The MAGA faithful anxiously waits for a sign
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
Trump AG's latest vow is straight from dictator's playbook — and it's a threat to us all
Bondi’s memo, released late on a Friday afternoon (a classic timing choice to minimize media attention), rescinded policies that had limited when and how Justice Department attorneys could pursue records or testimony from journalists, including in cases involving the unauthorized disclosure of government secrets to the press. The implications are chilling and immediate.
The Justice Department will now allow federal investigators to pursue communications from media outlets in government leak investigations, marking a complete reversal of Biden-era (and previous administrations’) policies that protected journalists from becoming targets of government intimidation.
Bondi’s justification? The Justice Department “will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people.”
Did you catch that? Not disclosures that threaten national security, but those that “undermine President Trump’s policies.” Since when did the President’s policies become sacred and beyond scrutiny? Since when did exposing wrongdoing by our government become a crime against “the American people”?
Throughout our history, ethical government officials who leaked information to the press have been essential to maintaining our democracy. They’ve exposed corruption, illegal wars, and unconstitutional surveillance, and in many cases they’ve paid a heavy price for their courage.
Take my old friend and correspondent Daniel Ellsberg, perhaps America’s most famous whistleblower. In 1971, Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, exposing how multiple presidents had systematically lied to the American people about the Vietnam War. He believed the documents contained “evidence of a quarter century of aggression, broken treaties, deceptions, stolen elections, lies and murder.” His brave act helped change public opinion and ultimately contributed to ending that disastrous war.
When Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, the Nixon administration tried to block their publication. The Supreme Court ruling in New York Times Co. v. United States upholding the press’s right to publish has been called one of the “modern pillars” of First Amendment rights with respect to freedom of the press.
That same Nixon administration that tried to silence Ellsberg created the infamous “White House Plumbers” unit to stop leaks, which later led directly to the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s downfall.
History shows that when presidents attack whistleblowers and the press, they’re usually trying to hide their own misdeeds. And it sure feels like that’s exactly what Bondi and Trump are now up to.
In more recent history, we’ve seen Edward Snowden expose the NSA’s mass surveillance programs and Chelsea Manning reveal troubling military actions, including the killing of civilians. Both were driven by their conviction that the American people deserved to know about government overreach and misconduct.
The Founders understood that a democracy cannot function without an informed citizenry, and citizens cannot be informed without a free press that can hold the powerful accountable. That’s why they enshrined press freedom in the First Amendment; they knew from bitter experience that power corrupts, and that the powerful will always seek to hide their corruption.
A free press serves as our early warning system against government overreach and abuse. When journalists can protect their sources, those inside the government who witness wrongdoing can come forward without fear of retribution. This critical flow of information is what Bondi is now trying to shut down.
Bondi’s actions come in the midst of an aggressive campaign against unauthorized leaking in Trump’s second administration. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has already referred “two intelligence community leakers” to the Justice Department for potential prosecutions, with a third referral on the way.
What we’re witnessing is step one in the dictator’s playbook: silence those who tell the truth about your regime. We’ve seen this pattern in Russia, Hungary, Turkey, and countless other countries where democracy has withered into authoritarianism. First, attack the press. Then, criminalize dissent. Intimidate lawmakers, lawyers, and judges. Finally, consolidate power in the hands of a single leader.
Bondi’s memo added that there will be procedures in place before members of the media are compelled to testify or their records are seized, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Justice Department is now prepared to compel journalists to testify, and their records will be subject to seizure.
But the most alarming part of all is what Bondi reportedly wants to do next. According to sources close to the Justice Department, she has argued that leakers — or even reporters — who provide information that she doesn’t like could be prosecuted for treason, a crime that carries the death penalty.
Let that sink in: the Attorney General of the United States believes that journalists doing their constitutionally protected job could be subject to execution.
I’ve been covering American politics for five decades, and just to be very clear: This is not normal. This is not just another partisan policy dispute. This is an existential threat to our constitutional system of government.
When a government official can decide that reporting unflattering information is “treason,” we’re no longer living in a democracy. We’re living in an authoritarian state where power flows from the top down, not from the people up.
Bondi’s actions reveal the Trump administration’s true nature. They have no interest in our democratic traditions or constitutional liberties. Their only goal is to consolidate power and silence dissent.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which documents threats to press freedom, has condemned Bondi’s decision and criticized Republicans in Congress who killed a federal shield law in 2024 that would have protected journalists from such subpoenas.
We’ve seen this before. Nixon’s attacks on the press were a precursor to his abuses of power. The Bush administration’s aggressive prosecutions of leakers after 9/11 helped enable his unconstitutional torture program and illegal surveillance. And Trump’s first term was marked by constant rhetorical attacks on the press as “enemies of the people.”
But this move by Bondi takes things to a new and dangerous level. By institutionalizing the persecution of journalists and their sources, she’s laying the groundwork for a full-scale assault on press freedom.
She claims that “subpoenaed news outlets are to be given advanced notice” and that the subpoenas will be “narrowly drawn,” but these are empty promises from an administration that has repeatedly shown contempt for democratic norms and the rule of law.
The time for polite disagreement or “strongly worded letters” is over. The time for waiting to see what happens next is over. We must act now to protect our democracy before it’s too late.
First, demand that Congress pass a federal shield law to protect journalists from being forced to reveal their sources. This is not a partisan issue; it’s about preserving the basic functioning of our democracy.
Second, support independent journalism with your dollars and your attention. Subscribe to newspapers, donate to nonprofit news organizations like ProPublica, and share important stories with your networks. A robust press is our best defense against tyranny.
Third, contact your representatives and tell them that protecting press freedom must be a top priority. Remind them that their oath is to the Constitution, not to any president or party. The phone number for the congressional switchboard, which can connect you to both your senators and your member of the House, is 202-224-3121.
Fourth, prepare to take to the streets if Bondi follows through on her threat to prosecute journalists for treason. That would be a red line from which there is no return to normal democratic governance.
Finally, remember that the press isn’t perfect — no human institution is — but it’s essential. When governments attack journalists, it’s rarely because they’re telling lies. It’s almost always because they’re telling truths that the powerful don’t want heard.
Daniel Ellsberg - seen here in 2010 - was a former US military analyst best known for his leak of the so-called Pentagon Papers in 1971 (AFP)
We stand at a crossroads in American history. Down one path lies a renewed commitment to our democratic values, including a free press that can hold the powerful accountable. Down the other lies authoritarianism, where “truth” is whatever the leader says it is, and those who disagree face persecution or worse.
The choice should be obvious. But making the right choice requires courage, from journalists who continue to do their jobs despite threats, from whistleblowers who risk everything to expose wrongdoing, and from citizens who refuse to be silent in the face of growing tyranny.
Pam Bondi and Donald Trump have shown their true colors. They’ve revealed their contempt for the Constitution and their fear of the truth. They’re trying to create a country where no one can challenge their power or expose their corruption.
We cannot — we must not — let them succeed. Our democracy depends on it.
The time to act is now.
Trump's armed thugs deliberately crushed this American family. Furious yet?
They were wrong.
In the chaos, the teenage daughter — still in her underwear — was yanked from her bedroom and forced to stand, exposed and terrified, while armed strangers rifled through her belongings. Her screams went unanswered. The agents refused to let her or the rest of the family get dressed. They didn’t explain why they were there, didn’t ask questions, didn’t seem to care that the person they were looking for didn’t live at that address.
Then they started taking things: cell phones, tablets, laptops — anything that might contain information or, perhaps more to the point, value. They seized all the family’s cash, their passports, their children’s devices. When the family demanded answers, they were met with silence and threats. No warrant was ever shown. No charges were filed. No receipts left behind.
ICE simply vanished, leaving the family humiliated, traumatized, and stripped of the basic tools of modern life. The agency has since refused to return the electronics or the money. There has been no apology, no accountability, no restitution — just a void where justice is supposed to live.
What happened to that family wasn’t an accident. It was a symptom — a glimpse behind the curtain of what the Trump administration has built: an unaccountable, increasingly lawless deportation regime that functions more like a secret police force than a branch of a democratic government.
And the targets aren’t just undocumented immigrants or criminal suspects anymore. They’re legal residents. College students. People born and raised in this country. Their only “crime” is voicing dissent, having the wrong skin color, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But some are pushing back, bringing us big news from the ACLU yesterday:
“The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey ruled today that Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident and recent Columbia graduate student, can move forward with his lawsuit claiming the government is unlawfully detaining him for his political views. The court rejected the government’s attempt to shut down Mr. Khalil’s case before it could be heard.”
Khalil has committed no crime. He was in the U.S. legally. His only offense — in the eyes of the Trump administration — was participating in peaceful protests criticizing Israeli policy in Gaza. For that, ICE agents stormed his university housing and locked him in a detention facility, citing a vague national security justification that amounts to little more than “we don’t like what he said.”
This is not how a constitutional republic behaves. It is how authoritarian regimes operate: by making examples out of those who speak up, and terrifying the rest into silence.
To understand how dangerous this moment is — how far we’ve drifted from our foundational values — we have to reach back nearly two centuries. Because this is not the first time American leaders have had to grapple with whether the protections of our laws apply to those without political power, to people who aren’t citizens but are still human beings.
In February 1841, 73-year-old former President John Quincy Adams stood before the Supreme Court to defend 53 African men who had been kidnapped from Sierra Leone, sold into slavery, and transported aboard the Spanish slave ship La Amistad. These men, having seized the ship and attempted to return home, were captured off the coast of Long Island and jailed as property, their fates debated not as individuals but as commodities.
Adams — the son of a founding father and one of the last living links to the American Revolution — didn’t argue their case as a matter of political favor or foreign diplomacy. He invoked something deeper: the principle that all people, regardless of citizenship, nationality, or status, are entitled to the protection of the law when they are on American soil.
“By what right was it denied to the men who had restored themselves to freedom,” Adams thundered, “and why was it extended to the perpetrators of those acts of violence themselves?”
He insisted that justice must be blind to nationality or legal status; that due process, as encoded in the Constitution, must apply to persons, not just citizens. If the government could arbitrarily decide who deserved rights and who didn’t, then no rights were truly secure.
It was a radical argument for the time, but the Supreme Court agreed. Adams won. And in doing so, he helped define a cornerstone of American jurisprudence: that the rule of law exists to constrain the state, not to be selectively applied at the whim of those in power.
Fast forward to 2025, and that principle is now under direct assault.
The Trump administration, enabled by allies in Congress and the judiciary, has weaponized immigration law and executive authority in ways that Adams would have recognized and condemned. They are now detaining legal permanent residents, like Mahmoud Khalil, not for crimes, but for speech. They are targeting foreign students and legal residents — often young people of color — for deportation based on political views, often under the thinnest pretexts of “national security.”
The administration’s justification in Khalil’s case? That his presence in the U.S. could cause “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” That’s the legal equivalent of saying, “We’re deporting him because we want to.” It’s not just unconstitutional: it’s tyrannical.
And this isn’t isolated. Turkish graduate student Rumeysa Öztürk was grabbed off the street by masked agents for writing an op-ed critical of Israeli policy in a student newspaper over a year ago. In both cases, there were no warrants, no hearings, no evidence of criminal activity. Just black-bag operations targeting people for using their First Amendment rights.
Meanwhile, pro-Netanyahu political groups — many with direct ties to Trumpworld — are openly compiling lists of student activists and professors to target for deportation. And the administration appears to be acting on those lists.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student who played a prominent role in pro-Palestinian protests at the university, is detained by U.S. federal immigration agents in New York, in March, in a still image obtained from a video. The Family of Mahmoud Khalil/Handout via REUTERS
John Quincy Adams would be horrified, but not surprised.
Because once the government claims the right to strip anyone of due process, rights cease to be rights and become privileges, granted or revoked at the whim of those in power. That is not a constitutional democracy. That is the scaffolding of fascism.
And sure enough, what began with undocumented immigrants is now creeping toward legal residents, foreign students, and even American citizens. The Trump administration recently floated the idea — with a straight face — of deporting certain American citizens to El Salvador.
Let that sink in.
The very notion should be constitutionally absurd. But like so many authoritarian moves, it’s being normalized through repetition.
First they came for the undocumented. Then they came for the legal immigrants. Then the student visa holders. Now, they’re signaling plans to come after naturalized citizens — and even people born here — if they hold the “wrong” political beliefs.
Trump’s January executive order made this shift brutally clear:
“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you... I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses.”
But who gets to decide what constitutes a “pro-jihadist protest” or who counts as a “Hamas sympathizer”? The Trump administration does. No court. No jury. No evidence required. Just guilt by association — and punishment without due process.
This is precisely how autocrats consolidate power: they redefine dissent as treason, criminalize speech, and strip away rights piecemeal until there’s nothing left to defend. It happened in Turkey under Erdoğan. It happened in Hungary under Orbán. It happened in Putin’s Russia. And now it’s happening here.
The echoes of the Amistad case are unmistakable. Back then, the federal government sought to hand kidnapped Africans over to foreign governments to appease diplomatic partners. Today, we are handing peaceful student protesters over to ICE and DHS to appease political donors and right-wing pressure groups.
The same disregard for humanity. The same corruption of justice. The same weaponization of government to serve ideology instead of law.
But just as Adams turned the tide in 1841 by reminding America of its founding principles, we must do the same today.
Because this isn’t about immigration policy. It’s not about border security. It’s about the foundational principle that all people — all people — have the right to due process, the right to protest, and the right to be free from government persecution.
That family in Oklahoma, whose lives were shattered by an ICE raid on the wrong house? They weren’t caught in the gears of bureaucracy. They were deliberately crushed by a system designed to instill fear, to dehumanize, and to render justice optional.
Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Öztürk are not threats to national security; they’re reminders of what democracy is supposed to look like: people using their voices to speak uncomfortable truths. That’s what authoritarians fear most.
And if we let this continue — if we fail to act — we are complicit in the unraveling of the very idea of America.
We must fight this on every front:
First, we need immediate legal challenges to every deportation that lacks due process. Constitutional rights don’t depend on citizenship: they apply to every person on American soil.
Second, we need massive public protest against these policies. Universities should, within the law, refuse to cooperate with ICE and protect their students. Communities should establish sanctuary policies. Legal organizations should provide pro bono representation to those targeted.
And finally, we need to reclaim the narrative. This isn’t about immigration policy or national security; it’s about the most fundamental American principle: that all people possess inalienable rights, even those who aren’t citizens or are accused of a crime.
John Quincy Adams knew in 1841 what we must remember today: a government that can deny due process to anyone can eventually deny it to everyone. The rule of law either protects us all, or it ultimately protects none of us.
The time for action is now. Contact your representatives. Support legal defense funds. Share this story. Join the fight.
Because if we don’t stand up for them today, there may be no one left to stand up for us tomorrow.