book on the topic had just made the cover of TIME magazine. I flew in, they put me up in the city/state’s fanciest hotel, and late the following afternoon I gave my speech. When, during the Q&A afterward, somebody asked me how best to institute the public school reforms I’d suggested, I said words to the effect of, “Get politically active, get your politicians involved, as they control and fund the schools.”
The room went completely quiet, which I thought odd, but then the conversation moved on and I didn’t think about it again until a few hours later when I arrived back at the hotel. My room had been ransacked. The bed was askew, drawers emptied, my suitcase all over the floor, even my toiletry kit spread across the bathroom floor.
When I called down to the hotel’s switchboard to let them know what had happened, the manager came up to my room and carefully told me that the police had visited my room while I was out.
“You must have done or said something suspicious,” he told me. That’s when I remembered the eerie silence in response to my suggestion that people get politically active.
America isn’t Singapore. Yet.
Or Russia, where even standing in the street with a blank sign will get you prison time. Yet.
Or Hungary, where posting on Facebook against Viktor Orbán will get you thrown into jail. Yet.
But we’re sure as hell moving in that direction.
Retired professor Barbara Wien stood outside Stephen Miller’s home passing out “No Nazis in NOVA” [North Virginia] fliers with his picture and the slogan, “Wanted for crimes against humanity.” Three weeks later, she was visited by agents of the FBI, the Secret Service, and a Virginia state policeman, because Miller’s podcaster wife had reportedly called them.
In addition to intimidating Wien, they had a search warrant signed by a judge and took her phone. The New York Times notes:
“The activist … has not been charged with any crime, though the Virginia State Police still have her phone. The investigation remains active, leaving it unclear whether law enforcement has since gathered additional evidence.”
Her lawyer told the Times about his client and the activists who’d been distributing similar flyers in town:
“They were speaking truth to power, and that is really at the core of our Constitution. It’s a principle and a right that our country was founded on.”
True, but the Trump regime doesn’t care about the law.
Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson had been reporting on Trump’s corruption and reorganization of our government, so FBI agents showed up at her home and took her phone, her laptop, and her sports watch, which had a record of everywhere she’d visited for the past few weeks. They were apparently looking for the names and locations of the federal employees she may have interviewed. As theTimes reported:
“It is exceedingly rare, even in investigations of classified disclosures, for federal agents to search a reporter’s home. A 1980 law generally bars search warrants for reporters’ work materials, unless the reporters themselves are suspected of committing a crime related to the materials.”
True, but the Trump regime doesn’t care about the law.
Meanwhile, a Reagan-appointed federal judge in Boston just said out loud what millions of Americans are feeling in their gut. U.S. District Judge William G. Young, hardly a lefty firebrand, looked at the evidence in front of him and concluded that the Trump administration is using the machinery of the state to punish speech it doesn’t like.
“I find it breathtaking,” Young said, that he was forced to conclude that “high-level officers of our government — cabinet secretaries — [were] conspiring to infringe the First Amendment rights of people with such rights here in the United States.”
Young was presiding over a case involving the arrest and threatened deportation of non-citizen college students and scholars who spoke out on Palestine. What troubled him wasn’t just the individual cases, but the pattern. The brown-nosers around Trump, he said (without using that word), appeared to be deliberately chilling dissent by turning immigration enforcement into a political weapon.
“The record in this case convinces me,” Young said, “that these high officials — and I include the president of the United States — have a fearful view of freedom. A view that defines the freedom here in the United States by who’s excluded.”
In other words, free speech for those who agree with Trump, Miller, Vance, Noem, et al, but fear, harassment, and punishment for those who don’t.
Then Young went farther, in a way judges almost never do. He openly described Trump’s governing style as authoritarian:
“It’s fairly clear that this president believes, as an authoritarian, that when he speaks, everyone — everyone in Article II — is going to toe the line absolutely.”
When a Reagan judge with impeccable conservative credentials and four decades on the bench is sounding alarms about authoritarianism and the collapse of First Amendment norms, it’s not partisan noise. It’s a warning flare shot up into the night.
But, of course, the Trump regime doesn’t care about norms or the Constitution. And if what’s going on isn’t clear enough, Stephen Miller posted last night about Minneapolis:
“Local and state police have been ordered to stand down and surrender.”
I spent decades doing international relief work in some of the worst places on the planet. I’ve had government soldiers threaten my life, police put automatic weapons in my face, and government ministers on three continents solicit bribes from me and my organization.
I’ve met with political prisoners and families whose members were murdered by the state for simply having the wrong political view. I’ve held children as they stopped breathing from starvation and had an aid worker shot to death in front of me.
This is the road to third-world-style-governance that our corrupt felon of a president has put America on. He justifies the execution of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, sets his rabid mobs on judges who don’t rule the way he wants, intimidates reporters and sues news outlets to shut them up, and is now threatening to deploy the full force of the federal government to silence dissent, criminalize protest, and punish individual speech he finds inconvenient.
He’s destroying our European alliance to the benefit of his friend and mentor Vladimir Putin, writing to the Norwegian Prime Minister as if Trump alone can determine American foreign policy like some sort of emperor or America’s mad king:
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace…”
He’s dragging this country step by step toward the sort of strongman state like the ones I used to work in, where loyalty matters more than the law and fear crowds out personal freedom. He’s overseeing a rapid and radical transformation of America from a democratic republic into a strongman oligarchy where billionaires like him, Elon Musk, the 13 billionaires in his cabinet, and the 140 billionaires who supported him in 2024 run the show.
He’s turned America into an oligarchy, in other words. Rich people buy pardons, corporations buy regulations and subsidies they want, and average people are screwed, particularly if they complain too loudly.
But history teaches us that oligarchies are unstable systems of government.
They typically either collapse from their own internal rot (as happened here in 1932 when the Republican Great Depression brought down the oligarchs of the Roaring Twenties) or get overthrown by their own people (as happened here in the 1860s when the fascist Confederate system that had taken over the Old South was destroyed by the Civil War).
And when oligarchies don’t collapse or get overthrown, they morph into tyranny; usually that happens within a single generation.
That’s what happened in Russia. It went from the chaos of the 1990s oligarchy to Putin’s authoritarian state in less than 20 years. It’s also what happened in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán took a newly-liberated democracy and turned it into an authoritarian state in less than a decade. It’s also what’s happening right now in Turkey, the Philippines, Brazil, India, and multiple other countries around the world.
Tyranny doesn’t typically pop up fully formed and all at once. It comes incrementally, moving step by inexorable step, until it hits a tipping point where it can no longer be stopped. Even days before that tipping point is reached, most people still think the system will correct itself, that once everyone figures out what’s happening, things will go back to normal.
They’re almost always wrong.
America is now in that dangerous zone between oligarchy and tyranny. Because of the corrupt Supreme Court Citizens United decision and its 1978 parent Bellotti, our nation’s oligarchs have controlled our politics for a solid 40 years.
They own the media, have captured the courts, and have bought most of Congress. The question for today is whether they’ll be satisfied with their comfortable oligarchy or whether they’ll join Trump and the GOP’s push for America’s final transition to outright dictatorship.
Steve Bannon told us what the goal was: “Deconstruct the administrative state.” That’s tyrant-speak for dismantling the institutions that might dare or have the ability to constrain oligarchic power.
As a result, we’re in a race against time and the window for successful action is narrowing. Every week that the Trump regime isn’t seriously challenged in the states, courts, the press, or at the ballot box, America’s oligarchs tighten their grip. Every election they buy makes the next election easier to purchase. Every judge they install makes the next judge easier to intimidate or buy off.
This isn’t alarmism: it’s the historical pattern, repeated across dozens of countries and thousands of years. I’ve seen it, repeatedly, with my own eyes.
Oligarchies either collapse or they become tyrannies; there’s no third option.
Thus, the only real question now is whether enough of us will recognize what’s happening while there’s still time to stop it. Republics like ours die — like Russia and Hungary did — when ordinary people convince themselves that the warning signs aren’t real. At least until the knock on the door comes for them.
And then, of course, it’s too late…
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MMA
01/20/26
01/20/26
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NO PIX
collage of Fox News chyrons in 1/26 concerning Minnesota
Media Matters; screenshots via Fox news
Research/Study
The incendiary and demonizing chyrons on Fox News evening programming regarding Minnesota, ICE, and protests
Written by Helena Hind & Jane Lee
Published 01/16/26 7:04 PM EST
After Fox News pushed the Trump administration’s propaganda in its coverage of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent’s deadly January 7 shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, the network has used its chyrons during the ensuing protests to demonize demonstrators, accuse Democratic officials of inciting violence, and declare “Dems at war with America itself.” Fox’s characterization of the protests serves to suggest a pretext for President Donald Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which he threatened to do in a January 15 Truth Social post.
...
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AN 1 267
President Donald Trump's Department of Justice (DOJ) is now claiming that Americans do not have a Constitutional right to film law enforcement officers.
NOTUS reported Tuesday that the DOJ made the claim during a hearing in U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez's courtroom. The hearing was the result of ongoing litigation by Minneapolis residents over claims that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents pepper-sprayed and arrested them without cause. While the initial complaint was filed prior to the fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, the plaintiffs cited Good's death as reason to issue a temporary restraining order against federal agents.
DOJ attorney Jeremy Newman defended the recent trend of ICE agents drawing their weapons on civilian vehicles following them, saying that "following" can lead to "dangerous activity," and that it was "reasonable for officers to be concerned about their safety. NOTUS further reported that Newman cited the 2023 Molina v. Book case to support his argument that "observing and recording police is not a clearly established First Amendment right."
"It’s very clear that this is an ongoing emergency," Newman said.
However, other court cases decided at the federal appellate court level have ruled that Americans do indeed have the right to document police officers in the course of their duties. In the 2022 Irizarry v. Yehia case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that the First Amendment guaranteed the right to film police officers "subject to reasonable time, place and manner restrictions."
Judge Menendez – an appointee of former President Joe Biden — reportedly chided ICE agents for not including copies of any police reports, body camera footage or statements from agents involved in altercations with plaintiffs. Newman responded that the agency "did the best we could" as their response to the litigation was cobbled together over the holiday season.
Menendez also told plaintiffs she would rule on their petition for emergency relief by Thursday or Friday, and hinted that any ruling would pertain to their specific case, rather than a broader decision impacting all protesters in Minneapolis.
Click here to read NOTUS' article in its entirety.
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an 1 26
A protest organizer in Grand Rapids, Michigan was recently arrested while speaking out against President Donald Trump's ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — while she was in the middle of speaking to reporters.
On Monday, Dallas, Texas-based small business owner Brandon Friedman posted a video to Bluesky showing a segment in which ABC affiliate WZZM interviewed Jessica Plichta of Grand Rapids Opponents of War, who organized a weekend protest in response to Maduro's capture. As Plichta was speaking, a police car is seen in the corner, and moments later two officers are seen putting Plichta in handcuffs.
"It's not just a foreign issue, it's our tax dollars that are being used to commit these war crimes," Plichta said. "It is also the duty of us, the people, to stand against the Trump regime, the Trump administration, for committing crimes both here in the U.S. and against people in Venezuela."
"What in the Gestapo is going on in Grand Rapids?" Friedman wrote on Bluesky.
WZZM reported that Plichta was arrested for "obstructing a roadway and failure to obey a lawful command from a police officer." Plichta told the outlet prior to her arrest that she was in Venezuela in December for the People's Assembly for Peace and Sovereignty of Our America summit.
"I saw Maduro in person,” Plichta said. “People loved him. Maduro was elected by the people. He is for the people and the people want to see his return. Free Maduro.”
The names of the two officers who arrested Plichta have not yet been released. AlterNet has contacted the Grand Rapids Police Department for comment.
Watch the video of Plichta's arrest below:
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AN 12 25
Outside of Union Station in Washington, D.C., activists have been regularly demonstrating against policies of the second Trump Administration — from immigration and mass deportations to the economy to health care.
Now, according to Washington's Fox Channel 5, the U.S. Park Police are ordering protesters to leave the area. But some of them are saying that they have a permit and shouldn't have to vacate.
Nana-Sentuo Bonsu and Jillian Smith of Fox Channel 5 report, "These protesters told Fox 5 on Tuesday, (December 9), that they aren't backing down…. If you've been to Union Station recently, you've likely noticed the tents pitched outside. They belong to different groups protesting different issues — mainly against the current administration."
One of the groups told Fox 5 that the Park Police told them they have to leave the area morning despite having a permit to protest.
Matthew Gordon, a retired U.S. Marine Corps veteran, has been protesting against Trump's use of federalized National Guard troops in Washington. And now, he is among the protesters being told to leave the area.
Gordon told Fox 5, "The National Park Service, who manages the plaza and the circle, they told us we have until 12 p.m. Wednesday…. to vacate the premises to begin the 'beautification and construction' on Columbus Circle."
*Read the full Fox Channel 5 article at this link.
Public opposition to artificial intelligence data centers—and the push by corporations and officials to move forward with their construction anyway—were vividly illustrated in a viral video this week of a woman who was arrested after speaking out against a proposed data center in her community in Wisconsin.
Christine Le Jeune, a member of Great Lakes Neighbors United in Port Washington, spoke at a Common Council meeting in the town on Tuesday evening. The meeting was not focused on the recently approved $15 million “Lighthouse” data center set to be built a mile from downtown Port Washington—part of a project developed by Vantage Data Centers for OpenAI and Oracle—but the first 30 minutes were taken up by members of the public who spoke out against the project.
As CNBC reported last month, more than 1,000 people signed a petition calling on Port Washington officials to obtain voter approval before entering into the deal, but the Common Council and a review board went ahead with creating a Tax Incremental District for the project without public input. The data center still requires other approvals to officially move forward.
“We will not continue to be silenced and ignored while our beautiful and pristine city is taken away from us and handed over to a corporation intent on extracting as many resources as they can regardless of the impact on the people who live here,” said Le Jeune. “Most leaders would have tabled the issue after receiving public input and providing sufficient notice. But you did nothing, and you laughed about it.”
Le Jeune spoke for her allotted three minutes and went slightly over the time limit. She then chanted, “Recall, recall, recall!” at members of the Common Council as other community members applauded.
Police Chief Kevin Hingiss then approached Le Jeune while she was sitting in her seat, listening to the next speaker, and asked her to leave.
She refused, and another officer approached her before a chaotic scene broke out.
City officials had told attendees not to speak out of order during the meeting, and Le Jeune acknowledged that she and others had spoken out of turn at times.
But she told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinelthat she had been surprised by the police officers’ demand that she leave, and by the eventual violence of the incident, with officers physically removing her from her seat and dragging her and two other people across the floor.
The two other residents had approached Le Jeune to protest the officers’ actions.
“I never expected something like that to happen in a meeting. It was very strange,” she told the Journal Sentinel. “Suddenly this police chief showed up in front of me, and all I was thinking was: ‘Wait, what is going on? Why is he interrupting her speech? ... It felt like [police] were kind of primed tonight to pounce.”
State Sen. Chris Larson (D-7) said that “police should not be allowed to violently detain a person who is nonviolently exercising their free speech. This used to be something all Americans agreed on.”
William Walter, executive director of Our Wisconsin Revolution, filmed the arrest and told ABC News affiliate WISN, “I’ve never seen a response like that in my life.”
“What I did see was a lot of members of the Port Washington community who are really frustrated that they’re being ignored and they’re being dismissed by their elected officials,” he said.
AI data centers, he added, “will impact you. They’ll impact your friends, your family, your neighbors, your parents, your children. These are the kinds of things that are going to be dictating the future of Wisconsin, not just for the next couple of years but for the next decade, the next 50 years.”
After Le Jeune’s arrest, another resident, Dawn Stacey, denounced the Common Council members for allowing the aggressive arrest.
“We have so many people who have these concerns about this data center,” said Stacey. “Are we being heard by the Common Council? No we’re not. Instead of being heard we have people being dragged out of the room.”
“For democracy to thrive, we need to have respect between public servants and the people who they serve,” she added.
Vantage has distributed flyers in Port Washington, which has a population of 17,000, promising residents 330 full-time jobs after construction. But as CNBC reported, “Data centers don’t tend to create a lot of long-lasting jobs.”
Another project in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin hired 3,000 construction workers and foresees 500 employees, while McKinsey said a data center it is planning would need 1,500 people for construction but only around 50 for “steady-state operations.”
Residents in Port Washington have also raised concerns about the data center’s impact on the environment, including through its water use, the potential for exploding utility prices for residents, and the overall purpose of advancing AI.
As Common Dreamsreported Thursday, the development of data centers has caused a rapid surge in consumers’ electricity bills, with costs rising more than 250% in just five years. Vantage has claimed its center will run on 70% renewable energy, but more than half of the electricity used to power data center campuses so far has come from fossil fuels, raising concerns that the expansion of the facilities will worsen the climate emergency.
A recent Morning Consult poll found that a rapidly growing number of Americans support a ban on AI data centers in their surrounding areas—41% said they would support a ban in the survey taken in late November, compared to 37% in October.
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intercept 11 25
Federal prosecutors have filed a new indictment in response to a July 4 noise demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, during which a police officer was shot.
There are numerous problems with the indictment, but perhaps the most glaring is its inclusion of charges against a Dallas artist who wasn’t even at the protest. Daniel “Des” Sanchez is accused of transporting a box that contained “Antifa materials” after the incident, supposedly to conceal evidence against his wife, Maricela Rueda, who was there.
But the boxed materials aren’t Molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, or whatever MAGA officials claim “Antifa” uses to wage its imaginary war on America. As prosecutors laid out in the July criminal complaint that led to the indictment, they were zines and pamphlets. Some contain controversial ideas — one was titled “Insurrectionary Anarchy” — but they’re fully constitutionally protected free speech. The case demonstrates the administration’s intensifying efforts to criminalize left-wing activists after Donald Trump announced in September that he was designating “Antifa” as a “major terrorist organization” — a legal designation that doesn’t exist for domestic groups — following the killing of Charlie Kirk.
Sanchez was first indicted in October on charges of “corruptly concealing a document or record” as a standalone case, but the new indictment merges his charges with those against the other defendants, likely in hopes of burying the First Amendment problems with the case against him under prosecutors’ claims about the alleged shooting.
It’s an escalation of a familiar tactic. In 2023, Georgia prosecutors listed “zine” distribution as part of the conspiracy charges against 61 Stop Cop City protesters in a sprawling RICO indictment that didn’t bother to explain how each individual defendant was involved in any actual crime. I wrote back then about my concern that this wasn’t just sloppy overreach, but also ablueprint for censorship. Those fears have now been validated by Sanchez’s prosecution solely for possessing similar literature.
Photos of the zines Daniel Sanchez is charged with “corruptly concealing.” Photo: U.S. District Court, Northern District of Texas
There have been other warnings that cops and prosecutors think they’ve found a constitutional loophole — if you can’t punish reporting it, punish transporting it. Los Angeles journalist Maya Lau is suing the LA County Sheriff’s Department for secretly investigating her for conspiracy, theft of government property, unlawful access of a computer, burglary, and receiving stolen property. According to her attorneys, her only offense was reporting on a list of deputies with histories of misconduct for the Los Angeles Times.
If you can’t punish reporting it, punish transporting it.
It’s also reminiscent of the Biden administration’s case against right-wing outlet Project Veritas for possessing and transporting Ashley Biden’s diary, which the organization bought from a Florida woman later convicted of stealing and selling it. The Constitution protects the right to publish materials stolen by others — a right that would be meaningless if they couldn’t possess the materials in the first place.
Despite the collapses of theCop City prosecution and the Lau investigation — and its own dismissal of the Project Veritas case — the Trump administration has followed those dangerous examples, characterizing lawful activism and ideologies as terrorist conspiracies (a strategy Trump allies also floated during this first term) to seize the power to prosecute pamphlet possession anytime they use the magic word “Antifa.”
That’s a chilling combination for any journalist, activist, or individual who criticizes Trump. National security reporters have long dealt with the specter of prosecution under the archaic Espionage Act for merely obtaining government secrets from sources, particularly after the Biden administration extracted a guilty plea from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. But the rest of the press — and everyone else, for that matter — understood that merely possessing written materials, no matter what they said, is not a crime.
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Guilt by Literature
At what point does a literary collection or newspaper subscription become prosecutorial evidence under the Trump administration’s logic? Essentially, whenever it’s convenient. The vagueness is a feature, not a bug. When people don’t know which political materials might later be deemed evidence of criminality, the safest course is to avoid engaging with controversial ideas altogether.
The slippery slope from anarchist zines to conventional journalism isn’t hypothetical, and we’re already sliding fast. Journalist Mario Guevara can tell you that from El Salvador, where he was deported in a clear case of retaliation for livestreaming a No Kings protest. So can Tufts doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, as she awaits deportation proceedings for co-writing an opinion piece critical of Israel’s wars that the administration considers evidence of support for terrorism.
At least two journalists lawfully in the U.S. — Ya’akub Ira Vijandre and Sami Hamdi — were nabbed by ICE just last month. The case against
is partially based on his criticism of prosecutorial overreach in the Holy Land Five case and his liking social media posts that quote Quranic verses, raising the question of how far away we are from someone being indicted for transporting a Quran or a news article critical of the war on terror.
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Sanchez’s case is prosecutorial overreach stacked on more prosecutorial overreach. The National Lawyers Guild criticizedprosecutors’ tenuous dot-connecting to justify holding 18 defendants responsible for one gunshot wound. Some defendants were also charged with supporting terrorism due to their alleged association with “Antifa.” Anarchist zines were cited as evidence against them, too.
Sanchez was charged following a search that ICE proclaimed on social media turned up “literal insurrectionist propaganda” he had allegedly transported from his home to an apartment, noting that “insurrectionary anarchism is regarded as the most serious form of domestic (non-jihadi) terrorist threat.” The tweet also said that Sanchez is a green card holder granted legal status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
The indictment claims Sanchez was transporting those materials to conceal them because they incriminated his wife. But how can possession of literature incriminate anyone, let alone someone who isn’t even accused of anything but being present when someone else allegedly fired a gun? Zines aren’t contraband; it’s not illegal to be an anarchist or read about anarchism. I don’t know why Sanchez allegedly moved the box of documents, but if it was because he (apparently correctly) feared prosecutors would try to use them against his wife, that’s a commentary on prosecutors’ lawlessness, not Sanchez’s.
Violent rhetoric is subject to punishment only when it constitutes a “true threat” of imminent violence. Even then, the speaker is held responsible, not anyone merely in possession of their words.
Government prosecutors haven’t alleged the “Antifa materials” contained any “true threats,” or any other category of speech that falls outside the protection of the First Amendment. Nor did they allege that the materials were used to plan the alleged actions of protesters on July 4 (although they did allege that the materials were “anti-government” and “anti-Trump”).
We don’t need a constitutional right to publish (or possess) only what the government likes.
Even the aforementioned “Insurrectionary Anarchy: Organizing for Attack” zine, despite its hyperbolic title, reads like a think piece, not a how-to manual. It advocates for tactics like rent strikes and squatting, not shooting police officers. Critically, it has nothing to do with whether Sanchez’s wife committed crimes on July 4.
Being guilty of possessing literature is a concept fundamentally incompatible with a free society. We don’t need a constitutional right to publish (or possess) only what the government likes, and the “anti-government” literature in Sanchez’s box of zines is exactly what the First Amendment protects. With history and leaders like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán as a guide, we also know it’s highly unlikely that Trump’s censorship crusade will stop with a few radical pamphlets.
The Framers Loved Zines
There’s an irony in a supposedly conservative administration treating anti-government pamphlets as evidence of criminality. Many of the publications the Constitution’s framers had in mind when they authored the First Amendment’s press freedom clause bore far more resemblance to Sanchez’s box of zines than to the output of today’s mainstream news media.
Revolutionary-era America was awash in highly opinionated, politically radical literature. Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” was designed to inspire revolution against the established government. Newspapers like the Boston Gazette printed inflammatory writings by Samuel Adams and others urging the colonies to prepare for war after the Coercive Acts. The Declaration of Independence itself recognized the right of the people to rise up. It did not assume the revolution of the time would be the last one.
One might call it “literal insurrectionist propaganda” — and some of it was probably transported in boxes.
The framers enshrined press freedom not because they imagined today’s professionally trained journalists maintaining careful neutrality. They protected it because they understood firsthand the need for journalists and writers who believed their government had become tyrannical to espouse revolution.
For all their many faults, the framers were confident enough in their ideas that they were willing to let them be tested. If the government’s conduct didn’t call for radical opposition, then radical ideas wouldn’t catch on. It sure looks like the current administration doesn’t want to make that bet.
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RWW
Ryan J. Reilly @ NBC News: Jury acquits D.C. 'sandwich guy' charged with chucking a sub at a federal agent
Sean Dunn faced a single misdemeanor after federal grand jurors refused to indict him on the felony charge sought by prosecutors.
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am gtness
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has earned the nickname “ICE Barbie” for her love of bizarre publicity stunts, including posing in front of detainees. / Alex Brandon/Pool via Reuters
More
NOTUS and the Daily Beast also uncovered multiple hateful posts from an X account belonging to Lendrum. In November 2023, he advocated for drivers to plow through pro-Palestinian protesters blocking traffic.
“Cars are bigger and heavier than any one of these freaks. All it takes is one brave driver to do what needs to be done, then others will follow,” he wrote.
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OMG
RWW
10/27/2025
by
Heritage Action, the political arm of the MAGA “think tank” behind the Trump administration’s Project 2025 policy agenda, is claiming that America’s city streets have been occupied by Marxist rioters to rally support for legislation that would empower President Donald Trump’s Justice Department to more aggressively wage war against the president’s political opponents.
“End the Marxist Occupation of our Streets,” reads a Heritage Action campaign message, which praises Trump's designation of Antifa as a "domestic terrorist organization." The message includes an illustrated graphic of a television “PUBLIC SAFETY ALERT” reading “MARXIST RIOTERS IN YOUR CITY AVOID PUBLIC AREAS AT ALL COSTS.”
The campaign by Heritage Action urges people to petition Congress to pass the Stop FUNDERS Act being promoted by Sen. Ted Cruz, Rep. Beth Van Duyne, and other MAGA Republicans. FBI Director Kash Patel endorsed the legislation at a congressional hearing last month.
Cruz told Fox News this month that his legislation would allow the Justice Department to “prosecute the money” that is funding “No Kings” protests and suggested without offering any evidence that the more than 200 organizations that have supported the overwhelmingly peaceful “No Kings” protests are part of a “criminal enterprise.”
Advocates warn that the Cruz legislation would, especially in the hands of the nakedly politicized Trump Justice Department, threaten freedom of speech and the right to dissent:
The legislation “would dangerously lower the bar for government investigations into Americans exercising their right to peaceful demonstration,” said Cole Leiter, executive director of Americans Against Government Censorship, a coalition of progressive and labor groups that launched late last year.
“By branding protest as a criminal activity, this bill threatens to intimidate people from engaging in peaceful, lawful advocacy and puts everyday Americans at risk of being dragged into sprawling investigations,” he added.
Trump has publicly demanded that the Justice Department deploy the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act – known as RICO – to prosecute his political opponents and progressive organizations and funders.
The Cruz bill would allow the federal government to, in Cruz’s words, “use the full suite of RICO tools against entities who fund or coordinate violent interstate riots.” According to Cruz’s office, those tools include “joint liability and group prosecution, conspiracy charges, asset forfeiture, and enhanced criminal penalties.” The Cruz press release claims the act would also “deter abuse of nonprofit status and expose hidden financial pipelines behind politically motivated violence.”
In his “war on the left,” Trump and his allies have repeatedly smeared and threatened philanthropists George and Alex Soros and the Open Society Foundations. The Guardian noted recently that Trump’s unsubstantiated claims “provided more specificity to a threat that liberal non-profits have been planning for since his election victory last year: a crackdown on their organizations and major Democratic funders designed to intimidate them from carrying out their work, waste their time with investigations and ultimately hobble the opposition.”
The Open Society Foundations recently responded to Trump administration attacks, saying in part:
Our activities are peaceful and lawful, and our grantees are expected to abide by human rights principles and comply with the law.
These accusations are politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the first amendment right to free speech. When power is abused to take away the rights of some people, it puts the rights of all people at risk.
Our work in the United States is dedicated to strengthening democracy and upholding constitutional freedoms. We stand by the work we do to improve lives in the United States and across the world.
Dozens of civil society organizations have condemned the Trump administration's attacks on the Open Society Foundations. In addition, People For the American Way has denounced “President Trump’s campaign to weaponize the entire federal government against anyone who stands in the way of his destructive agenda.”
Heritage Action is also urging the House to “establish — and dedicate adequate time, authority, staff, and resources to — a select committee to investigate the rise of left-wing terrorism.” In reality, there is evidence that “most domestic terrorists in the U.S. are politically on the right, and right-wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism.”
:{:{---}:
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10/24/2025 RWW
by
- David Peisner @ Rolling Stone: A Company Is Building Communities for Right-Wing Christians. Some Neighbors Aren’t Happy
“Are you fed up with crime, corruption, and wokeness in your big, blue city?” says RidgeRunner CEO Josh Abbotoy. “Move here”
- Liliana Segura @ The Intercept: The Absurd Prosecution of a Man Who Posted a Charlie Kirk Meme
Larry Bushart Jr. posted trolling memes on a Facebook thread about a vigil for Kirk. He’s been in a Tennessee jail ever since.
The Absurd Prosecution of a Man Who Posted a Charlie Kirk Meme
By the time the cops showed up to arrest him for sharing a derisive meme responding to the killing of Charlie Kirk, Larry Bushart Jr. had posted on Facebook more than 100 times on Sunday alone.
It was past 11 p.m. on September 21, and Bushart, 61, was still up with his wife at their home in Lexington, Tennessee, a small city halfway between Nashville and Memphis. It had been a normal weekend. On Saturday, they went to see a community theater performance of “Arsenic and Old Lace.” The next day, they moved furniture to prepare for a new carpet delivery. And, as he did almost every day, Bushart spent hours on his phone, posting on Facebook a torrent of liberal memes.
Born and raised in West Tennessee, Bushart worked as a police officer and sheriff’s deputy for 24 years, then spent another nine with the Tennessee Department of Correction before retiring from law enforcement last year. His politics made him an outlier among his neighbors. Like many people, he reserved his most strident opinions for the internet. On Facebook, Bushart slammed President Donald Trump and his followers, whom he likened to a cult. He quarreled with vaccine skeptics and fought with election deniers. As things took a darker turn during Trump’s second term, Bushart posted memes decrying the president’s increasingly authoritarian moves. After Kirk’s killing on September 10, Bushart posted furiously, repeatedly, about why the right-wing activist did not deserve to be lionized — and warning about the escalating assault on free speech.
His posts were not limited to his own feed. That Saturday morning, in a Facebook group called “What’s Happening in Perry County,” Bushart spotted a thread about an upcoming candlelight vigil honoring Kirk in the county seat of Linden, a small town some 45 minutes away. He fired off a rapid series of trollish memes. One showed a scene from “The Sopranos.” “Tony, Charlie Kirk died,” Carmela Soprano says. “Who gives a shit,” Tony replies. Another quoted Kash Patel’s press conference after Kirk’s murder, where he said, “I’ll see you at Valhalla,” depicting the FBI director in a Viking costume and holding a rubber chicken. The most vulgar meme appeared to capture the moment Kirk was shot, accompanied by the words, “Release the Epstein Files.”
But it was a more innocuous post that would soon send Bushart’s life spiraling out of control. It was an image he had previously posted to his own feed to little response: a photo of Trump alongside a quote, “We have to get over it.” The meme, which had been circulating for more than a year, drew from remarks Trump made after a January 2024 school shooting in Perry, Iowa. Beneath the quote was a line providing context: “Donald Trump, on the Perry High School mass shooting, one day after.” Above the image were the words “Seems relevant today.”
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If Bushart shared the posts to taunt those mourning Kirk, the reactions on the forum remained relatively mild. “Jeez Larry, take a stress pill or something,” one man commented. “Mow the lawn, get off the computer. A simple, concise statement like ‘I HATE Charlie’ would be sufficient.” Some of Bushart’s posts were received more positively; a meme arguing that “Billionaires fund the class war. Charlie Kirk sold it as a race war” got several likes. The Trump meme, meanwhile, was ignored.
By Sunday evening, however, the posts had gotten the attention of Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems. An avid Facebook user himself, Weems had shared the information about the Kirk vigil on his own page a few days earlier. He had also posted his own emotional response to the news of Kirk’s murder in September, warning ominously about the “evil” in our midst. “Evil could be your neighbor,” he wrote. “Evil could be standing right beside you in the grocery store. It could be your own family member and you never even know it.”
Weems contacted his investigator. Just under an hour later, in Lexington, Bushart wrote a two-line post on Facebook at 7:53 p.m. “Received a visit from Lexington PD regarding my posted memes on ‘What’s Happening in Perry County,’” he wrote. The police had come at the behest of Perry County, he said, but did not elaborate.
If he was concerned, Bushart didn’t show it. He went back to posting. At 9:48 p.m., Bushart shared a meme from a page called Blue Wave 2026, featuring an unhinged-looking Roseanne Barr. “Many maga are claiming that Obama used the pressure of his office and the FCC to get Rosanne cancelled just like Trump did to Kimmel,” it read. “Except Obama wasn’t president in 2018. Care to guess who was?”
It would be his last post that night. At 11:15 p.m., police knocked on his door again. This time there were four officers, one of whom was holding a warrant for his arrest, which had been sent from Perry County. Body camera footage obtained by The Intercept shows police following Bushart inside his house and waiting while he slips on his shoes. Then they handcuff him on his front porch and lead him away.
Arriving at the local jail, the officer with the warrant unfolded the piece of paper. “Just to clarify, this is what they charged you with,” he told Bushart, pointing and reading aloud: “Threatening Mass Violence at a School.”
“At a school?” Bushart said, sounding confused.
But the officer had no further explanation. “I ain’t got a clue,” he said, chuckling. “I just gotta do what I have to do.”
Bushart laughed too. “I’ve been in Facebook jail but now I’m really in it,” he said. He hadn’t committed a crime, he said. “I may have been an asshole but…”
“That’s not illegal,” the officer said.
Bushart was booked at the Perry County Jail in Linden on September 22, just before 2 a.m. He has been there ever since. His bail was set at $2 million — a shocking amount, wildly beyond his financial capacity. Under Tennessee law, Bushart would have to pay at least $210,000 to get out of jail, under onerous conditions. Although his defense attorney has filed a motion asking General Sessions Judge Katerina Moore to reduce his bail on the grounds that he is not a flight risk and does not pose a threat to the community, a hearing on the motion was reset at prosecutors’ request. Bushart’s next court date is not scheduled to take place until December 4.
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Bushart is one of countless people whose lives have been upended due to social media posts shared after Kirk’s death. The murder triggered an extraordinary crackdown on speech, wielded against Americans from every level of government, with the White House and its allies targeting those whose public reactions they considered offensive. Vice President J.D. Vance urged Americans to report people to their employers. At the Pentagon, nearly 300 employees were investigated. And more recently, the State Department revoked the visas of people who spoke ill of Kirk.
:{:{In Tennessee, a wave of firings and suspensions took place across the state, with numerous public employees and college and university staffers punished for their posts. A high school science teacher was suspended after being targeted by the right-wing website The Federalist for an Instagram story calling Kirk a “POS” and quoting his reaction to the 2023 Covenant School shooting in Nashville, which left seven dead, including three 9-year-old students. “It’s worth to have, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God given rights,” Kirk had said. }:
And, under pressure from Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who is running for Tennessee governor, a university fired a theater professor for posting an old article about Kirk’s comments, issuing a statement explaining that the professor had “reshared a post on social media that was insensitive, disrespectful and interpreted by many as propagating justification for unlawful death.”}:
But Bushart’s case is in a class of its own. He is almost certainly the only person who was arrested and held on a serious criminal charge for a Facebook post in the wake of Kirk’s death — a charge that seems clearly divorced from reality. Among those who have heard of it, the case has been met with shock, outrage, and considerable confusion. On TikTok, Reddit, and a “Justice for Larry Bushart” page on Facebook, many see the case as a form of government overreach that puts all Americans in danger. And though the case is undeniably part of the broader assault on free speech sparked by the Kirk assassination, it is also locally rooted: a perfect storm of bad law, overzealous policing, and a political climate that has emboldened law enforcement officials to punish perceived enemies.
At the heart of the controversy is elected Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems. In office since 2015, his previous claim to fame in Tennessee was his response to the 2018 shooting at Parkland High School in Florida, which killed 17 people. In an impassioned open letter, he criticized politicians who failed to protect students, pledging $500 of his own money to install barricade locks on school doors in Perry County. His rallying cry: “Not Our Children!”
More recently, Weems has availed himself of a Tennessee law passed after the Covenant School shooting, which sought harsh new punishments for “recklessly making a threat of mass violence.” The American Civil Liberties Union and other free speech experts cautioned at the time that the language was so broad, “it could potentially criminalize a wide range of adults and children who do not have any intent of actually causing harm or making a threat” — and this is precisely what has happened. The law has ensnared numerous students for social media activity that, by all rational interpretations, are not actually threatening actual violence. Earlier this year, ProPublica and WPLN/Nashville Public Radio reported on a group of middle school cheerleaders who were slapped with criminal charges by the local sheriff for filming a TikTok video in which one girl said, “Put your hands up,” while other girls dropped to the floor.
In Bushart’s case, the warrant affidavit contains a short narrative summarizing the ostensible evidence against him. “At approximately 1900 hours,” writes Perry County Sheriff’s Investigator Jason Morrow, “I … received a message from Sheriff Nick Weems regarding a Facebook post Larry Bushart made on the What’s Happening in Perry County, TN Facebook page stating ‘This seems relevant today…’ with an image of Donald Trump and the words ‘We have to get over it.’” Morrow quotes the rest of the meme and notes that it was posted “on a message thread regarding the Charlie Kirk vigil.” He then writes: “This was a means of communication, via picture, posted to a Perry County, TN Facebook page in which a reasonable person would conclude could lead to serious bodily injury, or death of multiple people.”
A screenshot of the meme Larry Bushart Jr. posted to Facebook. Source: Larry Bushart Jr.'s Facebook page
It’s possible, perhaps, to imagine how the Trump meme might have set some members of the Facebook group on edge — at least upon first glance. The post invoked a school shooting at a “Perry High School.” The local high school in Linden is called Perry County High School. Moreover, just one month earlier, Weems had reported an alleged threat against the school, prompting administrators to cancel all classes “for the safety of our students and staff.” Still, it was easy to discern that, apart from the name “Perry,” there was nothing connecting the meme to Linden.
Chris Eargle, who created the “Justice for Larry Bushart” Facebook page, first heard about the case from news reports posted on social media. Like many online commenters, he figured there had to be more to the story. “I was very skeptical when I first saw it,” he said. “He couldn’t have just been thrown in jail with a $2 million bond just for posting a Trump meme.” But the closer he looked at the case, the more it seemed clear that’s exactly what happened. “I was like, ‘Oh, wow, they actually did charge him for posting a meme.’”
Eargle requested to join the “What’s Happening In Perry County” group and was granted access. He also started commenting on different Facebook pages linked to the sheriff. “Unwise persecution of people for their political views will cost the taxpayers millions of dollars,” he wrote in a review on the “Re-Elect Weems for Sheriff” page. “He should never be allowed near public office again.” Before long, the page was taken down. So was the Perry County Sheriff’s Office page.
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Weems had been happy to publicize Bushart’s arrest at first. In the earliest news story on September 22, local radio station WOPC published Bushart’s mugshot along with a statement from the sheriff, who said that Bushart’s meme had alluded to “a hypothetical shooting at a place called Perry High School.” According to Weems, “That message caused considerable concern within the community and we were asked to investigate.”
Readers found this perplexing. “I’m confused,” one woman wrote on Facebook after the story was posted on the station page. “He was talking about shooting up the school or shooting up a vigil. How are the two things connected?” Another reader speculated that Weems hadn’t heard of the Iowa shooting and misinterpreted the post as a threat. “A man is in jail because the sheriff didn’t use google.”
In a comment that has since been deleted, Weems personally replied to correct the record. “We were very much aware of the meme being from an Iowa shooting,” he wrote later that afternoon. The meme “created mass hysteria to parents and teachers … that led the normal person to conclude that he was talking about our Perry County High School.”
This did not go over well. Most people would not read the meme as a threat, several commenters pointed out. But even if the meme had caused some people to panic, one man wrote, “your department arrested a man for expressing free speech because you listened to public hysteria rather than doing an investigation?”
Others didn’t buy the notion that there had been panic at all. “Mass hysteria is a lie,” another man wrote. “I hope he sues you.”
As the story spread, confusion persisted over the basic facts. Because the Facebook thread was only visible to members of the Perry County group, it was unclear to most people when, exactly, Bushart posted the memes or how people reacted — let alone whether the response could be described as “mass hysteria.” But Weems insisted that Bushart wanted to sow panic, telling The Tennessean that “investigators believe Bushart was fully aware of the fear his post would cause and intentionally sought to create hysteria within the community.”
Yet there were no public signs of this hysteria. Nor was there much evidence of an investigation — or any efforts to warn county schools. Although the Perry County Schools District did not respond to messages from The Intercept, attorneys with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a series of open records requests with the school district asking for any communications to or from staff pertaining to the case — including terms like “shooting,” “threat,” and “meme.” In response, the director of schools wrote that there were no records related to Bushart’s case. “The Perry County Sheriff’s Department handled this situation,” he wrote.
“You would think that if a school district or a school was the target of a serious threat, they would have an email or a text message or something to students, to parents, to the safety officer, to the community, saying, ‘Here’s what has happened. Don’t worry. Everything is all right,’” said Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney with FIRE who has been monitoring the case. “They have nothing.”
Meanwhile, the Perry County Sheriff’s Office has not responded to records requests by FIRE. In a phone call with The Intercept, a sheriff’s deputy told The Intercept that any records related to the case would have to be subpoenaed. “I’m not releasing anything due to the scrutiny and the harassing phone calls we’ve had,” he said, then hung up. But Weems himself responded to an email earlier this week. He said that the Perry County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page “has been in the process” of being deleted since July but declined to comment further. “There is a lot of false quotes being made in regard to this case,” he wrote. “Therefore, I’m not gonna continue to discuss the case until it’s settled in court.”
Bushart’s lawyer has not responded to messages about the case. Bushart’s wife declined to speak on the record on the advice of the attorney. But Bushart’s son defended his dad on social media, calling the prosecution “an egregious violation of his 1st Amendment rights” and spelling out what has been clear from the start: The meme he shared was meant to show “the hypocrisy in honoring Charlie Kirk while ignoring other tragic incidents of mass violence.”
For now, Bushart faces the prospect of spending Thanksgiving in jail. On Tuesday, a member of the Justice for Larry Bushart page created a GiveSendGo account to raise money for his legal defense. “This isn’t just for Larry; this is a stand against overzealous law enforcement acting on skewed interpretations of free speech,” it reads. “Remember: today it’s someone else; tomorrow it could be you or me.”
To Steinbaugh, who has litigated First Amendment violations all over the country, Bushart’s case stands out. “One thing that’s unique about it is that nobody has done a course correction here,” he said. “It would be one thing to have law enforcement overreacting and detaining someone … and then the next day, saying, ‘OK, message received, we’ve done our due diligence. That’s all we need to do here.’ This guy’s been incarcerated since this happened over quoting the president. Cooler heads should have prevailed by now.”
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- Liza Featherstone @ The New Republic: Trump’s Crusade Against Critics Is So Much Worse Than “Cancel Culture”
The liberal cancel culture of yesteryear is indeed regrettable. But let’s not succumb to bothsidesism.
- Kate Riga @ Talking Points Memo: Trump Isn’t Waiting for the Insurrection Act To Turn the Military on American Citizens
President Trump teases his backup plan to use the military against Americans in blue cities on a near weekly basis.
- Catherine Bouris @ The Daily Beast: Steve Bannon Reveals ‘There’s a Plan’ for Third Trump Term
Bannon divulged that there are “many different alternatives” for securing a third term for Trump.
- Dan McClellan: Is biblical slavery more compassionate?
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AN 10 25 RUPAR
Eric Trump’s controversial remarks — declaring that his father is guided by God and praising what he describes as a divinely orchestrated series of events leading America to this moment — are being blasted by a group of hundreds of national security experts.
“I can’t tell you how many things are lining up,” the President’s son told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson.
“I mean, think about the fact that this book came out on Charlie Kirk’s birthday, on the same day as we have peace in the Middle East,” he said, of his new book. “You know, I mean, so many different factors are all coming together at once in the most unthinkable, unbelievable journey.”
“Look how much better humanity and our world is,” under Trump, he claimed.
“You know, we’re saving Christianity. We’re saving God, we’re saving the family unit. We’re saving this nation. I mean, you know, DEI is out the window, Benny. You know, I mean, you no longer have Colin Kaepernick kneeling for the national anthem,” Trump continued. “You no longer have Budweiser going, woke as h–, all of this is dead.”
Trump claimed a resurgence in church attendance, and “a return to people, you know, valuing their children, and valuing society, and believing in the white picket fence, and what the American dream represents, and what the American dream stands for, and American exceptionalism, and peace around the world, and that people can coexist with one another without having to, you know, pick up arms and destroy each other for no reason whatsoever, other than, you know, incompetent, and, you know, and egotistical governments.”
“It’s a beautiful time, and he will go to heaven for all of that,’ he said of his father. “God absolutely guided this journey.”
The Steady State, a group of over 330 former national security officials, slammed the Trump scion’s remarks.
“Eric Trump is not talking politics,” they wrote. “Instead, he’s declaring a new moral order.”
“Framing Trump as God-guided and destined for heaven, he claims America has been ‘saved’ from DEI, protest, and pluralism. This is prophetic, authoritarian language,” they warned.
“Dissent becomes evil, and their victory becomes divine destiny.”
Former Obama head speechwriter turned political commentator Jon Favreau remarked, “We’ve moved rather quickly from ‘God saved Trump’ to ‘Trump is saving God,’ which I guess is the foundation of the new MAGA religion?”
Author Jennifer Erin Valent, winner of a Christian writers’ award commented, “No one ‘saves’ God. Every Christian should know that and be repulsed by the very assertion.”
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‘Absurd’: Noem claim to have arrested ‘antifa’ founder’s girlfriend stirs ridicule
Jordan Green, Investigative Reporter
October 15, 2025
:{:{This article was paid for by Raw Story}:
A dramatic claim by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to have arrested “the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa,” therefore putting the Trump administration in position to “eliminate” the leftwing “network,” was dismissed by both the activist the arrested woman was said to have dated and a leading expert on such leftwing groups.
“I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not now, nor have I ever been, the ‘founder’ of ‘Antifa’ — in Portland [Oregon], the United States, or anywhere else,” said Luis Enrique Marquez, the activist, in a statement on a website promoting a book.
“It’s an absurd claim, no matter how they try to frame it,” Stanislav Vysotsky, an associate professor of criminology at the University of Fraser Valley in British Columbia, told Raw Story.
ALSO READ: This Trump lackey's ridiculous promos actually point to the fall of American law
Nonetheless, Noem’s trumpeting of the arrest of Katherine Vogel, 39, showed the administration’s determination to make headlines as it seeks to paint “antifa” activists as a danger to the American public, and Portland as the supposed base of such groups.
‘Root them out’
Seated alongside President Donald Trump during a White House roundtable last week, Noem said: “One of the individuals we arrested in Portland was the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa.
“We are hoping that as we go after her, interview her and prosecute her, we will get more and more information about the network and how we can root them out and eliminate them from the existence of American society.”
On Sept. 30, Vogel was the subject of a targeted arrest carried out by Federal Protective Services and U.S. Border Patrol agents, after she was allegedly observed with a group of people spilling red paint on the sidewalk outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility.
A federal criminal complaint alleges that “while Vogel was being escorted into the facility for processing, she actively resisted by flailing her body” and struck one of the agents on the jaw with a closed fist.
She told an investigator she did not recall striking the agent.
Vogel was a contractor with the U.S. General Services Administration. As a result of her arrest “she was found unsuitable” and will no longer work for the agency, a spokesperson told Raw Story.
Noem’s description of Vogel as a potential linchpin for a nationwide network supposedly posing a terrorist threat appears to have been sourced to Andy Ngo, a right-wing media figure who Trump said at the roundtable was “a very serious person.”
Ngo was previously represented in a lawsuit for assault against Rose City Antifa, a Portland group, by Harmeet Dhillon, now assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice. Rose City Antifa was dismissed as a defendant. Ngo and Dhillon frequently share each other’s posts on X.
A week before Noem’s White House remarks, Ngo posted that Vogel was “a veteran Rose City Antifa member” and “the previous girlfriend of violent Rose City Antifa member Luis Enrique Marquez.”
Vogel, who was released from custody on Oct. 1, could not be reached for comment.
Marquez, the author of the book Antifascist: A Memoir of the Portland Uprising, refuted Ngo’s claim. The statement on his website said: “I have never been a member of Rose City Antifa or any other Antifa group.”
Marquez also said his relationship with Vogel ended in 2020, adding, “Any insinuation of an ongoing connection between us is false and disingenuous.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to a request to clarify Noem’s reference to Vogel as “the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa.”
Vysotsky, who has extensively interviewed antifascist activists, said that notion was difficult to square with reality, given that the movement dates back to the early 20th century.
“If we’re talking about the girlfriend of the founder of antifa, then we’re talking about someone who would have to be 120 years old or 130 years old,” Vysotsky told Raw Story.
While antifascism emerged in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, in response to the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany, Vysotsky said the modern antifascist movement in North America can generally be dated to the mid- to late-1980s.
Rose City Antifa, the Portland-based group referenced by Ngo, was founded in 2007. Vysotsky said that to the best of his knowledge, Marquez was not a founder.
“He came on the scene in 2016 or 2017,” Vysotsky said. “He happens to be someone who is prominent and outspoken on social media. It’s an absurd claim, no matter how they try to frame it.”
A DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said Vogel’s activist connections were the subject of “an ongoing investigation,” adding: “We will release more information when we can.”
‘A militarist, anarchist enterprise’
In a Sept. 26 X post, DHS described Rose City Antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization.” The post followed an executive order issued by Trump days earlier, which described “Antifa” as “a militarist, anarchist enterprise.”
But Vysotsky said Noem’s vow to “root out” and “eliminate” an “antifa” network was likely to go nowhere because there is no formal membership organization or international network.
“It’s an orientation, because it’s a set of beliefs by people opposed to fascism,” Vysotsky said.
“What they mean when they say ‘fascism’ is a movement based on a belief in an inherent inequality between people that is enforced by violence. What antifa stands for is equality between people, and what drives antifascism is a desire to create a more just and equal world.”
The idea that the Trump administration will be able to use Vogel’s arrest to identify a leadership cadre and, as Noem put it, “eliminate” an “antifa” network “from the existence of American society” is “an almost absurd claim,” Vysotsky said.
“Antifa activism, as it exists, is highly decentralized,” Vysotsky said, adding that antifascist activity ranges from individuals engaged in intelligence gathering and educational work “to small, local affinity groups that are organized in a direct, democratic manner.
“There’s no leadership,” he said.
The Sept. 26 DHS post accused Rose City Antifa of doxing ICE agents.
On Sept. 19 a website called Rose City Counter-Info did post two profiles that showed the names and images — and in one case, information about the employment history of a spouse — of two individuals purported to be ICE agents active in the Portland area. The DHS post included a photo of a flyer soliciting information about ICE agents that appears to include Rose City Antifa's email address, although it is partially redacted.
A statement published on Rose City Antifa's behalf denies that the group has doxed ICE agents or had anything to do with the flyer. The statement references a Bluesky post two months earlier that acknowledges the flyers but indicates Rose City Antifa was not responsible for putting them out.
The DHS X post referencing Rose City Antifa came a day after Trump issued a national security memorandum, NSPM-7, which argued that domestic terrorists organized under the banner of “anti-fascism” are engaged in “sophisticated, organized campaigns of targeted intimidation.”
The memo claims campaigns “escalate to organized doxing, where the private or identifying information of their targets (such as home addresses, phone numbers, or other personal information) is exposed to the public with the explicit intent of encouraging others to harass, intimidate, or violently assault them).”
The memo specifically references activists targeting ICE agents.
“For the Trump administration to argue that antifa activists are terrorists, they’re going to have to greatly expand what acts constitute terrorism,” Vysotsky said.
They’re already doing that, he argued, by “talking about doxing as a form of terrorism.”
‘Exceptionally broad’
Vysotsky said rhetoric from the Trump administration linking antifascism to terrorism appears to be calculated to distract attention from ICE activities and violence by far-right actors.
“This serves as a distraction to focus Trump supporters away from the negative images of families being separated,” Vysotsky said. “It’s also a way to distract away from political violence, which has overwhelmingly been right-wing political violence.”
Antifascists, with journalists and observers, confront white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va in 2017. Picture: Anthony Crider
Vysotsky and Marquez said they saw the campaign against “antifa” as signaling a crackdown on all who oppose Trump’s policies — not just the far left.
“It’s exceptionally broad, because when they talk about antifa, they’re creating this image that ranges from the bogeyman of black-clad protesters to mainstream politicians like Adam Schiff [the Democratic senator from California] to the Ford Foundation, which is a major philanthropic organization,” Vysotsky said.
NSPM-7 charges that an “‘anti-fascist’ lie has become a rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights and fundamental American liberties.”
Core tenets of antifascism, the memorandum claims, “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.”
Marquez said that “by targeting innocent people and fabricating threats that do not exist,” the Trump administration is “attempting to build a mythical enemy in order to expand control over our lives.”
This story was updated on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025 at 1:57 p.m. to reflect that Rose City Antifa has denied doxing ICE agents and responsibility for the flyer soliciting tips on agents.
Jordan Green is a North Carolina-based investigative reporter at Raw Story, covering domestic extremism, efforts to undermine U.S. elections and democracy, hate crimes and terrorism. Prior to joining the staff of Raw Story in March 2021, Green spent 16 years covering housing, policing, nonprofits and music as a reporter and editor at Triad City Beat in North Carolina and Yes Weekly. He can be reached at jordan@rawstory.com. More about Jordan Green.
Thom Hartmann
This Trump lackey's ridiculous promos actually point to the fall of American law
Here's how to bring Trump and his lawless thugs to justice
John Stoehr
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REPORT: When Charities Betray America: How “Pro-Palestinian” Protest Groups Promote Anti-Americanism
by Ryan Mauro on May 5, 2025
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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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// BONDI ON HATE SPEECH
Trump’s AG scrambles to do 'damage control' after conservatives rage against free speech threat
AN 9 25
Senior Trump administration officials on Monday made fresh threats to crack down on a nonexistent left-wing “domestic terror movement” following last week’s assassination of Charlie Kirk—a move that critics called an attempt to exploit the far-right firebrand’s murder to advance an authoritarian agenda targeting nonviolent opposition.
Even as investigators work to determine the motive of Kirk’s killer, members of Trump’s inner circle and supporters have amplified an unfounded narrative of a coordinated leftist movement targeting conservatives.
According to The New York Times:
On Monday, two senior administration officials, who spoke anonymously to describe the internal planning, said that Cabinet secretaries and federal department heads were working to identify organizations that funded or supported violence against conservatives. The goal, they said, was to categorize left-wing activity that led to violence as domestic terrorism, an escalation that critics said could lay the groundwork for crushing anti-conservative dissent more broadly.
Appearing on the latest episode of “The Charlie Kirk Show” podcast—which was guest hosted by US Vice President JD Vance—White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said that “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,” Miller vowed.
Vance said during the podcast that he wanted to explore “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.”
“You have the crazies on the far left who are saying, ‘Oh, Stephen Miller and JD Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected speech,‘” the vice president said. “We’re going to go after the network that foments, facilitates, and engages in violence.”
Vance, who like Trump and numerous supporters claim to champion free speech, also took aim at “people who are celebrating” Kirk’s killing.
Another unnamed administration official told the Times Monday that government agencies would be investigating people, including those accused of vandalizing Tesla electric vehicles and dealerships and allegedly assaulting federal immigration agents, in an effort to implicate US leftists in political violence.
Vance and Miller’s threats ignored right-wing violence—which statistically outpaces left-wing attacks—including the recent assassinations of Democratic Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman, who were murdered in June by a right-wing masked gunman disguised as a police officer.
Investigative reporter Jason Paladino reported last week that the US Department of Justice apparently removed an academic study previously published on the National Institute for Justice’s online library showing that “since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives” versus “42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives” committed by “far-left extremists.”
Responding to Miller’s remarks, New Republic staff writer Greg Sargent noted on social media that “Stephen Miller was directly involved in one of the largest acts of organized domestic political violence the United States has seen in modern times, the January 6 [2021] insurrection.”
Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) weighed in Monday on Miller’s attempt to exploit Kirk’s murder, writing on the social media site Bluesky that “it’s never acceptable to kill someone for their political beliefs. But the Trump [administration] exploiting the shooting of Charlie Kirk to follow their authoritarian instincts and crack down on the left is incredibly disturbing.”
“We must end any form of political violence—and reject those who try to exploit it,” she added.
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom noted Monday on social media that Miller “has already publicly labeled the Democratic Party as a terrorist organization.”
“This isn’t about crime and safety,” Newsom added. “It’s about dismantling our democratic institutions. We cannot allow acts of political violence to be weaponized and used to threaten tens of millions of Americans.”
The progressive Working Families Party (WFP) said Monday on social media that “JD Vance and Stephen Miller want to use the horrifying murder of Charlie Kirk to target and dismantle pro-democracy groups.”
“Their comments call to mind some of the darkest periods in US history,” WFP continued. “They’re dividing people based on what box we ticked on our voter registration.”
Vance and Miller “want to stoke fear and resentment to justify their un-American crackdowns on free speech, mass abductions of working people, and military takeovers of our cities,” WFP added. “This isn’t going to fly. We’ve survived crises like this before as a country, and we can choose to live in a place where our political freedoms are protected, where we settle disagreements with words not weapons, and where no one has to fear losing a loved one to gun violence.”
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9 26 SALON
He isn’t a government official, but his questions shape government action. A curious and symbolic figure in President Donald Trump’s second administration, Real America’s Voice Chief White House Correspondent Brian Glenn has grown essential to the calculated campaign to redefine what press freedom means in America. Loyalty is rewarded, dissent is punished and the line between reporter and political operative is obliterated.
Under this administration, freedom of the press is a conditional privilege. If you praise the president, you’re welcome. If you challenge him, you should expect retaliation. The White House feeds its preferred outlets — Real America’s Voice, Right Side Broadcasting, Fox News and a handful of right-wing influencers — while starving mainstream reporters of access and painting them as subversive threats. The president has encouraged lawsuits against journalists and media outlets for doing their jobs, and threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of networks he dislikes. Across the Potomac at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has quietly rewritten guidelines on press access. In a matter of months, we’ve witnessed a quiet conversion of the American press corps into something more akin to state media. Access is granted on the condition of favorability — and no member of the press is more favored than Glenn.
Glenn masquerades as a White House correspondent while serving as a glorified PR agent for the administration and his partner, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene…Many of Glenn’s questions for Trump are softballs. They parrot MAGA talking points and inject policy proposals straight from Greene’s desk into the official press pool.
:{:{Perhaps best known for berating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not wearing a suit to an explosive Oval Office meeting with Trump on Feb. 28, Glenn masquerades as a White House correspondent while serving as a glorified PR agent for the administration and his partner, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. (Some have called the duo “MAGA America’s favorite couple.”) Many of Glenn’s questions for Trump are softballs. They parrot MAGA talking points and inject policy proposals straight from Greene’s desk into the official press pool.}:
When Glenn asked the president whether he would eliminate capital gains taxes on home sales — one of Greene’s pet policy proposals — it wasn’t an inquiry; it was a plant. The president joked about Glenn being Greene’s boyfriend and moved on. But the question did its job. The congresswoman’s bill made it into the headlines, and it reinforced the unspoken understanding that Glenn is not there to interrogate: He’s there to assist. He is propaganda wrapped in a press pass. }:
Related
Inside MAGA’s fight over Charlie Kirk’s legacy
Before entering conservative political media, Glenn was a host for a regional morning program in Texas. He eventually pitched himself to the bosses at Right Side Broadcasting Network (RSBN), a conservative media outlet launched in 2016 to livestream Trump rallies. Six years later, he jumped to Real America’s Voice and became an integral node in a communication ecosystem that reinforces MAGA messaging.
Glenn has used questions to prompt immediate executive action, such as the removal of the White House Peace Vigil tarp — a round-the-clock protest for global disarmament that stood in Lafayette Square since 1981. Glenn asked Trump during a recent press appearance about a “blue tent” in front of the White House, saying it was “an eyesore.” Trump barked in response, “Take it down. Take it down today. Right now.” The vigil’s tent and signage were removed by National Park Service officers last week. Trump, perhaps in a moment of confusion, later blasted Glenn as fake news.
Similarly, following the death of right-wing star Charlie Kirk, Glenn pushed Trump to focus his ire on the transgender community and ban the Progress Pride flag. “Then they’ll sue, and they’ll get freedom of speech stuff,” Trump correctly pointed out after Glenn asked about a flag ban. “Well, there’s also groups called Transtifa,” Glenn replied. “So perhaps if you can label them a domestic terrorist group, in all reality, you could take that flag down, because it would represent the Transtifa.”
And Glenn was the reporter who recently suggested to Trump that protesters who interrupted his staged photo-op in Washington, D.C., could be prosecuted under Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statutes. “You said earlier this week that the women who yelled at you, who were protesting…should be in jail,” Maggie Haberman of the New York Times recently asked Trump. “Do you actually think that that is an offense that deserves jail time?”
The president turned to Glenn to back him up. “Do you agree with that?”
“I think they’re a nasty organization,” Glenn responded.
Haberman continued pressing Trump. “But you think they deserve jail?”
The president replied, “Go ahead.”
When Glenn asked Trump about banning Pride flags or dismantling protest encampments, the administration acted — quickly. But when seasoned journalists question policy on Ukraine, voting rights or reproductive health, they’re usually shut down, ignored or attacked. This isn’t how a free press functions. Dismantling a 40-year anti-nuclear protest in Lafayette Square after a single question from a friendly reporter? That’s suppression. Entertaining the idea of banning Pride flags based on one loaded media prompt? That’s soft authoritarianism. Refusing access to reporters who cover government abuses, while elevating influencers who openly promote administration propaganda? That’s state capture.
And it’s all how autocracies operate.
Read more
about this topic
RFK Jr’s war on vaccines is about shaming women, not helping kids
How Pam Bondi became MAGA’s patsy
Brendan Carr defended free speech — until he went after Jimmy Kimmel
By Sophia Tesfaye
Sophia Tesfaye is a senior writer (and former senior politics editor) for Salon. She resides in Washington, D.C.
You can find her on Twitter at @SophiaTesfaye.
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Meet the Man MAGA America Wakes Up To
Between hosting Right Side Broadcasting Network and dating Marjorie Taylor Greene, Brian Glenn is the next big MAGA media star.
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an 8 25
Veterans and legal analysts say the Trump administration’s arrest of a former army sergeant and roadside bomb victim marks an escalation in the administration’s attacks on first amendment rights, reports the Guardian.
Officials arrested Afghanistan war veteran Bajun Mavalwalla II for “conspiracy to impede or injure officers” after joining a demonstration against federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Spokane, Washington.
“Here’s a guy who held a top-secret clearance and was privy to some of the most sensitive information we have, who served in a combat zone,” said Kenneth Koop, a retired colonel who trained the Afghan military and police during Mavalwalla’s deployment. “To see him treated like this really sticks in my craw.”
READ MORE: Emotionally damaged Trump is a born loser
The Guardian reports Mavalwalla was not among the more than two dozen people arrested at the scene of a June protest that left a government van with a broken windshield. Nevertheless, FBI officials arrived at the door of Mavalwalla and his Afghanistan war veteran wife one month later.
According to the indictment, Mavalwalla and his co-defendants “physically blocked the drive-way of the federal facility and/or physically pushed against officers despite orders to disburse and efforts to remove them from the property”.
Video shows Mavalwalla, who has no criminal record, locked arms with other demonstrators to block a gate.
Mavalwalla has pleaded not guilty, and the Guardian reports Richard Barker, the former acting US attorney for eastern Washington state, resigned before signing the arrest warrant.
READ MORE: The last straw for the Supreme Court could spell trouble for Trump
“I am grateful that I never had to sign an indictment or file a brief that I didn’t believe in,” Barker wrote on Linkedin.
However, replacing Barker is Trump-appointed acting US attorney Pete Serrano, which the Guardian reports as having filed an amicus briefat odds with the 14th amendment. Serrano also has no prosecutorial experience and has described Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol rioters as “political prisoners.”
Luis Miranda, former chief spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, told the Guardian Serrano appears willing to test the waters for Trump’s use of political detainment.
“He’s a test case to see how far they can go,” said Miranda.
Read the full Guardian report at this link.
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fail an 8 25
Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News host President Donald Trump chose as a U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, drew a great deal of criticism when she stridently vowed to make sure Charles Sean Dunn — a former U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) paralegal — was aggressively prosecuted for throwing a Subway sandwich at a federal officer in Washington, D.C. "Assault a law enforcement officer, and you’ll be prosecuted," Pirro declared.
Pirro, critics argued, was being a hypocrite in light of the fact that Trump pardoned rioters who violently attacked police officers when they invaded the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.
Pirro's critics also said that she didn't have a substantial case. And on Wednesday morning, August 27, the New York Times reported that DOJ prosecutors "were unable to secure a felony assault indictment against" Dunn.
READ MORE:'He's in there': MAGA congressman caught on hot mic saying Trump is in Epstein files
According to NY Times reporters y Alan Feuer, Devlin Barrett and William K. Rashbaum, "The rejection by grand jurors was particularly noteworthy given the attention paid to the case. Video of the episode went viral on social media, senior officials talked about the case, and the (Trump) Administration posted footage of a large group of heavily armed law enforcement officers going to the apartment of the man, Sean C. Dunn, to arrest him."
The news about Dunn, dubbed "Sandwich Guy" in media reports, is drawing a lot of discussion on X, formerly Twitter.
The Atlantic's Shane Harris tweeted, "Turns out you can't indict a ham sandwich."
Content creator Prabhas Sankar commented, "The unusual case, which initially drew attention for its almost comical circumstances,
highlights the challenges prosecutors face when trying to prove intent and threat in incidents that may appear more trivial than dangerous. While assaulting a federal officer is generally treated as a serious offense, the grand jury's apparent reluctance to indict suggests that the evidence did not rise to the level of a prosecutable crime in their view. Legal analysts note that such cases often hinge on context — whether the act was seen as a genuine threat to safety or simply a rash, impulsive gesture without harmful intent."
READ MORE: 'Corrupt and just wrong': Michael Steele erupts over 'dumbest' moment of Trump meeting
X user Sarah Majdov posted, "It sounds like straight from the Onion."
Another X user, Jason Frakk, wrote, "A federal agent, tactical gear, a sandwich, and a SUBWAY. The only thing indicted here is the absurdity of it all. Guess some D.C. cases just don't have the filling to stick."
X user Errol Meade posted video of Pirro and remarked, "Dumbest possible people running America."
Meanwhile, on Bluesky, writer Ian Boudreau said of Pirro, "The prosecutor who failed to get a grand jury to indict the sandwich guy has to be experiencing rock bottom right now
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AN 8 25
rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) is planning to introduce legislation that would give new legal protections for angry motorists to run down rioters — a proposal he is now referring to as the “Thump Thump Bill.”
Fine, who has oriented his political career around his support of President Donald Trump, backed a similar piece of legislation while he was a member of the Florida state legislature.
Speaking to Breitbart News Network on Wednesday,as highlighted by The New York Sun, Fine said blocking roadways should no longer be considered a “reasonable” form of protest.
READ MORE: 'Duty to disobey': A stunning number of US troops know they can defy Trump's orders
The report noted that Fine has made a name for himself as a tough‑on‑crime pugilist who is not afraid to make enemies even within his own party.
He has described a fellow GOP lawmaker, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), as an “embarrassment.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) recently called Fine “disgraceful.”
In the Wednesday interview, Fine said, “When a pregnant woman can’t get to the hospital to have a baby, when an ambulance can’t get through traffic to get to the hospital, that’s a form of terrorism,” Fine said. “It disrupts our lives. And it’s not a reasonable form of protest.”
When asked about the safety of the protesters themselves, Fine says it does not even cross his mind.
READ MORE:Hunter Biden urges Melania Trump deposition with expletive-laden clapback after $1 billion threat
“I don’t care about that because they’ve chosen to do that,” Fine told the outlet.
He added: “They’re not confused about what they’re doing. If you stand in the middle of a highway, you shouldn’t be surprised when you get run over.”
He introduced his bill — officially named the Reinstating Orderly Access for Drivers Act — earlier this month. The legislation would create an “affirmative defense” in any “criminal or civil action for damages for personal injury, wrongful death, or property damage carried out using a motor vehicle” if the person who suffered damages or injuries was “acting in furtherance of a riot.”
Fine’s proposal draws inspiration from a Florida law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) that allows motorists to hit protesters if the demonstrations get unruly and cars are surrounded.
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YMAIL 8 25
On behalf of Steven, we want to share a riveting piece of journalism on the sham trial that resulted in an astonishing $669 million verdict against Greenpeace in the courts of North Dakota.
Renowned environmental journalist Alleen Brown recently released a podcast on the trial called "SLAPP’d Episode 2: The Trial Begins." It is a rare and highly disturbing look at how a SLAPP harassment lawsuit from the fossil fuel industry works from the inside. [LINK]
*Award-winning environmental journalist Alleen Brown of the "Drilled" podcast team.
The all-out legal assault on Greenpeace is eerily similar to what Steven experienced.
Oil billionaire and Trump friend Kelcy Warren used the same law firm to attack Greenpeace in North Dakota that Chevron used to target Steven after he helped win the landmark Ecuador pollution case. The nefarious activities of this law firm, Gibson Dunn, have been criticized by courts the world over.
They are now documented and exposed by Alleen.
Click here to listen to Alleen’s breathtaking reporting.
Alleen also included part of Steven’s story. Here is an excerpt:
*“Some of these trial monitors have run into Gibson Dunn and Crutcher before. Gibson Dunn represented Chevron in a notorious RICO case against an environmental lawyer named Steven Donziger.
It turns out, Steven is also in North Dakota. He's one of the people who organized the trial monitoring committee.
Steven is tough to catch outside the courtroom. He's constantly beelining it to his car to look at his phone and post updates on social media about what's happening inside the courtroom. I make arrangements to meet him for an interview at his hotel. For Steven, this case is personal.”*
Steven, Marty Garbus, and several prominent attorneys were on the ground in North Dakota to help protect Greenpeace. They are not done yet.
Our team will be in touch soon with updates on the Greenpeace monitoring project and another important initiative that Steven is about to announce.
Click here to listen to Alleen’s podcast episode today →
Thank you so much for the support!
The Free Donziger Team
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an 8 25
In Washington, DC — where protesters are speaking out against President Donald Trump's federalizing of local law enforcement —
a man is being charged with felony assault for throwing a Subway sandwich at a police officer.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi highlighted the arrest in a late Thursday morning, August 14 post on X, formerly Twitter.
"If you touch any law enforcement officer," Bondi tweeted, "we will come after you. I just learned that this defendant worked at the Department of Justice — NO LONGER. Not only is he FIRED, he has been charged with a felony. This is an example of the Deep State we have been up against for seven months as we work to refocus DOJ. You will NOT work in this administration while disrespecting our government and law enforcement."
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Bondi's post is drawing some scathing responses from X users, some of whom are attacking her as a hypocrite in light of the fact that Trump granted federal pardons to the January 6, 2021 rioters — including those who violently attacked police officers that day.
Reporter Sam Youngman tweeted, "When you know DOJ reporters are too chickens—— to call you on your obvious hypocrisy.'"
Attorney Tracey Gallagher posted, "You mean like the DOJ employing Jared Wise, a Jan. 6 defendant who called cops 'Nazis' and urged the crowd to 'kill em' as they stormed the Capitol? By the way Bondi hitting someone with a sandwich under state or federal law is not a felony.(18 U.S.C. § 111) you are missing an element here."
Gallagher, in a separate tweet, wrote, "You're missing the element of a deadly weapon OR GBI you have neither."
READ MORE:'Disgusting': MAGA erupts at Democratic governor over 'classless' remark about Trump 'bro'
Self-described "constitutional conservative" Kelly McCarty humorously posted, "Sandwich crime arrests should always be the top priority for the DOJ."
Attorney James Hess commented, "But you won't go after people on the Epstein list?"
X user Pat Greentree wrote, "But if you work for a foreign spy agency and traffic children to US leaders for blackmail purposes they will protect you. THIS is the deep state, not a guy throwing a sandwich."
READ MORE:'Severe pushback': House Republicans fear constituent revolt over divisive new proposal
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an 8 25
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an ah 8 25
As the Trump administration continues to push the boundaries of centuries-old constraints on domestic power, the Pentagon is reportedly developing a multi-million-dollar plan to create a “Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force”—armed with weapons and riot gear, ready to be deployed instantaneously to quell civil unrest anywhere in the nation.
An exclusive Washington Post report reveals that two National Guard teams of hundreds of troops, designed to be ready around the clock, would be stationed on opposite sides of the country, able to cross state lines on command.
“The plan calls for 600 troops to be on standby at all times so they can deploy in as little as one hour, the documents say. They would be split into two groups of 300 and stationed at military bases in Alabama and Arizona, with purview of regions east and west of the Mississippi River, respectively,” the Post reported on Tuesday.
READ MORE: Trump Melts Down Over Elizabeth Warren’s Accusations
The price tag? Potentially hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Post calls it “another potential expansion of President Donald Trump’s willingness to employ the armed forces on American soil,” and notes that once again, the Trump administration is on “shaky” legal ground.
Legal experts are warning against the plan.
“You don’t want to normalize routine military participation in law enforcement,” Joseph Nunn, an attorney at the Brennan Center for Justice, told the Post. “You don’t want to normalize routine domestic deployment.”
“When you have this tool waiting at your fingertips, you’re going to want to use it,” Nunn added. “It actually makes it more likely that you’re going to see domestic deployments — because why else have a task force?”
READ MORE: ‘All of Christ for All of Life’: Hegseth Under Fire for Endorsing Christian Nationalist
The news follows President Trump’s unprecedented decision on Monday to federalize the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police force to combat what he claims is out-of-control violence, despite the nation’s capital city having decreased violent crime by double digits in 2024 and again in the first half of 2025.
In response to the Post’s report on Tuesday, The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol noted, “So of course it’s not just D.C.”
Former constitutional law professor David Wemhoff, now the editor of The American Proposition, wrote that President Trump’s “purpose is to crush, fight Americans. He has no interest in fighting much less opposing China and Russia.”
“Ah, yes,” remarked former Trump national security official Miles Taylor, “nothing says ‘land of the free’ like a standing army ready to put down the people who disagree with you.”
Progressive researcher Derek Martin, formerly of the National Security Agency (NSA), commented: “President Trump is so afraid of protests he’s preparing to use the military to suppress them. Only tyrants think this way.”
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