Emerg Declar Bak
3 26
PRIMARY 9 25 KIRK SHOOT
estb 4 25 tentative not just fema nat dis
see state of exception // XO memoranda less law?
// nat’l sec bs
SEE MARTIAL LAW INSURRECTION
SEE FASCISM ~ RULE OF LAW SCOTUS 4
SEE XO DEFENSE PROD ACT NATL SEC
trump calls to pull BS end run on rule of law; // withholds in disaster to punish blue states
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AN 8 26 VID
President Donald Trump's loyalist and election denier, Tina Peters, is on a roadshow. Peters managed to score a commutation from a Democratic governor after her conviction for state crimes around the 2020 election. She was slated to be in jail for nine years. She only served 20 months.
The new election conspiracy roadshow drew the attention of CNN reporter Marshall Cohen, who spoke with host Dana Bash on Friday. Bash questioned whether Peters has able to do much since she's "preaching to the converted." Cohen explained it's all about access.
Peters has met with the White House, the Commerce and the Justice Departments.
"The question of influence is something we're going to find out as we get closer and closer to the midterms and see if the president enacts some of these very extreme and aggressive ideas and proposals that Tina Peters is pitching," Cohen warned. "You just saw on your screen photos of her meetings this week in Washington, D.C.. She sat down with Harmeet Dhillon, who is the chief of the Justice Department's civil rights division."
Dhillon has been pushing her own election changes while at the DOJ.
Peters also met with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, which prompted questions on Lutnick's role in elections.
"The Commerce Department is home to the Census Bureau [which] put out a report claiming that there were tons of non-citizens voting in elections," Cohen explained. "It suggests that the office is also trying to play in this space, which is why it's notable that Tina Peters is meeting with him."
He said he spoke with Peters' lawyer Peter Ticktin, "who is also pushing for some very aggressive moves before the election."
According to his comments, Peters "has a plan."
"And I don't know whether, you know, she'll get the support to make sure her plan gets implemented. Her plan differs from mine greatly. It's still going to need an emergency order in order to have it happen," Ticktin said.
The idea of declaring a national emergency so the president can take over the 2026 midterm elections isn't a "hypothetical situation," said Stateline.
Nick Brown, Washington state’s Democratic attorney general, said that they're already preparing for Trump's attempts to nationalize the election.
Last week, when asked about nationalizing the election, Trump told a conservative commentator, "Stranger things have happened, OK? I’ll leave it at that.”
Trump has yet to hit the "nuclear option," said Cohen. He also noted all of this is coming, again, because Democratic Gov. Jared Polis (Co.) commuted Peters' sentence, releasing her early.
"He said, it's the right thing to do, but he's disappointed in what she's up to in Washington," said the reporter.
The other thing that is making officials "lose their mind," Cohen said, is that Peters could be appointed to a post to consult on election security for the state of California. The post was offered by the Shasta County election official, who is a 2020 election denier.
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aha not me note spatial aspect: zone of exception
an 3 26
When President Donald Trump sent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to airports, his supporters applauded the move as a great way to help out Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees who are feeling overwhelmed during a partial government shutdown. Trump's critics, however, countered that ICE's presence at airports did nothing to make TSA agents' jobs easier or shorten long lines at airports — and if anything, they got in the way.
Salon's Amanda Marcotte, in a biting article published on March 25, argued that Trump's real motivation wasn't helping beleaguered TSA agents — he saw the ICE agents as a way to "bully" and "trigger the liberals." And Marcotte's Salon colleague Chauncey DeVega sees Trump's ICE/airports move as part of his "authoritarian" push to restrict "freedom of movement."
"Authoritarian regimes attempt to control freedom of movement, association and privacy; this is one of the most direct ways that such leaders exercise power," DeVega explains in an article published the day after Marcotte's. "People internalize the restrictions and conform. Those who refuse to do so are punished. The Trump Administration is now using America's airports as a space for authoritarian training and conditioning."
DeVega notes that in a 2024 report, Freedom House pointed out that authoritarian regimes "around the world use mobility controls — revoking citizenship, passport restrictions, travel bans — to coerce and punish dissidents, activists, journalists, and ordinary people."
According to Freedom House, "For people targeted in this way, mobility controls produce a sense of powerlessness."
Paul Gowder, a law professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, views airports as a place where authoritarians make a point of exercising control.
Gowder told DeVega, "The federal government has created agencies and personnel trained and socialized in operating in these liminal spaces. Most infamous is the Border Patrol, which has a long record of brutality — predictable, because they are trained to deal with people with lesser rights, in spaces where monitoring of their conduct is thin or nonexistent."
DeVega warns, "When militarized guardians of the border and the larger national security state are turned inward against a country's own citizens, it is known as the boomerang effect. This is a defining feature of democracies collapsing into authoritarianism…. Civil and human rights abuses at airports are a feature of this system, not a bug — and a measure of how far Trump is pushing its boundaries to advance his authoritarian project."
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MOJO 3 26
These Far-Right Conspiracists Are Pushing Trump to Take Control of Voting
Election deniers are lobbying the president to declare a national emergency.
Ari Berman
National Voting Rights CorrespondentBio
On Monday afternoon, as war raged with Iran, President Trump was seemingly preoccupied with more trivial matters. “FREE TINA PETERS!” he wrote on Truth Social, referring to the former Colorado election clerk who’s serving a nine-year sentence for giving election conspiracists access to sensitive voting equipment.
While it might seem odd for Trump to be posting about Peters as bombs fell on Tehran, there’s a connection between her and Trump’s orbit—her lawyer, Peter Ticktin, is a former classmate of Trump’s at the New York Military Academy who has represented the president in litigation against his political opponents. And Ticktin is now pushing Trump to declare a national emergency, based on the false claim that China interfered in the 2020 election, so that the president can assume vast new powers over the voting process. After the US invaded Iran, Trump reposted an article from a far right news site claiming that Iran also attempted to interfere in the 2020 and 2024 elections, seemingly tying the military effort to his voting crusade.
The 17-page executive order Ticktin is lobbying Trump to sign would completely upend how Americans vote and have their ballots counted in an unprecedented attempt to usurp powers that the Constitution gives to states and Congress. The order claims that an emergency declaration would allow Trump to unilaterally outlaw mail-in voting for most Americans and seize voting machines in favor of a hand count of all ballots, which would take much longer and be far more error-prone than a regular machine count.
Attorney Peter Ticktin listens during oral arguments for People vs Tina Peters in the Court of Appeals at the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center in Denver on Jan. 14, 2026.AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post/Pool/AP
That’s not all. The order would require all Americans to re-register to vote in person before the 2026 midterms, effectively voiding all state voter rolls, and force voters to re-verify their status before every election, a wildly impractical measure. It would mandate that all absentee ballots be notarized and restrict mail-in voting to those who have a medical condition or are out-of-town during the election. It would require strict forms of voter ID and proof of citizenship to cast a ballot, which could disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans who lack such documents. “Taken together, the proposal amounts to a radical attempt to reshape the rules of elections ahead of the 2026 midterms,” notes the voting rights group Fair Fight.
“Under the Constitution, it’s the legislatures and states that really control how a state conducts its elections, and the president doesn’t have any power to do that,” Ticktin told the Washington Post. “But here we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes. That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it.”
Of course, there is no evidence that China interfered in the 2020 election. And the two statutes that Ticktin claims allow Trump to declare a national emergency—the National Emergencies Act (NEA) and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—in fact give the president no control over the voting process. (The Supreme Court just ruled that the president could not invoke the IEEPA to justify his tariffs.)
“None of the cited authorities delegates the president any power to change voting laws, let alone the wholesale takeover of federal and local elections that the draft EO attempts to enact, even in the face of national emergency—including attempted foreign interference,” says an analysis from the Center for American Progress.
For these reasons, any such executive order would likely be immediately blocked in the courts, much like the last executive order on elections Trump issued last March.
Trump said last week he’s “never heard about” Ticktin’s proposal, but he’s already vowed to issue a new executive order on elections. And given his obsession with the 2020 election and calls for Republicans to “take over the voting in at least 15 places,” the allure of attempting to gain dictatorial control over the electoral process, no matter how illegal it is, is sure to appeal to the president.
Some of the sketchiest figures in the far right’s election denial movement are behind this push.
Ticktin, whose friendship with Trump dates back to their time at the military academy in the 1960s, has had a rocky career as a lawyer. He’s been suspended twice from the Florida bar. After the 2020 election, he represented Trump in a sprawling racketeering lawsuit accusing Hillary Clinton and Democrats of manufacturing allegations of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit and ordered sanctions against Trump’s lawyers, including Ticktin.
“The rule of law is undermined by the toxic combination of political fundraising with legal fees paid by political action committees, reckless and factually untrue statements by lawyers at rallies and in the media, and efforts to advance a political narrative through lawsuits without factual basis or any cognizable legal theory,” wrote US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks.
“Taken together, the proposal amounts to a radical attempt to reshape the rules of elections ahead of the 2026 midterms.”
Ticktin subsequently went on to seek pardons for election deniers including Peters, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, members of the Proud Boys, and other January 6 insurrectionists. He told Steve Bannon the 101st Airborne should be sent in to free Peters, who was convicted of giving access of 2020 election records to an associate of My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell.
Ticktin has been promoting the proposed executive order since last April, including on QAnon-affiliated talk shows. “If President Trump can’t call a national election emergency, then we will lose our country,” he told QNewsPatriot in January. Ticktin said the right-wing conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi has also “been very involved” in the effort. Corsi has been circulating a new draft since the summer alleging that Trump could invoke emergency powers because of alleged foreign intervention in the 2020 election.
Corsi was the driving force behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear campaign against John Kerry’s military record in 2004 and the birtherism conspiracy against Barack Obama, which Trump amplified. Corsi was investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller for allegedly acting as a conduit between Trump adviser Roger Stone and WikiLeaks as part of the effort to leak emails from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Corsi falsely claimed the emails were leaked by murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich.
The work of these fringe characters has been amplified by outside advisers closer to the president. Cleta Mitchell, the former Trump lawyer who helped the president attempt to overturn the 2020 election, said on a podcast in September that she believed “the president is thinking that he will exercise some emergency powers to protect the federal elections going forward.” Bannon has repeatedly promoted the national emergency scenario on his radio show in recent days.
In December 2020, the likes of Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn, and Patrick Byrne went to the White House to urge Trump to order the military to seize state voting machines. Trump was talked off the ledge by his advisers, but now says he regrets not doing so.
Whereas the craziest schemes hatched by election deniers were rejected by Trump’s aides in 2020, today those very election deniers hold prominent positions in the administration and are plotting from the inside. Recently, six administration aides took part in a gathering hosted by Flynn where attendees called on Trump to declare a national emergency. “At some point,” Byrne, the ex-CEO of Overstock.com, said, “he’s got to do something, the muscular thing: declare a national emergency.”
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OMFG
AN PP 3 26
Several high-ranking federal election officials attended a summit last week at which prominent figures who worked to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election pressed the president to declare a national emergency to take over this year’s midterms.
According to videos, photos and social media posts reviewed by ProPublica, the meeting’s participants included Kurt Olsen, a White House lawyer charged with reinvestigating the 2020 election (https://www.propublica.org/article/thomas-albus-fulton-county-georgia-election-records), and Heather Honey, the Department of Homeland Security official in charge of election integrity. The event was convened by Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38025057), and attended by Cleta Mitchell, who directs the Election Integrity Network, a group that has spread false claims about election fraud and noncitizen voting (https://www.npr.org/2024/03/13/1238102501/noncitizen-voting-immigration-conspiracy-theory).
Election experts say that the meeting reflects an intensifying push (https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/right-wing-figures-and-trump-allies-are-calling-trump-declare-national) to persuade Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) to take unprecedented actions to affect the vote in November. Courts have largely blocked his efforts (https://www.votebeat.org/2026/01/13/trump-ruling-latest-defeat-election-executive-order/) to reshape elections through an executive order, and legislation has stalled (https://punchbowl.news/archive/22626-am/) in Congress that would mandate strict voter ID requirements across the country.
The Washington Post reported (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/26/trump-elections-executive-order-activists/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F46da58a%2F69a07d06c5a72e73930e1a52%2F61cf5789d42d2018aa3e3af9%2F11%2F67%2F69a07d06c5a72e73930e1a52) Thursday that activists associated with those at the summit have been circulating a draft of an executive order that would ban mail-in ballots and get rid of voting machines as part of a federal takeover. Peter Ticktin, a lawyer who worked on the executive order and had a client at the summit, told ProPublica these actions were “all part of the same effort.”
The summit followed other meetings and discussions between administration officials and activists — many not previously reported — stretching back to at least last fall, according to emails and recordings obtained by ProPublica. The coordination between those inside and outside the government represents a breakdown of crucial guardrails, experts on U.S. elections said.
“The meeting shows that the same people who tried to overturn the 2020 election have only grown better organized and are now embedded in the machinery of government,” said Brendan Fischer, a director at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan pro-democracy organization. “This creates substantial risk that the administration is laying the groundwork to improperly reshape elections ahead of the midterms or even go against the will of the voters.”
Five of six federal officials who attended the summit didn’t answer questions about the event from ProPublica.
A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said federal officials’ attendance at the gathering shouldn’t be construed as support for a national emergency declaration and that it was “common practice” for staffers to communicate with outside advocates who want to share policy ideas. The official pointed to comments Trump made to PBS News denying (https://x.com/ElizLanders/status/2027440768382570581?s=20) he was considering a national emergency or had read the draft executive order. “Any speculation about policies the administration may or may not undertake is just that — speculation,” the official said.
In the past, Trump has expressed an openness to a federal takeover (https://www.ms.now/news/trump-suggests-federal-control-of-elections-in-some-areas#::text=They%20have%20very%20corrupt%20elections,Take%20a%20look%20at%20Atlanta.) as a way to stem projected Republican losses in November (https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/what-midterm-projections-tell-us-about-trumps-central-struggle). This month, he said in an interview with conservative podcaster Dan Bongino that Republicans need “to take over” elections (https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mdvglues2k2h) and “to nationalize the voting.”
Mitchell did not respond to questions from ProPublica about the summit. A spokesperson for Flynn responded to detailed questions from ProPublica by disparaging experts who expressed concerns, texting, “LOL ‘EXPERTS.’”
The 30-person roundtable discussion (https://www.goldiis.org/election-integrity-summit-feb-19-2026/) on Feb. 19, at an office building in downtown Washington, D.C., was sponsored by the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a conservative think tank. Afterward, activists and government officials dined together, photos reviewed by ProPublica showed.
Flynn, the institute’s chair, told a social media personality why he’d arranged the event.
“I wanted to bring this group together physically, because most of us have met online” while “fighting battles” in swing states from Arizona to Georgia, Flynn said to Tommy Robinson (https://newrepublic.com/post/207119/trump-officials-meet-uk-far-right-activist-tommy-robinson) on the gathering’s sidelines. Robinson
(https://youtu.be/BE76dMINeas&t=205s) of these
(https://youtu.be/efcLBSLj1DE). “The overall theme of this event was to make sure that all of us aren’t operating in our own little bubbles.”
Flynn has repeatedly advocated (https://www.mediamatters.org/media/4034157) for Trump to declare a national emergency and posted on social media (https://t.me/RealGenFlynn/5637) after the event addressing Trump, “We The People want fair elections and we know there is only one office in the land that can make that happen given the current political environment in the United States.”
In addition to Olsen and Honey, four other federal officials from agencies that will shape the upcoming elections attended the event. At least four of the six attended the dinner.
One is Clay Parikh, a special government employee at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who’s helping Olsen with the 2020 inquiry (https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/meet-the-cabal-hating-special-government-employee-involved-in-the-fulton-county-fbi-raid). A spokesperson at ODNI said Parikh had attended the summit “in his personal capacity.”
Another, Mac Warner, handled election litigation (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/us-department-justice-dismisses-biden-era-lawsuit-against-alabama-order-have-more-secure) at the Justice Department (https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/warner-who-said-cia-stole-election-now-leads-doj-civil-rights). A department spokesperson said that Warner had resigned the day after the event and had not received the required approval from agency ethics officials to participate.
The department “remains committed to upholding the integrity of our electoral system and will continue to prioritize efforts to ensure all elections remain free, fair, and transparent,” the spokesperson said in an email.
A third administration official who attended the summit, Marci McCarthy, directs communications for the nation’s cyber defense agency, which oversees the security of elections infrastructure like voting machines.
Kari Lake, whom Trump appointed (https://www.npr.org/2024/12/12/nx-s1-5226920/voice-of-america-kari-lake-voa) as senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, was a featured speaker. Lake worked with Olsen and Parikh (https://azmirror.com/2024/05/02/appeals-court-hears-kari-lake-election-case-has-to-remind-her-lawyer-how-appeals-work/) in her unsuccessful bid to overturn her loss in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election.
Lake said in an email that she “showed up to the event, spoke for about 20 minutes about the overall importance of election integrity, a non-partisan issue that matters to all citizens — both in the United States and abroad. I left without listening to any other speeches.”
“Elections should be free from fraud or any other malfeasance that subverts the will of the people,” she added.
At the meeting, activists presented on ways to transform American elections that would help conservatives, according to social media posts and interviews they gave on conservative media, such as LindellTV, a streaming platform created by the pillow mogul Mike Lindell. They said the group broke down into two camps: those who wanted to pursue a more incremental legal and legislative strategy and those who wanted Trump to declare a national emergency.
Multiple activists left the meeting convinced Trump should do the latter, a step they believe would allow the president to get around the Constitution’s directive that elections should be run by states.
Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, a prominent funder of efforts to overturn the 2020 election, told LindellTV (https://x.com/RealLindellTV/status/2026010210691891499) that Trump has “played nice” so far in not seizing control of American elections. “But at some point,” Byrne said, “he’s got to do something, the muscular thing: declare a national emergency.”
Byrne responded to questions from ProPublica by sending a screenshot of a poll that he said suggested “2/3 of Americans correctly do not trust” voting machines, which the proposed national emergency declaration aims to do away with.
Will Huff, who has advocated for doing away with voting machines, told a conservative vlogger (https://rumble.com/v7651ra-general-flynn-seth-keshel-election-integrity-invite-only-event-gold-institu.html?e9s=src_v1_s%2Csrc_v1_s_o&sci=9f9e6806-9d18-4791-94aa-dd748e01bf42) that Olsen, the White House lawyer, and other administration representatives would take the “consensus” from the gathering back to Trump. “It’s got to be a national emergency,” said Huff, the campaign manager for a Republican candidate (https://arkansasadvocate.com/2026/02/23/republicans-running-for-arkansas-secretary-of-state-focus-on-election-security-boosting-voter-turnout/) for Arkansas secretary of state.
In response to questions from ProPublica, Huff said in an email that Olsen and Trump would use their judgment to decide whether to declare a national emergency.
“The President has been briefed on findings of shortcomings in election infrastructure,” Huff wrote. “I believe there are steady hands around the President wanting to ensure that any action taken is, first, constitutional and legal, but also backed by evidence.”
McCarthy, the cybersecurity official, expressed more general solidarity with fellow attendees in a post on social media about the summit (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marcimccarthy_some-nights-remind-you-exactly-why-you-stay-activity-7430976797892247552-5czw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAACXoH4kBRdrVc8xNNzmluCZwN9VqrCHJUa8). “Grateful for friendships forged through years of standing shoulder-to-shoulder, united by purpose and conviction,” she wrote. “The mission continues… and so does the fellowship.”
Last week’s gathering was the latest in a string of private interactions between conservative election activists and administration officials, according to emails, documents and recordings obtained by ProPublica. Many have involved (https://www.propublica.org/article/kevin-moncla-election-researcher-fulton-county-georgia) Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network (https://www.propublica.org/article/save-voter-citizenship-tool-mistakes-confusion). Before taking her government post, Honey was a leader in the Election Integrity Network, ProPublica has reported (https://www.propublica.org/article/heather-honey-dhs-election-security), as was McCarthy (https://georgiara.com/candidates-for-georgia-republican-party-offices/name/marci-mccarthy/).
Previously unreported emails obtained by ProPublica (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/27422867-election-integrity-leaders-email-9-26-25/) show that just weeks after Honey started at the Department of Homeland Security, she briefed election activists, a Republican secretary of state and another federal official on a conference call arranged by her former boss (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/931870447/202511339349309126/full), Mitchell.
“We are excited to welcome her on our call this morning to hear about her work for election integrity inside DHS,” Mitchell wrote in an email introducing presenters on the call.
Honey didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica about the call. Experts said Honey’s briefing gave her former employer access that likely would have violated ethics rules in place under previous administrations, including the first Trump administration — though not this one.
The prior “ethics guardrails would have prevented some of the revolving door issues we’re seeing between the election denial movement and the government officials,” said Fischer, the Campaign Legal Center director. Those prior rules “were supposed to prevent former employers and clients from receiving privileged access.”
YIKES
an 2 26
Legal and voting rights experts are sounding the alarm after a Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/26/trump-elections-executive-order-activists/) bombshell report (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2026/02/extraordinary-presidential-power-trump-urged-to-declare-emergency-over-voting/) revealed that President Donald Trump (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/?s=%22Donald+Trump%22) — who has been insisting on federalizing voting and has issued an executive order to pressure states to require proof of citizenship for voter registration — is now being urged by activists to sign an executive order declaring a voting "emergency."
The proposed 17-page order would "unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting,” the Post reported, noting that the proposal "claims China interfered in the 2020 election" which would be the "basis to declare a national emergency."
Former Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) national security official Miles Taylor warned (https://x.com/MilesTaylorUSA/status/2027072540204466364) that the "biggest electoral crime in American history might be unfolding."
"The president cannot seize control of state-run elections by declaring a fake 'emergency.' There’s no statute that permits it," wrote (https://x.com/MaxFlugrath/status/2027125743566688359) Fair Fight Action communications director Max Flugrath. "Reviving debunked conspiracy theories to force changes before a major election is what politicians do when they believe they’re going to lose."
Flugrath added (https://x.com/MaxFlugrath/status/2027073935842460082) that the Post's reporting follows up on an October New York Times investigation which found "that Trump officials discussed a fake 'national emergency' to force new election rules on states. A DHS official said it could allow Trump to 'go around Congress' and take over elections."
“What a gift such a clearly unconstitutional executive order would be!" election security expert David Becker told (https://x.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/2027113590877217217) CBS News' Scott MacFarlane. "Though divorced from legal and factual reality, it would enable the courts to invalidate this power grab well in advance of the election, and confirm the clear limits to fed'l interference in elections."
Prominent elections attorney Marc Elias wrote (https://x.com/marceelias/status/2027096060124872855), "My team and I have been anticipating this for months. It is unconstitutional and illegal. The media should note: Last time he issued an EO about voting, we sued and won. If Trump issues such an order we will sue again and we will win again."
"Far right voices in Colorado," journalist Kyle Clark noted (https://x.com/KyleClark/status/2027116884928483579), "have long called for this step as a prelude to military tribunals and mass executions."
U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) said (https://x.com/tedlieu/status/2027085273285132494), that there is "no national emergency exception" to Article 1, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution.
"States regulate elections unless Congress passes law," he added, stating that is why Trump "desperately" wants to pass the SAVE Act, "to suppress voting."
The NAACP called (https://x.com/NAACP/status/2027105216542224729) the proposed executive order a "dangerous proposal," and "a direct assault on our democracy."
Former WBZ-TV anchor Liam Martin commented (https://x.com/LiamFromBoston/status/2027072911278825710), "I tend to think even this SCOTUS would block an attempt to federalize elections. But what Trump and his team are doing is setting the stage to declare the midterms void and refuse to seat the new members. What do we do then?"
'Extraordinary Presidential Power': Trump Is Urged to Declare Emergency Over Voting (https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2026/02/extraordinary-presidential-power-trump-urged-to-declare-emergency-over-voting/)
Trump, who has insisted on federalizing voting and who issued an executive order last March to pressure states to require proof of citizenship to register voters, is reportedly now being urged to declare an emergency over voting.
“Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting,” The Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/26/trump-elections-executive-order-activists/) reported in an exclusive.
“President Donald Trump has repeatedly previewed a plan to mandate voter ID and ban mail ballots in November’s midterm elections, and the activists expect their draft will figure into Trump’s promised executive order on the issue.”
According to Florida lawyer Peter Ticktin, who is advocating for a presidential order on voting, “we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes.”
“That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it,” Ticktin told the Post.
Claiming there is an emergency would allow the president to ban voting by mail and voting machines “as the vectors of foreign interference, Ticktin argued.”
Trump has repeatedly urged Republicans to pass the SAVE Act, which critics say could disenfranchise millions of American citizens who do not currently have a passport or access to their birth certificates. It could also disenfranchise people who have married and changed their names but did not do so on all their legal documents.
“Trump has said that if the bill fails, he will act unilaterally to impose the changes for the midterms,” the Post reported.
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Promoting the National Defense by Ensuring an Adequate Supply of Elemental Phosphorus and Glyphosate-Based Herbicides – The White House (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/02/promoting-the-national-defense-by-ensuring-an-adequate-supply-of-elemental-phosphorus-and-glyphosate-based-herbicides/)
PROMOTING THE NATIONAL DEFENSE BY ENSURING AN ADEQUATE SUPPLY OF ELEMENTAL PHOSPHORUS AND GLYPHOSATE-BASED HERBICIDES
Executive Orders (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-orders/)
February 18, 2026
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Defense Production Act of 1950, as amended (50 U.S.C. 4501 et seq.) (the “Act”), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, it is hereby ordered:
Section 1. Policy and Findings. Elemental phosphorus is pervasive in defense supply chains and is therefore crucial to military readiness and national defense. It is a key input in smoke, illumination, and incendiary devices and is a critical component for manufacturing the semiconductors that are central to numerous defense technologies, such as radar, solar cells, sensors, and optoelectronics. It is also increasingly important in modern lithium-ion battery chemistries used in a multitude of weapon-system supply chains. For these and other reasons, on November 7, 2025, the Department of the Interior, acting pursuant to the Energy Act of 2020, designated phosphate as a critical mineral.
Elemental phosphorus is also a critical precursor element for the production of glyphosate-based herbicides, which play a critical role in maintaining America’s agricultural advantage by enabling farmers to efficiently and cost-effectively produce food and livestock feed. As the most widely used crop protection tools in United States agriculture, glyphosate-based herbicides are a cornerstone of this Nation’s agricultural productivity and rural economy, allowing United States farmers and ranchers to maintain high yields and low production costs while ensuring that healthy, affordable food options remain within reach for all American families.
There is no direct one-for-one chemical alternative to glyphosate-based herbicides. Lack of access to glyphosate-based herbicides would critically jeopardize agricultural productivity, adding pressure to the domestic food system, and may result in a transition of cropland to other uses due to low productivity. Given the profit margins growers currently face, any major restrictions in access to glyphosate-based herbicides would result in economic losses for growers and make it untenable for them to meet growing food and feed demands.
:{:{Ensuring an adequate supply of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides is thus crucial to the national security and defense, including food-supply security, which is essential to protecting the health and safety of Americans. Nonetheless, the United States’ ability to domestically produce those critical inputs is extremely limited. Indeed, there is only a single domestic producer of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides, and this producer does not meet our annual needs for those inputs. }:
For that reason, more than 6,000,000 kilograms of elemental phosphorus are imported from other countries annually. Future reduction or the cessation of domestic production of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides would gravely threaten American national security by disrupting, and requiring the further offshoring of, this Nation’s defense supply chain including by having a debilitating impact on domestic agricultural capabilities.}:
I accordingly find that, consistent with the Department of the Interior’s designation, elemental phosphorus is a scarce material that is critical to national defense and security. Our Nation’s inadequate elemental phosphorus production, which must sustain both defense manufacturing and our significant agricultural needs, and the threat of increased domestic scarcity leave us vulnerable to hostile foreign actors and pose an imminent threat to military readiness.
Consistent with these findings, I find that ensuring robust domestic elemental phosphorus mining and United States-based production of glyphosate-based herbicides is central to American economic and national security. Without immediate Federal action, the United States remains inadequately equipped and vulnerable. Accordingly, I hereby find, pursuant to section 101 of the Act, that domestic elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides meet the criteria specified in section 101(b) of the Act (50 U.S.C. 4511(b)).
:{Sec. 2. Ensuring an Adequate Supply of Elemental Phosphorus and Glyphosate-Based Herbicides. (a)
Notwithstanding Executive Order 13603 of March 16, 2012 (National Defense Resources Preparedness), the authority of the President conferred by section 101 of the Act to require performance of contracts or orders (other than contracts of employment) to promote the national defense over performance of any other contracts or orders, to allocate materials, services, and facilities as deemed necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense, and to implement the Act in subchapter III of chapter 55 of title 50, United States Code (50 U.S.C. 4554, 4555, 4556, 4559, 4560), is delegated to the Secretary of Agriculture (Secretary) with respect to ensuring a continued and adequate supply of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides.}:
(b) The Secretary shall use the authority under section 101 of the Act (50 U.S.C. 4511), in consultation with the Secretary of War, to determine the proper nationwide priorities and allocation of all the materials, services, and facilities necessary to ensure a continued and adequate supply of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides.
(c) The Secretary shall issue such orders and adopt and revise appropriate rules and regulations as may be necessary to implement this order.
(d) In exercising the authority delegated in this section, the Secretary shall take into account the President’s judgment that domestic production of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides is critical to the national defense. Accordingly, the Secretary shall ensure that any order, rule, or regulation issued under this section does not place the corporate viability of any domestic producer of elemental phosphorus or glyphosate-based herbicides at risk.
Sec. 3. Immunity. This order confers all immunity provided for in section 707 of the Act (50 U.S.C. 4557). Additionally, domestic producers of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides are required to comply with this order, in accordance with the provisions of 7 C.F.R. part 789.
Sec. 4. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
(d) The costs for publication of this order shall be borne by the Department of Agriculture.
DONALD J. TRUMP
THE WHITE HOUSE,
February 18, 2026.
an 2 26
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is facing a highly classified whistleblower report, and there is concern about how to safely share it with lawmakers.
The Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/politics/national-security/classified-whistleblower-complaint-about-tulsi-gabbard-stalls-within-her-agency-027f5331?mod=e2tw) reported Monday morning that the sensitive report is "said to be locked in a safe." President Donald Trump's administration has avoided telling lawmakers about it, claiming that it involves such secret information.
The information could cause “grave damage to national security" if it becomes public, an official claimed. The information reportedly includes "claims of executive privilege that may involve the White House."
This is an administration, however, that has claimed "national security" liberally, such as the rationale for taking over Greenland and the immigration crackdown.
“If everything can be a national emergency or a threat to national security or a matter of foreign policy, then essentially all constitutional powers are ceded to the president,” said Shirin Sinnar, (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-national-security_n_68a32e22e4b0b028bc35d20c) a law professor at Stanford Law School in an Aug. 2025 report by Paul Blumenthal. “And that can’t be intended by the constitutional design.”
Gabbard's office claims the allegations are “baseless and politically motivated.”
However, the whistleblower's lawyer, Andrew Bakaj, said he was never aware that the inspector general's office had made any determination about the complaint's credibility. However, the inspector general's office decided that some of the allegations weren't credible while others might be.
Bakaj sent a letter to Gabbard that was also sent to the House and Senate in November, which the Journal has viewed.
"Months later, lawmakers still haven’t received the complaint itself. Some Democratic staffers on the intelligence committees have tried to learn more about the complaint in recent weeks, with little success," congressional aides told the reporters.
The month before the complaint, Republicans approved a new inspector general for the intelligence community on a 51 to 47 vote.
The new IG is Christopher Fox, who worked for Gabbard before the new job overseeing her work.
---}:
AN 1 26
Trump blames welfare fraud investigation for 'violent' protests in Minnesota (https://www.alternet.org/trump-minnesota-2675033368/)
2X SAME DAY ADMIN WORDS BITE ASS
AN 1 26
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to respond to President Donald Trump's claim (https://www.alternet.org/trump-supreme-court-2674225327/)that a national emergency justified his drastic tariff moves. However, the Constitution allocates tariff-regulation power to Congress, not the presidency.
The New Republic's Greg Sargent spoke with MS NOW's Steve Benen on Monday morning, noting that Trump’s own words may be the strongest case against his tariff powers. The two analysts argued that Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) has repeatedly blown up the legal and political rationale for his trade war in public statements.
During a morning podcast "The Daily Blast," (https://newrepublic.com/article/205657/transcript-trump-wrecks-case-tariffs-truly-weird-tirade)Sargent and Benen dissected Trump’s recent threats to increase tariffs on parts of Europe not because of some economic reason but because the countries sent military to aid in the defense of Greenland from the U.S.
Trump keeps publicly admitting that his “emergencies” are more whims and leverage plays. Trump threatened tariffs on Brazil for multiple reasons and also claimed that France rejected his Gaza 'Board of Peace.'
Trump boasted that he raised tariffs from 30 to 39 percent after a call with Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter “rubbed [him] the wrong way,” then lowered them after being courted by industry executives who brought him a Rolex and a personalized gold bar.
The two incidents make it clear that there isn't an "emergency" necessitating a tariff, but that Trump is using them for his own personal gain, the men agreed.
Benen argued that these anecdotes from the president undermine the administration’s legal claim that Trump is using emergency powers under the 1977 law to address a genuine economic emergency, namely trade deficits.
He continued, saying that Trump is "so far gone, is so wrapped up in his own delusion that he forgets he’s supposed to maintain the emergency pretense." Trump then ends up “confessing in public that the entire rationale for his policy is a sham.”
The trade deficits that Trump claimed are an emergency, Benen said, are not inherently harmful.
He explained, “You and I have trade deficits with our grocery store,” and they have been shrinking, not exploding into crisis. The Constitution vests tariff power in Congress, through Article I, not to the presidency. It's the main reason most legal (https://www.alternet.org/congress-trump-emergency-powers/) scholars and experts (https://www.alternet.org/legal-scholars-trump-tariffs/) think Trump is likely to lose at the Supreme Court if the justices follow the statute and the Constitution. In fact, one of Trump's own officials (https://www.alternet.org/trump-tariff-bessent/) thinks the policy might fall at the high court.
The two men go on to skewer House Speaker Mike Johnson, who praised Trump’s supposed “Article II” tariff power, which simply doesn’t exist. Tariff authority sits in Article I, Benen told Sargent, making Johnson’s hands-off posture “completely antithetical” to the system he claims to revere.
Meanwhile, Republicans who privately dislike tariffs are allowing Trump to proceed unilaterally, even though it is "pushing prices up and that it’s becoming a drag on the economy."
Sargent agreed, saying, "It’s very, very clear that affordability is an enormous issue in these elections." Those high costs are hammering voters and it could cost the GOP the House, and possibly the Senate, in 2026.
If the Supreme Court upholds Trump’s approach despite his public admissions, Benen said, it would mark “a breakdown of American governance at crisis levels,” normalizing an enormous abuse of power with no institutional check.
HCR 1 12? 26
...The Senate advanced a bill to stop the Trump administration from additional attacks on Venezuela without congressional approval. And, just two days after Trump had reversed the victims and offenders in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, suggesting that Capitol Police officers had been among the offenders, the Senate unanimously agreed to hang a plaque honoring the police who protected the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Congress passed a law in March 2022 mandating that the plaque be hung, but Republicans until now had prevented its installation.
Friday was a busy day at the White House.
On Friday, Trump threatened Greenland, saying that he was “going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.”
Trump’s threat against a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally has had American lawmakers and foreign allies scrambling ever since. In a joint statement, the leaders of Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom said that “Greenland belongs to its people.” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) released a video explaining that “what you are essentially talking about here is the United States going to war with NATO, the United States going to war with Europe. You’re talking about the U.S. and France being at war with each other over Greenland.”
Trump’s threats against Greenland came at a meeting with oil executives. When he attacked Venezuela to capture Maduro, Trump told reporters that United States oil companies would spend billions of dollars to fix the badly broken infrastructure of oil extraction in that country. But apparently the oil companies had not gotten the memo. They have said that they are not currently interested in investing in Venezuela because they have no idea how badly oil infrastructure there has degraded and no sense of who will run the country in the future.
What oil executives did suggest to Trump on Friday was that they would quite like to be repaid for their losses from the 2007 nationalization of their companies from the sale of Venezuelan oil Trump has promised to control. ConocoPhillips, for example, claims it is owed about $12 billion. “We’re not going to look at what people lost in the past, because that was their fault,” Trump told them. “That was a different president. You’re going to make a lot of money, but we’re not going to go back.”
Yesterday the government made public an executive order President Donald J. Trump signed on Friday, declaring yet another national emergency—his tenth in this term, by my count—and saying that any use of the revenue from the sale of Venezuelan oil to repay the billions of dollars owed to oil companies “will materially harm the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
Specifically, the executive order says, such repayment would “interfere with our critical efforts to ensure economic and political stability in Venezuela” and, by extension, jeopardize U.S. foreign policy objectives including “ending the dangerous influx of illegal immigrants and the flood of illicit narcotics;…protecting American interests against malign actors such as Iran and Hezbollah; and bringing peace, prosperity, and stability to the Venezuelan people and to the Western Hemisphere more generally.” So, it appears, Trump wants to retain control of the money from the sale of Venezuelan oil.
...
YT 12 25 HCR TOTAL # EMERG DECL/LAWS INVOKED 9?
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSEV5uuzbq8)
But because of the Department of Government Efficiency um and Elon Musk working together with the director of
10:24
the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vote, who was one of the key writers of Project 2025,
10:30
the executive branch under Trump grabbed that power. They took that power away from Congress. And this to me was the
10:37
first and major shock of this administration that the Republicans in the Senate, I didn't expect a lot out of
10:43
the Republicans in the House of Representatives for a number of reasons, but I was surprised that the Republicans in the Senate didn't say, "Whoa,
10:51
doggies, hang on there. You you may not have the power of the purse because that's all the power they have really."
10:59
So, they're setting up here or they were setting up here this attempt to go around, not even to go around the
11:05
Constitution, to pretend the Constitution didn't really exist. But it didn't stop there. Um, think about the
11:11
fact that Trump controlled the Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate and the White House. When
11:17
you have a trifecta like that, it means that the president theoretically should
11:23
be able to pass whatever he wanted, right? But Trump never tried to pass
11:29
legislation that he wanted. He simply did something new and that was to
11:34
declare national emergencies. Trump during between um the time he took
11:40
office and I want to say mid November,
:
don't quote me on that, declared nine emergencies. And the trick
11:51
to emergencies is that declaring an emergency often gives the president extraordinary power. And that makes
11:57
sense, right? If there is an attack, if there is a disaster, if something happens, you don't want the president to
12:03
have to to drag everybody into Congress and debate a law, you want the president
12:09
to be able to do something very quickly. And so we have written in our laws these places where the president can do things
12:16
very quickly. But rather than try and get anything through Congress, Trump just went ahead and declared emergencies
12:23
that would enable him to do whatever he wanted. And you saw this really dramatically beginning in April when
12:29
Trump declared that we had an emergency. And because of that, he instituted his
12:35
tariff wars beginning with what he called liberation day. Remember, I think it was April 2nd. And the idea there was
12:42
that he could just do whatever he wanted because he had declared an emergency. Well, the constitution explicitly gives
12:48
to Congress the right to levy tariffs. That's in the constitution. There is an
12:53
emergency act that enables the president to do things in an emergency. But there
12:58
was no emergency. He simply declared that there was emer an emergency. And then crucially,
13:06
there is a way to challenge emergencies. The Congress has to say, "Hang on a second there. We want to have a vote on
13:12
whether or not there's really an emergency." But between the time they do that and the time they take on a vote, a vote on it, 15 days have to elapse. 15
13:19
working days have to elapse. Well, what happened was the House of Representatives under uh House Speaker
13:26
Mike Johnson declared that for the purposes of that law, for the rest of
13:32
the congressional session, no days would pass. And I couldn't believe that that didn't get more attention because that
13:38
is bonkers. The idea that the the the the uh Congress can just say, "Oh, days
13:44
are not going to pass because we don't want our president to be challenged." Well, what's going on there is
13:51
interesting because what's going on there is that this harks back to a
13:56
political theory that was popular in Nazi Germany. It was articulated by a
14:02
political theorist named Carl Schmidt and he said a number of things that I'm not going to go into now. But in terms
14:08
of the power in a government, what he said was that the true power in a
14:13
government flows not to whatever the constitution says, but to those people
14:18
who can exploit emergencies in order to create exceptions to the constitution so
14:25
that they could exercise power without regard to the law. And you saw this in
14:30
um in um in August of this year when Trump said, "I have the right to do
14:37
anything I want to do. I'm the president of the United States. If I think our
14:42
country is in danger, and it is in danger in the cities in that case, I can do it." Um that's straight out of
14:50
Schmidt. And actually JD Vance is a follower of Schmidt. He once said um he described JD uh Schmidt's ideas as
14:57
saying there's no law, there's just power. And these ideas of Carl Schmidt
15:03
are um circulating pretty widely on the American right including with a thinker
15:08
so so-called um uh named uh Curtis Jarvin. And Curtis Jarvin is one of the
15:14
people who's behind the Dark Enlightenment, the attempt to destroy American democracy and replace it with
15:20
dictatorships. And um he's the sort of guy who would just have been, sorry about what it's called, but would pretty
15:25
much have been a poster except for the fact that he drew the attention of Peter Teal, who is a billionaire um tech
15:31
bro who really loves this idea that you could get rid of the federal government, which is um in in people in the mind of
15:39
people like him uh creating regulations and taxes that make it impossible for
15:45
people like him to um improve society as quickly as he feels that he would able
15:51
to do. Musk thinks this way as well, but Peter Teal is really the one who is most closely aligned with Kurtish Yarvin. So,
15:58
you see this in the the the government in this idea of just getting rid of of
16:03
democracy, getting rid of our constitution, getting rid of our laws and working outside that. All right. So,
16:11
um, we have the tariff wars and then, um, you're you're increasingly seeing
16:18
this idea that Trump's got this momentum, nobody can stop him. And I think you really see that in July. It's
16:25
building up through June and into July when Congress passes what the Republicans began to call the One Big
16:32
Beautiful Bill Act or zero BBBA. um which they're trying to change the name
16:38
of now for this simple reason that what the OBBBA did was it put into place the
16:46
ideology that the Republican party had articulated since at least the 1990s but
16:52
but back into the 1980s. um that they could create a great nation
16:58
if only they got rid of regulations and taxation and got rid of the basic social safety net that we have enjoyed since
17:05
- And you saw this in the one big beautiful bill act. It uh the primary
17:11
thing it did was it extended the 2017 tax cuts for the from under the first Trump administration which
17:18
overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy and corporations. But it also slashed Medicaid and the supplemental nutrition
17:25
assistance program and they let it expire the supports for purchasing
17:30
affordable um uh health care insurance under the Affordable Care Act. They cut
17:36
through a whole bunch of things that would benefit ordinary Americans in order to benefit the wealthy and corporations. Now, crucially,
17:44
there were no Democratic votes for those bills. And that I say is one of the reasons that it's caused a lot of
17:50
trouble since then because the Republicans are trying to get the Democrats to look as if they had
17:55
something to do with that act because they passed it in July and the world has changed a lot since July. So you're also
18:04
seeing in that same period the first half of 2025 increasing attempts on the part of Trump and his cronies to line
18:10
their own pockets. I mean, they basically have just done everything they can to put billions of dollars into
18:16
their own pockets, through leveraging tariffs, through cryptocurrency, through buying uh or through selling pardons,
18:23
through doing everything they possibly can. So, you had all this going on in that first half of the year. And a lot
18:30
of people, especially in the mainstream media, who were watching this, either got on board or sort of stood back in
18:37
horror and seemed to go, I guess we better go along with this. But I'd like to argue today that with this attempt to
18:45
destroy American democracy and to work outside of our laws and our constitution
18:50
in a way that in many ways reflected the world before the creation of the United
18:55
States of America that something else happened. Now that something else
19:01
see CLETA SOVEREIGN EMERGENCY BORDER 9 25 ALSO 10 25?
AN 12 25
After President Donald Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) demolished the East Wing of the White House, the administration is now looking at 17 other sites it hopes to bulldoze to the ground. According to The Washington Post (https://archive.ph/o/LiD48/https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/12/30/homeland-security-plan-demolish-buildings-st-elizabeths/) and The Daily Beast (https://www.thedailybeast.com/kristi-noem-accused-of-inventing-an-emergency-to-tear-down-historic-buildings/), Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem invoked a national emergency to justify the move.
Just two days before Christmas, the General Services Administration (GSA) told the city of Washington, D.C., "it was planning an emergency demolition of 17 historic buildings because they constitute a present risk to life and property,” the Post said.
Noem says the buildings constitute “a present risk to life and property” because some of them sit on the DHS’ West Campus complex. The area is a vast achoridge with tall mature trees and a small pond.
The vacant buildings being torn down would give the government a “tactical advantage” in any possible “active shooter scenarios.” ALICE'sActive Shooter Response Training (https://www.alicetraining.com/blog/understanding-active-shooter-statistics-incident-response-times/#::text=Average%20Length%20of%20Active%20Shooter,Training%C2%AE%20in%20Incident%20Response) clocks that the average mass shooting ends in just five minutes. Far fewer mass shootings happen in or around law enforcement agencies compared to schools. Still, the Dec. 19 memo from Noem fantasized about a "malicious insider" or "disgruntled DHS employee or contractor" who could enter the complex and use the empty buildings to carry out a sniper-style shooting.
The building Noem wants to see gone is St. Elizabeths, which was a first government psychiatric hospital. It was built in 1855. It became a national landmark (https://www.nps.gov/places/st-elizabeths-hospital.htm) in 1990.
President Trump stated during the campaign that he supported reopening state-run mental health institutions. In fact, Trump's "crime" executive order (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/ending-crime-and-disorder-on-americas-streets/) goes so far as to direct federal agencies to encourage states to use "civil commitments" to put the severely mentally ill into a long-term institutional setting.
As NPR reported, (https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2024/04/16/1244702372/could-the-u-s-force-treatment-on-mentally-ill-people-again) "In the mid-to-late 20th century, America closed most of the country's mental hospitals."
GSA spokesperson Marianne Copenhaver told The Post via email that Homeland Security alerted the agency about “a present security risk to life and property” at St. Elizabeths “that may require us to demolish buildings.”
“Accordingly, we are following all applicable laws and regulations to address those issues,” she said.
"If these buildings are considered such a security threat, DHS should first reevaluate the location of its perimeter security fence, as suggested in early consultation meetings," wrote Elizabeth Merritt, the deputy general counsel for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Rebecca Miller, the executive director of the D.C. Preservation League, in a statement to the Daily Mail. (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15422403/wrecking-ball-homeland-security-st-elizabeths.html)
"If the space within these vacant buildings is accessible, that’s because DHS and GSA have failed to effectively secure them," Merritt and Miller said.
Among the buildings are four Allison buildings, the East lodge, the greenhouses, the creamery staff house and residence, and the Linden and Holly wards.
The Allison group of buildings was established as a home for disabled veterans. The Linden and Holly wards housed white female epileptics, a condition that, in many, can now be treated with medication. The East Lodge segregated female African-American patients, the Daily Mail said, citing St. Elizabeths, A History (https://dcpreservation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/0-COMPLETE-St.-Elizabeths-Hospital-A-History.pdf), a 2013 document by the GSA.
// context
President Donald Trump's administration is now responding to a lawsuit seeking to halt construction of his proposed new White House ballroom.
The Associated Press (AP) reported Monday (https://apnews.com/article/trump-white-house-ballroom-national-security-de9756118bbfca8f40af9cf89db6af5b) that Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) is now justifying the construction of his $300 million ballroom – which would replace the demolished East Wing of the White House (https://www.alternet.org/news-politics/trump-ball-room-white-house/#) — by claiming it's necessary for "national security" purposes. U.S. Secret Service officials told the judge assigned to a lawsuit (https://www.alternet.org/trump-ballroom-construction/) filed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States that construction on the site where the East Wing used to stand had to continue to meet unspecified "safety and security requirements."
The administration's claim of needing the ballroom for "national security" purposes was roundly mocked on social media. Rep. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), who sits on the House Foreign Relations Committee, asserted on her official X account (https://x.com/RepJulieJohnson/status/2000701572242718939) that Trump's ballroom was "not a national security priority."
"His vanity project is only a distraction from resolving global crises in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Afghanistan, and the list goes on," Johnson wrote.
Former Democratic campaign worker Gerald M. LeRoy also piled on (https://x.com/GeraldLeroy6/status/2000694231325692166), observing that the news of the day was "so insane that I do appreciate the humor of a breaking news headline essentially being 'Trump opposes someone opposing him.'"
"There is no bottom to the mendacity of these scoundrels," Chicago-based writer Lynn Becker posted (https://x.com/LynnBecker/status/2000707989972377756).
Florida-based attorney Steve Kerins responded to the news by also pointing to Trump's recent executive order classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction (WMD).
"National security ballroom. Fentanyl WMDs. We're really on a roll of authoritarian consolidation today," Kerins wrote (https://x.com/SteveKerins/status/2000704620210110674).
Vox.com senior writer Elias Isquith took a different direction (https://bsky.app/profile/eliasisquith.blog/post/3ma2plalxvs2w), sarcastically wondering if Trump was the "physical embodiment of a larger metaphysical force" that was "designed to ruthlessly exploit the most obvious flaws in our constitution & our society & thus force us to address glaring defects."
Click here (https://apnews.com/article/trump-white-house-ballroom-national-security-de9756118bbfca8f40af9cf89db6af5b) to read the AP's full report.
AN AH 10 25
In the United States' last three presidential elections, Donald Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) had a clear advantage in rural areas. But Trump's steep new tariffs are creating a great deal of hardship for many of the farmers who voted for him, and farmers are hoping that a bailout will enable them to make ends meet.
The New York Times' Michael Grunwald, in an op-ed published on October 21 (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/opinion/trump-soybeans-tariffs.html), points to the difficulties farmers are facing as an example of a pattern with Trump — who, according to Grunwald, creates a crisis, then proposes a solution at taxpayers' expense.
"Once again, President Trump says he's preparing an emergency bailout for struggling farmers," Grunwald explains. "And once again, it's because of an emergency he created. China has stopped buying U.S. soybeans to protest Mr. Trump's tariffs on imports. In response, Mr. Trump plans to send billions of dollars of tariff revenue to U.S. soybean farmers who no longer have buyers for their crops. At the same time, Argentina has taken advantage of Mr. Trump's tariffs to sell more of its own soybeans to China — yet Mr. Trump is planning to bail out Argentina, too."
Grunwald continues, "This may seem nonsensical, especially since Mr. Trump already shoveled at least $28 billion to farmers hurt by his first trade war in 2018. But it actually makes perfect sense. It's what happens when Mr. Trump's zero-sum philosophy of trade — which is that there are always winners and losers, and he should get to choose the winners — collides with Washington's sycophantic approach to agriculture, which ensures that farmers always win and taxpayers always lose. In the end, Mr. Trump's allies, including President Javier Milei of Argentina and the politically influential agricultural community, will get paid — and you will pay. I didn't say it was good. I just said it makes sense."
Trump's view of economics, Grunwald notes, is outlined in his 1987 book "The Art of the Deal."
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"The most important thing to know about the former real estate developer and casino operator in the White House is that he doesn't believe in mutually beneficial transactions," the Times journalist observes. "The central theme of his book, 'The Art of the Deal,' is that every deal has a winner and a sucker. On trade, Mr. Trump sees America as a perennial sucker, and he vows to make it win so much that you'll get tired of winning."
Trump's protectionist approach to trade, according to Grunwald, is "lousy policy for America" but "works nicely for Mr. Trump, because it gives him enormous power to reward or punish specific companies or industries."
"We do not live in a zero-sum world," Grunwald argues. "The nice thing about free markets and free trade is that voluntary transactions between individuals or nations really can make both sides better off. Or we can keep paying farmers to farm soybeans, pay them more to convert some of those soybeans into wildly inefficient fuels, pay them even more when they can't sell their soybeans because we're in a trade war with their customers — and then pay extra to bail out one of the countries replacing them in the marketplace. That only makes sense in Mr. Trump's Washington."
Jesse Watters says Democrats are “flirting with secession” (https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/jesse-watters-says-democrats-are-flirting-secession)
10/06/25 8:36 PM EDT
//
MMA
October 6, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five
KAYLEIGH MCENANY (CO-HOST): When you look at the DOJ filing -- I bring my primary sources when I'm on with Jessica always -- the 169-page DOJ filing requesting an emergency filing to reverse that judge. What you find in it is this: their legal authority is 10 U.S.C 12406. They say in two cases Donald Trump can federalize the National Guard. One case: you're unable to implement the laws of the United States. You cited the laws of the United States. It's immigration law as passed by Congress. Unable to enforce that because ICE agents are being targeted.
Number two: you can federalize the Guard if there's a rebellion against the authority of the government. Well, ICE is government. There's a pretty clear rebellion against this authority. Go ask the Dallas ICE agents who were targeted with anti-ICE bullets. This is a rebellion against US government sources.
And also, what's interesting, you only have to get ten pages into this lawsuit, here's what you find, just to add to Jesse's list here. There's someone who wielded a firearm at ICE in Portland. There's an individual -- you mentioned the rocks, the sticks. Listen to this, officers have been bitten, kicked, shot with paintballs, threatened with a machete and a knife, and assaulted with potentially blinding lasers. The protesters literally lit a material on fire up against the courthouse and other protesters threw accelerants on the fire. That's just one fire, there was another fire too. That one was done with motor oil over the building in Portland ICE.
Donald Trump is on strong legal footing. I can't speak to the one federal judge. I think they're going to get reversed. The ninth circuit sided with Trump once, I think they'll do it again. You can't be biting ICE officers and lighting their building on fire.
---}:
AN 10 25}:
Barbara F. Walter, author of “How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, warned Sunday that democracy in the United States is in decline and President Donald Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) could create "fake emergencies" to intensify his campaign against his opponents.
Speaking ata podcast onThe Bulwark (https://www.thebulwark.com/p/are-we-really-headed-for-a-second?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=87281&post_id=175224526&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=bg13&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email)posted Sunday morning, Walter said, "I think American democracy is in a really sad place, actually. It's in a place of democratic decline. It's probably likely in the near future to be in a place of economic decline. And these are things that are not going to turn around anytime soon. If you look at the underlying conditions for political violence, the United States, unfortunately, has all of them right now."
She continued: "Political violence tends to happen in countries with weak and declining democracy, especially democracies that are changing rapidly and moving more and more towards autocracy. We call those anocracies, and that's actually the most dangerous place to be. Full, healthy democracies almost never experience political violence."
She added that hardcore autocracies rarely experience political violence, and most of the violence happens in the middle.
"And since January 2025 of this year, America's democracy has declined faster than it ever has in its history. And it's declined faster than democracy in any other advanced industrialized democracy in the world," she added.
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Likening Trump to a "wannabe dictator," Walter said the president could use "fake emergencies" to "clamp down on citizens."
"These types of sort of fake emergencies allow these wannabe dictators to declare a state of emergency, declare martial law, and basically just clamp down on citizens so that citizens aren't allowed to leave their homes," she said.
She added: "There's curfews. Soldiers are now patrolling the streets. There's roadblocks. And this effectively ends democracy. So people were saying, okay, is theCharlie Kirk murder, (https://www.alternet.org/2673981072/) and in particular, the Republican Party's reaction to it, that this is almost a declaration of war by the left. People were worried that that would be that type of situation."
Walter also warned that Trump does not see the American constitution as an impediment.
"I don't think Trump sees the Constitution as an impediment in any way. [Viktor] Orban did not see Hungary's Constitution as an impediment. He simply changed it. Netanyahu doesn't see Israel's Constitution as an impediment. You know, these guys are bullies and strongmen, and they just push their way through and see if anybody stops them," she said.
The analyst noted that following conservative activist Charlie Kirk's murder, many expected a war on the left by the Trump administration, but it didn't play out that way. The administration, she argued, is now looking for a bigger reason to ramp up its efforts to go after its opponents.
"The Trump administration isn't ready to declare a state of emergency and to basically take control of the potential hotspots for opposition. Those hotspots for opposition are going to be America's big cities," she said.
Walter added: "It's hard for most Americans to feel deeply threatened because an outspoken activist on the right was killed. They might be horrified by it. They might desperately wish it never happens again, but they don't feel personally threatened by it. And for people to be willing to give up their rights and freedoms to say, 'okay, martial law is okay with me.' They have to be, they have to truly believe that their and their family safety is threatened. And Charlie Kirk's murder didn't do that. So it's going to have to be something bigger than that," she said, noting that Trump is still trying to "create a situation" where he can "suddenly grab all power."
"That's where you have most of the people who disagree with Trump, feel threatened by Trump. And he doesn't have his soldiers in place there. He started to do that in Washington, D.C., in Los Angeles, and he tried to do that in Chicago. But he's not ready for the moment to sort of pull the trigger," she said.
Asked if this democratic backsliding could lead to a civil war in the U.S., Walter said, "So the main point I want to make is that citizens are much more powerful than they think they are. There's over 330 million of us. You know, think back to your time at school in the schoolyard. You know, everybody's seen bullies operate and and they see what happens when the you know, the kids in the schoolyard, dozens of them, just stand up."
She continued: "Bullies tend to wither. We have 300 and, you know, over 330 million Americans. And if we just in our own separate individual ways, simply just started silently and peacefully resisting, not voluntarily complying when we're told that to do something that's illegal .So there's a whole series of things. And then protest is the greatest tool," she added.
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AN COMM DR 10 25 BASED ON 5 YR OLD FOX B ROLL
Top Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) administration adviser Stephen Miller was accused (https://x.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1974664075763429637) of spreading dangerous “propaganda” Saturday night regarding the federal judge who ruled that the White House could not deploy 200 National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon.
The White House deputy chief of staff accused (https://x.com/StephenM/status/1974647432299327904) US District Judge Karin Immergut, who was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term, of “legal insurrection” after she found (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/04/us/politics/judge-blocks-national-guard-portland.html) that the president’s claims about violent protests at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland were “untethered to facts,” and that residents’ expressions of opposition to ICE do not meet the high legal standard for calling the National Guard.
Miller claimed (https://x.com/StephenM/status/1974647432299327904) authorities in Oregon and Portland are aiding “an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers” by refusing to aid ICE agents, and claimed Immergut was attempting to assume the role of “commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces” by siding with state officials and issuing a temporary restraining order blocking the National Guard deployment, which was expected to begin this weekend.
Immergut said the state had provided “substantial evidence that the protests at the Portland ICE facility were not significantly violent or disruptive in the days—or even weeks—leading up to the president’s directive.”
Portland residents who oppose Trump’s mass deportation agenda began holding nightly demonstrations at the ICE facility over the summer, with some trying to block vehicles from entering and exiting the property. Crowds have dispersed quickly during the daytime, while at night federal officers have sometimes used tear gas and other weapons to move people away from the building. The Portland police have reported 27 arrests since early June at the protests, and at least two dozen people have been arrested by federal officers.
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While the president has described Portland as “war-ravaged,” Immergut said that the protests fall far below the threshold for ordering federal troops to Portland, which the president has the authority to do only in times of foreign invasion, a rebellion, or when local authorities are unable to maintain order.
“The protests have been such a minor issue that the normal nightlife in downtown Portland has required more police resources than the ICE facility,” said (https://www.npr.org/2025/10/04/nx-s1-5557239/trump-national-guard-portland-court-ruling) Immergut.
The judge added that the US “has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs... This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: This is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power—to the detriment of the nation.”
Miller’s accusation that Immergut was taking part in a “legal insurrection” by rejecting Trump’s false claims about the nature of the protests was “reckless,” said (https://x.com/GovPressOffice/status/1974680863716848078) California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“It’s authoritarian propaganda, plain and simple. Stephen Miller should be fired,” said the Democrat.
New York Timescolumnist David French added that Miller’s claims put Immergut in potential danger, as right-wing counterprotesters have arrived (https://www.npr.org/2025/10/04/nx-s1-5557239/trump-national-guard-portland-court-ruling) in Portland in recent days.
Immergut’s temporary order is set to expire in two weeks, but she is expected to rule on the state’s request for a more permanent injunction barring the deployment of the National Guard.
The Trump administration on Saturday night appealed Immergut’s ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously ruled that Trump could send the National Guard to Los Angeles to stop anti-ICE protests after a federal judge had decided (https://www.commondreams.org/trump-national-guard-illegal) that deployment should be halted.
In addition to seeking the National Guard deployment, the administration has reportedly (https://www.commondreams.org/news/national-guard-chicago-il) discussed sending the Army’s 82nd Airborne division, which is typically deployed in hostile foreign territory, into Portland.
On Saturday, Miller repeated claims (https://x.com/StephenM/status/1974534850334933179) that “there is a large and growing movement of left-wing terrorism in this country” that is “well organized and funded” and ”shielded by far-left Democrat judges.” Immergut is a Republican.
“The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks,” said Miller.
Since the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last month, the president and his allies have insisted that left-wing groups are fomenting violence, with Trump signing (https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-antifa) an executive order falsely claiming he has the authority to designate “antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization”—despite the fact that no “antifa” organization exists.
The president also signed (https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-war-on-critics) National Security Presidential Memorandum 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.”
On Saturday, Miller said on Newsmax that the administration intends to apply NSPM-7 in Portland, initiating investigations into what he called a “domestic terrorist network” whenever federal agents make an arrest at a protest.
Miller, said (https://x.com/jimstewartson/status/1974543308581208320) investigative reporter Jim Stewartson, “collapsed Democrats, ‘far-left Democrat judges’, and ‘antifa’ into a single domestic terror threat as a pretext for mass arrests.”
AN 9 25 BULWARK
Bulwark writer Philip Rotner says (https://www.thebulwark.com/p/reining-in-rogue-presidents) American law did not account for a bad-faith actor in the Oval Office, and it shows.
“Time and again in just eight months back in office, Donald Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) has advanced norm-busting assertions of presidential power far beyond anything ever attempted — or even dreamed of — by his predecessors,” said Rotner, referring to Trump declaring national emergencies that would typically require congressional approval or regulatory review. This include his unilateral tariffs, sending the military to Los Angeles, federalizing the Washington, D.C. police force, militarizing the southern border, ending birthright citizenship, deporting foreign students, targeting colleges and law firms and destroying the independence of administrative agencies.
“As tempting as it may be to call these actions ‘blatantly illegal,’ the truth is actually worse,” said Rotner. “The constitutional and statutory ambiguities Trump is attempting to exploit really do exist. Indeed, strategic ambiguity has until recently generally been viewed as a feature, not a bug, of our legal system.”
READ MORE: 'I'm the one asking the questions': CNN host cuts off Ted Cruz after he shouts over her (https://www.alternet.org/cnn-host-ted-cruz/)
Rotner said the Constitution is framed in generalized language, with phrases like “due process” and “equal protection” left largely undefined. But broad, nonprescriptive constitutional and statutory language is only a virtue when the American public puts good-faith actors in the White House. In the hands of a bad-faith leader, strategic ambiguity becomes a weapon.
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“Trump is a bad-faith actor with a wide authoritarian streak,” Rotner said. “He is systematically testing the limits of the law, probing for soft spots, loopholes, and ambiguities to increase his power and provide him legal cover to do ‘whatever I want.’”
And he trusts the courts will allow him enough leeway to expand his power vastly beyond "what anybody had previously imagined," Rotner said. It does not matter when his assertions of presidential power are thin or nonexistent in the eyes of most legal scholars. Scholars don’t get the last word,’ Rotner said. That belongs to the courts, which appears to rule by unexplained shadow docket decree.
“A clear pattern has emerged in the Court’s repeatedly putting its thumb on the scale in Trump’s favor, often ‘without a murmur of explanation,’” Rotner said. “Virtually all of the cases will require the Court to interpret vague, ambiguous statutory language drafted by Congress to permit presidents to act swiftly and decisively in times of crisis.”
READ MORE: 'Undisputed idiot king': Former NBC journalist calls Eric Trump 'the epitome of stupidity' (https://www.alternet.org/eric-trump-stupidity/)
But the Republican majority Congress has ceded some of its powers to the executive branch, said Rotner, and it will be up to a future Congress to get us out of the mess by no longer assuming good faith when it drafts legislation or amends existing statutes.
“The rules of the game have changed and good faith can no longer be assumed,” Rotner said.
AN 9 25
'They will take what they want': 7 ways Trump is already planning to disrupt the midterms (https://www.alternet.org/trump-disrupt-midterms/)
Carl Gibson (https://www.alternet.org/author/carlgibson)
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an 8 25
Salon Senior Writer Chauncey DeVega says (https://www.salon.com/2025/08/12/trumps-dc-takeover-is-an-ominous-move/) President Donald Trump’s DC takeover is just Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) doing exactly what he’d planned to do all along.
“During the 2024 election, Donald Trump promised to be a dictator on ‘day one.’ Seven months after his return to power, he is earnestly expanding that promise,” writes DeVega.
Trump’s concerns about “law and order” in DC are “self-interested and wholly circumstantial,” said DeVega. He noted that Trump did not deploy the DC National Guard when an armed mob was laying siege to the U.S. Capitol in 2021 to try to help him hold on to power.
READ MORE: Trump's worst crimes and destructions haven't even happened yet (https://www.alternet.org/trump-s-worst-crimes-and-destructions-haven-t-even-happened-yet/)
DeVega went on to write that, similar to other authoritarians, Trump is willing to manufacture statistics and public emergencies that do not exist. There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia, he writes. Violent crime in DC is at a 30-year low (https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/violent-crime-dc-hits-30-year-low), and is down another 26 percent so far this year.
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But autocrats and demagogues use false claims of crime and disorder as pretexts to “declare a permanent state of emergency and to suspend the rule of law, along with civil rights and liberties," writes DeVega. Salon democracy expert Katherine Stewart called the tactic “one of the most frequently telegraphed stunts in the authoritarian canon.”
Trump’s war on the homeless and the poor is yet another example of an authoritarian at work, says DeVega, explaining that they are “human proof of how a government and its leaders have failed the people,” and they are “a form of narcissistic injury to an authoritarian who presents himself as being all-powerful and perfect.” He referenced Trump’s social media announcement (https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1954889165666934914) of the DC takeover, in which he promised “Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will DISAPPEAR. I will, MAKE OUR CAPITAL GREAT AGAIN!”
“Inconvenient” and “disposable” people must be removed or erased because “they are an affront to the Great Leader, the Party and the myth of national greatness,” says DeVega, adding it’s a category that “inevitably expands to include political ‘enemies.’”
READ MORE: 'Not plausible': Trump-appointed judge hands him major loss in court (https://www.alternet.org/trump-judge-loss-court/)
DeVega added that simply “being American” may not be the antidote that political observers hope it will be.
Read DeVega's full Salon essay at this link (https://www.salon.com/2025/08/12/trumps-dc-takeover-is-an-ominous-move/).
wapo burgum energy
Former North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, Trump’s pick for interior secretary and “energy czar,” also suggested during his confirmation hearing Thursday that the incoming administration could consider declaring an energy emergency because of soaring electricity demand.
“This is part of a larger crisis our nation is facing around electricity,” Burgum told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
The energy emergency declaration relies heavily on concerns about the nation’s power grid not being able to keep up with surging demand, particularly from tech companies developing artificial intelligence. It stresses that the nation’s “ability to remain at the forefront of technological innovation” requires more energy.
an 525
Defenders of climate and the rule of law blasted the Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) administration on Friday for using what one consumer campaigner called a "phony" emergency to wage lawfare agaist states trying to hold Big Oil financially accountable for the planetary crisis.
On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed complaints against New York (https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1398816/dl?inline=&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery) and Vermont (https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1398811/dl?inline=&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery) over their climate superfund laws, which empower states to seek financial compensation from fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of climate mitigation. The burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of human-caused global heating.
Separately, the DOJ also sued Hawaii (https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1398726/dl?inline=&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery) and Michigan (https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1398731/dl?inline=&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery) "to prevent each state from suing fossil fuel companies in state court to seek damages for alleged climate change harms."
"The use of the United States Department of Justice to fight on behalf of the fossil fuel industry is deeply disturbing."
Hours later, Hawaii became the 10th state to sue Big Oil for lying about the climate damage caused by fossil fuels. The Aloha State's lawsuit (https://climateintegrity.org/uploads/media/Filed-1CCV-25-0000717.pdf) targets ExxonMobil (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/exxonmobil), Chevron, Shell, BP, and other corporations for their "decadeslong campaign of deception to discredit the scientific consensus on climate change" and sow public doubt about the existence and main cause of the crisis.
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"The federal lawsuit filed by the Justice Department attempts to block Hawaii from holding the fossil fuel industry responsible for deceptive conduct that caused climate change damage," Hawaii Attorney General Anne E. Lopez said. "The use of the United States Department of Justice to fight on behalf of the fossil fuel industry is deeply disturbing and is a direct attack on Hawaii's rights as a sovereign state."
The DOJ on Thursday cited President Donald Trump's April 8 executive order, " Protecting American Energy From State Overreach (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/protecting-american-energy-from-state-overreach/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery)," which affirms the president's commitment "to unleashing American energy, especially through the removal of all illegitimate impediments to the identification, development, siting, production, investment in, or use of domestic energy resources—particularly oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, geothermal, biofuel, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources."
Trump also signed (https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-platform-on-energy) a day-one edict declaring a "national energy emergency" in service of his campaign pledge to "drill, baby, drill" for climate-heating fossil fuels. The "emergency" has been invoked to fast-track fossil fuel permits (https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-accelerates-oil-project-approval), including for extraction projects on public lands.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the DOJ's Environment and Natural Resources Division said in a statement (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-complaints-against-hawaii-michigan-new-york-and-vermont-over) Thursday, "When states seek to regulate energy beyond their constitutional or statutory authority, they harm the country's ability to produce energy and they aid our adversaries."
"The department's filings seek to protect Americans from unlawful state overreach that would threaten energy independence critical to the well-being and security of all Americans," Gustafson added.
Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy watchdog Public Citizen (https://www.commondreams.org/tag/public-citizen), on Friday accused (https://www.citizen.org/news/trump-attempts-to-undermine-state-climate-lawsuits-in-aim-to-protect-big-oil/) the Trump administration of "using a phony energy emergency declaration to illegally attack state climate and clean energy laws."
"There is no energy emergency, and Trump's stated reasoning for it is as much a scam as every other pathetic con and hustle this president attempts," Weissman continued. "Fake constitutional claims based on a fake emergency cannot and will not displace sensible and long overdue state efforts to hold dirty energy corporations accountable."
"These corporations have imposed massive costs on society through their deceptive denial of the realities of climate change, and through rushing us toward climate catastrophe," he added. "It's good policy, common sense, and completely within state authority, for states to hold these corporations accountable."
AN 4 25
It was 218 years ago that President Thomas Jefferson signed into law the Insurrection Act of 1807, which has only been invoked on rare occasions since then. Under the Insurrection Act, a president can deploy the U.S. military nationally and federalize the National Guard units of individual states.
The last president who invoked the Insurrection Act was George H.W. Bush during the Los Angeles riots in 1992. President Donald Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in 2020 during the George Floyd protests but didn't follow through.
But now, in his second term, Trump is threatening to deploy the military on U.S. soil on Sunday, April 20.
READ MORE:'Mugged by reality': How the 'dissident right' is rebelling against MAGA (https://www.alternet.org/michelle-goldberg-trump-dissident-right/)
After returning to the White House on January 20, Trump signed an executive order (https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/donald-trump-may-impose-martial-law-type-order-on-april-20-what-we-know-8162828) declaring a national emergency on the U.S./Mexico border. And he left open the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act 90 days later.
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In an article published by Salon (https://www.salon.com/2025/04/15/countdown-to-april-20-americans-brace-for-trumps-big-decision/) on April 15, legal expert Austin Sarat (who teaches jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts) lays out some reasons why Trump invoking the Insurrection Act could be so dangerous.
"Given the breadth of the authority the Insurrection Act grants presidents," Sarat explains (https://www.salon.com/2025/04/15/countdown-to-april-20-americans-brace-for-trumps-big-decision/), "it is unsurprising that President Trump has long thought about using it…. And, make no mistake, the Insurrection Act grants the president broad authority. In 1827, the Supreme Court made that clear."
Sarat notes that (https://www.salon.com/2025/04/15/countdown-to-april-20-americans-brace-for-trumps-big-decision/) in 2024, Trump proposed using the Insurrection Act against "the enemies from within" and "radical-left lunatics."
READ MORE:'Death Master File': How DOGE won 'a momentous internal battle' over an illegal 'novel strategy' (https://www.alternet.org/doge-social-security/)
"The president alone gets to decide what constitutes an 'insurrection,' 'rebellion,' or 'domestic violence,'" Sarat warns (https://www.salon.com/2025/04/15/countdown-to-april-20-americans-brace-for-trumps-big-decision/). "And once troops are deployed, it will not be easy to get them off the streets in any place that the president thinks is threatened by 'radical-left lunatics.' That's why April 20 will be so consequential. If Americans take to the streets to protest the president's invocation of the Insurrection Act, the president might use those protests as an excuse to extend the deployment of troops."
Sarat continues (https://www.salon.com/2025/04/15/countdown-to-april-20-americans-brace-for-trumps-big-decision/), "The prospect of using the military against Americans is a nightmare and would mark a further descent into authoritarianism…. As we contemplate what might happen on April 20, Americans who object to the invocation of the Insurrection Act will be in something of a bind. If they take to the streets to protest, that may give the administration a pretext to expand its use further."
STATE OF EMERG --> EL SALV bs
AN 4 25
Trump (https://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/donald-trump/) is authorizing the U.S. military to take jurisdiction over federal lands along the southern border to help enforce his immigration agenda.
On Friday, Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) issued a memorandum entitled (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/military-mission-for-sealing-the-southern-border-of-the-united-states-and-repelling-invasions/) "Military Mission for Sealing the Southern Border of the United States and Repelling Invasions" to the secretaries of Defense, Interior, Agriculture and Homeland Security, reports USA Today (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/11/trump-gives-military-jurisdiction-federal-border-lands/83052001007/).
The memo names the Roosevelt Reservation, which lies between Mexico and the states of California, Arizona and New Mexico, as "National Defense Areas.” And it frames immigrants as “invaders” threatening “the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the United States.”
READ MORE: (Opinion) Trump is about to target something far more terrifying than tariffs (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-fdic/&ved=2ahUKEwiF6YSPpNGMAxUUlIkEHYQhACoQFnoECBUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1FOPrYKQDiz0-mfOPBniD-)
“Our southern border is under attack from a variety of threats. The complexity of the current situation requires that our military take a more direct role in securing our southern border than in the recent past,” the memo reads.
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While long, the territory is only about 60 feet wide, "the distance from home plate to the pitcher’s mound,” according to Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight for the Washington Office on Latin America, in Washington, D.C.
Isacson told USA Today the consequences of the Department of Defense assuming control of federal land at the border was not “immediately clear,” but he said it could result in “more severe criminal charges for migrants” unlawfully crossing the border. This is primarily because migrants may qualify as having “trespassed on a military installation” if they set foot on it, and they could potentially face more than the federal misdemeanor of “entry without inspection.”
“In carrying out activities under this memorandum, members of the Armed Forces will follow rules for the use of force prescribed by the Secretary of Defense,” the memo reads.
READ MORE:Could be the last one standing': Trump aims to 'illegally remove' head of bipartisan board (https://www.alternet.org/trump-ccr-garza-kirsanow/)
The administration is increasingly pressing migrants to self-deport. Earlier this week the administration asked the Social Security Administration to relist thousands of immigrants as “dead” (https://www.alternet.org/trump-immigrants-2671743411/) to remove their ability to legally work in the country and access credit and banking services.
American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick posted to Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/reichlinmelnick.bsky.social/post/3lml4z34li224) that Trump's deployment of the military to take over the Roosevelt Reservation could be an effort to "bypass the Posse Comitatus Act," which prohibits the U.S. military from enforcing civilian law. He added that Trump's move was "bad and dumb."
note abbott? tex gop tries to use invasion as legal justification for fuckery