Opinion
One day showed us what America could have been – and could yet be
I am certain there has not been a time in my life that has stretched out any longer than the three decades that passed between July 23, 2024 and July 23, 2025.
Just a year ago, Vice President Kamala Harris made her first public appearance after taking the baton from President Joe Biden to begin her historic sprint to the White House, while shattering glass ceilings and trying to save America from itself along the way ...
If successful, it would be the most audacious political Hail Mary in American history, during a time we never needed a good woman more.
Wisconsinites had traveled from all parts of the state with little notice to gather in this out-sized high school gymnasium tucked hard in the middle of a brawny suburb that helped wall off Milwaukee to the east.
One by one, Wisconsin’s Democratic royalty sauntered into the place … Gov. Tony Evers, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, and state Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler led a cast of dozens who wanted the teeming crowd in West Allis to know that despite all the recent tumult in the party they were firmly planting their flag with her.
Only 18 days earlier, off a terrible debate performance, Joe Biden had been in the state capitol of Madison in yet another high school auditorium in this battleground state where he literally begged for his political life, before mustering with George Stephanopoulos in a classroom onsite to make the same case to a national audience that evening.
Biden’s speech drew a mostly sympathetic reception from the partisans in attendance, but it was clear as day he was not in the kind of good trouble the great John Lewis would have advocated this late in the campaign.
Outside in the neighborhoods surrounding the school, the atmosphere was surreal. Hundreds of people, who couldn’t get in to watch the speech were turning on their best “Midwestern nice,” politely pleading with Biden to drop out. Others were there to show their support. Still others were there because when the president has traveled to your blue-collar neighborhood, the respectful thing to do is just shut up, and hear him out.
Then there were the pro-Palestinian protestors — always the pro-Palestinian protestors — who brought plenty of noise and heat to the somber event. They were kept at a distance by law enforcement which had descended from everywhere, but with their drums and kazoos nonetheless could be heard 10 blocks over.
I sympathized with their cause, just as I sympathized with the Israeli families who had been brutally terrorized, but all of them simply had to know that Biden would be miles better dealing with this sizzling issue than Bibi’s orange baby, who these days has given Israel’s disgusting, corrupt “leader” a spare room in the White House to help burp Stephen Miller.
That was the day I knew for sure these protesters were clearly prepared to burn it all down for their cause, even if it meant setting that cause back for a decade, by installing a complete madman in the White House. I wonder if they have learned yet that Trump not only couldn’t care less about them, but has it directly out for them?
I’ll leave this sore subject here for now, certain I have somehow insulted both sides …
We know now, that try as he might, Biden couldn’t convince the Big Money, the Big Media, and the Big Mouths in the Democratic Party that he was worth their time, entertainment value, and riches, so the show moved onto Milwaukee 18 days later without him, and with her.
Turns out, she was better than good. She was great.
If her job that day one year ago was to instill calm and confidence, while lighting a fire that would show us the way, she accomplished all three.
There was a real degree of difficulty here, because she was breaking away fast from a boss who had given her a chance, and could not afford to stumble even once getting out of the starting block.
Biden got only a brief mention in West Allis that day, which seemed both cold, and politically necessary. If Biden really was as bad as so many in the party said he was, it would do no good to spend much time appeasing him with platitudes, especially with but three months until the most important election in U.S. history.
Harris looked sensational, as always, in her smart, navy blue ensemble — such a contrast to her obese, orange opponent — and deftly hammered home all her talking points. Women would be protected, Project 2025 was a roadmap for destruction, and there would be more and more jobs coming from her administration.
I left the auditorium that day hopeful, but wondered if beating up on our own so late in the campaign had done more harm than all its intended good …
Despite what I am reading now from the Monday Morning Quarterbacks, who form the scattershot political elite, she ran a damn fine campaign. While her opponent was being given free rein to say and do literally anything without consequence, she plowed ahead and tried to do the most difficult thing in America politics: knock down centuries of misogyny and bigotry, while keeping people focused on character and substance.
She absolutely wiped the deck with Trump in their one and only debate. He wanted no part of a second beating, and stayed as far away as possible while screaming people were eating his supporters’ cats and dogs.
Seriously.
The patriarchy in America weren’t about to give her the respect she earned by standing up to the lewd, woman-abusing cretin that night, much the same way Hillary Clinton never got the credit she deserved for publicly smashing him three times in their debates just eight years earlier.
After all this I wonder if this screwed-up country will ever be ready for a woman to lead us. There is no way we deserve it …
This much is fact: Trump is a physically and mentally diminished monster, which makes him the most dangerous thing in American history. He knew all about Project 2025 just like she said he did, and is using it as a roadmap to dismantle our environment, our healthcare system, our safety nets, our economy, and common decency.
He’s a fascist, mostly because it’s easier ruling with an army than it is doing the necessary hard work it takes to govern all of America. He is a small-timer who has never had that in him.
Human beings have been rounded up and dumped in cages flanked by alligator-infested swamps. The convicted felon is now being hounded for his friendship with a man who rounded up children and raped them.
Billionaires are being rewarded for their loyalty, and working folk are being thrashed simply for their situation in life.
One year ago today, Kamala Harris took the stage in a Milwaukee suburb, and offered us all a chance at a far better way forward.
I’ll never forget that day, or the woman who selflessly accepted the baton from her fractured party, and ran like hell in an effort to preserve our democracy, and protect us from ourselves …
(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)
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Trump's masked enforcers point to dark and dangerous truths
In Los Angeles, they came at night, black helmets, tactical gear, no names, no insignia. Protesters were grabbed off the streets and loaded into unmarked vans. No one knew who they were. No one could ask. Their faces were hidden. Their power, absolute.
We are entering an era in which the agents of state power no longer have faces.
Across the country, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in upstate New York to militarized police responses in Atlanta, Chicago, and Portland, Americans are increasingly confronted by law enforcement officers whose identities are concealed. Their names stripped from badges. Their faces obscured by masks, goggles, and helmets. Their authority rendered anonymous.
The stated rationale is familiar: protection from doxxing, retaliation, or harassment. And in an age of hyper-polarization and digital vigilantism, those concerns are not entirely unfounded. Former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Ali Soufan warns, “Visibility puts a target on your back in the age of online extremism.” That may be true. But the inverse — faceless authority — puts a target on democracy itself.
At what point does protecting the enforcer obscure the principle of enforcement?
A democracy policed by faceless enforcers is not merely a tactical adaptation. It is a philosophical departure.
In literature, masks symbolize both freedom and concealment, rebellion and repression. Oscar Wilde famously quipped, “Give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth.” But there’s another truth lurking beneath: Masks don’t just enable expression; they also enable erasure.
Social psychologists have long understood this. In 1969, Stanford researcher Philip Zimbardo conducted a now-classic experiment in which participants donned hooded robes and were instructed to administer electric shocks to others. Unsurprisingly, the masked participants delivered higher shocks, exhibiting greater aggression and reduced empathy.
Even children grasp this dynamic. In a Halloween study, masked kids were significantly more likely to steal extra candy than their unmasked peers. A hidden face, even for a moment, grants permission to break the rules.
When combined with state power, anonymity can override individual conscience and turn human beings into instruments of group will.
The history of masked violence in America is not speculative; it is foundational. The Ku Klux Klan’s hooded anonymity wasn’t incidental. It was central to their terror. By day, Klan members were judges, sheriffs, or civic leaders. By night, they became ghosts, free to punish without consequence.
In Nazi Germany, SS and Gestapo agents wore masks during night raids, not only to instill fear but also to psychologically distance themselves from their crimes. In Chile under Augusto Pinochet, secret police donned balaclavas while abducting dissidents. In Iran under the Shah, SAVAK agents masked their faces during torture sessions to erase accountability.
This tactic is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes: concealment of identity to enable unchecked violence.
It is crucial to approach such parallels with care. No one is saying that masked ICE agents in American cities are equivalent to Gestapo squads in Berlin. But the comparison should serve as a warning, not a distraction. The question is not whether history repeats perfectly, but whether we are ignoring its lessons.
Of course, law enforcement officers face real threats. They have been harassed, even targeted for violence. Those risks are real and deserve attention. But the solution cannot be to erode public accountability.
We do not allow judges to hide their names. We do not permit anonymous juries. Our system of justice, however imperfect, relies on visible responsibility. To abandon that ideal in the name of safety is to accept a dangerous new social contract: one in which power flows only one way.
But here’s the hopeful truth: When communities resist the normalization of masked authority, they can win.
In Portland, Oregon, during the 2020 racial justice protests, federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Marshals deployed in camouflage uniforms and unmarked vehicles detained protesters without identifying themselves.
The move drew national outrage and lawsuits. Oregon’s attorney general filed suit to stop these “secret police-style” tactics, and public pressure led to federal inspectors general investigating the practice. By 2021, Congress passed a provision requiring federal agents deployed in civil disturbances to display visible identification showing their name or a unique ID code and their agency.
In New York, years of grassroots organizing by groups like Communities United for Police Reform led to the June 2020 repeal of Section 50‑a, a decades-old law that had shielded police disciplinary records from public view. The change came amid mass protests, underlining how collective action can dismantle policies of anonymity that enable abuse.
In Oakland, California, the issue of hidden identity became headline news in 2011, during the Occupy Oakland demonstrations. An officer was caught on video covering his nameplate with tape, a violation of departmental policy. He was suspended for 30 days, and his supervising lieutenant was demoted. Public outrage led to stronger rules requiring all Oakland officers to display badge numbers and name tags even when outfitted in riot gear.
These victories didn’t happen overnight. They were the result of sustained advocacy and legal challenges. And they remind us: Faceless authority can be challenged, but only if we refuse to accept it as inevitable.
The logic of masking metastasizes. Today it may be ICE. Tomorrow it could be traffic cops, school resource officers, or regulators enforcing housing codes and environmental policy. Once anonymity is normalized, it becomes nearly impossible to roll back.
Imagine being confronted by a law enforcement officer whose face is completely obscured. What would you feel? Fear? Confusion? Powerlessness? These are not accidental responses. Perhaps that is the point.
But a free society cannot function on intimidation.
We live in an open society. Police do not rule us; they serve us. To wear a badge is to accept a burden, to be known, to be scrutinized, to be restrained by the public’s gaze.
The philosopher Michel Foucault warned that power is most effective when it is least visible. But the inverse is also true: Power is most just when it is most seen.
A democracy cannot thrive on ghosts. It requires people, real, visible people, making visible decisions in the full light of day.
So, what can be done?
To stop the normalization of faceless power, we can:
- Demand transparency laws banning face coverings in non-high-risk operations;
- Support local watchdog journalism that documents abuses of anonymity;
- Join campaigns for demilitarizing police departments and banning unmarked uniforms during public interactions; and
- Insist on civilian oversight boards with real teeth to enforce accountability.
The mask is not a neutral tool. It is a statement. And it is one that a free society cannot afford to make lightly.
If we want a future where power serves people, not the other way around, it begins with insisting that authority shows its face.
- George Cassidy Payne is a writer, educator, and social justice advocate. He lives in Irondequoit, New York.
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History shows the depth of Trump's Epstein trouble
Here are the two contradictions lying at the heart of the contretemps over Trump and Jeffrey Epstein:
1. As early as May, Trump knew his name was in the Epstein files. Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy informed Trump at a meeting in the White House that his name appeared “multiple times.”
But on July 15, when a journalist asked Trump, “Did [Bondi] tell you at all that your name appeared in the files?” Trump responded, “No, no.”
2. Bondi said in February that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now to review.”
But on July 7, the Justice Department stated that a thorough review had turned up no list of Epstein’s clients.
Neither of these is evidence that Trump was involved in Epstein’s activities with underage girls. But together they suggest a cover-up — which can kill a presidency.
Exhibit A: Nixon. Of Tricky Dick, the oft-repeated question was, “What did he know, and when did he know it?”
That’s being asked of Trump now.
Like Nixon, Trump is trying to cover up his cover-up. One day after The Wall Street Journal revealed that a letter bearing Trump’s name that was included in a 2003 birthday album for Epstein, Trump sued the Journal, calling the letter “nonexistent” and claiming the article defamed him.
Trump’s problem is that so many Americans — including most of his MAGA base — believed that, once back in the Oval Office, he’d expose a powerful global elite centered on pedophilia. But what if Trump is part of that elite?
Some of Trump’s senior staff — such as Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI — built their reputations on exposing that supposed elite. Bongino now says the decision not to release the Epstein files has eroded his credibility among his supporters.
Poor fellow. Bongino became a successful podcaster and media personality precisely because he fueled conspiracy theories linking pedophilia, Epstein, and the global elite.
Another of the deepening ironies here is that Trump’s effort to target his enemies has blurred the line between the White House and the Justice Department — making it harder for Trump to distance himself from the Department’s sudden reversal on releasing the Epstein files, thereby adding to the specter of a cover-up.
The appearance of a cover-up gets even worse now that the House of Representatives has left for its August recess a day earlier than expected because Speaker Mike Johnson — a close ally of Trump — wanted to stop a bipartisan discharge petition that would have forced a vote on the release of the Epstein files.
Senate Republicans may be more open to a bipartisan investigation. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, a member of the Judiciary Committee, says, “Whatever the bottom line is, I’m in favor of releasing it.”
Hawley also suggests a joint committee made up of House members and senators to get to the bottom of the growing issue.
Recall that Nixon faced a joint committee of Congress that sought to “get to the bottom” of Watergate.
Epsteingate won’t end because members of Congress go home for August recess. Just the opposite. Because it remains unresolved, more stories will emerge suggesting a cover-up. Republican town halls will be filled with such charges.
Trump hasn’t learned the essential lesson of Watergate: when the public senses a cover-up, you have no choice but to expose everything. Otherwise, the cover-up metastasizes into a “cancer on the White House,” in John Dean’s infamous phrase.
- Robert Reich is a professor emeritus of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com
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This surrender to Trump is a symptom of our national disease
The CBS merger deal illustrates everything that’s wrong with post-Reagan Revolution America. It’s not just another corporate merger: it’s a road sign on our accelerating march toward oligarchy, propaganda, and the collapse of honest media.
We’ve watched one of the most important legacy broadcast platforms in America pay a $16 million bribe to our convicted felon president, reportedly offer him another $16 million worth of free air time, and try to sell its entire operation to a billionaire with a God complex. It’s the worst of the Reagan revolution coming home to roost, on our screens, in our homes, and in our civic life.
Start with the $16 million payoff: Trump sued CBS and its parent company Paramount over a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, laughably arguing that CBS’s editing of the interview constituted unlawful election tampering. The lawsuit was instantly and widely regarded as frivolous, but instead of fighting it, CBS quietly settled for an astonishing $16 million. No trial. No discovery. Just a big, fat check.
This isn’t journalism: it’s tribute. It’s what oligarchs have done for centuries when they want to please the king.
This should shock the conscience of any functioning democracy, and has the rest of the world wondering about the health of ours. But in the GOP’s America — where billionaires are gods and corporations are people — this is just Thursday.
Antitrust laws that were once enforced to keep our economy and our media diverse and competitive are now all but ignored.
It wasn’t always this way, as I lay out in The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream. Before Ronald Reagan took office, the federal government blocked mergers that would’ve concentrated too much economic or political power.
In 1890, Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act that said giant companies couldn’t dominate markets simply because they had the financial muscle to buy up their smaller competitors or drive them out of business by dropping prices long enough to run them into bankruptcy. It was later augmented by the Clayton Anti-Trust Act (1914) and the Celler-Kefauver Act (1950).
The law was so rigorously enforced — so the game of business could be played by all comers, not just the “big boys” — that in the 1960s the Supreme Court barred the merger of the Kinney and Buster Brown shoe companies because the new combined company would control 5 percent of the shoe market.
But then Reagan, in 1983, ordered the DOJ, SEC, and FTC to basically stop enforcing the Sherman Act, which is why today Nike, for example, controls about a fifth of the entire nation’s shoe market. It’s the same across industry after industry, from retail to grocery stores to railroads to computer software to social media to chip manufacturing to airlines to hotels … and media.
In the decades since Reagan and the GOP stabbed small businesses in the back, things have deteriorated badly. In 1983, there were about 50 companies that owned 90% of American media, controlling roughly 90% of what Americans see, hear, and read. As of today, it’s six: Comcast, Disney, News Corp, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount (for now). That’s not a free press, it’s an oligopoly.
And now Larry Ellison, the tenth-richest man in the world with a net worth north of $150 billion, and his son are stepping in to consolidate even more control. Ellison already uses his wealth to push far-right political causes; he was the single largest funder of a rightwing PAC. Now he’ll have one of the largest megaphones in America.
This is what oligarchy looks like, courtesy of the Reagan Revolution and, most recently, the corrupt Citizens United decision by five bought-off Republicans on the Supreme Court.
An oligarch buys a media empire. A corrupt president extorts that empire for cash and air time. The journalists there who once held power to account get fired. And now Stephen Colbert — whose nightly monologue is one of the few mainstream platforms consistently skewering Trump and the GOP — is on the chopping block. So is the legendary 60 Minutes team, neutered to avoid offending Ellison’s political pals. All to grease the wheels for a merger and keep Trump happy.
Meanwhile, the average American gets nothing. No trustworthy journalism. No independent voices. No real debate. Just more billionaire-driven narratives, more Trump hagiography, and more of the toxic sludge that passes for news in post-Reagan America.
We’ve seen this movie before. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán used state subsidies and friendly oligarchs to seize control of that nation’s media. In Russia, Vladimir Putin arrested or exiled journalists while his billionaire cronies bought up every independent outlet.
Trump’s already following the blueprint to do the same here through Project 2025: purge career civil servants, seize control of the FCC, and turn the media into a mouthpiece for the regime. With CBS in the hands of Ellison and already making cash payments to Trump, we’re more than halfway there.
Make no mistake: this isn’t about entertainment or even profits. It’s about power. When the press becomes the property of the morbidly rich and they wield it to defend their interests, as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams warned, democracy becomes their plaything.
Trump is running a campaign of vengeance, vengeance against the media in particular, and CBS is handing him a gun. And the kicker? Shari Redstone — the morbidly rich heiress billionaire who’s cashing out of CBS and Paramount — is walking away with billions while the public walks away with nothing.
What’s happening to CBS is not just one network’s moral collapse; it’s a symptom of our national disease. The disease Reagan diagnosed as “government is the problem” when he actually meant: “democracy is the problem.”
Since 1981, Republicans have systematically deregulated, defunded, and dismantled every guardrail of democratic capitalism they could get their hands on. The result is an America where billionaires like Ellison can buy the truth, where the press kowtows to the criminal-in-chief, and where the public interest has no advocate left.
We are reaping what Reagan sowed. In 1996, the Telecommunications Act — passed with bipartisan support but cheer-led by Reaganites — blew open the floodgates of media consolidation. In the years that followed, Clear Channel (now iHeartMedia) gobbled up over 1,200 radio stations. Sinclair Broadcasting used loopholes to flood local news with right-wing propaganda.
And now, legacy TV networks are selling themselves to political oligarchs while laundering bribes to Trump through legal settlements and airtime giveaways.
All of this is happening in plain sight. It’s not even subtle anymore. Trump brags about “retribution,” and CBS offers him a microphone. He lies about the election, and they hand him airtime. He threatens journalists, and their bosses fire them.
And where are the regulators? The Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission under Joe Biden had taken steps to revive antitrust enforcement, but Trump has ended all those efforts and put a bootlicker in charge of the FCC.
And Congress? Half of them are on the take, funded by the very oligarchs who benefit from this media rot. According to OpenSecrets.org, media and internet companies spent over $600 million lobbying Congress in 2024 alone.
What we’re witnessing is the logical endpoint of a 44-year experiment in trickle-down libertarianism called the Reagan Revolution. The billionaires got their tax cuts. The corporations got their deregulation. The politicians got their payoffs. And the people got lies, propaganda, and impoverishment.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We could enforce antitrust laws. We could reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. We could limit media ownership and break up monopolies like Comcast and Sinclair. We could tax the billionaires who are using their wealth to warp our democracy and rebuild public-interest journalism from the ground up.
But first, we have to stop pretending this is normal.
It’s not normal to pay a criminal ex-president $16 million to go away and then invite him back on air; this sort of thing doesn’t happen in any other developed country in the world.
It’s not normal to fire comedians and journalists for telling the truth. It’s not normal for one politician to cow the nation’s news organizations. And it’s sure as hell not normal for the Fourth Estate to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the neofascist MAGA movement.
This isn’t just a CBS problem. It’s not even just a media problem. It’s a democracy problem. If Congress lets the Ellisons and Trumps and Redstones buy and sell the truth, it’ll be years before we get it back, if ever.
The Congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121. Pass it along.
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Sheer ambition has pitched this red state's leadership into a civil war
When the Georgia Senate stunned the state Capitol and wrapped up work before the typical midnight deadline on the last night of the 2025 session, a visibly frustrated House Speaker Jon Burns took a not-so-subtle dig at his friends across the hall.
“The House is focusing on its priorities of getting the job done, and we’re not worried about moving on to some other higher office,” the powerful Republican told reporters shortly before gaveling out his own chamber. “We came here to do a job, and we did our job.”
With the exception of the presidency, just about every position in politics can be considered a stepping stone to something bigger. But it’s not often (maybe once every four or eight years) that ambitious and powerful lawmakers suddenly go from colleagues to campaign rivals as they all seek to add another title to their resume.
The tension is already creeping into Georgia’s upper chamber, where greetings on the Senate floor have started to sound more aspirational than ceremonial. It’s not out of the ordinary, a former lawmaker once said, to hear someone walk onto the Senate floor and randomly shout, “Good morning, Congressman!”
But it’s becoming more than just a joke tossed around the chamber. At least 10 state senators — Republican and Democrat — are leaving behind their seats and leadership positions to run for “some other higher office,” in the colorful words of the speaker. And that number could grow as more offices open up ahead of the 2026 elections.
Let’s start at the top: Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who serves as president of the senate, recently launched a bid for governor.
Three Republican state senators have already entered the race to succeed Jones: Steve Gooch of Dahlonega, John F. Kennedy of Macon and Blake Tillery of Vidalia. State Sen. Josh McLaurin, a Sandy Springs attorney, is the only known Democratic contender so far.
With Attorney General Chris Carr also fighting for the governor’s chair, Republican state Sens. Brian Strickland of McDonough and Bill Cowsert of Athens, both lawyers, are aiming to become the state’s next top prosecutor. State Sen. Emanuel Jones is challenging a longtime incumbent in a metro Atlanta congressional seat. And state Sen. Jason Esteves is running in the Democratic primary for governor.
A lot of these names aren’t “backbenchers” — they are synonymous with the levers of power in the chamber. Kennedy is the president pro tempore, Gooch is the majority leader, and Tillery chairs the budget-drafting appropriations committee. Strickland chairs the judiciary committee, and Cowsert is also a former Senate leader (and a brother-in-law to outgoing Gov. Brian Kemp).
And a change in Republican bylaws means that many of these members must immediately stand down from their roles in leadership while they campaign for a different office, which means new leaders are already being named ahead of the 2026 session.
While this mass exodus of seasoned legislators definitely says a lot about their own ambitions (and how awkward next year’s session is going to be), it’s also a sign of the power transition underway at the state Capitol with Gov. Brian Kemp entering the final year of his term.
The governor’s mansion isn’t the only big office up for grabs. Insurance Commissioner John King is running to oust Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Agriculture Commissioner Tyler Harper are said to be plotting their next moves as well. More open statewide offices could lead to more lawmakers ditching their annual 40 days of work in search for higher office.
With several key senators already departing, however, the chamber is set to lose years of wisdom and institutional knowledge as key offices prepare to change hands. So the next governor and lieutenant governor won’t be the only ones learning on the job — a lot of their legislative partners will be new to their roles as well.
Strickland says the looming leadership turnover brings a great opportunity for new faces and names to step up to the plate.
“I think you’re going to see a chance for new people to step in who might have different leadership styles, but will maybe bring some needed changes in some particular areas,” he said recently while on break from court.
In the short term, lawmakers will need to convene for one more session before next November. But with so many senators running for other offices, how many of them will be focused on doing the work they were elected to do and not itching to get back out on the campaign trail?
“I think it’s incumbent on all of us who are running statewide to set [our campaigns] aside for those 40 days and to do the job we were elected to do for those 40 days,” finished Strickland.
“Obviously there’s going to be some tension. My hope is that it does not come from me.”
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This immigration court trend should scare you
By Cassandra Burke Robertson, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Professional Ethics, Case Western Reserve University.
Something unusual is happening in U.S. immigration courts. Government lawyers are refusing to give their names during public hearings.
In June 2025, Immigration Judge ShaSha Xu in New York City reportedly told lawyers in her courtroom: “We’re not really doing names publicly.” Only the government lawyers’ names were hidden — the immigrants’ attorneys had to give their names as usual. Xu cited privacy concerns, saying: “Things lately have changed.”
When one immigration lawyer objected that the court record would be incomplete without the government attorney’s name, Xu reportedly refused to provide it.
In another case, New York immigration Judge James McCarthy in July referred to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, attorney as merely “Department” throughout the hearing.
New York immigration Judge Shirley Lazare-Raphael told The Intercept that some ICE attorneys believe it is “dangerous to state their names publicly.” This follows a broader pattern of ICE agents wearing masks during arrests to hide their identities.
This secrecy violates a fundamental principle that has protected Americans for centuries: open courts. Here’s how those courts operate and why the principle governing them matters.
‘Presumption of openness’
The U.S. legal system is built on openness, with multiple layers of legal protection that guarantee public access to court proceedings.
This tradition of open courts developed as a direct rejection of secret judicial proceedings that had been used to abuse power in England. The notorious Star Chamber operated in secret from the 15th to 17th centuries, initially trying people “too powerful to be brought before ordinary common-law courts.”
But the Star Chamber eventually became a tool of oppression, using torture to obtain confessions and punishing jurors who ruled against the Crown. Parliament abolished it in 1641 after widespread abuses.
By the time American colonial courts were established, the reaction against the Star Chamber had already shaped English legal thinking toward openness. American courts adopted this principle of transparency from the beginning, rejecting the secretive proceedings that had enabled abuse.
Today, the term “star chamber” refers to any secret court proceeding that seems grossly unfair or is used to persecute individuals.
In the U.S., courts have repeatedly emphasized that “justice faces its gravest threat when courts dispense it secretly.” The First Amendment gives the public a right to observe judicial proceedings. The Supreme Court has ruled that “a presumption of openness inheres in the very nature of a criminal trial under our system of justice.”
Every federal appeals court has recognized that this constitutional right extends to civil cases too, with some exceptions such as protecting “the parties’ privacy, confidential business information, or trade secrets.” Federal court rules require that trials be “conducted in open court” and that witness testimony be “taken in open court unless otherwise provided.”
Many state constitutions also guarantee open courts — such as Oregon’s mandate that “no court shall be secret.”
While there’s no explicit law requiring attorneys to be publicly named, there’s also no policy allowing their names to be kept secret. The presumption is always toward openness.
In response to these recent developments, law professor Elissa Steglich said that she’d “never heard of someone in open court not being identified,” and that failing to identify an attorney could impair accountability “if there are unethical or professional concerns.”
Rules for anonymity
Courts sometimes allow anonymity, but only in specific circumstances.
Juries can be anonymous when there’s “substantial danger of harm or undue influence,” as legal expert Michael Crowell writes — like in high-profile organized crime cases or when defendants have tried to intimidate witnesses before. Even then, the lawyers still know the jurors’ names.
Similarly, parties to a lawsuit can sometimes use pseudonyms like “Jane Doe” when the case involves highly sensitive matters such as sexual abuse, or when there’s a real risk of physical retaliation.
But these rare exceptions require careful court review.
What’s happening with ICE attorneys is different. There’s no formal court ruling allowing it, no specific safety findings and no established legal process.
Immigration courts have fewer protections
Immigration courts operate differently from regular federal courts. They are so-called “administrative courts” that are part of the executive branch, not the judicial branch.
These courts decide claims involving an individual’s right to stay in the U.S., either when the government seeks to remove someone from the country for violating immigration law or when an individual seeks to stay in the country through the asylum process.
Immigration judges lack the lifetime job protections that regular federal judges have. As executive branch government employees, they can be hired and fired, just like other Department of Justice employees.
People in immigration court also have fewer procedural protections than criminal defendants. They have no right to court-appointed counsel and must represent themselves unless they can afford to hire an attorney. The majority of immigrants appear without an attorney. Outcomes are better for those who can afford to hire counsel.
Immigration court records are also less accessible to the public than other federal court proceedings.
For years, the Board of Immigration Appeals, the nation’s highest immigration court, made less than 1% of its opinions publicly available. A federal court ruled that public disclosure was required; the Board of Immigration Appeals now posts its decisions online.
However, lower immigration court decisions are rarely made public.
Because immigration courts operate with less oversight than regular federal courts, public observation becomes more critical.
Open courts aren’t just about legal procedure — they’re about democracy itself. When the public can observe how justice is administered, it builds confidence that the system is fair.
Court watching protects transparency
Court watching has become an important way for citizens to ensure due process is honored, especially in immigration cases.
Observers can monitor whether proper legal procedures are being followed. They can watch for signs that attorneys are prepared, treating people respectfully and following court rules — regardless of whether those attorneys identify themselves.
Observers help track trends such as lack of legal representation, language barriers or procedural unfairness that can inform advocacy for reforms. This kind of public oversight is especially important in immigration court, where people often don’t have lawyers and may not understand their rights.
When community members bear witness to these proceedings, it helps ensure the system operates fairly and transparently.
Professional ethics and accountability
As a law professor who runs a law school’s Center for Professional Ethics, I can say that while there’s no specific law forcing ICE attorneys to identify themselves, they are still bound by rules of professional conduct that require accountability and transparency.
State bar associations have clear standards about attorney conduct in court proceedings. The American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct emphasize that lawyers are “officers of the legal system” with duties to uphold its integrity.
Immigration judges, despite being government employees rather than lifetime-tenured federal judges, are also bound by judicial conduct codes that require them to uphold public confidence in the justice system. When judges allow or encourage anonymity without formal procedures or safety findings, they risk violating these ethical obligations.
Bar associations can investigate professional conduct violations and impose sanctions ranging from reprimands to suspension or disbarment. While enforcement against federal government lawyers has historically been uncommon, sustained documentation by court observers can provide the evidence needed for formal complaints.
While government attorneys, judges and other court personnel may face real safety concerns, hiding their identities in open court is unprecedented and breaks with centuries of legal tradition that requires accountability and transparency in our justice system.
As pressure mounts to process immigration cases quickly, courts are ethically and legally bound to ensure that speed doesn’t come at the expense of fundamental fairness and transparency.
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It's not Jeffrey Epstein who will bring Trump down
Back in late March, I wrote a piece about US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth committing what some at the time said was the biggest breach in national security in US history. Hegseth “accidentally texted” war plans to the editor of The Atlantic. Hegseth also organized those war plans using an unsecured messaging platform, which pretty much guaranteed America’s enemies knew about them in advance.
My argument in that piece: in another time and place, this historic scandal would have led to the downfall of powerful men, but we live in this time and place, of autocratic rule, in which Donald Trump is seen by his followers as literally infallible. In such an age, old-fashioned political scandals aren’t possible. “But her emails” was the last of a dying breed.
I wrote that piece believing there would never be daylight between Trump and MAGA or between Trump and a rightwing media apparatus that has the power to bend the will of the Washington press corps.
But then came the Jeffrey Epstein memo released by the Department of Justice, which communicated to the Trump’s followers that the truth about how the world really works – QAnon – is not only false but they were suckers for believing it. That triggered a subterranean reaction.
All of a sudden, figures like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson are questioning Trump’s intentions, which means reporting by the mainstream press is having more impact than it normally would.
This is important. The choices made by the Washington press corps are often determined by whether they will affect the president’s base. The Hegseth story was serious on the merits. It was worthy of months of coverage. But it didn’t get far, because MAGA thought either it was a nothingburger or blamed reporters for making Trump look bad. The president was never responsible for his choices. So the scandal died.
But the questions are now coming from inside the house. The media landscape is so profoundly different that if mainstream reporters start talking about Trump’s age and infirmity with the same frequently and intensity with which they talked about Joe Biden’s, it will be entirely due to the MAGA faithful’s fruitless search for a good-faith reason why their champion is standing with “the deep state,” instead of against it.
I don’t want to get ahead of myself, so I called in Jennifer Schulze. She’s a longtime Chicago journalist and publisher of Indistinct Chatter, a newsletter about the news.
Trump himself won’t let the Epstein story die, Jennifer told me, giving reporters more opportunities to dig in: “There is something rather enjoyable about watching this hot mess.”
John Stoehr: The White House press corps is normally deferential to Donald Trump, in the sense that reporters haven't determined how aggressive they should be with a man seen by many as invincible. The Epstein case may be against that grain. What are you seeing?
Jennifer Schulze: It's too early to tell where the press corps comes down, given that so many who routinely ask Trump questions aren't news reporters, but MAGA personalities. But the ones who are actually journalists — and still permitted to be in the pool — are going to keep asking questions. Good for them. It is a very big story with lots of layers. Trump is keeping it in the news, too. So every day, reporters keep having additional opportunities to ask him and his administration about it.
Perhaps the more immediate question is about the MAGA media. There seems to be a split, and that split is driving the story that the real journalists are covering. So ... thank God for MAGA media?
MAGA’s varied responses to the Epstein story is a story, and it will continue to be a story as this mess shakes out. We have come to expect MAGA media to be in lockstep with Trump, all promoting the same narrative, so it is newsworthy that these splits are developing.
I'm especially interested in watching what Fox does. So far, Trump's state media outlet is following his lead. Media Matters has a headline that says it all: "Trump told MAGA to be quiet about Jeffrey Epstein. Fox News obeyed." Media Matters has some interesting data to support that. It reports that last Monday, Fox mentioned Epstein only eight times but mentioned former President Joe Biden 158 times. Fox has really not broken from Trump in his second term, but like with other stories, the Fox audience may rebel at least a little bit.
Other MAGA media is reporting the story but you can feel their pain. Some are literally begging Trump to release the Epstein files. Others are flailing, trying to point the blame at Pam Bondi or Democrats. There is something rather enjoyable about watching this hot mess.
The Epstein issue seems to expose the problem of staffing your administration with MAGA media personalities. Dan Bongino, for instance, appears to have decided that he has more incentive to break with Trump than stick with him. And those incentives will snowball quickly inside and outside MAGA media. Thoughts?
Poor Dan Bongino.
For years, he railed to his very large audience about the Epstein files, promising to get to the bottom of it when Trump is elected. Now Trump's president (again) and Bongino lands the No. 2 job at the FBI, but what happens? He fails to deliver. What does he do? He calls in sick. Reality has kicked him (and many MAGA faithful) in the butt.
Who knows what Bongino will end up doing. I'm not sure it matters. People go in and out of Trumpworld all the time. True believers and grifters like Bongino can't quit Trump for good. I do hope more news coverage turns to how much money Bongino and others have made by polluting the information ecosystem with the Epstein file lies, etc. It has been their lifeblood. But so, too, has their connection to Trump
The Democrats have done a pretty good job so far of turning the Epstein case into a real wedge issue. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who is notoriously bad at media, said that either Trump lied about the conspiracy or is covering it up, a brilliant framing of the story that complements the press corps' need to conflict. How does it look from your end?
This is the fighting stance many Democratic voters have been looking for from Democrats. The Epstein case is nauseating (and yes, there are actual victims that deserve attention in the ongoing coverage), but it's a perfect opportunity for Democrats to hammer Trump on how one of his biggest conspiracy theories is falling apart, how his typically stuck-like-glue base is fracturing; how his appointees are flailing.
I do think Democrats can walk and chew gum at the same time so I'm glad to see them giving it such a good effort. Trump has made it easy for Democrats in some respects. He's making mistake after mistake, and keeping the story front and center, because he is so remarkably undisciplined. The attack lines write themselves.
I also think a cowed news media is finding some spine with the Epstein coverage because, again, the stories almost write themselves. Every hour, there's a new outburst from Trump or MAGA media type, etc.
There has been nothing but scandals since day one, but the press corps has not been able to make any of them stick. I'm thinking here of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Trump could blame the media, the Democrats, the deep state, anyone, and the MAGA faithful would go along. Not this time, which means the Washington press corps can really dig in — until Trump fires Fed Chair Jerome Powell or starts a war. But even then, the MAGA faithful might not follow along.
Here's what's different: Trump is keeping the story in the headlines. He is like an open fire hose. As long as the press keeps asking about the Epstein files, he'll keep saying crazy stuff that becomes the basis for the next wave of stories. Meanwhile, reporters are digging up all kinds of sidebar stories, including the MAGA media response, Bongino watch, maneuvers by Congress, etc. We have the Wall Street Journal story about Trump's birthday letter to Epstein and how Trump himself called the editor to pressure her to kill the piece. Trump trying to kill a news story should be headline news for days.
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This Trump hatchet man is a danger like no other
By Paul M. Collins Jr., Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science, UMass Amherst
President Donald Trump’s nomination of his former criminal defense attorney, Emil Bove, to be a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, has been mired in controversy.
On June 24, 2025, Erez Reuveni, a former Department of Justice attorney who worked with Bove, released an extensive, 27-page whistleblower report. Reuveni claimed that Bove, as the Trump administration’s acting deputy attorney general, said “that it might become necessary to tell a court ‘f––– you’” and ignore court orders related to the administration’s immigration policies. Bove’s acting role ended on March 6 when he resumed his current position of principal associate deputy attorney general.
When asked about this statement at his June 25 Senate confirmation hearing, Bove said, “I don’t recall.”
And on July 15, 80 former federal and state judges signed a letter opposing Bove’s nomination. The letter argued that “Mr. Bove’s egregious record of mistreating law enforcement officers, abusing power, and disregarding the law itself disqualifies him for this position.”
A day later, more than 900 former Department of Justice attorneys submitted their own letter opposing Bove’s confirmation. The attorneys argued that “few actions could undermine the rule of law more than a senior executive branch official flouting another branch’s authority. But that is exactly what Mr. Bove allegedly did through his involvement in DOJ’s defiance of court orders.”
On July 17, Democrats walked out of the Senate Judiciary Committee vote, in protest of the refusal by Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, to allow further investigation and debate on the nomination. Republicans on the committee then unanimously voted to move the nomination forward for a full Senate vote.
As a scholar of the courts, I know that most federal court appointments are not as controversial as Bove’s nomination. But highly contentious nominations do arise from time to time.
Here’s how three controversial nominations turned out – and how Bove’s nomination is different in a crucial way.
Robert Bork
Bork is the only federal court nominee whose name became a verb.
“Borking” is “to attack or defeat (a nominee or candidate for public office) unfairly through an organized campaign of harsh public criticism or vilification,” according to Merriam-Webster.
This refers to Republican President Ronald Reagan’s 1987 appointment of Bork to the Supreme Court.
Reagan called Bork “one of the finest judges in America’s history.” Democrats viewed Bork, a federal appeals court judge, as an ideologically extreme conservative, with their opposition based largely on his extensive scholarly work and opinions on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
In opposing the Bork nomination, Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts took the Senate floor and gave a fiery speech: “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.”
Ultimately, Bork’s nomination failed by a 58-42 vote in the Senate, with 52 Democrats and six Republicans rejecting the nomination.
Ronnie White
In 1997, Democratic President Bill Clinton nominated White to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. White was the first Black judge on the Missouri Supreme Court.
Republican Sen. John Ashcroft, from White’s home state of Missouri, led the fight against the nomination. Ashcroft alleged that White’s confirmation would “push the law in a pro-criminal direction.” Ashcroft based this claim on White’s comparatively liberal record in death penalty cases as a judge on the Missouri Supreme Court.
However, there was limited evidence to support this assertion. This led some to believe that Ashcroft’s attack on the nomination was motivated by stereotypes that African Americans, like White, are soft on crime.
Even Clinton implied that race may be a factor in the attacks on White: “By voting down the first African-American judge to serve on the Missouri Supreme Court, the Republicans have deprived both the judiciary and the people of Missouri of an excellent, fair, and impartial Federal judge.”
White’s nomination was defeated in the Senate by a 54-45 party-line vote. In 2014, White was renominated to the same judgeship by President Barack Obama and confirmed by largely party-line 53-44 vote, garnering the support of a single Republican, Susan Collins of Maine.
Miguel Estrada
Republican President George W. Bush nominated Estrada to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2001.
Estrada, who had earned a unanimous “well-qualified” rating from the American Bar Association, faced deep opposition from Senate Democrats, who believed he was a conservative ideologue. They also worried that, if confirmed, he would later be appointed to the Supreme Court.
However, unlike Bork – who had an extensive paper trail as an academic and judge – Estrada’s written record was very thin.
Democrats sought to use his confirmation hearing to probe his beliefs. But they didn’t get very far, as Estrada dodged many of the senators’ questions, including ones about Supreme Court cases he disagreed with and judges he admired.
Democrats were particularly troubled by allegations that Estrada, when he was screening candidates for Justice Anthony Kennedy, disqualified applicants for Supreme Court clerkships based on their ideology.
According to one attorney: “Miguel told me his job was to prevent liberal clerks from being hired. He told me he was screening out liberals because a liberal clerk had influenced Justice Kennedy to side with the majority and write a pro-gay-rights decision in a case known as Romer v. Evans, which struck down a Colorado statute that discriminated against gays and lesbians.”
When asked about this at his confirmation hearing, Estrada initially denied it but later backpedaled. Estrada said, “There is a set of circumstances in which I would consider ideology if I think that the person has some extreme view that he would not be willing to set aside in service to Justice Kennedy.”
Unlike the Bork nomination, Democrats didn’t have the numbers to vote Estrada’s nomination down. Instead, they successfully filibustered the nomination, knowing that Republicans couldn’t muster the required 60 votes to end the filibuster. This marked the first time in Senate history that a court of appeals nomination was filibustered. Estrada would never serve as a judge.
Bove stands out
As the examples of Bork, Estrada and White make clear, contentious nominations to the federal courts often involve ideological concerns.
This is also true for Bove, who is opposed in part because of the perception that he is a conservative ideologue.
But the main concerns about Bove are related to a belief that he is a Trump loyalist who shows little respect for the rule of law or the judicial branch.
This makes Bove stand out among contentious federal court nominations.
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Trump's rage threatens to unearth his biggest skeletons
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported a 50th birthday album for Jeffrey Epstein that included a drawing, note, and signature from Donald Trump — an album compiled by Epstein’s longtime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, who was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison for conspiring with him to sexually abuse minors.
Given the president in turn filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the WSJ and owner Rupert Murdoch for “knowingly and recklessly” publishing “numerous false, defamatory, and disparaging statements” allegedly causing Trump “overwhelming financial and reputational harm,” there has been a minimal amount of reporting on and discussion of other documents, if not evidence per se, that have made accusations of in tandem sexual abuse of minors involving Epstein and Trump.
For example, Salon has reported on Maria Farmer, a sexual accuser and former employee of Epstein who on two occasions, in 1996 and 2006, told the FBI to look into Trump.
Similarly, Raw Story has reported on one lawsuit filed by Katie Johnson (a pseudonym) against defendants Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein in 2016.
In that lawsuit, Katie Johnson v. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein, filed on April 26, 2016 in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, the plaintiff alleges that the defendants “did willfully and with extreme malice violate her Civil Rights under 18 U.S.C.: 2241 by sexually and physically abusing” her, “by forcing her to engage in various perverted and depraved sex acts by threatening physical harm to Plaintiff Johnson and also her family.”
In the same complaint, “Katie Johnson” further alleges that the defendants violated her civil rights “by making her their sex slave.”
She also “alleges that she was enticed by promises of money and a modeling career to attend a series of underage sex parties held at the New York City residence of Defendant Jeffrey E. Epstein and attended by Defendant Donald J. Trump.”
The lawsuit sought $100 million in damages.
You can read the complaint for yourself if you are interested in the scandalous details. I am more interested in referencing a similar federal lawsuit filed in New York not long after Johnson’s case was dismissed on the grounds that it had not raised civil rights claims under federal law.
In that second case, Jane Doe v. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein, filed in the United States District Court Southern District of New York on October 3, 2016, the plaintiff’s complaint alleges that she was the victim of “rape, sexual misconduct, criminal sexual acts, sexual abuse, forcible touching, assault, battery, intentional and reckless infliction of emotional distress, duress, false imprisonment, and defamation.”
However, when the accuser was to hold a news conference on November 2, 2016, it was abruptly called off.
Attorney Lisa Bloom had previously arranged for her client to appear at Bloom’s Woodland Hills law office. At the appointed time, Bloom told the assembled journalists and TV cameras that “Jane Doe has received numerous threats today…she is too afraid to show her face…She is in terrible fear.”
“Katie Johnson” spelled out in the California lawsuit: “I loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to stop, but he did not. Defendant Trump responded to my pleas by violently striking me in the face with his open hand and screaming that he would do whatever he wanted. … Immediately following this rape, Defendant Trump threatened me that, were I ever to reveal any of the details of Defendant Trump’s sexual and physical abuse of me, my family and I would be physically harmed if not killed.”
During the 2016 presidential campaign, other lawsuits and claims by 26 women were made against Trump for sexual assault.
Only two defamation lawsuits and a sexual abuse claim filed by E. Jean Carroll, that resulted in damages totaling $88.3 million, ever came to fruition.
Nevertheless, it is highly likely that those California and New York filed lawsuits are among the flagged items mentioning Trump collected by the thousand-plus FBI agents working on 24-hour shifts to comb through some 100,000 pages of the Epstein files.
Needless to say, this type of information is precisely what Trump does not want revealed now or anytime in the future to the American people of any political persuasion.
Of course, should Donald J. Trump v. The Wall Street Journal not be tossed out of court, then most if not all of this material would become available to the Journal’s attorneys through discovery.
- Gregg Barak is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Michigan University and the author of several books on the crimes of the powerful, including Criminology on Trump (2022) and its 2024 sequel, Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy. The third book in this Trump trilogy, Regime Change, Authoritarian Treason, and the Outlaw-in-Chief: President Donald Trump’s Struggle to Kill U.S. Democracy & Realign American Global Power, will be published after the 2026 midterm elections.
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Trump’s ultimate crime goes beyond mere lawbreaking
When historians look back on this era, they’ll inevitably ask how a nation built on principles of democracy, justice, and equality allowed one man to commit such a broad range of crimes and abuses, and whether Donald Trump is indeed the most dangerous criminal in American history.
To fully grasp the gravity of Trump’s actions, consider the extensive categories of his criminal and potentially criminal conduct, each more disturbing than the last.
First, there’s the relentless financial corruption. Trump has long played fast and loose with the law when it came to his finances. In New York, his company was convicted of tax fraud and financial manipulation designed to deceive lenders and inflate his wealth. Trump University was shuttered after a $25 million fraud settlement, its “students” left feeling defrauded.
His charitable organization, the Trump Foundation, was dissolved following revelations that funds intended for charity were instead used to benefit Trump personally and politically, and to pay off Pam Bondi in Florida where he and Jeffrey Epstein were living (she was AG for almost a decade and never went after Epstein).
But Trump’s shady financial dealings didn’t begin or end with these public scandals. For decades, he was closely associated with New York’s organized crime families. Trump Tower itself was built using concrete provided by mob-linked companies.
Roy Cohn, Trump’s mentor and attorney as I detail in The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink, was a notorious fixer and lawyer for mob figures such as Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano.
Trump’s casinos also regularly skirted the law, drawing scrutiny from federal investigators for potential money laundering linked to organized crime, and his former casino manager recently revealed to CNN that Trump and Epstein once even showed up together with underage girls in tow (the White House denies the story).
Trump’s long relationship with Epstein further exposes his moral bankruptcy and possible criminality. The two were close associates and owned residences near each other in New York and Palm Beach, socializing together frequently.
Trump famously described Epstein as a “terrific guy” who enjoyed the company of beautiful women, some “on the younger side.” Multiple reports suggest Trump knew about Epstein’s exploitation of minors, yet Trump continued their association until public scandal made it inconvenient.
Then there are Trump’s questionable international relationships, with none more alarming than his mysterious affinity for Vladimir Putin. Trump’s first administration consistently favored Russian interests, dismissing election interference findings from American intelligence agencies, undermining NATO, and, in his second administration even withholding military aid from Ukraine, thus benefiting Putin’s geopolitical ambitions.
While the full nature of Trump’s entanglement with Putin remains hidden, Trump’s obsequious behavior toward the Russian dictator raises serious questions about financial leverage or compromised loyalties. For example, the only major country in the world Trump chose not to impose tariffs on this year was Russia.
Trump’s disturbing Russian connections also include his 2016 campaign manager and close confidant, Paul Manafort, whose career was dedicated to installing pro-Putin autocrats and corrupt oligarchs across Eastern Europe, including Ukraine and Albania. Heidi Seigmund Cuda writes about his recent Albania connection in her great Bette Dangerous Substack newsletter.
Manafort was convicted of multiple felonies, including tax and bank fraud, stemming from his shady dealings overseas, actions intimately connected with Putin’s broader geopolitical ambitions, for which Trump pardoned him.
Trump’s choice of Manafort to lead his 2016 campaign wasn’t coincidental; it signaled to Moscow an openness to influence, further raising troubling questions about Trump’s susceptibility to foreign manipulation and complicity in Manafort’s criminal schemes.
Trump’s election interference is equally alarming. It began with hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to manipulate public perception during the 2016 campaign, for which he was convicted of felony election manipulation charges in Manhattan last year.
More brazenly, Trump attempted to subvert democracy in Georgia when he lost the 2020 election by demanding of Georgia’s Secretary of State, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
His attempts to cling to power by any means necessary reached a terrifying crescendo with the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election, ultimately joined by over 100 Republican members of Congress. This led to a federal indictment, making him the first former president charged with seeking to destroy the very democratic system that put him into power.
Trump’s abuse of presidential authority is chillingly unprecedented. Robert Mueller’s investigation laid out multiple instances where Trump criminally obstructed justice, brazenly interfering with federal investigations. He solicited foreign interference from Ukraine in the 2020 election, a move that led to his first impeachment.
Trump’s presidency was also marred by repeated violations of the Emoluments Clause as he profited directly from foreign governments funneling money through his hotels and golf clubs. He pitched Teslas from the White House in flagrant violation of the Hatch Act (penalty: 5 years in prison). Even after leaving office in 2021, Trump illegally retained classified documents and obstructed federal efforts to retrieve them, leading to further federal charges.
One of the most grotesque and morally bankrupt chapters of the Trump presidency unfolded in the early months of the Covid pandemic, when Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly made the political calculation that the virus was “only hitting Blue states” and disproportionately killing Black Americans so it could be weaponized.
According to reporting at the time, Kushner convened a secretive White House task force of mostly male, white, preppy private-sector advisors who concluded that a robust federal response to minimize deaths would be politically disadvantageous. Their analysis was clear: since it was primarily Democratic governors and Black communities suffering the early brunt of the pandemic (NY, NJ, WA), Trump could politically benefit by blaming local leadership and withholding meaningful federal aid.
It was a cynical — and deadly — strategy to let the virus burn through the opposition’s voter base that ultimately led to an estimated 500,000 unnecessary American deaths and gave us as the second-most Covid deaths per person in the world.
This approach not only explains the administration’s chaotic and insufficient response to testing, supplies, and coordination, it exposes a level of callous — morally, if not legally criminal — political calculus rarely seen in modern American history since the days of the Trail of Tears.
Leaked documents and internal communications at the time confirmed that federal resources were distributed unevenly, often favoring Republican-led states.
Trump also regularly lashed out at Democratic governors like Gretchen Whitmer and Andrew Cuomo while ignoring their pleas for ventilators and PPE. As the death toll mounted, Trump publicly minimized the virus, holding rallies and rejecting masks, while privately admitting to journalist Bob Woodward that Covid was “deadly stuff.”
This wasn’t just negligence: it was targeted neglect driven by racism and partisanship, carried out in the middle of a once-in-a-century public health emergency.
Beyond these abuses of power, Trump openly incited political violence. His rhetoric fueled vigilantism and violent confrontations at rallies.
Most infamously, on January 6th, 2021, he incited an insurrection designed to halt the peaceful transition of power in a stunning betrayal without precedent in American history. He encouraged extremist and white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and Oath Keepers, effectively endorsing domestic terrorism.
Right up until he took office and corruptly shut them down, investigations continued into potential wire fraud and misuse of funds from Trump’s “Save America” PAC, alongside scrutiny into financial irregularities involving his Truth Social platform.
Investigations into obstruction, witness intimidation, and potential bribery — now blocked as the Supreme Court has put him above the law, or shut down by his toadies — further compound his record of potential crimes.
Yet Trump’s ultimate crime goes beyond mere lawbreaking. He has methodically eroded democratic institutions, weaponized disinformation to undermine public trust, and attacked the traditionally nonpartisan independence of the judiciary, intelligence agencies, military, and law enforcement. His assaults on the press are right out of Putin’s playbook. Trump’s relentless assault on truth and democracy normalizes authoritarianism and political violence.
Thus, his most dangerous crime is not simply corruption or obstruction, nor even incitement of insurrection: it’s the deliberate attempted destruction of American democracy itself. This crime, far more profound than any individual act, threatens the survival of the republic itself.
If America is to survive as a free nation, we must confront the reality of Trump’s actions. He isn’t merely a criminal; he’s become the most dangerous criminal in American history precisely because his actions imperil the very foundations of our democracy.
Allowing such crimes to go unpunished risks setting a precedent that future would-be autocrats may follow, forever tarnishing the promise of American democracy. Once he’s out of power, our nation’s new mantra must become, “Never forget, never forgive, never again.”
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This part of Trump's lawlessness is most troubling of all
Rule of law. Due process. Separation of powers.
Many of us were taught that these are the core principles of our government that protect us and our democracy. Now, we’re living through dire threats to these fundamental values. Since taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump has launched a relentless assault on America’s judiciary and legal system — with dire consequences for people across the country.
Trump’s systematic dismantling of judicial authority isn’t a Beltway issue for Washington insiders. The American people recognize these actions for what they are: a threat to their own rights and ability to be treated fairly by the courts. Our polling of voters in battleground states demonstrated that 74% of those voters — including Democrats, Independents, and Republicans — are concerned that Trump’s actions could allow the government to violate their rights with no consequences.
And the administration’s flouting of the law has already directly threatened Americans’ basic safety: Trump’s unprecedented deployment of the military and national guard in California, against the wishes of state and local governments, escalated an already volatile situation and put civilians in danger.
It goes without saying that our courts aren’t perfect — and, indeed, as the administration’s assault on their independence demonstrates, real reforms will be needed to our judiciary and legal system in the years ahead to right the ship.
But put simply, this administration has no respect for the separation of powers — attacking judges who issue opinions contrary to Trump’s agenda and signaling a clear willingness to circumvent the rule of law altogether.
One of the earliest examples of Trump’s defiance of lawful court orders came just a few weeks after he was sworn back into office, when Judge John McConnell Jr. ordered the unfreezing of billions in federal grant money. The administration's refusal to comply meant communities nationwide lost funding for essential services, causing mass panic and confusion across the country. When the administration ignores orders to reinstate critical support for communities, American families and children suffer.
And now, Trump and his administration openly admit to ignoring the courts. For months, the Department of Justice provided excuse after excuse for why they hadn’t facilitated the Supreme Court-ordered return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father they wrongfully sent to El Salvador. Last month — though the administration continues to persecute him — Garcia was brought back to the U.S., proving that had the federal government wanted to obey the Supreme Court in April, they could have.
This creates a dangerous precedent for everyone in America: Legal protections are meaningless if the government can disregard them at will. What happens when your Social Security benefits are wrongfully denied? When your healthcare coverage is illegally terminated?
This pattern of defiance goes hand in hand with Trump and his allies’ targeting of the legal system overall.
Trump’s MAGA Republicans in Congress have filed articles of impeachment against federal judges Trump doesn’t like, and Republican leadership is advancing harmful legislation to kneecap the power of the courts. They are working to eliminate the power of the judiciary to pause Trump’s dangerous, illegal executive actions nationwide. Without this protection, your rights would depend entirely on where you live. An unconstitutional policy could be paused in California but continue harming families in Texas, Florida, and Ohio.
The administration’s shake down of our nation’s largest and most lucrative law firms similarly impacts access to justice. By punishing firms for political reasons, and then extorting them for nearly a billion dollars in legal services, Trump is trying to create a culture of fear in the legal community where few are willing to challenge government actions and all work to bolster his power.
Our judiciary or legal system overall is not perfect. Far from it. And when we’re out of this mess, work must continue to strengthen the independence and fairness of our courts.
But we need strong courts and strong lawyers more than ever at this moment. Without them, Trump and his congressional allies will have free rein to enact any and all harmful policies regardless of established law or the Constitution. And hardworking Americans who just want to care for their families and loved ones will be the ones to suffer.
But the American people are seeing right through these attempts to rig our government in favor of the rich and powerful. Since Trump’s inauguration, millions of people have participated in protests across the country.
When ordinary people are willing to take to the streets, it is time for the most powerful among us to call a spade a spade and not duck away from the full crisis facing our country.
The momentum is starting to shift: Members of Congress have begun sounding the alarm on Trump’s unprecedented attacks on judicial independence, and law firms like WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Jenner and Block are fighting back against Trump’s unconstitutional executive orders.
We need more courageous action. And while it is critical that the protests and civic engagement we’ve seen across the country continue, we also need that action to come from the most powerful: lawmakers at all levels of government, law firms, corporations, and university systems.
If we value our ability to seek justice when wronged and ensure equal protection under law, we must recognize our justice system is under siege. Defending our courts isn’t only about preserving institutions — it’s about protecting our rights and our freedoms before it’s too late.
- Maggie Joe Buchanan is the interim executive director at Demand Justice
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