Trump fans treated to another betrayal
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
This grassroots rebellion can decapitate Supreme Court's catastrophic mistake
Several of you have told me that the first step out of the mess we’re in is to get rid of the Supreme Court’s bonkers Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision of 2010, which held that corporations are people — entitled to the same First Amendment protection as the rest of us.
Corporate political spending was growing before Citizens United, but the decision opened the floodgates to the unlimited super PAC spending and undisclosed dark money we suffer from today.
Between 2008 and 2024, reported “independent” expenditures by outside groups exploded by more than 28-fold — from $144 million to $4.21 billion. Unreported money also skyrocketed, with dark money groups spending millions influencing the 2024 election.
Most people I talk with assume that the only way to stop corporate and dark money in American politics is either to wait for the Supreme Court to undo Citizens United (we could wait a very long time) or amend the U.S. Constitution (this is extraordinarily difficult).
But there’s another way! I want to tell you about it because there’s a good chance it will work.
It will be on the ballot next November in Montana. Maybe you can get it on the ballot in your state, too.
Here’s the thing: Individual states — either through their legislators or their citizens wielding ballot initiatives — have the authority to limit corporate political activity and dark money spending, because they determine what powers corporations have.
In American law, corporations are creatures of state laws. For more than two centuries, the power to define their form, limits, and privilege has belonged only to the states.
In fact, corporations have no powers at all until a state government grants them some. In the 1819 Supreme Court case Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, Chief Justice John Marshall established that:
“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence … The objects for which a corporation is created are universally such as the government wishes to promote. They are deemed beneficial to the country; and this benefit constitutes the consideration, and, in most cases, the sole consideration of the grant.”
States don’t have to grant corporations the power to spend in politics. In fact, they could decide not to give corporations that power.
This isn’t about corporate rights, as the Supreme Court determined in Citizens United. It’s about corporate powers.
When a state exercises its authority to define corporations as entities without the power to spend in politics, it will no longer be relevant whether corporations have a right to spend in politics — because without the power to do so, the right to do so has no meaning.
Delaware’s corporation code already declines to grant private foundations the power to spend in elections.
Importantly, a state that no longer grants its corporations the power to spend in elections also denies that power to corporations chartered in the other 49 states, if they wish to do business in that state.
All a state would need to do is enact a law with a provision something like this:
“Every corporation operating under the laws of this state has all the corporate powers it held previously, except that nothing in this statute grants or recognizes any power to engage in election activity or ballot-issue activity.”
Sound far-fetched? Not at all.
In Montana, local organizers have drafted and submitted a constitutional initiative for voters to consider in 2026 — the first step in a movement built to spread nationwide. It would decline to grant to all corporations the power to spend in elections.
Called the Transparent Election Initiative, it wouldn’t overturn Citizens United — it would negate the consequences of Citizens United. (Click on the link and you’ll get the details.)
The argument is laid out in a paper that the Center for American Progress published several weeks ago. (Kudos to CAP and the paper’s author, Tom Moore, a senior fellow at CAP who previously served as counsel and chief of staff to a longtime member of the Federal Election Commission.)
Note to governors and state legislators: The Citizens United decision is enormously unpopular. Some 75 percent of Americans disapprove of it. But most of your governors and state legislators haven’t realized that you have the authority to make Citizens United irrelevant. My recommendation to you: Use that authority to rid the nation of Citizens United.
Hopefully, Montanans will lead the way.
- Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
- Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.
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We elected an imbecile — and his latest move could kill us all
Since Donald Trump has been back in office, energy prices have increased at more than double the rate of inflation. The Consumer Price Index from the end of October reported an “all items price index” increase for food, shelter, and transportation of 3.0 percent over a 12-month period, while energy services for the same period rose by 6.4 percent.
After promising to slash energy prices, Trump has done the opposite. His energy policies reflect the same ethos driving everything else in his retribution playbook: reward donors and inflict pain on Democrats, even when the economic consequences are nationwide.
Lust for retribution
In early October, Trump announced the claw-back of billions of dollars in federal funding for utilities, money that had been appropriated to reinforce power grids and reduce electricity prices.
Targeting blue states exclusively, Budget Director Russ Vought announced the cancellation of “nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda.” In all, 321 Congressionally set awards supporting 223 wind, solar, and transmission projects were trashed.
Trump’s aversion to clean energy isn’t the only factor driving costs. His refusal to upgrade the grid, his half-baked export and tariff initiatives, and his blind support for energy-sucking AI data centers are all contributing to surging energy prices with no relief in sight.
As Canary Media framed it, “Trump slapped tariffs on certain wind turbine materials and opened a sham “national security” probe to pave the way for even more. He halted construction on a nearly completed offshore wind farm and moved to revoke permits for two more. He canceled hundreds of millions in port funding critical to offshore wind development and imposed new directives to stifle renewable projects on federal lands.”
Trump’s dedication is showing: after only ten months of Trump 2.0, US household electric bills have increased by 10 percent, and are expected to continue climbing.
UN Climate Summit
Trump is doing more than reversing US climate successes, he’s also undermining progress in other parts of the world. Last month, when the International Maritime Organization agreed on the world’s first carbon tax on global shipping to encourage the transition to cleaner fuels, Trump released a childish Truth Social rant threatening to retaliate.
This month, he ignored the UN Climate Summit in Brazil. Thankfully, California Governor Gavin Newsom attended, representing the world’s fourth-largest economy. Newsom highlighted California's efforts to step up on climate where Trump has stepped out.
Facing down the embarrassment of an antiquated, know-nothing, pro-fossil fuel regime, Newsom didn’t hold back. When asked about the US retreat from global climate action, he called Trump “an invasive species … He’s a wrecking ball president trying to roll back progress of the last century … he’s doubling down on stupid.”
Newsom did more than talk. While he was at the summit, he signed new Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with Brazil, Colombia, and Chile to advance clean energy, wildfire prevention, and other climate-related initiatives. He also expanded California’s existing partnerships with China and Mexico on clean energy development and zero-emission freight corridors.
Newsom managed to bolster California's profile as a stable international business and climate partner despite the optics of a US president ruled by ego and impulse.
Our loss, China’s gain
In September, addressing the UN, Trump called climate change a “con job” and urged other world leaders to abandon their climate efforts despite the Earth’s rising temperatures. Trump claimed falsely that China sells wind turbines to the world without using them at home, and told assembled leaders, “If you don’t get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail.”
The next day, China pledged the reverse. Xi Jinping announced China’s plan to increase electric vehicle sales and dramatically increase wind and solar power, targeting a 600 percent increase over 2020 levels.
Despite Trump’s claim, China has vastly expanded wind power developments at home, adding 46 gigawatts of new wind energy this year alone, enough to power than 30 million homes. Meanwhile, our Cro-Magnon regime froze permits for wind farms and issued stop work orders, ending tens of thousands of wind energy jobs in the process.
Critics agree that Trump’s withdrawal from climate efforts ceded valuable ground to China, which is now rapidly expanding its renewable and EV industries. China’s Ming Yang Smart Energy just unveiled OceanX, a two-headed offshore wind turbine. OceanX is expected to cut offshore energy costs to one-fifth of Europe’s costs while allowing wind farms to operate with fewer, more powerful turbines.
“China gets it,” Newsom said at the UN Climate Summit, “America is toast competitively, if we don’t wake up to what the hell they’re doing in this space, on supply chains, how they’re dominating manufacturing, how they’re flooding the zone.”
Newsom is right. Americans are suffering the tragedy of an uninformed and unstable president who rejects science, a president who wants to take us back to the 19th century. We have also inflicted our tragedy on the rest of the world.
Pope Leo frames climate action as a moral and spiritual imperative, tying the “cry of the Earth” to the “cry of the poor,” because small island nations and the global south, including poor states in the US, will continue to suffer the most from extreme weather and climate destruction.
Trump will be dead before climate change becomes an obvious existential threat. As Newsom said, he is only temporary. But the global destruction he leaves behind could be permanent. We owe it to our children, ourselves, and all the earth’s inhabitants to never again elect an imbecile, and to shut this one down before he kills us all.
- 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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This foul betrayal is Trump's worst treachery yet
Almost lost among Donald Trump’s latest assault on America, has been his utter disdain for our democracy, and love for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Amid Trump’s attack on our government, White House, health-care, food benefits, vote, the arts, environment, our economy, and peace and quiet, the Russia-Ukraine War has raged on.
Defying all odds, the Ukrainians and their gutsy, charismatic leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have held off the once-feared Russian army for nearly four years. This should be celebrated as one the most inspirational events of a 21st Century that has been sorely lacking inspiration or good.
Putin and his vaunted army were supposed to cut through Ukraine like a knife through butter when they launched their attack on Feb. 24, 2022. When Putin’s army amassed on the Ukrainian border it was estimated by many experts that Ukraine would fall in mere hours.
Except that never happened because the Ukrainians proved themselves more feisty and prepared, and Russia weaker and more clumsy, than all these experts expected.
By the third day of fighting Zelenskyy was proving himself more than ready for what feeble Russia was bringing him, and produced a video watched my millions that turned down the United State’s invitation to evacuate him, saying:
“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride!”
Something wonderful was happening on the eastern front, as a small, upstart and proud nation was smacking the murderous Putin and his army right in the mouth.
It was scary, thrilling and good news to everybody it seems except for Putin and his puppet, Trump, who wasted no time alerting the world to what side he was on, calling Putin’s attack, “savvy” and “genius.”
Just three days later, when he saw what was happening, as the valiant Ukrainians stood up to the bully, and “savvy genius,” Putin, the carnival-barking Trump changed his tone at a CPAC gathering in Florida, on February 27, 2022, and slobbered this:
“The Russian attack on Ukraine is appalling. We are praying for the proud people of Ukraine. God bless them all.”
After surviving this anti-democratic whiplash, instead of apologizing for his grotesque words praising Putin, Trump did what he always did, and has always done: He attacked the United States, and let Putin off the hook, saying:
“The real problem is that our leaders are dumb, dumb. So dumb.”
But Trump’s phony reversal, and attack on America, was only the subhead of that event in Florida, because he used that never-ending speech to hint loudly at another run for office by taking a swipe at America and its President, Joe Biden:
“As everyone understands, this horrific disaster would never have happened if our election was not rigged and if I was the president …”
He went on:
“In November 2024, Democrats will find out like never before. We did it twice, and we’ll do it again. We’re going to be doing it again, a third time.”
Here’s where I will always point out with precision and rage that this anti-American, no-good monster should have been on his way to rotting in jail by now for his attack on our country that had occurred just one year earlier, on Jan. 6, 2021. Except Attorney General Merrick Garland still hadn’t even laid a glove on the traitor, Trump, and allowed him to reclaim his hold over a party that had proven itself morally busted, and incapable of standing up against Trump or Putin, and for America.
Now four very painful years later, the proud Ukrainians are still holding off Russia, and Trump is still doing everything he can to make sure Russia prevails.
As I type this, Trump has rolled out a U.S. peace plan this is so absurd even the cowards who helped enable him in the Republican Party are speaking out against it, saying it is nothing but a Russian wish list.
Here is Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC):
“Putin is a murderer a rapist and an assassin. We should not do anything that makes him feel like he has a win here.”
Here is Sen. Mitch McConnell, (R-KY):
“If administration officials are more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace, then the president ought to find new advisors.”
I am aware that both of these men are not seeking reelection, which is why you can be assured they are both finally telling the truth.
On Sunday, Trump was right back where he was four years ago, despite all the heroics of the Ukrainians since, blaming the United States, Ukraine and our allies for the attack, by blasting this out on his state-run social media channel:
“With strong and proper U.S. and Ukrainian LEADERSHIP, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would have NEVER HAPPENED.”
“UKRAINE ‘LEADERSHIP’ HAS EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS, AND EUROPE CONTINUES TO BUY OIL FROM RUSSIA.”
Read that again, and try to tell me that Trump is not a traitor.
Not a single word of condemnation at the aggressor and murderer, Putin. Only disdain for America, Ukraine, and our NATO allies whose relationship over the decades has been forged in blood and honor.
Russia helped install Trump into office in 2016. We know this. In fact, nobody knows it better than his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who chaired the Republican-led bipartisan committee who rendered these findings in August, 2020, which stated:
The Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian intelligence services during the 2016 presidential election posed a “grave” counterintelligence threat.
This is from a PBS story that went into the 1,000-page report. It was the fifth and final one from the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee on the Russia investigation:
“The findings, including unflinching characterizations of furtive interactions between Trump associates and Russian operatives, echo to a large degree those of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and appear to repudiate the Republican president’s claims that the FBI had no basis to investigate whether his campaign was conspiring with Russia. Trump has called the Russia investigations a “hoax.”
Cold irony then that it is the feckless Rubio who seems to be caught in the middle of unfriendly fire right now between Trump and the rest of the free world as his boss attacks the United States and makes excuses for Putin with his pathetic excuse for a “peace plan.”
From AP reporting:
Lawmakers critical of President Donald Trump’s approach to ending the Russia-Ukraine war said Saturday they spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio who told them that the peace plan Trump is pushing Kyiv to accept is a “wish list” of the Russians and not the actual proposal offering Washington’s positions.
A State Department spokesperson denied their account, calling it “blatantly false.”
Rubio himself then took the extraordinary step of suggesting online that the senators were mistaken, even though they said he was their source for the information. The secretary of state doubled down on the assertion that Washington was responsible for a proposal that had surprised many from the beginning for being so favorable to Moscow.
“For being so favorable to Moscow …”
Shocking, eh?
So here we are again. Donald Trump is doing everything in his seemingly unlimited power to make sure Putin gets what he wants after starting this illegal and immoral war against Ukraine.
He is clearly in the tank FOR Russia and AGAINST America.
Just what in the hell is going here????
- (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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If this psychotic Trump outrage isn't impeachable, nothing is
Donald Trump just called for the execution of American veterans — all of them also elected members of Congress — because they reminded our active duty soldiers that it’s a violation of both American and international law to commit war crimes.
If that’s not impeachable, what is?
This is his most dangerous and insane escalation yet, because it crosses a bright red line the Founders themselves warned about: a president openly demanding the execution of members of Congress for telling U.S. service members to obey the law.
And the horror of it isn’t subtle. It’s not, like in the days of Nixon and Reagan, even coded. It’s not even wink-and-nod stochastic terrorism.
This is the President of the United States calling for hanging lawmakers — by name — for the “crime” of reminding military personnel that their oath is to the Constitution, not to him.
That is the precise scenario the Founders feared when they warned that a would-be tyrant could try to transform the military from defenders of the republic into enforcers of a single man’s will.
What these senators and representatives said in their video is not controversial, not partisan, and not new. It’s bedrock American law. It’s the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It’s every ethics class, every commissioning oath, every baseline principle of civilian-controlled government in a constitutional republic.
Trump’s reaction — psychotic, paranoid, and dripping with bloodlust — makes one thing painfully clear: he’s terrified of the military remembering who they actually work for.
It also suggests an ominous future Trump may have planned where he turns our military against you and me.
Or uses it against a foreign nation so he can wiggle out of the growing questions about his 1990s teenage modeling agency, his Miss Teen USA pageant, and their possible connections to Jeffrey Epstein and child sex trafficking.
The lawmakers who made that video are, to a person, military and combat veterans or intelligence professionals who’ve literally risked their lives for this country.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) was shot at, launched into space, and flew combat missions over Iraq. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) served in the Air Force. Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) was an Army Ranger. Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA) is a Navy vet. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) spent years as a CIA analyst overseeing Iraq policy. These aren’t armchair patriots: they’re the real thing.
So when Trump — who faked bone spurs to dodge Vietnam — calls for them to be executed, it tells you something profound: he wouldn’t be flipping out like this unless he intends to give orders like that.
Everything about this situation is a rerun of January 6th — for which he’s already been impeached — only with the stakes ratcheted up.
Trump has already learned that violent language produces violent followers. He watched it happen in real time. He saw his crowd beat police officers bloody, hunt for Mike Pence, and smash their way through the Capitol while chanting about hanging elected officials.
As I mentioned about the attacks on Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), he knows his movement is filled with men eager to “carry out the punishment” for him. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) offers a warning — that Trump is lighting a match in a country soaked in gasoline — that isn’t metaphor. It’s a sober assessment grounded in hard experience.
And now Trump is testing the waters again, seeing how far he can go, how hard he can push, before America pushes back.
Consider what these lawmakers actually said in their video: follow lawful orders, refuse unlawful ones, and remember your oath is to the Constitution. That’s the opposite of sedition. It’s literally the definition of military ethics in a democratic society, right out of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, American law, international law, and even the Nuremberg trials
Fox’s commentator Andy McCarthy — hardly a liberal — made this clear:
“There is no insurrection or sedition without the use of force. Disobeying a lawful order is insubordination, not insurrection or sedition. Disobeying an unlawful order is required.”
Veterans and members of Congress telling soldiers to obey the law? That’s the American system working.
But Trump immediately interpreted it as a threat to himself and his agenda. Not to our country. Not to political or military norms. To him personally.
That should reveal to every American with half a brain who this man really is and what his plans really are.
The cries of “HANG THEM!” and “punishable by DEATH!” aren’t policy positions. They’re the words of an out-of-control authoritarian, a wannabe dictator, a man intent on destroying the rule of law and the American republic that’s been based on it for over two centuries.
They’re the gut-level reactions of a man who thinks loyalty should flow upward to his person, not outward to the nation.
And it’s not a one-off. This is a Trump pattern that necessitates impeachment.
- This is the same Trump who demanded the execution of Gen. Mark Milley.
- The same Trump who encouraged chants of “Hang Mike Pence.”
- The same Trump whose follower mailed pipe bombs to Democratic leaders.
- The same Trump who says generals should be shot, newspapers and TV networks shut down, and political opponents imprisoned.
- Who calls soldiers who died in battle “suckers” and “losers.”
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller — who also avoided military service, like every man in the Trump family — shrieking that veterans should “resign in disgrace” for stating U.S. law is the purest illustration of an authoritarian mindset straight out of 1930s Germany: loyalty is owed to the leader, he suggests, not to the Constitution. And the moment someone asserts otherwise, they’re a traitor.
And Fox “News” giving Miller a platform to do it, without even trying to push back or defend American values of the role of law, is unspeakable.
Which brings us to a remarkable admission from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY): Republicans are “afraid” to cross Trump. They’re terrified of Trump’s base, the Confederate flag-waivers, the well-armed Bros. Terrified, because Trump has conditioned those men (virtually all of the violence has come from right wing men) to see critique or embrace of the rule of law as betrayal, and betrayal as punishable.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) is right: you can’t negotiate with a party whose operating principle is “wait to see what Trump wants.”
As Murphy noted yesterday in response to Trump’s call to kill Democratic lawmakers:
“If you’re a person of influence in this country and you haven’t picked a side, maybe now would be the time to pick a fucking side.”
We now have a major political party that openly accepts their president calling for the execution of lawmakers who simply restate the Constitution. And a White House spokeswoman who pathetically backs him up.
Trump isn’t just attacking political rivals: he’s asserting that the American military’s loyalty belongs to him personally, and that those who contradict him should be killed. That is the exact formula the Founders designed the Constitution to prevent.
That’s not normal political dysfunction. That is a republic confronting its own death-throes.
The heartening part — the only heartening part — is the response from the lawmakers themselves.
These elected officials understand the stakes. They know the oaths they took aren’t merely symbolic.
They know that stopping this modern-day rightwing fascism depends on We the People standing up, speaking out, and refusing to be intimidated while we support members of our military — from the most senior levels to the lowest privates — in their refusing to follow illegal orders.
Trump wants a military that obeys him, not the rule of law. That’s why he’s screaming for the deaths of these congressional veterans. It’s also why Congress must impeach him now.
These veterans in Congress reminded the members of our military that their duty is the exact opposite of Trump’s demand for unthinking, unquestioning fealty to illegal orders.
No democracy survives that.
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This plague of frogs tells us something hopeful about resistance to Trump
By Anya M. Galli Robertson, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton
When the center of protests against immigration enforcement switched recently to Charlotte, North Carolina, so did the frogs.
Back in October, an agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency popularly known as ICE, deployed pepper spray into the air vent of a peaceful protester’s inflatable frog costume. Video of the incident in Portland, Oregon, quickly went viral. Frogs and other inflatable costumes became a fixture of protests against Trump administration actions everywhere.
As a sociologist who studies social movements and political discourse, I knew when I saw the video that we’d soon see frogs everywhere at protests.
And indeed, the costumes have visually distinguished recent events from earlier anti-Trump demonstrations, softening their public image at a time when Republican officials were calling protesters “violent” and “Antifa people.”
It’s hard to be violent in a frog suit.
Humor is subversive. When used strategically, it can help undermine the legitimacy of even the most powerful opponents.
Playful and potentially protective
Portland activist Seth Todd began protesting in an inflatable frog costume as a way of “looking ridiculous” when federal law enforcement ramped up repressive tactics against his fellow protesters at ICE facilities.
“Nothing about this screams extremist and violent,” he told The Oregonian newspaper.
Such costumes are interactive, playful, physically unwieldy and potentially protective. They can help activists appear less threatening to police, evade facial recognition systems and even deflect the blows of police batons or rubber bullets.
Wearing inflatable costumes at demonstrations checks all the boxes for tactics that can be widely imitated: cultural relevance, symbolic power, accessibility and easy participation.
My interviews with activists who used glitter bombing in past protests revealed that light-hearted tactics can expand participation by attracting newcomers who are wary of more confrontational forms of protest. This is especially true when the tactics are easy to adopt — notably, wearing inflatable costumes in the weeks leading up to Halloween.
“Protest costumes” are now a category on Amazon.
Unlike the seasoned activists who were early adopters, protesters who wore inflatable animal and character costumes — sometimes because frog costumes had sold out — at No Kings protests on Oct. 18 represented a range of experiences and affiliations, including many first-timers.
“We are middle of the road,” explained one protesting frog in Chicago. “We’re just regular folks who have had enough.”
Bears, unicorns, dinos and raccoons
Activists continue to don frog costumes in solidarity. One group calling itself the Portland Frog Brigade says its goal is “artfully exercising our First Amendment right to free speech.”
Others created Operation Inflation to collect and distribute inflatable costumes to Portland protesters.
Just days after the pepper spray incident, a video circulated showing people outside the Portland ICE facility wearing inflatable bear, unicorn, dinosaur and raccoon costumes, dancing to raucous music in front of a line of law enforcement officers clad in riot gear.
Despite the almost literal novelty value of frog costumes, there’s nothing new about any of this.
Inflatables have long played an important role in outlandish protest tactics. A large inflatable “Trump chicken” was installed outside the White House back in 2017, while a “Trump baby” blimp hovered over Parliament in London during a 2018 state visit.
During the 1960s, the Bread and Puppet Theater used towering puppets and satirical street performances to protest the Vietnam War and social inequality.
Carnivalesque tactics and clown costumes have been popular responses to police repression at anti-globalization protests.
The Raging Grannies were a mainstay at antiwar and antinuclear demonstrations in the early 2000s, easily recognizable with their colorful costumes and witty songs.
And LGBTQ+ rights advocates have thrown pies and glitter-bombed right-wing politicians, while also staging costumed flash mobs and dance parties outside the offices and homes of prominent public figures.
Absurdist performances and playful public displays are powerful tools of political dissent, especially when they stand in contrast to state violence, authoritarianism and human rights abuses.
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How a J6 lawyer admitted Trump's own 'selective and vindictive' abuse of the law
Last week, the American Society of Criminology (ASC) held its 80th Annual Meetings in Washington, D.C. The theme was Criminology, Law, and the Democratic Ideal.
On day two, I found myself in an impromptu debate with Roger Roots. The name may not be familiar but perhaps it should be. As a January 6 defense lawyer, Roots was what Politico called the “Hidden hand” in the Oath Keepers militia leader Stewart Rhodes’ bid to derail his trial, and lead defense counsel for Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola, alleging government wrongdoing and calling for a mistrial, using as evidence Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s airing of J6 security footage.
In the realm of constitutional law, Roots has written papers including The Originalist Case for the Fourth Amendment. But there is more to him than a mere legal résumé.
He has had a couple of felony convictions. In one he was sentenced to 51 weeks in jail for resisting arrest and violating probation in Florida. In the other, he was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison for possession of unregistered firearms, including some found in his room at a community college in Wyoming.
Roots has run for office. In 2014, while an assistant professor of criminology and sociology at Jarvis Christian College in Hawkins, Texas, he took leave to campaign in his home state, Montana, as a Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate.
At the time, he told the Sidney Herald his status as a “former” racist and Holocaust denier had cost him a teaching position at Macon State College ten years before. He also told the Herald, “I used to be an extreme right winger, and I used to read the writings of Adolf Hitler and all kinds of racist materials.” He failed to mention past allegations about connections to the Ku Klux Klan.
Roots’ legal work on the far right ranges wider than J6. In 2016, he was a “volunteer paralegal” for Ryan Bundy, “one of 26 defendants indicted on a federal conspiracy charge stemming from the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.” The judge allowed Roots to confer confidentially with Bundy in jail and sit beside him during hearings, but not to address the court.
At the ASC last week, the conference program listed a presentation by Roger Roots of Lysander Spooner University — which appears to just be a website. I thought it worth going along to listen.
The session was entitled, Did Trump's Pardon of the J6ers “End a Grave National Injustice?” A J6 Defense Lawyer Speaks.
The abstract said: “Trump's mass pardon of ‘J6ers’ was met by condemnation … throughout news media, academia, and the legal system. Many voices denounced the pardons as an attempt by Trump to whitewash or falsify the narrative of January 6. But was there something to Trump's assessment that the J6 prosecutions were a grave national injustice?
“In this paper, a J6 defense lawyer who tried 14 J6 cases and argued four J6 appeals before the DC Circuit addresses all sides of this issue. The author concludes that January 6 prosecutions were indeed a grave injustice that merited Trump's clemency.
“The cases produced inordinately high conviction rates, and produced the harshest average sentences ever associated with political rioting in American history. Federal prosecutors relied on novel theories of the law and utilized federal statutes in ways never before seen. The author will answer questions and criticisms.”
In front of a healthy crowd, Roots began by referencing Trump’s executive order pardoning some 1,500 convicted J6-ers on day one of his second term. He told us the president had not provided Americans with any reasons for his pardons and clemencies.
“Trump should have allowed me to write the executive order for him,” Roots said.
The presentation that followed was based on a combination of facts, fictions, and distorted legal arguments about J6 prosecutions in relation to historical non-prosecutions of peaceful demonstrators. Without offering any real details, Roots’ examples included:
- Socialist leader Eugene Debs’ arrest in 1918 and sentencing in 1919 for his anti-war rhetoric.
- The 1932 Bonus Army Incident, in which around 20,000 World War I veterans occupying vacant federal buildings in DC to demand payment of promised bonuses were removed.
- The internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
- The events of May 2, 1967, when some two-dozen armed members of the Black Panthers Party for Self-Defense, led by Bobby Seale, entered the California State Capitol in Sacramento to protest the pending Mulford Act, a gun control law.
Roots’ contention was that the legal treatment of violent J6ers was more harmful, severe and unprecedented than anything that occurred with respect to his four examples. He was also trying to make the case that both the J6ers and Trump were victims of “selective and vindictive" prosecution.
His arguments were easily shot down.
Chiefly, he had omitted from his presentation the fact that none of his examples were about protestor-police interactions, let alone instances of violence. In the case of the Bonus Army, 10 days of peaceful occupation preceded forced removal by the armed forces.
Five minutes or so into Roots’ presentation, I decided somebody had to check this gaslighting troll.
I decided to throw him off his game. As the saying goes, “I’m not a lawyer but I have played one on TV.” I have also played one on radio, on podcasts and on YouTube. I decided that since Roots was essentially acting as a defense attorney, I would play prosecutor and judge. I did so by interrupting whenever I felt his ad hominem assault on due process and the rule of law needed to be disrupted.
Much of Roots’ presentation was about the supposed “injustices” of criminal prosecutions in the U.S., in this case of J6 insurrectionists who tried to overturn an election. Whenever I wanted to intervene, I simply said: “Counselor, there is nothing unusual here, that is simply the way our criminal justice system works.” By the end of his presentation, Roots had agreed with me on virtually every objection — which rather undermined his conclusions.
When he finished and asked for questions and comments, I waited until everyone who wished to speak had done so. Then, as Roots was preparing to leave, I popped back in: “Not so fast, counselor.” It was time to address Trump’s own selective and vindictive prosecutions.
“Tell me,” I said. “Yes or no, are the prosecutions of [ex-FBI Director] Jim Comey and [New York Attorney General] Letitia James selective and vindictive?"
To which, Roots said: “Yes, I guess they are. We just don’t have a very fair system of law in this country.”
I had one final question.
“Would you not agree that as bad as our ‘rigged’ system of justice might be, it is far worse today under the direction of Donald Trump and the anti-constitutional MAGA justices of the Supreme Court than it has ever been?”
Our conversation was done.
- Gregg Barak is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Michigan University and the author of several books on the crimes of the powerful, including Criminology on Trump (2022) and its sequel, Indicting the 45th President (2024). The third book in this Trump trilogy, Regime Change, Authoritarian Treason, and the Outlaw-in-Chief: President Donald Trump’s Struggle to Kill U.S. Democracy & Realign American Global Power, will be published after the 2026 midterm elections.
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This unlikely messenger is exposing Trump's killer weakness
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), according to reporting in Axios, is setting his sights on a 2028 run for the presidency. The report forced Donald Trump to respond to it, and thus to talk about life without him as the leader of MAGA, much less America.
No, Cruz will not be elected president in ‘28 — and we certainly don’t want that to happen — but we should encourage the talk nonetheless, and media should to bring it up more. Apparently, the White House is angry with Cruz for putting it out there, seeing it as undermining Trump — and JD Vance. As NOTUS reports:
The White House and its allies believe Sen. Ted Cruz is taking positions antithetical to President Donald Trump from his perch as chair of the Senate Commerce Committee as a way to position himself against Vice President JD Vance ahead of 2028.
And they’re not happy about it. Cruz has been making life difficult for the White House behind the scenes.
And that’s why it’s a good thing. This week’s outcome of the months-long debacle in Congress over the Epstein files, coming to a head after Republicans saw a Democratic blowout at the polls two weeks ago, underscores that Trump is a lame duck.
The dam burst, as Republicans rushed to vote to force the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files. We have not seen a president rebuked like this in ions, with a veto-proof majority that was nearly unanimous in the House and Senate.
Sure, Trump jumped on the bandwagon and told Republicans to vote for it, but only after he saw he was going to lose big. He could release the files at any time, and didn’t need a bill. He signed the bill — which he had to do, or face that veto-proof majority — with no cameras, nor with the victims by his side, announcing it on Truth Social in the dead of night.
Trump was forced to do something he was loath to do. It doesn’t mean the files will be released, as he’ll go to Plan B or Plan C, working with the DOJ to block them or strip out anything in them about him. While that’s not good for the victims who want justice, any further stonewalling will just keep the story out there. It will never go away, and will continue to bring Trump down.
Trump is the lamest of ducks, as Republicans in states like Indiana now defy his orders to redistrict and further gerrymander. And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (D-GA) went for broke and created a huge clash with Trump. She was the most high-profile deep, dark MAGA figure to break with him, taking a gamble that it would work for her. And it did.
Trump finally exploded and called her a “traitor” — which is rich for so many reasons, including that she’s used that word against so many others — inspiring violent threats against her. None of us knows MTG’s true motives. On Friday, she dropped the stunning news that she would resign from Congress in January. There’s been lots of talk about her positioning herself to run for president too.
Bring it on!
No, MTG will not be elected president. But the more the MAGA base talks about this rift and about other Republicans running for president, the more they show that they’re dividing and also looking at life beyond Trump, who’s dropped his threats — for now — of running for a third term.
Trump’s power over the GOP is slipping, and the Jeffrey Epstein debacle was really a massive exposure of that. NBC News reports that Greene’s voters, while they still support Trump in her blood-red, gerrymandered district in Georgia, also continue to support her.
Before Greene announced her resignation, NBC interviewed voters in her district. Trump had pulled his endorsement of Greene and threatened to back a candidate to primary her. But it doesn’t seem to be working:
“That’s not right. It’s not right,” Debbie Dyer, 60, said of Trump’s accusation. “She should not be seen as a traitor. She’s trying to do the best for the American people and I think Donald Trump should accommodate her and work for America.”
“She has a lot of courage and tells it like it is,” added Dyer, who lives in Dalton, near the Tennessee border, and works at a carpet company.
Trump was hoping the voters would choose between him and Greene, and choose him — his black-and-white world in which you’re either with him or you’re against him — but that doesn’t appear to be happening. This tactic always worked for Trump, but it’s now deflating.
“Some people are struggling with it. Some are choosing Team Marjorie, and some are Team Trump,” said Angela Dollar, a local Republican official in Floyd County, part of Greene’s district.
As for Dollar: “I can like two people who don’t like each other. My hope is they’ll reconcile.”
It seems highly doubtful that Trump is going to destroy Greene. And that’s a big deal.
Of course, none of us should trust or root for Greene, who’s been a vile force in politics, her recent pushback on Trump notwithstanding.
But if Trump no longer has the power to destroy Republicans by backing primaries against them — and as more of them learn that that’s true — we could see the GOP bucking him on a number of issues as we head toward the mid-terms, where Democrats have opened up a big lead in the generic ballot.(A whopping 14 points in one poll, and high single digits in others.)
Republicans are in disarray, with a civil war under way over everything from welcoming holocaust denier Nick Fuentes into the party to fears about the impact of Obamacare subsidies expiring.
The only thing uniting the GOP for years has been a fear of Trump.
But if that fear dissipates, the splits just widen, as they fight one another more and facilitate the MAGA crack up. And that is definitely something to root for.
- Michelangelo Signorile writes The Signorile Report, a free and reader-supported Substack. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism.
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These horrifying threats and acts of violence prove Trump must be removed
The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) governs the conduct of every person in the United States military, and applies equally to all ranks and branches, whether in combat, or not.
All service members are taught, and are expected to understand, its core principles. Ignorantia juris non excusat, or “Ignorance of the law,” is not a legal defense in the US military. Under Art. 92 of the UCMJ, members have a duty to obey all lawful commands, and they have a parallel duty to disobey all unlawful commands. Obeying a manifestly illegal order, like an order to target civilians, can expose a service member to criminal liability.
The duty to disobey manifestly illegal orders is a cornerstone of international law, with foundations in Nazi atrocities-related post-WWII trials like Nuremberg. Orders of such nature that their unlawfulness is clear and obvious, such as an order to target unarmed civilians, are considered manifestly illegal.
Manifestly illegal orders
Donald Trump has ordered the summary execution of at least 83 people so far in strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth call these targets “narco-terrorists” because they think that means they can treat them as enemy combatants in a war that does not exist.
It doesn’t. Even if the victims were “narco-terrorists,” for which Trump has provided zero evidence, at worst, they are citizen criminals entitled to interdiction and legal process under US and international law.
No country has the right to execute non-combatant civilians unless faced with imminent threat, otherwise unhinged leaders could shoot people for sport, which Trump’s snuff videos are chillingly starting to resemble.
International condemnation of Trump’s campaign is growing, along with a global chorus accusing him of murder that would be louder if Trump weren’t threatening foreign trade like a mob boss. Formerly strong US allies, including the UK, Colombia, and the Netherlands, have either refused or suspended related intelligence sharing with the US. Military support groups are starting to talk in earnest, offering counseling and advice on what to do when faced with illegal order situations.
Calls to execute US lawmakers
Against this legal framework, the President of the United States has called for the prosecution, conviction, and death penalty for federal legislators, for reminding military personnel that they must follow the UCMJ. After Democratic legislators, all veterans of Intelligence or the US military, released a video reminding members of their duty to disobey illegal orders, Trump came unglued, unleashing a series of posts confirming that he is a danger to all Americans and unfit to lead the military.
Trump wrote:
"It’s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET."
"SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!" he added in a later post.
Eliciting stochastic violence, Trump then reposted other posts calling the lawmakers "traitors" and "domestic terrorist Democrats" and another reading, "HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!"
Trump is criminally insane. What are officials waiting for to remove him?
The evidence that Trump is unfit to lead, and is a metastasizing threat to the US citizenry, is objectively irrefutable:
- He is using the US military for domestic law enforcement, which has long been illegal under federal law
- He has openly turned the Department of Justice into a lawless political weapon
- He is sending armed, masked and insufficiently trained federal agents to attack people in their beds, at schools and churches, and on the sidewalks
- His closest advisors publicly encourage excessive brutality as his “War” Secretary praises “lethality” unconstrained by the laws of combat
- Advancing his violence toward the media, last week he defended the dismemberment of a journalist critic
- He has officially declared groups who oppose him politically to be “domestic terrorists” in clear violation of the First Amendment
- His administration has been caught lying about peaceful protestors threatening ICE agents in order to justify ICE brutality.
At the same time Trump is violating the rule of law at home, transforming the nation into an occupied military zone, his national security blunders have seriously increased the risk of harm from outside forces by:
- Sharing a plan of attack through unsecured sources
- Posting juvenile social media rants that gave Iran advance notice to move their enriched uranium
- Accidentally declaring part of Mexico as US territory now under US command
- Alienating NATO, demoralizing Ukraine, and supporting Putin’s murderous regime in Russia
- Claiming victory in Gaza even as both sides continues attacking on the other
- Selling fighter jets to Saudi Arabia despite national security warnings.
These cumulative blunders suggest he doesn’t care about long-term, or even short-term, risks to national security. For example, Trump’s plans to sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia ignores consistent warnings from national security officials that he will be letting China steal the American military’s advanced technology. Trump either doesn’t care, or lacks the cognitive capacity to understand, that Riyadh and Beijing have a formal security partnership.
“We will be doing that, we’ll be selling F-35s,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, because the Saudis “want to buy them, they’ve been a great ally.”
These facts trigger a duty to act, regardless of politics.
Federal officials, including his cabinet, and members of Congress, all swore an oath to follow the Constitution and protect the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Legal tools within their reach include impeachment and removal, Congressional oversight and the power of the purse, and the 25th Amendment.
This is not a partisan issue. America is in danger. Federal officials’ complicity and failure to act is now a dereliction of duty in deference to a man whose cognition is in question, who still has access to the nuclear codes.
- 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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This CEO knows Trump fried the economy — but he helped
The Big Mac has a big problem. According to the CEO of McDonald’s, fast food chains saw a double-digit dip in visits from lower- and middle-income customers in the first quarter of 2025.
The reason? He says we’re becoming a two-tiered economy, and lower- and middle-income customers can no longer afford fast food.
While the stock market is riding high and the Trump administration is slashing taxes for corporations and the rich, nothing is “trickling down” to everyday Americans.
Frankly, it’s a little galling to hear the CEO of McDonald’s complaining about income inequality, because corporations like McDonald’s are making the problem worse.
They pay their workers so little that many have to rely on food stamps and Medicaid to make ends meet — for which the rest of us pay in our taxes.
Meanwhile, their CEOs are paid roughly 1,000 times more than their typical employee.
Big corporations have a history of union busting, further reducing the power of their workers to negotiate a living wage.
Finally, they make the entire economy fragile. As wealth concentrates in the richest 10 percent, the rest of America can’t afford to buy enough to keep the economy running.
So what can we do about this? End the trickle-down hoax once and for all: Tax cuts for the wealthy make the rest of us worse off, not better.
Fight for unions. In the 1950s, when America had the biggest middle class the world had ever seen, a third of all private-sector workers were unionized. Now, it’s 6 percent.
Raise the minimum wage to $20 an hour (and higher for big corporations with billions in profits that pay their CEOs more than $20 million a year).
Bust up big monopolies with the power to keep prices high.
Demand corporations share their profits with workers, so that when corporations do better, their workers do, too.
In sum: Build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. Because if we don’t, we’re all cooked.
***
Please watch our video — and share.
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- Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
- Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.
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Even MTG sees this evil truth
The Georgia Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who on Friday announced her shock resignation from Congress, has been dissed and ridiculed by the left for years. Progressives mocked her lies, shredded her conspiracies, exposed her QAnon nonsense, and denounced her cruelty. And through it all she never once feared for her life.
She fundraised. She smirked. She gave speeches, traveled the country, and strutted through Congress like she owned the place.
But the second she angered the Republican base, barely 48 hours after she resisted Donald Trump’s demands and broke from the MAGA line, she suddenly feared for her life and needed private security.
She told reporters and the world on Twitter that she’d been warned about threats to her safety coming from Trump’s supporters. Death threats. Serious ones. The man she once called her political soulmate — Trump — had turned on her instantly, publicly labeling her a “traitor” and mocking her fear.
For years she thought she was part of the mob. Now she’s discovering Trump and his followers only ever thought of her as their useful idiot.
This is the difference that America and our mainstream media refuses to say out loud:
When you cross Democrats, you get a political argument. When you cross the MAGA right, today’s GOP, you get threats of violence. And not metaphorical threats: real ones. The kind of threats that force a sitting member of Congress to hire armed guards because she dared anger their god-king.
So let’s stop pretending this is random.
What Greene is experiencing now is the inevitable consequence of what’s known as “stochastic terrorism,” the weapon of choice for Trump and the modern GOP.
Stochastic terrorism means the leader doesn’t need to tell anyone directly to commit violence: he just smears his target, inflame his base, calls his target a “traitor” and “enemy,” and then gleefully waits for the most unhinged followers to “get the message.”
It’s like the infamous plaintive cry from King Henry II, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?“ that led to the murder of archbishop Thomas Beckett. The violence becomes “plausibly deniable,” but entirely predictable.
This has been Trump’s signature political method for a decade now.
This is how the Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss were hunted, harassed, stalked, and driven into hiding after Trump singled them out by name.
This is how the man who tried to shatter Paul Pelosi’s skull was radicalized.
This is how election workers, librarians, teachers, judges, prosecutors, journalists, and now Greene herself end up on the receiving end of death threats.
It’s how the January 6th assault on our Capitol happened, leading to the deaths of three police officers.
Trump knows how his words will be received. The GOP knows it. They’ve built an entire political apparatus on the expectation that some fraction of their followers will respond with violence.
This is nothing new; it’s the same tactic used by authoritarians throughout history.
- The Klan used it during Reconstruction.
- Fascist movements used it in the 1930s.
- Trump’s MAGA movement and his “bros” use it today.
You vilify your target. You paint them as an existential threat. You whip up your crowd. And someone will decide to “do something.”
You don’t need orders: you just need followers who believe you’re speaking for God and country.
Trump has mastered this, and Greene is now caught in it.
Our nation’s Founders warned us about this, over and over: just read George Washington‘s farewell address to the Nation:
“This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind … It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.”
They didn’t fear foreign armies as much as they feared internal demagogues who could inflame a faction into violence.
James Madison wrote that the “means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.” Washington warned that “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men” could exploit factions to destroy the Republic from within. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both warned that once a demagogue captures a faction, the people become tools, not citizens.
That is exactly where we are today. Take it from someone — me — who’s been on the receiving end of death threats like this for years.
One of America’s two major political parties has normalized violent intimidation as a form of political expression. It enforces loyalty not by persuasion but by fear.
It encourages resentment and rage and then pretends to be shocked, “Shocked, I tell you!” when those emotions spill into threats or bloodshed.
Remember when Mitt Romney told a confidant that he and other Republican senators were afraid to vote to impeach Trump because it would endanger their lives and those of members of their families? What’s extraordinary is that while Romney and other Republican senators wimped out, Greene stood her ground.
And now, as a result, even Greene has discovered what happens when you step outside the lines of a movement built on menace.
The outrage here isn’t that Greene feels unsafe. It’s that she finally feels what millions of Americans have been living with ever since Trump taught his followers that violence is patriotism and that critics are enemies.
The outrage is that we still pretend this is a healthy democracy when one faction uses threats of violence and the media pretends it’s normal.
The outrage is that this monster — which last dominated America during the era of the Ku Klux Klan — keeps growing because too many people in power are afraid to name it.
The outrage is that rightwing outlets keep feeding this beast for profit.
This must be confronted. We can’t keep ignoring the rising tide of political violence tied directly to Trump’s rhetoric and the GOP’s ecosystem of rage.
Federal law enforcement must treat rightwing stochastic terrorism as a real threat to national security.
Like with the Church Commission in the 1970s, we need hearings, investigations, and consequences. We can’t wait until the next shattered skull or the next Ruby Freeman or the next terrified election worker or, God help us, the next January 6th.
If Greene has finally seen the monster, good. Now, the rest of us can’t afford to look away.
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15 reasons the GOP's Epstein nightmare is nowhere near over
The House passed a bill this week that would force the Department of Justice to release what’s now known as the Epstein files. The measure passed overwhelmingly, by a vote of 427-1. Even before it arrived at the Senate, Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called for its passage by unanimous consent. He succeeded. The bill went2 to the president for his signature.
Donald Trump caved, but I agree with those who say this is not over.
Here are 15 thoughts.
- After all the fighting to prevent passage, we should ask why Trump is now going to authorize the release of documents in which his own name appeared so frequently that the attorney general determined that it was better not to release them at all.
- Mark Epstein suggested an answer. He’s Jeffrey Epstein’s brother. Yesterday, he told Chris Cuomo that Trump changed his mind over the weekend, and encouraged the Republicans to vote in the affirmative, because “they’re sanitizing the files.”
- Mark Epstein: “I’ve been recently told the reason they’re going to be releasing these things, and the reason for the flip is that they’re sanitizing these files. There’s a facility in Winchester, Virginia, where they’re scrubbing the files to take Republican names out of it. That’s what I was told by a pretty good source.”
- Mark Epstein denied the claim that the widely circulated email in which he asked his brother to ask Steven Bannon if Vladimir Putin had photos of “Trump blowing Bubba” is evidence of kompromat. However, “Jeffrey definitely had dirt on Trump,” he told Cuomo. “You could see in the emails. Trump could deny it all he wants, but it’s pretty clear everything Trump says is a lie.”
- Trump put intense pressure on House Republicans who are prominent voices within the MAGA movement. The House speaker humiliated himself many times over by refusing to swear in a congresswoman who was the last vote needed to pass the discharge petition. Over 1,000 FBI agents pored over as many as 100,000 documents in the Epstein case to redact each instance of Trump’s name. It was after that process that AG Pam Bondi decided against releasing them, triggering Trump’s current dilemma. If only the names of Trump’s enemies appear in the files once they’re released, no one is going to believe it.
- The bill requires, per Bill Kristol, “that the Justice Department make public within thirty days all the unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in its possession related to any of Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activities, civil settlements, immunity, plea agreements, and investigatory proceedings. It specifies that ‘no record shall be withheld, delayed, or redacted on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary.’”
- Moreover: “The authors of the legislation tried to make sure any exceptions were narrowly drawn. The attorney general can only withhold or redact information from personal or medical files — the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy — or information that would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution, ‘provided such withholding is narrowly tailored and temporary.’ The law requires that all redactions must be accompanied by a written justification in the Federal Register.”
- But, as CNN’s Jake Tapper said after House passage: “The legislation as it stands clearly says, ‘The attorney general may withhold or redact personally identifiable, information of victims or victims, personal and medical files,’ and any material that depicts injury, physical abuse, death or child sexual abuse, or jeopardize an active investigation or national security.”
- In these loopholes are the makings of a familiar play, wrote MS Now’s Ryan Teague Beckwith. Trump will pretend to be exonerated. That’s what he did with documents showing his collusion with Russia before the 2016 election, and that’s what he’s going to do with the Epstein files. Teague Beckwith: “If the report doesn’t prove the worst thing imaginable, then it proves Trump is totally innocent … We won’t know what is in the Epstein files until they’re released. But no matter what they show, we can expect Trump will say that they exonerate him.”
- There is one big difference, though. Back then, when the Republicans wanted Trump to get reelected in 2020, they had incentive to play along with his makebelieve. Things are very different now. Though Trump is selling the idea of running for an illegal third term, ambitious Republicans aren’t buying it. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie and others are competing for advantage in anticipation of the time when Trump is gone. So the GOP push for releasing the Epstein files can be seen as a fight over future party leadership. If enough Republicans believe his time is over, that might expose Trump to the outcomes of Democratic aggression: impeachment, removal, and perhaps prosecution. ABC News’ Jonathan Karl was right to say Trump seemed rattled. But he isn’t rattled by defeat. He fears what could happen if his party stands by and watches.
- Taylor Greene and Massie speak for the party’s conspiracy wing. Supporters of that faction wanted to see members of a Jewish pedo-cabal, which is what Epstein represented, brought to justice: arrested, tried and executed in what was called “The Storm.” They were not interested in whether Trump was incriminated. They didn’t believe he was until he triggered a crisis of faith in him. He may yet be redeemed, but that won’t depend on pretending to be exonerated. Trump’s redemption will depend on how much ambitious Republicans fluent in the coded language of antisemitism are willing to play along.
- Some liberals appear to be looking to the Epstein files the same way they used to look to the Mueller report. In doing so, I think they’re missing the big picture. Almost certainly, the Epstein files are not about something specific, like “Trump blowing Bubba.” They are about a capital-T truth. The Republicans know it, especially those who are attuned to the QAnon conspiracy theory. For them, the truth is that the Democrats are part of an evil, Jewish conspiracy against “real Americans.” All that’s needed to achieve “justice” is “proof.” Today, House Oversight Chairman James Comer said he will provide it. "If there's no Epstein list – and we want to find out if there were people that were violating the law and who they were – we'll have to construct our own."
- The Democrats must counter with their own capital-T truth, one that’s fundamentally different from the Republicans’ in that it’s grounded in reality. Specifically, in the testimony of every single one of the survivors of Epstein’s child-sex trafficking syndicate and the elite men who sustained it. Broadly, in the daily experiences of everyone living with the legal and moral consequences of an elite cohort whose corruption is so deep and whose impunity is so vast that we’re literally paying for it.
- “I was going to places like Johnstown, Pa., and I was going to places like Warren, Ohio. When I was there, the issue would come up about ‘the Epstein class’ — that’s what they called it. They said, well, are you on the side of the forgotten Americans or on the side of the Epstein class?” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) told the Times.
- The California congressman expounded on that Tuesday, saying the Epstein vote should be seen as part of the Democratic Party’s efforts to “build an enduring coalition around a vision of new economic patriotism that can unite the left and right. The elements of that are to rail against an elite governing class that has created a system that’s not working for ordinary Americans. And then to offer a concrete vision of how we’re going to prioritize the economic independence and success of those forgotten Americans, as opposed to … the Epstein class that has accumulated power and doesn’t play by the rules and has impunity at the expense of ordinary Americans.”
If nothing else comes of this week's vote, I hope it’s an awareness among liberals that conspiracists who fear an evil cabal doing evil things are mistaken only in terms of the identities of those who constitute that cabal. Otherwise, they are right. There is a real conspiracy against them – against all of us. And it's evil.
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Of all the shameful metaphors for the rot at the White House, this one wears the crown
This week, Donald Trump threw a lavish state party to welcome a brutal Saudi murderer. He defended the murderer’s crime, blamed the victim, and viciously attacked a reporter for asking the question on everyone’s mind: What about Jamal Khashoggi?
Of all the shameful metaphors for the corruption, ignorance, and rot presently infecting the White House, this one wears the Trump crown.
A brutal regime dismembers its critic
Khashoggi was a US resident and journalist for the Washington Post before it fell to corporate interests that now serve Trump.
Khashoggi was a frequent critic of the Saudi government. He frequently criticized the royal ruling family, not for their lavish lifestyles but for their suppression of dissent, their refusal to allow free speech among the Saudi people, and their widespread human rights abuses.
On Oct. 2, 2018, Khashoggi was murdered in Istanbul. He had gone to see about a visa for his Turkish fiancée at the Saudi consulate’s office, where he was attacked, strangled, and dismembered.
A recording made by Turkish intelligence agents in the building captured the whole gruesome ordeal: Khashoggi could be heard struggling against Saudi guards of the royal Crown Prince as his killing was recorded, complete with screams, the sounds of strangulation, then quiet, before a bone saw was heard dismembering his body.
US intelligence knows MBS ordered it
In 2021, US intelligence reports concluded that Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aka MBS, personally ordered the operation.
The US Director of National Intelligence supplied facts supporting that conclusion, including:
- Bin Salman’s total control of decision-making in the Saudi Kingdom
- The direct involvement of Bin Salman’s key adviser in the brutal attack, along with members of his personal security team
- Bin Salman’s stated support for using violence to silence critics of the Saudi government abroad, including Khashoggi.
US intelligence added that, “Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom's security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince's authorization.”
This week, despite these publicly available facts, Trump treated Bin Salman to an unusually lavish state reception, complete with military officers in full dress carrying both Saudi and American colors. As the US taxpayer-funded Marine band played, Trump and Mr. Bone Saw were treated to a fly-over of advanced fighter jets, samples of the 48 F-35 jets Trump already sold to Saudi Arabia, despite national security concerns that China will be able to steal the aircraft’s advanced technology.
Trump courts a murderer to line his own pockets
Trump’s personal wealth has increased by more than $3 billion since his return to office, largely from ethics-adjacent crypto schemes, foreign real estate deals, meme coins that have no value, and overt pay to play transactions. His lavish courtship of Bin Salman fits neatly into the same corrupt pattern, promoting Trump’s illegal, private, for-profit interests.
The Trump Organization has multiple, large-scale projects pending in Saudi Arabia, including a new Trump Tower and a Trump Plaza development in Jeddah, along with two other projects in Riyadh. These deals are publicly known; it’s likely billions of dollars more are exchanging hands under the table.
Trump is also in private partnership with the Saudi-owned, “International Luxury Real Estate Developer,” Dar Global. There's a separate $2 billion deal where an Abu Dhabi-based, UAE-backed investment firm used a cryptocurrency from the Trump family's venture, World Liberty Financial, to invest in another crypto exchange, profiting Trump royally.
And no one has forgotten Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner's, $2 billion private “investment” fee from the Saudis, packaged when Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) announced a $55 billion acquisition. Kushner’s fee is widely regarded as payment for providing political cover and guaranteeing Trump’s regulatory protection. After the PIF’s own advisors initially rejected the deal, bin Salman personally overruled them and pushed it through.
Trump didn’t mention these deals this week when he rolled out the red carpet on taxpayers’ dime, but claimed instead with trademark ambiguity that the Saudis were going to “invest as much as $1 trillion in the US.”
Trump endorses the unthinkable
Journalists around the world, not to mention Khashoggi’s family, had to endure the nightmare of watching Trump fawn all over Bin Salman. In every photo from the mainstream media, Trump couldn’t keep his hands off him, as if Trump were absorbing Saudi wealth through his fingers.
Tuesday, when ABC journalist Mary Bruce asked Bin Salman about intelligence reports concluding that he ordered the Khashoggi murder, Trump jumped in, answering for him.
“He knew nothing about it! You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking something like that.”
Trump then suggested Khashoggi got what he had coming for criticizing the government, saying:
“A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”
After sending this chilling message to his critics, Trump then attacked Bruce for being “horrible, insubordinate” and asking “just a terrible question,” dressing her down in garbled syntax before cameras of the world with, “You’re all psyched up. Somebody psyched you over at ABC and they’re going to psych it. You’re a terrible person and a terrible reporter.” He later demanded that ABC lose its broadcast license.
Mohammed bin Salman is condemned throughout the civilized world as a brutal pariah. Trump just spent a taxpayer fortune to rebrand him “one of the most respected people in the world,” to elevate and promote Trump’s own business ventures.
It is fitting that Trump committed this atrocity in a formerly dignified room now desecrated with tacky gold medallions. The Oval Office is now a bordello whose pimp is selling America to the highest bidder — and we, his trafficked victims, are letting him do it.
- 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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