Opinion
David Letterman exposed exactly what Trump is
We should talk about two stories published over the weekend, and what they tell Americans about the true objective of Donald Trump.
First, the administration shut down a bribery investigation of Tom Homan. Before Trump was reelected, Homan accepted a $50,000 bag of cash from an undercover FBI agent, according to Reuters. Homan apparently promised “immigration-related” government contracts once he was back in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Second, Trump demanded that US Attorney General Pam Bondi move more quickly to prosecute named enemies, including US Senator Adam Schiff, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Trump called them “guilty as hell” on Truth Social in what appears to be a post intended to be a direct message to Bondi. As one observer noted wryly, “this is literally just Watergate but instead of the Nixon tapes, Trump just … tweeted it out.”
This twofold perversion of the law is indeed what Richard Nixon was guilty of. He knew he was guilty of it. That’s why he hid it and it took a year for investigators to uncover it. Trump, meanwhile, isn’t bothering to hide it, but either way, it’s criminal.
As Jonathan Bernstein said:
“Richard Nixon resigned ahead of certain impeachment and removal in part for a much milder version of all this, one that took place in absolute secrecy and took over a year to uncover. Trump is doing a much worse version. Out in the open. It’s obviously a blatant, massive violation of his oath of office, and [Chief Justice] John Roberts notwithstanding … well, I’m not a lawyer, but it sure looks criminal to me.”
More than that, however, it’s a window into what Trump truly wants — rules and laws that protect him and his friends while at the same time, those very same rules and laws punish his enemies. He wants rules and laws to explicitly recognize in-groups and out-groups. And he wants law enforcement to recognize that difference when enforcing the law.
All men are created equal? Nope. Justice is blind? Nah.
Most of us believe the law should be applied without fear or favor. Whether you’re white or Black, Christian or Muslim, straight or trans — everyone is subject to the same rule of law. Everyone should be treated equally. And when the law isn’t applied that way, we call it injustice.
But I think most of us misunderstand, more or less, how equality is viewed by Trump and the rest of their MAGA movement. Equality is no virtue. It’s a vice. It is a violation of their rights and liberties, and a subversion of what they believe to be the natural order of things — in which American society is shaped like a pyramid, with money and power gathered toward the top and controlled by rich white men. Importantly, the in-group should never be treated the same way as the out-group. When the law is applied equally, they call that injustice.
All this is blindingly hypocritical (and we should say so) but the term “hypocrisy” can’t capture the enormity of the fraud. MAGA does not pay lip service to equality. It opposes it, often openly. A better term is impunity — for the rule of law and for the rest of the small-r republican values that are enshrined in the Constitution. Impunity is the true goal. Trump’s success, whatever that means, literally depends on everyone else obeying the law, under penalty of law, while he is free to break it.
That’s what was going on when Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked: "Why won't the president accept the conclusions of his DOJ to not bring charges against Letitia James?"
Her response: "The president has every right to express how he feels about these people … who literally tried to ruin his life … He wants to see accountability."
Crimes for me, punishment for thee.
Trump isn’t hiding the fraud the way Nixon did, but he is hiding it in his own way — beneath a mountain of propaganda about his enemies.
The Justice Department official who closed the bribery investigation into Tom Homan said it was a “deep state” op. Trump himself urged Bondi to prosecute quickly based on the lie that his impeachments and indictments were baseless. He said: “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me … OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
But I think the lies could fade into the background as the abject unfairness of his presidency comes more into the mainstream view. Indeed, the lies could end up fading even faster thanks to Trump himself. His post, which was clearly intended for Bondi, conveys a sense of urgency — as if he’s aware that time is running out for his totalitarian project and people are beginning to figure out his scam.
Polls indicate a public deeply dissatisfied with his presidency, creating conditions for a potential takeover of the Congress by the Democrats. Such uncertainty is going to give collaborators and opportunists like Bondi a serious reason to hesitate. As David Frum wrote, “Such people now have to make a difficult calculation: Do the present benefits of submitting to Trump’s will outweigh the future hazards?"
That’s why, it’s a good idea for the Democrats to begin building a case for law and order, which is to say, for restoring the equal and moral administration of justice. (Reformers like Casey Michel and Adam Bonica might call this an anti-corruption platform, for other reasons.) Do it now, as Trump’s power grab is reaching a tipping point. Promise to hold accountable anyone tempted to break the law in Trump’s name.
“I want to make it clear. There’s going to be a Democratic majority in just over a year,” California Congressman Eric Swalwell said. “To the FCC chairperson [Brendan Carr] and anyone involved in these dirty deals: get a lawyer and save your records, because you’re going to be in this room answering questions about the deals that you struck, and who benefited, and what the cost was to the American people.”
I have some sympathy for Democratic leaders in that it’s difficult to pinpoint a “kitchen-table” issue that will appeal to a broad majority of people, but especially voters who are loosely affiliated with the parties. Right now, they have settled on health care. All the power to them.
But Trump is unlike any president in our lifetimes, even Nixon, who was a crook. Everything Trump has done since taking office a second time — illegal tariffs, illegal self-dealing, illegal funding cuts, illegal terminations, illegal military occupations, illegal immigrant detentions, illegal media censorship, illegal everything, virtually — is rooted in the fact that his administration is, as David Letterman said last week, an “authoritarian criminal administration.”
Fighting crime is perhaps the kitchen-table issue.
Besides, being the party of crime-fighters has a nice ring to it.
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This Trump move should terrify us — because it's been done before
By Betty Medsger, Professor Emeritus of Journalism, San Francisco State University.
As a candidate last year, Donald Trump promised retribution against his perceived enemies. As president, he is doing that.
At the Department of Justice, a “Weaponization Working Group” has a long list of Trump’s perceived enemies to investigate. At the FBI, Director Kash Patel has conducted a political purge, firing the highest officials at the bureau and thousands of FBI agents who investigated alleged crimes by Trump as well as investigated participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riots.
It marks the first time since J. Edgar Hoover’s 48-year reign as FBI director that the FBI has targeted massive numbers of people perceived to be political enemies.
Trump’s recent fury showed how much he expects top officials in federal law enforcement to carry out his retribution.
He was enraged when Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, decided there was insufficient evidence to charge two people Trump regards as enemies: former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“I want him out,” Trump angrily told reporters on Sept. 19, 2025. Siebert resigned, although Trump claimed he had fired him.
Trump’s most recent demands for retribution came soon after top adviser Stephen Miller’s vow to prosecute leftists in the “vast domestic terror movement” — that the administration blames, without evidence, for Charlie Kirk’s assassination — using “every resource we have.”
As director of the FBI, Patel will likely be in charge of the investigations of perceived enemies generated by the DoJ and the White House. He already has sacrificed the bureau’s independence, making it essentially an arm of the White House.
This isn’t the first time an FBI director has been driven by a desire to suppress the rights of people perceived to be political enemies. Hoover, director until his death in 1972, operated a secret FBI within the FBI that he used to destroy people and organizations whose political opinions he opposed.
A burglary’s revelations
Hoover’s secret FBI was revealed, beginning in 1971, when a group of people called the Citizens Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into an FBI office and removed files.
This group suspected Hoover’s FBI was illegally suppressing dissent. Given Hoover’s enormous power, they thought it was unlikely any government agency would investigate the FBI. They decided documentary evidence was needed to convince the public that suppression of dissent — what they considered a crime against democracy — was taking place.
In my book The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI, I describe how these eight people decided to risk imprisonment and break into the FBI’s office in Media, Pennsylvania.
The files they stole and made public confirmed the FBI was suppressing dissent. But they revealed much more: Hoover’s secret FBI and the startling crimes he had committed. These secret operations had become so extensive that they eventually diminished the bureau’s capacity to carry out its core mission: law enforcement.
Hoover, one of the most admired and powerful officials in the country, had secretly conducted a wide array of operations directed against people whose political opinions he opposed.
The files revealed that agents were instructed to “enhance paranoia” and make activists think there was an FBI agent “behind every mailbox.” Questioning Vietnam war policy could cause anyone, even a U.S. senator, Democrat J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, to be placed under FBI surveillance.
It was the revelation of Hoover’s worst operations, COINTELPRO — what Hoover called the Counter Intelligence Program — that made Americans demand investigation and reform of the FBI. Until the mid-1970s, there had never been oversight of the FBI and little coverage of the FBI by journalists, except for laudatory stories.
‘Almost beyond belief’
The COINTELPRO operations ranged from crude to cruel to murderous.
Antiwar activists were given oranges injected with powerful laxatives. Agents hired prostitutes known to have venereal disease to infect campus antiwar leaders.
Many of the COINTELPRO operations were almost beyond belief:
- The project conducted against the entire University of California system lasted more than 30 years. Hundreds of agents and informants were assigned in 1960 to spy on each of Berkeley’s 5,365 faculty members by reading their mail, observing them and searching for derogatory information — “illicit love affairs, homosexuality, sexual perversion, excessive drinking, other instances of conduct reflecting mental instability.”
- An informant trained to give perjured testimony led to the murder conviction of Black Panther Geronimo Pratt, a decorated Vietnam War veteran. He served 27 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. He was exonerated in 1997 when a judge found that the FBI concealed evidence that would have proved Pratt’s innocence.
- The bureau spied for years on Martin Luther King Jr. After it was announced King would receive the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, Hoover approved a particularly sinister plan that was designed to cause King to commit suicide.
- What one historian called Hoover’s “savage hatred” of Black people led to the FBI’s worst operation, a collaboration with the Chicago police that resulted in the killing of Chicago Black Panther Fred Hampton, shot dead by police as he slept. An FBI informant had been hired to ingratiate himself with Hampton. He came to know Hampton and the apartment very well. He drew a map of the apartment for the police on which he located “Fred’s bed.” After the killing, Hoover thanked the informant for his role in this successful operation. Enclosed in his letter was a cash bonus.
- Actress Jean Seberg was the victim of a 1970 COINTELPRO operation. In a memo, Hoover wrote that she had donated to the Panthers and “should be neutralized.” Seberg was pregnant, and the plot, approved personally by Hoover — as many COINTELPRO plots were — called for the FBI to tell a gossip columnist that a Black Panther was the father. Agents gave the false rumor to a Los Angeles Times gossip columnist. Without using Seberg’s name, the columnist’s story made it unmistakable that she was writing about Seberg. Three days later, Seberg gave birth prematurely to a stillborn white baby girl. Every year on the anniversary of her dead baby’s birth, Seberg attempted suicide. She succeeded in August 1979.
There was wide public interest in these revelations about COINTELPRO, many of which emerged in 1975 during hearings conducted by the Church Committee, the Senate committee chaired by Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat.
At this first-ever congressional investigation of the FBI and other intelligence agencies, former FBI officials testified under oath about bureau policies under Hoover.
One of them, William Sullivan, who had helped carry out the plots against King, was asked whether officials considered the legal and ethical issues involved in their operations. He responded:
“Never once did I hear anybody, including myself, raise the questions: ‘Is this course of action which we have agreed upon lawful? Is it legal? Is it ethical or moral?’ We never gave any thought to that line of questioning because we were just pragmatic. The one thing we were concerned about: will this course of action work, will it get us what we want.”
Ethical? Legal?
The future of the new FBI under Patel and Trump is unclear, especially in light of the president’s known tolerance for lawlessness, even violence. His gifts of clemency and pardons to Jan. 6 rioters are evidence of that.
As for Patel, fired FBI officials stated in their recent lawsuit over those dismissals that Patel had told one of them it was “likely illegal” to fire agents because of the cases they had worked on, but that he was powerless to resist Trump’s demands.
The recent statements from both Trump and top aide Miller suggest the FBI’s independence, and broader constitutional requirements that the administration remain faithful to the law, are meaningless to them. They suggest that, like Hoover, they would criminalize dissent.
What will happen at the FBI after the internal purge ends? Will retribution fever wane? Will Patel refocus on the bureau’s chief mission, law enforcement? And will the questions asked in Congress in 1975, as the bureau was being forced to reject Hoover’s worst practices, be asked now: Is what we are doing ethical? Is it legal?
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The real reason the Supreme Court is on Trump's side is terrifying
Are they afraid Trump will get them killed?
Ninety years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt fired William E. Humphrey from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Humphrey sued to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the Constitution had never given “illimitable power of removal” to the president and that he couldn’t fire Humphrey. The case is called Humphrey’s Executor v US — Humphrey got his job back.
The unanimous decision of the Court was clear and explicit:
“We think it plain under the Constitution that illimitable power of removal is not possessed by the President in respect of officers of the character of those just named.
“The authority of Congress, in creating quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial agencies, to require them to act in discharge of their duties independently of executive control cannot well be doubted, and that authority includes, as an appropriate incident, power to fix the period during which they shall continue in office, and to forbid their removal except for cause in the meantime.
“For it is quite evident that one who holds his office only during the pleasure of another cannot be depended upon to maintain an attitude of independence against the latter's will.”
On Monday, without public argument, debate, or discussion, the Republican majority on today’s Court let Trump fire FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter, a complete and obvious deviation from the Humphrey’s precedent. They gave no reasoning other than that they’d deal with the issue later.
Justice Elena Kagan was having none of it, issuing a blistering dissent that said, in part:
“Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars. Still more, it should not be used, as it also has been, to transfer government authority from Congress to the President, and thus to reshape the Nation’s separation of powers,”
Why are these six Republican appointees deferring to Trump in such an obvious violation of precedent and the Constitution they’ve sworn to uphold? This, and a handful of other times they’ve rolled over for Trump, is quite literally unprecedented.
The six Republicans on the Supreme Court have been amazing, baffling, and horrifying Court-watchers and judges beneath them from across the political spectrum, as they use their so-called Shadow Docket to issue dictates that clearly contradict the Constitution, violate settled precedent, and even break black-letter law.
All, apparently, to appease Donald Trump.
As the famous conservative Judge Michael Luttig recently wrote:
“He has enthralled our Supreme Court, spellbinding it into submission to him and his will rather than to the Constitution and its will, and our Supreme Court has favored him with its affirmation and its acquiescence in his lawlessness.”
But why are these six justices going along with this?
Is it because, like is alleged of Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, they’re all on the take, benefiting from the largess of rightwing billionaires or the fundraising impresario Leonard Leo, powerful figures who are ordering them to violate the very oath they took when they assumed office?
Or is it because they’re so ideologically extreme, wed to a 21st-century form of neofascism, that they’re enthusiastic to overturn 249 years of our constitutional order?
Or could it be that they’re simply terrified to cross The Don, a man who told the world this weekend that he “hates” people who cross him? Look at what he’s doing right now to his former Republican colleagues and employees, James Clapper, James Comey, and John Brennan. And don’t forget Miles Taylor. It’s brutal.
Consider also what else they’ve done so far this year, handing down more shadow docket rulings in nine months than during the entire 16 years of the Bush and Obama administrations combined:
In US v Shilling they let Trump dismiss transgender individuals from the armed forces even though the ban clearly constituted invidious discrimination that violates the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection component and due process. They heard no arguments and gave no explanation.
In OPM v AFGE they blew up civil service protections for federal workers, creating a due-process debacle to let Trump fire pretty much anybody he wanted. They heard no arguments and gave no explanation.
In Dept of Education v California they allowed Trump to engage in illegal viewpoint-based retaliation against DEI-related content and violate the First Amendment and Spending Clause limits. They heard no arguments and gave no explanation; Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson were so furious they wrote two dissents.
In Noem v National TPS Alliance they trampled due process and undermined the law Congress had passed that allowed immigrants to have temporary protected status so Trump could pull that protection from any brown-skinned person he wanted (although this was specifically about Venezuelans). They heard no arguments and gave no explanation.
In Noem v Svitlana Doe they allowed across-the-board termination of “humanitarian parole” and work authorizations for hundreds of thousands of people here legally from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, trashing the Constitution’s requirement for individualized process and to avoid disparate impact. They heard no arguments and gave no explanation; Justices Sotomayor and Jackson were so angry they wrote a joint dissent.
In Trump v CASA de Maryland they allowed Trump to start narrowing birthright citizenship in what the dissenters said “directly contradicts the text and original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Civil rights groups called Trump’s executive order “flatly unconstitutional” but they heard no arguments and gave no explanation.
In Noem v Vasquez Perdomo they allowed ICE to seize, search, and detain people based on their race, language, accent, or job description, in clear violation of both civil rights laws, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Fourth Amendment protections of privacy and the requirement for a warrant to be judge-issued based on reasonable suspicion and witness testimony. They heard no arguments and gave no explanation; Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson were so furious they wrote a dissent.
In Trump v Wilcox they allowed Trump to defy the constitutional separation-of-powers framework (and longstanding limits on at-will removal for certain independent-agency officials), to get rid of officials he didn’t like in independent agencies that Congress had previously separated from the president’s overview, in clear defiance of the US Constitution.
Every one of these decisions is shocking on its face, and more like them are expected. Up next is most likely a decision that may further gut voting rights in America, the only advanced democracy in the world where voting is still a privilege that can be withdrawn without notice instead of a right.
Why is this happening?
While the two elected branches get their legitimacy from “the will of the People,” the Supreme Court derives its legitimacy from openly and transparently deliberating after hearing arguments, and explaining its rationale, so anybody can understand its logic and the decisions can become a guide for future court cases.
When the Court simply says, “This is the way it is because I say so,” like a parent talking to a child, rather than explaining, it erodes faith and confidence in our justice system.
It becomes a type of justice system, in fact, that America has never seen before outside of the old Confederacy. That’s the kind of damage these Shadow Docket decisions cause.
So, why would they do this? Why would these six people defy the Founders and Framers, spit on the Constitution, and trample the rule of law, all in the service of a single wannabe dictator?
I’ve heard the arguments that they’re on the take, and they’re compelling, particularly when it comes to their Citizens United decision that allowed billionaires to buy politicians and judges and came soon after a rightwing billionaire had showered Clarence Thomas and his wife with millions in gifts and vacations.
And it’s clear that at least Thomas and Alito are so ideologically extreme that they probably wouldn’t have been uncomfortable on the German supreme court in the 1930s.
But I think the real reason is that they’re terrified.
After all, these are not (like 13 of the billionaires in Trump’s cabinet) rich people. Sidewalk protests in front of Kavanaugh’s and Roberts’ homes have let the nation see that they live in nice houses in nice neighborhoods, but don’t have the gated security and armed guards of your average decamillionaire or billionaire. They feel vulnerable.
And for good reason.
Roy Den Hollander posted pro-Trump writings online and had officially volunteered for Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign prior to showing up at the door of federal Judge Esther Salas disguised as a FedEx driver. Her 20-year-old son, Daniel, answered the door and Hollander shot him dead, then wounded his father before escaping and ultimately killing himself.
The initial story that went viral was that he’d been dressed up as a pizza delivery person, so in the years since this incident, according to the US Marshall’s Service over a hundred judges who’ve handed down anti-Trump decisions have had pizzas delivered to their homes at weird hours, by way of saying, “We know where you live and can kill you whenever we want.”
The pizzas are often addressed to be delivered to “Daniel Anderl” care of the judge whose home is targeted, and sometimes even to the children of the judges receiving the pizzas; Daniel was the son of Judge Esther Salas who was killed in the attack targeting her entire family, and Salas described this ongoing rightwing terror campaign against her peers as “psychological warfare.”
Trump has used terms like “monsters,” “lunatics,” “crooked,” and “radical left” to describe judges who rule against him. His rhetoric regularly portrays judges who rule against him as political enemies, further fueling attacks and harassment from his supporters.
Judge John McConnell, for example, said he received more than 400 threatening voicemails, including messages like “Tell that son of a bitch we’re going to come for him” and “I wish someone would assassinate your ass” after ruling against Trump.
On top of that, of the 31 politically motivated attacks and assassinations since 2018, only one was done by a “leftist”; all 30 others were committed by confirmed rightwingers, the majority openly Trump supporters.
Given this history, it’s easy to see why these Supreme Court judges may be afraid of earning Trump’s ire by ruling against him.
They know that with just a half a dozen sentences on his low-rent social media site, Donald Trump could say things about any one of them that would incite a lone wolf to come to their homes to kill them.
Just last week, responding to the Kirk killing, Amy Coney Barrett said, “Political discourse has soured beyond control…”
After all, if university presidents, wealthy heads of major law firms, the heads of CBS and ABC, and billionaires from Zuckerberg to Bezos are so terrified of Trump they’ll humiliate themselves (think Tim Cook or Mark Zuckerberg) before him, why wouldn’t Supreme Court justices be, too?
It also explains why they’re using the shadow docket instead of the normal merits docket; shadow docket decisions are temporary and easily overturned after Trump leaves office, theoretically limiting the damage these rulings are causing to our republic.
They might have even convinced themselves they’re doing the best thing, by postponing a moment of conflict to reduce Trump‘s damage to America. After all, both JD Vance and Elon Musk have said that they’re willing to ignore decisions of the Supreme Court; once an administration has gotten away with that, pretty much any power the Supreme Court has completely vanishes.
This is a horrible truth all nine members are well aware of, one alluded to by both Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall. The court has no mechanism to enforce it rulings other than its credibility.
The Trump administration last week asked Congress for an additional $58 million to provide security to federal judges, presumably including the Supreme Court. Ironically, if they begin to feel safe as a result, Trump may rue the day he provided them with that additional security.
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We won the battle over Jimmy Kimmel. Here's how to win the PR war with Trump
When ABC/Disney indefinitely suspended Jimmy Kimmel, it seemed unlikely they’d reverse their decision within a week. Trump and his allies aimed to suppress not only Kimmel’s voice, but to intimidate anyone opposing them. Instead, the suspension backfired, energized the Trump opposition, and offers lessons on how to push back on the administration’s other attacks on democracy.
Let’s recount the history. After the killing of Charlie Kirk, Kimmel posted, “Can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human.” He also sent his family’s “love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.”
But the attacks on Kimmel didn’t mention that, focusing instead on his statement that “the MAGA gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
Suspect Tyler Robinson’s parents were indeed strong Trump supporters, so he did come out of a MAGA background, even if he likely left that culture. Maybe Kimmel could have been clearer. But Kimmel’s point about the Trump team trying to score political points has only been proven more true.
Trump had already warned in July that Kimmel should be fired, after Stephen Colbert of CBS. After Kimmel’s statements following the assassination, Trump FCC head Brendan Carr threatened to fine and revoke the licenses of stations carrying Kimmel’s show, stopping just short of leaving a dead horse on the bed. Nexstar and Sinclair then jumped in saying they wouldn’t air Kimmel’s episodes, and Sinclair demanded Kimmel personally donate to Turning Point USA, Kirk’s group, and to his family. ABC/Disney caved. Vladimir Putin and his oligarchs would have be proud.
Except that Americans responded with appropriate outrage. The cancellation site of the Disney+ streaming service reportedly crashed. Late-night talk hosts and Disney stars spoke out. People demonstrated in front of Disney HQ, led by the Writer’s Guild and supported by the other film industry unions, and at ABC headquarters in NY. More than 400 actors and other entertainers, including some of the biggest names in Hollywood, signed an ACLU letter.
Grassroots reactions accelerated as progressive organizations engaged. Common Cause launched a Turn Off Disney campaign. FreePress.Net started a call-in campaign. Indivisible offered a menu of approaches, MoveOn circulated a petition. Hashtags trended: #BoycottDisney, #CancelDisneyABC, #CancelDisneyPlus, #CancelHulu,#BoycottSinclair, #IstandWithJimmyKimmel.
The pushback even crossed party lines, with Kimmel getting support from conservative-leaning comedians. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) focused on Carr’s threats of suspending licenses, saying it was “unbelievably dangerous for government to put itself in the position of saying we’re going to decide what speech we like and what we don’t, and we’re going to threaten to take you off air if we don’t like what you’re saying.”
So what are the lessons for continuing to push back against Trump and all he represents? How can we make it more difficult for Trump and his allies to silence Kimmel later, or others who’d challenge them?
- When consumer-facing companies like Disney support Trump’s agenda, they make themselves vulnerable. The boycott campaign targeted theme parks, cruises, movies, and channels like Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu. While the political right runs boycotts as well (and has threatened Disney), the company’s craven submission to Trump gave a chance to levy pressure and remind people that if they can target Kimmel, they can target anyone. We can use boycotts in other contexts as well — like the oil companies that helped pay for Trump’s election in return for his doing his best to smash renewable energy. We just need to pick effective targets where it’s straightforward to highlight their dubious actions.
- The response built a broad coalition of fellow-citizens who were outraged, whether or not they were Kimmel fans. If we’re going to stop Trump’s attacks on democracy, it means working with people we don’t necessarily agree with. The courageous Russian dissident Alexei Navalny talked about why, when there was more space for dissent, he supported the right of Russian nationalists to protest Putin, and even helped them organize, although he found some of their views repugnant. We need to make our coalitions as broad as possible.
- Disney caved, but Nexstar and Sinclair jumped in to lead the charge following Carr’s FCC threats. And have so far refused to put Kimmel back on. So continued pressure on them makes sense, particularly as Sinclair played a longtime role demanding that their stations air their right-wing segments and talking points. Nexstar hasn’t historically been as aggressive, but is asking Trump’s FCC to relax market concentration rules to let them merge with Tegna. Even if we can’t block the merger their actions around Kimmel lets us highlight the danger of allowing a handful of oligarchs to dominate what people see and hear. Continuing to targeting Nexstar, and Sinclair’s local stations is a way to give people a way to continue involvement, with local public protests echoing the Tesla Takedown campaigns in giving people ways to act within their own communities.
- Culture matters, as the Trump supporters know well. Just because a high-profile entertainer comments on an issue or supports a candidate, it doesn’t automatically mean the positions of their fans will change or their candidate will win. But speaking out with passion and heart, as people did around Kimmel, can move others to act.
- Boycotts can pressure station advertisers. Local groups can announce targets. People can find advertisers by watching local broadcasts. The Kimmel suspension even inspired a crowdsourced map where people can take pictures of TV ads and upload them with links to which advertiser and which station. Supportive congressional representatives can investigate the conversations FCC head Carr did and didn’t have related to Kimmel.
Because Kimmel was such a visible public figure, the efforts defending him were able to ride a wave of major news coverage and massive spontaneous public reactions, including by people who weren’t political junkies. But if we’re to build on this momentum, it’s going to take coalitions that act together, persist, and coordinate, instead of over-relying on spontaneous reactions or self-organizing maps. Local Seattle groups, for instance got excellent coverage for organizing a protest at their Sinclair affiliate KOMO. But when individuals launched a boycottdisneyabc.com site and listed a separate protest the next day at the same station, along with other ABC/Nextstar affiliates, literally zero people attended. Successful pushback takes both organization and individual action.
Kimmel wasn’t the only media figure targeted for questioning Kirk’s values or how the administration was using the murder to attack political enemies. MSNBC fired Matthew Dowd and the Washington Post fired columnist Karen Attiah, but they had far less presence than Kimmel, and responses so far have been limited. So lots more work remains to be done, particularly since Trump made clear at Kirk’s funeral that he’s coming after more organizations and people.
By reversing Kimmel’s suspension, however, those of us who acted got a taste of our own power. The Kirk shooting was a tragedy on multiple levels. It escalated American political violence. It gave Trump and his allies a martyr, whose death energized them with an even further sense of righteousness. It sowed a fear that if you spoke or wrote the wrong words and didn’t toe the line, you’d be a target next. But because the administration so immediately jumped to weaponize the murder against their enemies by targeting Kimmel, and because so many individuals and organizations successfully pushed back, the restoration of his slot gave the majority of Americans who oppose Trump a sense of possibility and agency — which we can carry forward. They showed that a would-be dictator can try and shut down people who disagree with him, but when enough of us act and stand together those efforts will fail.- Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While, with nearly 300,000 copies in print between them. Sign up for his Substack here.
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You thought Trump couldn't go any lower. Guess what?
President Donald Trump disgraced America again on Tuesday.
That’s business as usual, in most contexts. But this time Trump projected his psychosis beyond the customary bounds of American politics.
Trump stood before the United Nations General Assembly and delivered a rant filled with insults and lies that might go down in history as the vilest of its kind.
Presumably speaking for all of us Americans, Trump told the entire world to f––– off.
Among the most vile lowlights of Trump’s tantrum:
- He dismissed climate change as a “con job,” mocking decades of scientific consensus in front of world leaders who have committed themselves to fighting rising seas and burning forests.
- He framed immigration as a global poison, attacking nations that take in refugees while offering no solutions — just fear, contempt and seething xenophobia.
- He claimed Christianity is the most persecuted religion on Earth, an inflammatory lie intended to stoke division and grievance while pandering to his White Nationalist base.
- He vomited falsehoods that he had presumably “resolved” seven major conflicts — including Israel-Iran and India-Pakistan, rewriting reality while of course offering no proof since none exists and drawing eye-rolls, not applause.
- He told U.N. diplomats their countries are “going to hell” for permitting too much immigration, then basked in the moment like he was inflaming a rally crowd, not representing all Americans at a global forum.
Here’s how the Wall Street Journal news report characterized the speech:
In an hour-long speech filled with grievances about ongoing wars, windmills and malfunctioning escalators, it was Trump’s attacks against what he called a “double-tailed monster” that rang loudest in the ornate General Assembly room.
“Immigration and the high cost of so-called green, renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world and a large part of our planet,” he said.
“Countries that cherish freedom are fading fast because of their policies on these two subjects. Both immigration and their suicidal energy ideas will be the death of Western Europe.”
Immigration in particular was ruining other nations, Trump insisted: “Your countries are going to hell.”
(Now, if you’re wondering about the escalator references, Trump was whining like a toddler about how an escalator in the UN building had stopped for a moment, briefly stranding him and First Lady Melania Trump. All our hearts go out to Melania.)
Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with a U.S. president calling out the UN for perceived ineffectiveness. Many Americans share that concern — and while some of us would rather see constructive, adult engagement to improve the UN’s efforts, that would remain perfectly within the bounds of propriety.
But that’s not what Trump did yesterday. He put on world display a level of hatred and boorishness — and a cringeworthy lack of gravitas — that certainly had diplomats the world over shaking their heads. Even beyond what they have come to expect.
Two days before the UN speech, Trump delivered one just as toxic at the memorial service for slain conservative icon Charlie Kirk. There, he proclaimed, “I hate my opponent, I don’t wish him well.”
That, of course, was a message to the sizable majority of Americans — at least 60 percent and counting — who disapprove of Trump today. Without apology, he let hundreds of millions of Americans know of his hatred for them.
But Trump didn’t just stop with us today. He also let it be known that he hates the world.
“Your countries are going to hell!” Trump raged.
That’s the only way he’d ever get to know them better.
- Ray Hartmann writes on Substack at Ray Hartmann's Soapbox.
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The world watched Trump rave at the UN. What it learned is no laughing matter
It is beyond ironic that Donald Trump names so many of his clubs "Trump International," because he never seems more out of place than when forced to address global matters. His very small world comes across as laughable, but it matters.
Whatever it is that fires up the Trump mystique among the MAGA movement, capturing the support of 40 percent of Americans at any given moment, it certainly doesn't travel. He is never found more wanting than when addressing global matters. The most recent humiliation actually occurred here at home — his home, New York City, but in front of the world at the United Nations.
Standing at the same podium on which Khrushchev banged his shoe, Castro held court for four hours, and JFK aspired to "explore the stars," Trump announced to an attentive world that while he was personally "really good at predicting things," immigration was causing their countries to go to hell. Nice.
It would be almost impossible for him to sound older. While there is room to discuss ways a country keeps its original culture in an evolving world, or the mechanisms for orderly immigration, the very idea that nations can isolate in a connected globe is both mystifying and unwanted. Given that Trump was primarily directing his immigration animosity toward Europe, he's essentially telling them to stay "white" or descend into Satan's flames. Nice.
Were that his only problem.
Not only did Trump float out his ugliest of ideas, the "great replacement theory,” but he also went fact-free in addressing one of the most sophisticated audiences he'll ever entertain, and did so when addressing the topic about which that audience was most interested — trade. He claimed that in his second term so far, the United States has "secured commitments and money already paid for $17 trillion," a statement so laughable as to bring a drink to the nose, given that America's entire GDP last year was $29 trillion.
The laughable lie is akin to telling a domestic audience that drug prices will go down 1,500 percent. If Trump could be believed, Walgreens will now pay us $52.25 to pick up the Klonopin needed to survive this post-fact world. And yet there he is, this time speaking to international leaders, laying out another statistical impossibility. Nice.
Did he whine? Of course, he did. Trump complained that no one has given him any credit for ending wars around the world — he seems stuck on seven, though no one can name them, and then noted that "everyone says I should get a Nobel Peace Prize." He did not say, "After all, they gave a Nobel to the Black president," but he may as well have. This column is more likely to win the Nobel Prize for Literature than this unserious man winning a prize for peace. But he whined anyway. Nice.
Now, do not doubt for a second that despots around the world do tell Trump such stupid stuff and will laud him in private over his powerful UN oratory. No question, when he hears from leaders in the Middle East, Latin America, China, or other authoritarian strongholds, he is showered with praise, told that the United States is "strong again," and most certainly, he deserves that white whale, the damn Nobel.
It is just that easy for other dictators to pick our pockets while filling his with flattery. Nice. To him, at least.
This is all just so awful on so many levels. American foreign policy over the decades, while fallible to a fault, was better than nearly any alternative, largely a force for good. And while that is nice, it also benefited Americans in more ways than we can count. From military bases in the Far East and Europe, to wall-sized televisions for $500, attracting the smartest people on Earth, and cutting-edge tech, Americans benefited tremendously from being "the good guys," the enlightened ones, science-centered, fiscally powerful, with a sensible long-term outlook. No more.
We look as stupid as he sounds.
Many might say, "Well, it's still just a speech and can't matter in the long run," but they're wrong. It does matter. Because the audience extends beyond the delegates. Imagine CEOs in Germany, Korea, or India, power players considering a major infrastructure move in the United States. Big business craves stability. Foreseeability. Reliability. They hear this crazed American and his policy and see only liability.
Banks, too. Entire economies ride the back of the 30-year mortgage, the bet that the next three decades will look "similar enough" to the last three that banks will extend loans, providing the American dream — home ownership. But again, as Wall Street looks on in wonder, muttering "WTAF," moguls here and around the world consider gripping their money tighter, putting our economy in peril, making everything more expensive.
Kind of funny. If the U.S. actually took in $17 trillion "every few months," the federal government could probably buy everyone a house. And that would be nice.
But that won't happen because it's not a serious number, nor based on a serious trade policy. It matters because trade is what underlies the UN's greatest purpose, peace throughout the globe. It is hard to go to war with the country that makes your phone. Simply put, we cannot afford to wage war with China. Global trade is essential to peace and prosperity, but do you suppose that any world leader sitting in that audience believes that he or she can enter into a beneficial, solid trade agreement with the United States?
No, and now your car just got more expensive and the world more unstable. Not nice.
But it certainly is expected when the president of the United States, once considered the leader of the free world, the most powerful man on Earth, takes to the podium whining, lying, and sounding like a petulant man-child, or exactly what happened this week. Skip the horror movie this Halloween and instead watch a side-by-side comparison of a typical Barack Obama UN speech next to that. Then think about the next 30 years.
For the last 30 years, the world has been pretty good to the United States, and the United States has been good to much of the world. Our military owned the seas and the skies, our crops had intercontinental buyers, our stuff was fairly cheap, oil flowed too freely, and economic progress was essentially baked in. Nice.
No longer.
Standing at the same podium from which Ronald Reagan brought along the Soviets, Nelson Mandela fought apartheid, and Pope Francis argued for drastic action on climate change, current American president Donald Trump talked about hats that said he's right about everything, then repeated, "And I don't say that in a braggadocious way, but it's true. I've been right about everything."
Just what the world ordered. The know-nothing playing the know-it-all all. Nice.
Because it is not just a speech. It is a direction, one that encompasses 340 million citizens, a powerful military, backed by a powerful GDP, and against that juggernaut, it is hard for the world not to sit back and think, "That's the wrong direction," and then work around us. Perhaps Americans remain largely unaware of the UN and our global prosperity because of it, in part because we've never had to live without it.
But with speeches like that, laying out a direction as such, we — along with the CEOs, banks, and farmers — may have to now factor in such a world. Unfortunately, it may only hit us when the television is $1,400, a mortgage far out of reach, and our mighty military is fighting at home and alongside despots. Is there any other takeaway from such a speech?
Alas, "Trump International" is now laughable. Sadly, it is more than just another speech and actually does matter. Eventually, the laughter turns to tears. Nice.
- Jason Miciak is a past Associate Editor at Occupy Democrats, author and American attorney. He can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com
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These GOP fire eaters are preparing their supporters for war
In the decade before the Civil War, slave-owning men known as “Fire Eaters” started ratcheting up public discourse in stark, divisive, all or nothing terms. They cast their interests not as political differences, but as an existential crisis facing the nation. They used public speeches to vilify people who disagreed with them, spreading hatred in the hearts of men until it grew hot, and war became inevitable.
It’s impossible to read the words of those men without hearing the voices of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller speaking at Charlie Kirk’s memorial.
Using that solemn occasion to deliver a message of hatred and division, two weeks after Kirk’s murder, Trump and Miller are still exploiting it. Despite the lack of clarity about both the killer’s motive and his shifting political ideologies, they continue to spread false rhetoric blaming the “radical left,” projecting their own wish for political violence just as the Fire Eaters of the 19th century did.
Words of war
Anyone who expected a respite, or dared to hope for a “presidential” message during Kirk’s memorial service, was sorely disappointed. After a MAGA speaker lineup, Trump walked onto the stage while Lee Greenwood sang “Proud to be an American,” also known as “God Bless the U.S.A.” In Trump's heavily choreographed entrance, raucous applause erupted as live fireworks exploded across a stage more reminiscent of a used car clearance event than a somber memorial.
After Kirk’s grieving widow spoke of forgiveness and grace, Trump batted her words away. Trump relayed to the audience how Kirk said he didn’t hate people who disagreed with him.
“But,” Trump said, “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them, I’m sorry.”
Miller, the presumed architect behind Trump’s attacks on immigrants and minorities, delivered his own ghoulish invective, eulogizing Kirk with dark images of us vs. them:
“The light will defeat the dark. We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us. Because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble.
And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity.”
Miller didn’t define who he meant by “we” and “they.” He didn’t need to.
Right v left
Trump and Miller are getting their wish: Political violence in the US is on the rise. Violent attacks against US government personnel and facilities more than doubled between 2024 and 2025. Contrary to what Trump and Miller keep claiming, however, it’s coming from the right, not the left.
Analyzing political violence according to the views of the perpetrator is complicated in part because interpreting motive can itself be subjective. It’s also complicated because different organizations use different terminology. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security define domestic violent extremism as violence “intended to influence government policy or intimidate civilians for political or ideological purposes,” while researchers, including universities, use more operational definitions.
Despite these challenges, data clearly show that right-wing political violence has been far, far deadlier than left-wing political violence.
Based on government and independent analyses, PBS reports that right-wing extremist violence has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of fatalities in the US, listing recent examples such as the 2015 Charleston church shooting, the Pittsburgh 2018 Tree of Life synagogue attack, and the anti-immigrant 2019 El Paso Walmart massacre. The report also lists deaths caused by left-wing extremist incidents, including anarchist and environmental movements like the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front, arson and vandalism campaigns that often targeted property rather than people.
When compared side by side, violence from right wing extremism amounted to approximately 75 percent to 80 percent of U.S. domestic terrorism deaths between 2001 and the present, while violence from the left comprised about 10 percent to 15 percent of such incidents and less than 5 percent of fatalities overall from political violence.
Violent words elicit violent responses
Mark Hertling writes in his excellent essay “Beware today’s fire eaters” that the 1861 onset of Civil War can be attributed to political arsonists who portrayed compromise and coexistence as dishonor, promoting national violence as the only resort.
Hertling, a former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, writes that the Civil War agitators “moved beyond grievance into agitation and violence. They … treated any dissent as an existential threat to their way of life. They cultivated a rhetoric that was designed not to persuade opponents but to radicalize their many followers,” ultimately celebrating political violence as necessary.
The tactics of the fire-eaters, Herling notes, reveal the same playbook we are witnessing today as Trump radicalizes his base by demonizing and dehumanizing his political opponents.
Fire Eaters of the Civil War, like Trump and Miller, painted their political adversaries as mortal enemies. As Trump has demonstrated repeatedly with Executive Orders that have no basis in law, the Fire Eaters also normalized extralegal responses. They claimed political violence was a patriotic duty, just as Trump exalted J6 rioters to fight like hell or they wouldn’t have a country left, then rewarded even the worst among them with a pardon.
As Trump, Miller, Hegseth and Bondi build the world’s largest and most lethal police state, they are equipping Trump with his own private militia. As Trump teases a third presidential run, it’s not hard to see that, for him, January 6 was but a rehearsal.
- Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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We have clear proof the tide is turning on Trump
I can’t tell you exactly how I know but after 60 years in and around politics I’ve developed a sixth sense, and my sixth sense tells me the tide is now turning on Trump.
This past week did it.
On Monday, he sued the New York Times in a lawsuit that, as CNN put it, read “like a pro-Trump op-ed, with page after page of gushing praise for the president.”
On Tuesday, he accused reporter Jonathan Karl and his employer, ABC News, of engaging in hate speech against him, and warned that Pam Bondi, the attorney general, might go after them.
On Wednesday, after Brendan Carr, his lapdog chair of the FCC, pressured ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel, he claimed that Kimmel being “CANCELLED” was “Great News for America,” and urged NBC to fire Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers next.
On Thursday, he said broadcast networks have been mean to him and that Carr might have to start taking their licenses away. “When you have a network and you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump,” he said, “they’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that. They’re an arm of the Democrat Party.”
On Friday, he suggested that negative coverage about him is “really illegal.” Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office he said: “They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad. See, I think that’s really illegal,” adding “Personally, you can’t take, you can’t have a free airwave if you’re getting free airwaves from the United States government.”
On Saturday, he demanded that Bondi prosecute several of his political rivals even though grand juries and federal prosecutors couldn’t find any evidence of wrongdoing. He demanded that she do it “NOW!!!”
On Sunday, at the memorial service for Charlie Kirk, he said that he disagreed with Kirk’s supposed leniency toward his ideological foes, adding: “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.”
You could almost feel the great sleeping giant of America open an eye and frown, then blink both eyes and sit up and stretch, and then roar, “What the hell is going on here?”
Immediately after Kimmel’s suspension, Disney viewers and customers began to cancel their subscriptions to Disney+ and Hulu and threaten a broader consumer boycott.
According to Strength in Numbers, the Disney boycott quickly became four times as large as any boycott over the last five years.
Disney’s stock dipped about 3.5 percent and continued to trade lower in subsequent days — a loss in market value amounting to some $4 billion.
Even Ted Cruz — Ted Cruz! — began issuing grave warnings about censorship.
By then the giant was roaring and stomping.
By Monday, Disney decided to put Kimmel back on the air.
Trump’s poll numbers were dipping even before last week’s explosion of authoritarianism. Now they’re in free fall.
I’m old enough to have witnessed the great sleeping giant of America awaken before.
Joe McCarthy’s communist witch hunt destroyed countless careers before the giant roared: “Have you no sense of decency?”
McCarthy melted almost as quickly as the Wicked Witch of the West. His national popularity evaporated. Three years later, censored by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy drank himself to death, a broken man at the age of 48.
The giant roared again a decade later, after television showed civil rights marchers getting clobbered by white supremacists. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act.
It roared again after tens of thousands of young Americans were killed in the jungles of Vietnam, finally bringing to an end one of the nation’s costliest, deadliest, and stupidest wars.
It roared again at Richard Nixon after Nixon was heard on tape plotting the coverup of Watergate — then being forced to exit the White House by helicopter on his way back to California.
It is starting to roar again now — at the sociopathic occupant of the Oval Office who won’t tolerate criticism, who in one wild week revealed his utter contempt for the freedom of Americans to criticize him, to write or speak negatively about him, even to joke about him.
Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I’ve seen a lot. I know the signs. The sleeping giant always remains asleep until some venality becomes so noxious, some action so disrespectful of the common good, some brutality so noisy, that he has no choice but to awaken.
And when he does, the good sense of the American people causes him to put an end to whatever it was that awakened him.
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This Dem just gave voice to the resistance
As you know, Jimmy Kimmel was suspended — before being reinstated this week — due to two factors.
One is a federal government, specifically the FCC, that is turning into the Thought Police.
The second is the cowards and quislings at Disney and ABC, who are under the illusion that they can forfeit just a little of their freedom and the Thought Police won’t eventually confiscate it all.
After Kimmel was suspended, there was an outpouring of support by artists and journalists, politicians and free-speech advocates, as well as other late-night hosts. CBS News reported that, “Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon opened their late-night shows using a mix of humor, song and expressions of solidarity” with Kimmel.
Colbert’s commentary was notable. He reran the segment of Kimmel’s remarks that FCC Chairman Brendan Carr called “the sickest conduct possible.”
That segment: “The MAGA Gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it. In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.”
“Given the FCC’s response, I was expecting something more provocative,” Stephen Colbert said. “That’s like hearing that Playboy has a racy new centerfold and finding out it’s just … Jimmy Kimmel.”He went further.
Colbert said it sounds like the FCC told ABC to punish Jimmy Kimmel or else.
“It feels to me shutting down this type of speech would represent a serious threat to our freedoms,” he said. “And you know who else thinks that? Brendan Carr in 2020 when he tweeted: ‘From internet memes to late-night comedians … political satire … helps hold those in power accountable. Shutting down this type of political speech — especially at the urging of those targeted or threatened by its message — would represent a serious threat to our freedoms.’”
- YouTube youtu.be
That’s good, and I think we should remain hopeful, but I think we should also be realistic. The regime has moved from being coy about its plan to punish dissent to being open about it. The New York Times reported that the president said “broadcasters risk losing licenses when hosts criticize him.” His followers are bragging. Benny Johnson, the prominent propagandist, said: “We did it for you, Charlie. And we’re just getting started.” With Kimmel, even after the reinstatement, a chill has set in.
I would now expect TV people to be looking over their shoulders, not only at the people who cut their paychecks, but to the snitches eager to rat them out. We can expect that chill to seep into their work. And that chill will likely be chilliest among people Trump already dislikes.
It’s as MSNBC’s Anthony Fisher said yesterday afternoon: “What is happening now is actual, successful, speech-chilling censorship.”
And we have seen it before.
Fisher refers to the “MAGA thought police,” a spin on the secret police force, modeled after Soviet Russia’s, featured in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. (It punishes “thoughtcrimes.”) Zack Beauchamp wrote a big piece about the “the third red scare,” a reference to the first one, in the 1920s, and the second one, in the 1950s, in which the country seemed to erupt in paranoia about Communists hiding behind every tree. This time, though, instead of the red being that of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, it’s that of the Republican Party of the United States.
And finally Jeet Heer said: “This is the biggest attack on free speech since the McCarthy era but it also has significantly less popular consensus behind it than the second Red Scare. It's being done on behalf of a minority faction led by the most unpopular president in modern history. Organizing against this can win.”
Good organizing needs good messaging. That’s why, in addition to saying what’s happening now is like what happened in the first and second Red Scares, we should dust off the old 20th-century liberal rhetoric and update it for a new kind of totalitarian regime. And I think, without really being aware of it, Ro Khanna did just that.
“This administration has initiated the largest assault on the first amendment and free speech in modern history,” the congressman said last week. “They’re making comedy illegal. Brendan Carr pressured ABC to cancel Jimmy Kimmel and Disney [which owns ABC] canceled Jimmy Kimmel, this canceling from an administration that lectured us about culture.
“That’s why today I’m introducing a motion to subpoena Brendan Carr to bring him in front of this committee to stop the intimidation of private businesses and to stand up for the First Amendment.
“Now it’s not just Brendan Carr. Attorney General Pam Bondi is prosecuting hate speech, even though hate speech is constitutionally protected and even though we’ve had so many lectures from my friends on the other side of the aisle not to prosecute hate speech.
“And then what about our vice president, the champion of free speech, as he told us during the campaign. The vice president is telling Americans to snitch on fellow Americans with offensive posts and to call their employer so they can be fired. And the vice president is threatening to prosecute political organizations that he disagrees with.
“We are Article 1 of the Constitution, not foot lackeys … It is time that we stand up for our constitutional role to defend the freedoms of Americans? People are tired of us giving our power to Donald Trump at JD Vance. We have an obligation to our constitution, not to Donald Trump at JD Vance, as they ride roughshod over the First Amendment.”
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How two decent Virginians gave hope that Trumpism can be crushed
As the anti-science Republican Party urgently tries to turn out the lights to the lab of the great American experiment, I want to remind you again that there are patriots and truth-tellers everywhere fighting them, and we should all take heart …
Like you, these good people are leaning in hard and spending their time and treasure to protect us from the most anti-American regime this country has seen since the racist, traitorous Robert E. Lee was leading armies against our country 165 years ago.
I ran into two of these good folks on Saturday, and I want to tell you about it.
My wife and I were shaking off the last of the grisly road grime from a long journey that started in the Battleground State of Wisconsin, and 1,200 miles later ended hard on the coast of the Battleground State of North Carolina.
We were busy settling into temporary housing that should shelter us nicely for the next few months, as the state that stretches out to the north of us, Virginia, readies for crucial elections Nov. 4. Democratic victories in that state could radically change the battlefield for the forces defending America against the odious, fascist Republicans who mean to end us.
On the way to our car, I spotted a white Subaru in the parking lot with a handsome, bright blue Abigail Spanberger sticker on the car.
Spanberger is the Democrat running to replace the grotesque, book-banning, Glenn Youngkin, in Virginia as the state’s governor in just six, short weeks.
I told my wife that I endeavored to meet the fine people who would fly this flag in a N.C. county that isn’t shy about touting their anti-American ignorance by supporting the orange, convicted felon who violently attacks us …
There are plenty of pro-American, pro-environment patriots out here in the Outer Banks, but we don’t carry guns or wear our ignorance on stupid, childish cammies. We’re more inclined to go about our work with a quiet purpose, while picking up their trash on the beach.
Just after lunch, and on my way to the hardware store to grab some much-needed supplies, I got the opportunity to meet these people who wore their hearts on their sleeves.
A man and woman were piling into the Subaru, when I approached them. Here is how that encounter went:
ME: “Howdy!”
THEM: “Howdy!”
ME: “I was hoping to meet the people with that Spanberger sticker on their car.”
THE MAN: “Why? Are you going to punch me in the nose?”
I laughed out loud …
Such times we live in …
I told the man, named Joe, that I actually wanted to hug him, because Spanberger was badass, and anybody who would support her must be some kind of badass themselves.
That’s when they laughed.
The wife, Carol, asked where I was from in Virginia, and I told her I was just a loudmouth activist lately stationed in Wisconsin, where we are fighting the good fight from the rooftop of the country.
She said, “Oh!! You guys are killing it up there!”
I agreed, of course, because since 2018 it’s hard to point to another state that has altered its political landscape as dramatically as Wisconsin.
We’ve kicked out Republican governors, flipped our Supreme Court from dark red to middling blue, put fair-ish maps in place, and basically restored order to a state that had gone mad thanks to the poison the billionaire Koch Bros. had been ladling out to the mouth-breathing Republicans, who were led by Scott Walker, perhaps the stupidest man alive.
Yeah, we fell short last November, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Kamala Harris actually got more votes than Joe Biden did in 2020, but just enough Republicans and dummies in the middle helped put the woman-abusing felon back in our White House. We did keep the steady Tammy Baldwin in the Senate for six more years, so there was that.
So now I was talking to a couple of patriots who knew the importance of every election going forward, and were dug in on the frontlines of Virginia.
I told Joe that Spanberger was going to win big, because she was made for the moment, and so, too, were he and his wife.
He said, “I sure hope so,” before Carol interrupted and said, “She’s great. Yer damn right she’s gonna win!”
I gave her a high-five, smiled big, walked off, climbed into my car, and headed for the store.
There are patriots everywhere, my friends, and this is the time to be loud, proud and purposeful. You need to search these people out. Lean on them … If necessary, help show them the way.
There is great power in connection, because connection brings power.
It’s time to take that power back.
- (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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These sinister rants show Trumpworld isn't mourning — it's unleashed
Everyone who follows politics from any sort of middle ground suffered comprehensive dread after Donald Trump's second election. We knew of Project 2025 and its "in your face" drive toward totalitarianism. It was baked in — a guarantee.
The nightmare unspooled as it became all too clear that Trump's new administration wouldn't tolerate minders, deep thinkers, the conscientious. There would be no adults in the room. Trump presented a cabinet of laughably unqualified "loyalists" and America pretended it was normal. Expected as it was, the foreboding was no less real.
However, the last 10 days have taken matters to a new level — one even more extreme, perhaps planned all along, but now most definitely here.
Charlie Kirk's murder, along with some admittedly heartless responses, ushered in a new phase, one for which Trumpworld may have been planning all along, but now set upon us over days. In so doing, they ushered in near zoo-level incompetence from a cabinet picked for loyalty despite abject incompetence. The "in your face" aggression, coupled with newfound confidence, brought about the most dangerous week yet in Trump 2.0.
The White House is emboldened, using Kirk's assassination to unapologetically twist the dial, more aggressively crazed than ever. This is dangerous.
The most obvious newly evolving move is the labeling of the entire left as a terrorist movement that threatens American stability. This is gaslighting so pure as to be almost elegant, coming as it does from terrorists who attacked our Capitol. Opposition to Trump has become that much more dangerous. And if one listens closely, they almost took joy in the killing as leaving them finally "freed." What an opportunity.
Stephen Miller, never more self-righteous and raw, the most openly authoritarian-racist member of the administration, recently said:
"With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks, and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name."
Sorry, but that sounds less like grief than relief.
There are no left-wing networks. As a member of the Democratic Party, I'd say we probably need more and better-defined networks to spread an anti-Trump message, but they don't yet exist. Not as Miller meant.
No matter, Miller wants an excuse to "attack" the left, wanting to spring loose the semi-fascist brownshirts in Homeland Security and National Guard on anyone they don't like. Breathtaking in its boldness, one can feel his rush to rage-filled hatred, ready for an open-field run.
Watch out.
But Miller is only following the example set at the top. Trump has been all over the place, spitting vitriol at the left, using Kirk's death to go next-level. Post-Kirk, he has a treasured launching pad toward Orwellian control, example "A" being Jimmy Kimmel. Emboldened, Trump went after even bigger game — network news, as evidenced by recent interactions with the media, as reported by Politico:
President Donald Trump on Friday reiterated his claim that critical television coverage of him is “illegal” and pushed back on criticisms that his administration was taking actions that chill free speech.
The administration quickly established the fact-free narrative that the left metaphysically groomed the suspect in the Kirk killing, Tyler Robinson, despite all evidence pointing to an isolated, uniquely sick loner, practically apolitical, a young man who simply hated Kirk's intolerance toward LGBTQ Americans. Hardly a political leftist.
But the idea took hold on the right, an excuse to attack all opposition as terrorists threatening Americans. This is as dangerous as it is self-serving.
Meanwhile, the cabinet seemed newly confident, and with increased energy came new evidence of jaw-dropping incompetence. None is in over their head more than FBI Director Kash Patel. Little more than a flame-throwing podcaster, he appeared in front of Congress backed by a new level of anti-left rage, and promptly humiliated himself as the most hapless, fully politicized, and laughable FBI director in history. As noted by USA Today:
During his equally contentious Sept. 16 hearing before a Senate committee, Patel went off the rails, labeling [Sen. Adam] Schiff “a political buffoon at best” and saying, “You are the biggest fraud to ever sit in the United States Senate.”
Try to imagine Fox News's reaction to a Democratic administration, or simply a normal FBI director, trying that. Despite almost non-existent expectations, Patel managed to still surprise as a newly freed, shameless, hapless, moron. This, of course, after erroneously announcing the arrest of a “subject” in the Kirk killing.
It goes on, even down to the Department of Health and Human Services and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s absurd crusade against vaccines — the single most powerful public health tool in history, short perhaps of proper sewerage. But conspiracy freaks are going to freak, and the "post-science experts" at a key CDC meeting devolved into clueless chaos.
Per a report in The New York Times:
“Thursday’s session ended with the panel members at odds. A hot microphone caught one panelist calling another committee member 'an idiot,' although it was unclear who was speaking.”
Take your pick.
True, the administration was always vicious, uncaring, and self-satisfied, but it went to a new and dangerous level prior to even Charlie Kirk's memorial service at an NFL stadium in Phoenix. State control and censorship reached late-night comedy, leaving those left on air quivering. All over mildly disrespectful talk — but only talk.
It is likely that the plotters in Project 2025 counted on some seminal moments all along, using each to tighten their grip. They surely envisioned protests, some perhaps descending into violence as their launch pad to the next level. Instead, they are rallying around two grotesque but extremely isolated killings: Kirk as "proof" that political violence is the province of the left, and the murder of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian immigrant, as "proof" that white people are under attack. That incident in Charlotte, North Carolina lubricated a shift to more surface-level racism — always useful to the right.
It all worked better than they could have hoped, and they're showing it with barely suppressed excitement.
The pattern was set in January. Perhaps even ahead of schedule, it is now viciously in your face — a government that is authoritarian, post-law, post-decency, post-unity, in what were the United States. They always fantasized about a war within. Now they get to move, seeing themselves as blameless, responding to a first shot, one taken by "all" Trump opposition. How useful.
MAGA provides its voters self-identity. It's not what they believe. It is shared hatred, never more acute, thus never more united, never more willing to quash all that previously made America great. Those charged with leadership don't need to be good, only "committed."
Unfortunately, the impact will be felt as they move with a greater sense of mission, greater hatred, less confusion, and more dopamine. Never forget: they hate you more than any international faction on earth, more than all of them put together.
Now, though, they have a theme — they're under attack by a violent resistance as a whole. Tragic as one young man's senseless killing may be, they seem more fulfilled, even relieved to have a tragedy transition to a precious tool, never on clearer display than the last week.
And it is just so f–––––– dangerous.
Don't believe me? Listen to them.
“Stephen Miller understands the assignment,” Laura Loomer wrote on Sunday. “Many others don’t. Crush. The. Left. So they never rise again.”
- Jason Miciak is a former Associate Editor at Occupy Democrats, author, and American attorney. He can also regularly be found on Politizoom.
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The inspiration for Trump's latest assault should chill you to the bone
We’ve seen this movie before. Or at least our grandparents did. Dictators can’t take a joke.
On Feb. 4, 1939 — seven months before their invasion of Poland kicked off World War II — the man with oversight responsibility for German media officially forbade five comedians from ever again performing in public. As the headline in the New York Times explained:
“Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime”
Their crime, according to Josef Goebbels, was publicly telling “brazen, impertinent, arrogant and tactless” jokes about the Führer.
Their humor, Goebbels told the press, only appealed to the “society rabble that followed them with thundering applause — parasitic scum, inhabiting our luxury streets, that seems to have only the task of proving with how little brains people can get along and even acquire money and prominence.”
The Times wrote that Goebbels and Adolf Hitler were particularly incensed that the actors caricatured and ridiculed Hitler’s followers and the loyal toadies in his administration:
“What amused the public most, however, and presumably roiled the National Socialist authorities most — although Dr. Goebbels does not mention it — is that they deftly, but unmistakably, caricatured some gestures, poses and physical characteristics of National Socialist leaders — sometimes with bon mots that made the rounds of the country.”
The Nazi leaders were furious, arguing that they themselves had, the Times noted, “a keen sense of humor that could kill opponents with ridicule.”
Instead of ordering the offending comedians executed, the Times added, they were simply rendered incapable of earning a living in their chosen profession.
“But as National Socialism proposes to remain in power 2,000 years it has neither the time nor the patience to apply that method to the ‘miserable literati.’”
FCC (“Federal Censorship Commission”?) Chairman Brendan Carr seems to be following in Goebbels' footsteps, having implicitly threatened Disney/ABC and two groups of TV station affiliates with regulatory intervention to block multi-billion-dollar mergers if they didn’t take Jimmy Kimmel off the air.
CBS’s rolling over when Trump was offended by Stephen Colbert appears to have emboldened the administration to go after other comedians.
Donald Trump himself, meanwhile, was blunt about how “illegal” it is for people on television to criticize him. And he wasn’t just talking about comedians, specifically calling out “newscasts” that will presumably be Carr’s next target:
“I’m a very strong person for free speech. But 97, 94, 95, 96 percent of the people are against me in the sense of the newscasts are against me. The stories are — they said 97 percent bad. So, they gave me 97, they’ll take a great story, and they’ll make it bad. See, I think that’s really illegal, personally.”
Meanwhile, Trump has sent soldiers into the streets of three American cities, purged federal museums of information about slavery and discrimination against minorities and women, and posted what may have been meant to be a private DM demanding that Attorney General Pam Bondi begin prosecuting his political enemies.
Along those same authoritarian lines, three major federal buildings in Washington, D.C. now sport massive new banners with Trump’s face glowering down on people walking or driving by. Paid for with your tax dollars, the banners violate federal law according to a report released by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA).
Georgia Democratic Congressman Hank Johnson was blunt in his critique:
“When I saw the banners hanging from federal office buildings last week, it reminded me of [the] Communist Party in China and banners hanging from federal offices — just totally inappropriate and a step towards authoritarianism. It’s another indication of the march that we’re on towards authoritarianism in this country.”
Will anybody on network television be willing this week to tell “brazen, impertinent, arrogant and tactless" jokes about the Saddam Hussein-like banners?
Stay tuned.
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