Top Stories Daily Listen Now
RawStory
RawStory

This massive disaster laid bare a dire danger under Trump

On Nov. 26, 2025, in a quiet northern suburb of Hong Kong, an aggressive fire broke out in the middle of the day. The fire was unusual in its intensity and duration, consuming seven of eight high-rise towers in a residential complex. Despite the quick response of well-equipped fire trucks, the blaze spread quickly and burned for more than 43 hours.

Although the death toll is not final, at least 160 people suffered the most horrific deaths imaginable, with dozens so charred they may never be identified.

The ferocity of the fire has been blamed on a private contractor’s use of highly flammable materials including polystyrene foam boards placed over windows, along with substandard scaffolding netting that failed to meet fire-retardant codes. The buildings were undergoing renovations when the fire hit, and numerous fire alarms also failed to warn.

A tragedy like this gives pause, in part because it should have been prevented. Fire analysts say that more rigorous inspections, including thorough sample testing of materials used on higher floors, not just of easily accessible ground level floors, would have identified the use of non-compliant, cheaper materials before the blaze started.

Although the Chinese government will never admit any fault for the inadequate inspections and has instead jailed people for asking, it’s already clear that standard building inspections would have prevented the loss of life. Lapsed and loose inspections, and possible corruption, meant officials did not detect that flammable materials were used where they should not have been, or that fire safety systems were not functioning, despite residents alerting officials of these problems a year prior to the fire.

It’s also the kind of tragedy lying in wait in the US, ready to strike after Donald Trump's all-out war on safety standards and regulations meant to protect the public.

Americans in danger

Since his re-election, Trump has rewarded corporate donors by dismantling costly regulations they dislike. In the process, time-honored regulations and safety standards that quietly protected life have been gutted, setting us up for a Hong Kong-esque tragedy of our own.

Federal government regulations designed to protect health and lives include, in the broadest sense, workplace safety, transportation safety, food and drug safety, and environmental protection. Under Trump 2.0, each of these categories of protection have either been gutted outright, or are now so attenuated due to funding cuts they barely function.

Each federal agency with regulatory authority, including OSHA, the FDA, the EPA, and DOT, among others, has been significantly weakened with reduced investigations into wrongdoing and corruption, and fewer cases for failing to comply with safety and environmental standards. Trump has also imposed across the board budget cuts for regulatory enforcement, including inspector staffing across a wide spectrum of industries.

None of these changes will continue in a vacuum; other than ignoring climate change which is already wreaking havoc, we won’t know what other unenforced regulation will lead to tragedy until it strikes.

Under Trump’s profits-first-people-last strategy, the EPA has launched the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history. Trump dismantled EPA regulations protecting air, water, and soil, relaxed emissions standards for power plants, increased toxic vehicle emissions, weakened water protections, limited scientific research into the risks, and rolled back greenhouse gas reporting and soot standards, all to boost industry profits at the expense of citizens who live and work in those communities.

Trump also shuttered 11 OSHA offices in states reporting unusually high workplace fatalities, most of them Republican-controlled. Louisiana, for example, ranks the sixth-most dangerous state for workers in the U.S. It is also home to more than 200 chemical plants and refineries dotting an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River dubbed “Cancer Alley,” because of the high rates of cancer and birth defects linked to petrochemicals.

Former OSHA Director David Michaels said that with these closures, “enormous oil and petrochemical facilities with significant safety and health hazards will be inspected even less frequently than they are now.”

According to DOGE, the government will save $109,346 from the closures.

Blame game

If Hong Kong-type tragedy strikes, Trump will first block information about it, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt will call it fake news, and Fox won’t report it. Then, after the tragedy dominates mainstream media headlines, the whole administration will pivot to blaming Joe Biden.

But the danger is real, it is now, and it is not about politics.

Americans have lived for generations with barely-there inspections, leading to Cancer Alleys, occupational disease, dangerous products, collapsing infrastructure, etc. But now Trump has expelled almost all regulatory watchdogs in service to his corporate donors. Because less regulation means higher profits, corporate America is rewarding Trump handsomely in what amounts to quid pro quo.

In a functioning democracy, this would amount to criminal recklessness. In a rule-of-law republic, the resulting tragedies, when they strike, would lead to charges of foreseeable homicide.

  • 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.

This ruthless cover-up leaves Trump’s most alarming ambitions exposed

Donald Trump recently told reporters he’d have “no problem” releasing video of US strikes off the Venezuelan coast where two survivors clinging to the shipwreck were shown no quarter — executions that violated federal law, the US Code on War Crimes, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibiting murder.

But when asked about the video three days later, Trump denied ever agreeing to release it, claiming, “You said that, I didn’t say that. This is ABC fake news,” before pivoting to “whatever Pete Hegseth decides” to release to the media will be fine with him.

It was a safe punt. The Secretary of Defense has fought media access to the Pentagon like no secretary before him. Hegseth will keep spinning his “kill everyone” strikes, his Signalgate publication of war plans, and every other military crime he can get away with until he is stopped.

Ministry of Truth

Hegseth, a former Fox News bobblehead with barely-there military credentials, fights the release of any Pentagon information that he hasn’t choreographed.

In September, Hegseth announced a new DOD policy that essentially required journalists to get his permission before they publish. Journalists were required to sign pledges acknowledging that if they ask the wrong questions, or probe into department employees in any way that could elicit the wrong kinds of information, they could be labeled a national security risk, lose their Pentagon press badges, and be blocked from the building.

When Hegseth announced the change, credible media outlets cried foul.

The New York Times called it an attempt to “constrain how journalists can report on the US military, which is funded by nearly $1 trillion in taxpayer dollars annually,” adding that the public has the “right to know how the government and military are operating.”

The National Press Club echoed that with, “For generations, Pentagon reporters have provided the public with vital information about how wars are fought, how defense dollars are spent, and how decisions are made that put American lives at risk. That work has only been possible because reporters could seek out facts without needing government permission.”

Last week, the NYT put teeth into their criticism, and filed suit to restore media access.

Illegal 'prior restraint'

Hegseth’s reach for a “media oath” smacks of prior restraint, a type of government censorship before publication that has long been deemed unconstitutional. Several early cases examined when national security interests were strong enough to overcome First Amendment freedoms in times of war; during WWII, “Loose lips sink ships” reflected an awareness that advance public disclosure of military secrets could be dangerous.

But in 1971, the Supreme Court held that prior restraint on speech by the government is unconstitutional, requiring an "exceptional" showing of "grave and irreparable" danger.

In The New York Times vs. the United States, the Nixon administration tried to block publication of the Pentagon Papers by arguing that publication of classified documents about the Vietnam War would endanger national security, necessitating prior restraint to protect vital security interests. The Supreme Court ruled that the public’s right to know outweighed the danger of publication, and that vague security claims aren't enough to censor the press.

In order to support an issuance of prior restraint today, the government must prove that publication would cause inevitable, direct, and immediate danger to the United States. In Hegseth’s “kill everyone” bombings, it’s hard to fathom how releasing video after the fact would jeopardize anything other than his own spin, as all victims are dead, their ships obliterated, and Trump himself repeatedly posts snuff videos of the violence.

National security risk

Blind to irony, both Hegseth and Trump have personally modeled why some military secrets should not be published, at least not in advance of the act.

In March, Hegseth’s Signal chat published US plans of attack in Yemen, including the exact time and location of the planned attack, which easily could have led to ambush or counter attacks costing American lives.

In June, Trump posted that the US knew where Iran’s enriched uranium was stockpiled, giving Iran advanced warnings to move it before the bombing began, which Iran did.

Both Trump and Hegseth seriously jeopardized national security by releasing US military plans of attack in advance, which no media outlet has sought the right to do.

Nonetheless, Hegseth’s new media restraints require Pentagon approval before public release of even unclassified information, because “unauthorized disclosure … poses a security risk that could damage the national security of the United States and place personnel in jeopardy.”

Press in MAGA hats

After 80 years of free press access to the Pentagon and military professionals who work there, Hegseth has granted himself sole authority to determine when journalists pose “national security risks.”

Based on a journalist's “receipt, publication, or solicitation of any ‘unauthorized’ information,” Hegseth has unbridled discretion to block, eject, and blacklist them. This amounts to authority to revoke reporters' access to the Pentagon for engaging in lawful newsgathering, which is an illegal, prior restraint to stop speech before it happens.

Hegseth has now replaced all credible media outlets with MAGA content creators, whom he welcomed to the Pentagon earlier this week for press briefings. These MAGA influencers, despite their lack of reporting or military beat experience, are the “new Pentagon press corps.” They include the My Pillow guy, nutjob Trump whisperer Laura Loomer, and Tim Pool, who was paid to produce videos for a company secretly funded by the Russian government.

All of them signed Hegseth’s required pledge.

  • 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.

Trump's attack dog is barking at the wrong leaders. He's about to be put down

In late November, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent instructions to US diplomats, directing them to sell Trump’s immigration policies to allies who don’t want them.

In a barely reported move, Rubio instructed diplomats in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada to start “raising concerns” about “immigrant crime” with foreign leaders, while encouraging them to adopt harsher entry restrictions.

Rubio’s directive suggests he is unaware that Canadian, and most European leaders, regard Trump as an undisciplined moron. Unable to read the global room, Rubio instructed American diplomats to “regularly engage host governments” on immigrant crime, and to “report back” on allies who seem “overly supportive of immigrants.”

The goal, Rubio said, is to build foreign support for Trump’s “reform policies related to migrant crime, defending national sovereignty, and ensuring the safety of local communities.”

The result, most likely, will be a collective eye roll.

Exporting lies

Trump, Fox News, and hard right politicians like Viktor Orbán have built their brands around fear mongering, portraying immigrants as dangerous criminals. But educated leaders outside the right-wing echo chamber instantly recognize these claims as false.

In 2024, the National Institute of Justice released figures comparing arrest rates between undocumented immigrants and native-born US citizens, tracked over a seven-year period.

The study found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born citizens for violent and drug crimes, and at a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes. For homicide, undocumented immigrants had the lowest arrest rates throughout the entire study, averaging less than half the rate of US-born citizens. Another multi-year study from Stanford shows the same, with immigrants 30 percent less likely overall to commit crimes than US born natives.

Studies in Europe show similar results. In Germany, where Elon Musk’s darling, the far-right Alternative for Germany party claims that “violent gang rapes” and “knife crimes” by immigrants are “skyrocketing,” media outlets' fact-checking teams showed those claims were false.

In early 2025, researchers found no correlation between immigration and crime rates in Italy, Germany, the UK, France and Belgium. The same results were reported in August for Canada and Australia.

Most importantly, disinformation is more tightly controlled in Europe, and the news media is not allowed to fearmonger the way Fox News does, so when Trump tries to export his playground bully diplomacy, members of the public are more skeptical.

Exporting economic failures

Setting aside perceptions, foreign leaders are aware, even if Trump is not, that his anti-immigrant push has hurt global and local economies.

In the US, no sector has been hurt more by Trump’s anti-immigration push than farmers. American farmers today say their No.1 challenge isn’t the weather, equipment costs, or even the mortgage — it’s finding enough labor. With more than 40 percent of American farm workers lacking legal status, people who used to do the heavy lifting are now staying home in fear while crops rot in the fields.

When ICE started raiding farms earlier this year, a large California farmer told Reuters that around 70 percent of the migrant workforce stopped coming to work, which meant “70 percebt of your crop doesn’t get picked.” She also said out loud what Trump refuses to admit: “Most Americans don’t want to do this (backbreaking) work.”

Although ICE’s effect on food supplies will take more time to assess, immigration policies that ignore regional labor requirements are a long-standing problem. Several years ago, the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association begged Congress to expand their accessible labor pool as the dairy industry faces “an acute national labor crisis” without immigrant labor. In 2025, farm labor, and the dairy labor crisis, have worsened.

Industry leaders in Europe say the same. Migrant workers are as crucial to construction, hospitality, and agriculture in the EU as they are in the US. Immigrants in Europe also comprise over 50 percent of the skilled workforce in technology. Overall, immigrant labor has become more crucial, not less, as Europe faces declining population trends.

Bad timing

Emphasizing foreign “sovereignty” in their anti-immigrant efforts, Rubio and Trump somehow miss that exporting Trump’s xenophobia, and dictating its ignorant spread, doesn’t respect our allies’ sovereignty, it offends it.

Trump and Rubio seem to project their own Fox News-based myopia onto the world, assuming foreign audiences accept their fact-free propaganda as blindly as MAGA does. But they don’t. Fox couldn’t hack the UK’s accuracy-in-the-news legal requirement and stopped trying to broadcast there several years ago. In result, EU audiences are better equipped to discern fact from fiction than far-right audiences in the US.

As the administration calls for a travel ban on entire countries full of “killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies,” Rubio’s timing could not be worse. He is pushing Trump’s hatred just when EU allies are credibly accusing him of blackmail, and South America leaders are accusing the administration of murder.

Rubio obviously misapprehends how little regard Europeans and Canadians have for Trump’s uninformed bellicosity. Poor timing on his immigration cable alone suggests our allies will soon start letting his calls go into voicemail.

  • 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.

Trump's lackeys just committed unspeakable acts for him — and they don't have immunity

The latest South Park episode nailed it: When “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth gets wind of a small Colorado town’s annual holiday race, he declares it an “Antifa uprising” and calls out the troops to crush it. While armed forces assemble their AK-47s, Hegseth struts around filming himself for well-coiffed social media content, unaware that his obsession with “lethality” looks unhinged.

South Park’s point, previewed during Hegseth’s shameful speech at Quantico, and his sophomoric tome championing war without rules, is that Donald Trump has reduced the US military to an absurdist prop so grotesque it raises questions of insanity.

After a series of US strikes in the ocean killed 87 people suspected of trafficking drugs, strikes properly assessed as murder regardless of whether people died in the first, second, or whichever strike, Congress is finally alarmed as calls for Hegseth's impeachment grow.

Strikes cannot be justified

Two days after the Washington Post first reported that Hegseth issued a command to “Kill them all” in a September attack on the high seas, which led to a second strike that killed survivors, Hegseth posted a juvenile cartoon making light of his own crime. Hegseth’s post depicted a chubby turtle standing on helicopter skids, laughing as he fires a bazooka close-range at boats below.

Aside from depicting the slaughter of humans as a children’s war game, Hegseth’s post also perpetuates a lie: Neither drugs, nor rifles, nor weapons of any kind have appeared in any of the snuff videos Hegseth and Trump keep posting to brag about the killings. To date, the administration has offered no intelligence or evidence whatsoever, other than Trump’s personal opinion, to support the claim that the destroyed boats were carrying drugs, arms, or illicit cargo. Even if they were, military law requires interdiction, seizure and process, not unilateral, on-the-spot executions.

Hegseth also claims the strikes are in compliance with the laws of armed conflict, and “approved by the best military and civilian lawyers, up and down the chain of command.” Except there weren’t any top lawyers left “up and down the chain of command” after Hegseth fired the top Judge Advocates General (JAGs) for the Army, Navy, and Air Force in February.

JAGs come back to haunt

The JAGS didn’t slink away quietly. After Hegseth fired them, they formed a watchdog. Former JAGs Working Group. now warning that Hegseth’s orders on the high seas “constitute war crimes, murder, or both.” They also echoed six Democratic lawmakers reminding servicemembers of their duty to disobey patently illegal orders, adding, “anyone who issues or follows such orders can and should be prosecuted for war crimes, murder, or both.”

After Hegseth and Trump appeared to throw commanding officer Adm. Frank Bradley under the bus, blaming Bradley, not Hegseth, for the second strike that killed the survivors, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt read a statement that Bradley’s conduct was “well within his authority and the law directing the engagement.” Except, of course, it wasn’t.

The administration seems to be arguing that the strikes are lawful, despite not knowing the identities of anyone onboard, because Trump has “determined” that the US is in a formal armed conflict with drug cartels. But Congress has not declared any such war, and one-sided orders to execute suspects do not constitute an ‘armed conflict’ under any military code.

The State Department’s designation of drug cartels as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” does not provide legal authority to execute them because the “imminent threat” rule limits lethal force to immediate threats to life. Trump/Hegseth’s assumption that these small boats: 1. are carrying drugs; 2. are destined for the US; 3. will make it that far; 4. without sufficient fuel; 5. will eventually cause deaths; 6. of some Americans; 7. who choose to use the drugs, does not support an “imminent threat” analysis under any law, for reasons that should be obvious from the string-along assumptions listed.

Guilt (and execution) by association

After the first boat strike on Sept. 2, 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the military could have interdicted the vessel, which is how the Coast Guard normally responds to drug vessels, but chose instead to kill everyone on board because Trump wanted to “send a message.”

Hegseth continues to parrot Trump’s “message,” posting recently, “Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization,” and, “We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists.”

It matters little which strike ended the lives. Trump’s legally suspect campaign of executing people based on a suspicion that they are smuggling drugs didn’t start with Hegseth’s order to “Kill them all,” it started with Trump’s assumption that the presidency makes him judge, jury and executioner.

Legal authorities rejecting Trump’s assumption include the DOD’s Law of War Manual; the Hague Regulations; the Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act; the Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibiting extrajudicial killings; the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and state and federal statutes prohibiting murder.

People disinclined to read the law but inclined to think the government can execute people suspected of committing crimes should consider: If a police officer thinks I am going to beat my wife when I get home, can he shoot me in the face before I get there?

  • 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.

The reason for these Trump failures would be funny — if it weren't so alarming

A kakistocracy is a system of government where the most unfit, incompetent, and unscrupulous individuals are in power. Such a system does not reflect rational decision-making. Instead, Trump’s kakistocracy is emerging as the consequence of systemic failures (by Donald Trump’s design), corruption (ditto), and societal dynamics (manipulated, but not wholly created, by Trump).

Malevolence may also be a factor. Outside his naked lust for power, profit, and retribution, Trump has shown little interest in governing. After DOGE trashed most federal services, the only departments left fully operational are Trump’s well-funded instruments of power and control: ICE/DHS, FBI, DOJ, DOD, Federal Bureau of Prisons, and the US military.

But as Trump seeks to grossly expand his reach through these entities, it is gratifying to watch his hand get slapped back, largely due to his and his administration’s incompetence, by federal courts insisting on the rule of law.

Sheer incompetence led to the dismissal of Trump’s pet prosecutions

On Monday, Judge Cameron McGowan Currie threw out Trump’s cases of political retribution against James Comey and Letitia James, after a parade of incompetence.

The cases were dismissed without prejudice when Currie ruled that Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was acting without authority when she obtained the Comey and James indictments. This slap came not for Halligan’s career-ending errors, like failing to present the complete indictment to the complete grand jury, misstating the law to jurors, or for doing Trump’s illegal partisan bidding, but because her appointment as the interim U.S. Attorney was unlawful under both federal law and the US Constitution.

The arcana of judicial appointment procedure may seem boring, even inconsequential, but what Trump tried to do with Halligan demonstrates that it is anything but. Judicial appointments are governed by the article II of the Constitution, and 28 U.S.C. § 546. Under these authorities, a president gets to appoint interim U.S. attorneys for a 120-day appointment. When that 120-day period runs out, the authority to fill the position then shifts to the federal judiciary, not the president acting through his Attorney General.

That shift is enormously consequential. It was designed to block rogue actors from appointing one interim US attorney after another, running through a roster of unethical lawyers willing to break the law by pursuing cases based on politics rather than law.

That is exactly what happened with Halligan.

Trump tried to install a revolving door of lawless sycophants

Judge Currie held that the initial 120-day appointment clock began in January with Trump’s appointment of Erik Siebert, the previous interim U.S. Attorney. Seibert’s 120-day interim period expired on May 21 but the district court judges, following federal law, reappointed him to serve until the vacancy was filled. Trump then nominated him for the full-term position, so he continued to serve.

However, in September, Siebert refused Trump’s request that he pursue criminal charges against Trump’s political enemies, Comey and James. Trump loyalists claimed James falsified property records to receive better loan terms, and that Comey made a false statement to Congress, despite the lack of evidence. Seibert spent five months investigating but ultimately determined there was not enough evidence to proceed with either case. (When Fair Housing officials agreed in internal memos that James committed no crime, they were dismissed.)

Because Seibert refused to pursue unethical and unsupported indictments, Trump wanted to fire him, but Seibert beat him to the punch and resigned. At that point, AG Pam Bondi backdoor-installed Halligan as Seibert’s replacement, but that decision was up to the courts, not Trump. Because Halligan was not legally appointed to serve as interim US attorney, the court ruled that she had no authority to pursue the Comey and James indictments and threw them out.

Trump’s legal clowns keep dropping balls they shouldn’t be juggling

When Seibert said no, he wouldn’t risk his law license to pursue Trump’s wet dream prosecutions unsupported by law, he wrote a “declination memo,” a standard memo outlining the reasons why. That memo featured prominently in a related hearing that revealed yet another lawless DOJ move.

DOJ counsel refused to answer another judge's simple “yes or no” question about whether Seibert wrote such a memo. When Judge Michael Nachmanoff got irritated by the DOJ lawyer’s cagey responses, he pressed until the lawyer finally admitted the reason for his reticence: Because Todd Blanche, Trump’s Deputy Attorney General, instructed him not to admit the declination memo existed.

Federal trial attorneys know that lying by omission to a federal judge, or a lack of candor in response to any judge’s inquiry, if proved, is grounds for disbarment. I’ll go out on a limb here and predict that many of Trump’s DOJ lawyers will find alternative careers when Trump leaves office.

In the meantime, these dismissals are gratifying because they prove that evil intent can be thwarted — trumped, if you will, by vast incompetence.

As a 30-year litigator, I know it is unseemly — unprofessional, even — to enjoy seeing a strident lawyer with more confidence than competence get her comeuppance for acting unethically.

But in this space, I’m a political writer suddenly laughing at the realization that authoritarianism can’t prevail here because it requires competence. It’s funny as hell and the schadenfreude is delicious.

  • 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.

Trump's plan made these troops sitting ducks

Back in August, a publication written by and for US military members groused about the danger of National Guard troops performing lawn care in the nation’s capital.

Credibly ranked as having no political bias, The Military Times observed that the real threat to 2,300 troops deployed to D.C. wasn’t Trump’s imaginary “magnitude of violent crime” in war-torn domestic environs, but domestic assignments that rendered them sitting ducks.

Military analysts had warned for months that such deployments presented a “heightened threat environment” that was both wounding morale and risking the lives of enlisted soldiers. Uniformed troops gardening in the US capital also contradicted Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s focus on “lethality” and his “warfighting ethos.” After Hegseth announced that any activities that distract from lethality “shouldn’t be happening,” his rake-wielding fighters were mocked by foreign media outlets as “Trump’s lethal landscapers.”

Trump’s use of the military as Made-for-Fox News video props alarmed critics and supporters alike. Aside from sending troops into cities where they are not wanted, Trump’s politicization and purging of the military prompted a rare rebuke from former defense secretaries including Lloyd Austin and Trump’s own first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, who submitted a joint letter to Congress warning about Trump’s recklessness.

Military is legally and functionally different from law enforcement

For more than 150 years, for reasons easily traced back to the founding era, using military troops for domestic law enforcement has been illegal under the Posse Comitatus Act. Unless there’s an insurrection or rebellion, two specific words denoting specific conditions on the ground, a president cannot deploy the US military to enforce federal, state, or local law. The Insurrection Act, widely understood to be an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, also requires specific conditions on the ground such as rebellion or an extreme level of violence necessitating military assistance.

Despite the clarity of federal law, Trump has sent military troops to US cities in the absence of rebellion, insurrection, or widespread rioting, using a revolving door of justifications from “quelling violence in Democratic-controlled cities” and “cracking down on crime” to “supporting deportation initiatives,” meaning, to help ICE, which is another form of domestic law enforcement.

Whatever excuse he trots out, Trump appears to be doing his level best to cause violent rioting in the streets so that there will be insurrection or rebellion. He’s counting on it, even though most Americans do not want cities occupied by troops.

The US military is not allowed to be used for law enforcement, because service members are trained to kill. The military’s primary mission is to defend the nation against foreign threats. Combat-ready military forces are trained to defeat adversaries through readiness and weapons training on lethality, resilience, and mission readiness in hostile environments, prioritizing skills like weapons proficiency, combat tactics, and survival. In obvious distinction, law enforcement officers exist and are trained to enforce domestic laws and protect civilian populations, which is best accomplished through de-escalation, proportionality, and the preservation of life.

Simply put, domestic law enforcement and the US military differ in terms of purpose, training, mission and goals, and it’s both disrespectful and dangerous to confuse them.

Attacking the truth

On Nov. 20, 2025, a federal judge ruled that Trump’s deployment of the military to the nation’s capital was illegal, and ordered an end to it. On Nov. 26, still deployed despite the court order, two members of the National Guard were tragically shot outside a D.C. Metro station while on foot patrol.

After one of the service members died, instead of offering introspection or comfort, Trump lashed out, doubled down, and blamed Joe Biden. Referring to the suspect's origins in Afghanistan, Trump told the press: “There was no vetting or anything. They came in unvetted. And we have a lot of others in this country, we’re going to get 'em out.”

A reporter then pointed out that Trump’s own DOJ Inspector General confirmed the vetting, so why, exactly, was Trump was still blaming Biden? Trump exploded: “Because they let them in. Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? Because they came in on a plane along with thousands of other people who shouldn’t be here, and you’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person.”

Trump attacked the question because it didn’t fit his narrative: The shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was thoroughly vetted by both the CIA and the FBI because he previously worked with the CIA in Afghanistan, assisting in US combat missions.

Doubling down on lies won’t make us safe

Military advisers have long warned that putting American military members on city streets put them in increased danger. After the D.C. shooting, a member of the California National Guard texted the New York Times that he “knew that this would happen.” Having served six years in the Guard, the soldier said he and his commanders worried that the assignment “increased our risk of us shooting civilians or civilians taking shots at us.”

Instead of rethinking the obvious danger of putting military troops on US street corners, Trump has decided to double down by deploying 500 more troops to D.C., and stopping immigration entirely from poor nations. DHS announced further that, “The Trump administration is also reviewing all asylum cases approved under the Biden administration.”

Except, as Reuters pointed out, Lakanwal wasn’t granted asylum by Biden. He was granted asylum, this year, by the Trump administration.

  • 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.

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.

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:

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:

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.

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.



This startling new clue changes everything about Epstein's death

Now we have learned that Jeffrey Epstein was trying to leverage dirt on Trump when he “committed suicide” in a federal jail under Trump’s control, am I a conspiracist for pivoting backward, wondering how Epstein really died? And what does it say that I care more about atrocities Trump will commit in order to change national headlines than I care about how Epstein died?

Trump has already demonstrated his capacity for murder. Military analysts have written extensively about Trump’s summary execution of people in fishing boats. The proper term, under the US Code of Military Justice, the UN Charter, and the International Criminal Court, is “murder.”

So I guess that reality — Trump’s extrajudicial killings, aka murder — was already top of mind when I learned that Epstein was getting ready to spill the beans on Trump, and Trump likely knew it, before Epstein died under suspicious circumstances.

Epstein was shopping dirt

The House Oversight Committee has released 23,000 pages of correspondence maintained by Epstein’s estate, which is only a portion of the complete file. Salacious details will likely keep peppering the headlines as thirsty staffers read each page, or, more accurately, scan those pages into AI with a command to “select key words and phrases.” But it’s already clear that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were thinking hard about the best way to turn on Trump, and how to capitalize on whatever dirt they had on him.

By now, most people have seen Epstein’s 2011 email to Maxwell about Trump not “barking.”

After Epstein had been under criminal investigation for several years, an investigation that grew legs as more victims came forward and high profile “clients” were named, he wrote to Maxwell, “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump. [Victim’s name] spent hours at my house with him.”

Maxwell, obviously aware of Epstein’s meaning, replied, “I have been thinking about that…”

Several years later, still shopping his dirt, Epstein asked a reporter, would you like to have “photos of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen?”

Epstein also turned to journalist Michael Wolff for advice on how to hurt Trump. A few months after Trump announced his first run for president, Wolff advised Epstein that he should just let Trump “hang himself.”

Wolff wrote, “If (Trump) says he hasn’t been on (the Lolita Express) or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win (the presidency) you could save him, generating a debt.”

Trump had to know

Trump knew his friend was a pedophile, but that’s old news. Trump said publicly in 2002 that Epstein “was fun,” and liked girls “on the younger side.” There’s no nuance here. Epstein was a pedophile. Trump knew it. They remained close nonetheless, until they didn’t.

Epstein was sentenced in 2008, but served only 18 months under a sweetheart deal arranged by Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, who later became Trump’s labor secretary. But Epstein was arrested again 10 years later, after the Miami Herald published Perversion of Justice, about the leniency Acosta showed.

That year, Epstein emailed one of his lawyers, Reid Weingarten, and asked him to dig into Trump’s finances, specifically Trump’s mortgage on Mar-a-Lago and a $30 million loan. Accusations of money laundering and other suspicious high-dollar real-estate transactions have followed Trump for years. Epstein said Trump’s finances were “all a sham” years before Trump was found guilty of fraud.

Epstein eventually tried to get Vladimir Putin involved. After Trump became president, before he met Putin in Helsinki in 2018, Epstein tried to get a message through to Russia: If you want to understand Trump, you need to talk to me.

Did Trump decide enough’s enough?

By spring 2019, Trump’s DOJ was building another criminal case against Epstein. Knowing what we know now about Trump’s perversion of the DOJ into his own personal pitbull, it’s likely the DOJ was asking questions and feeding Epstein’s accusations back to Trump.

That fall, Epstein was confined at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, which was under the direct control of Trump’s Federal Bureau of Prisons. On August 10, prison guards found Epstein dead in his cell. Federal investigators concluded he killed himself by hanging.

People who knew Epstein said it was impossible for him to have committed suicide. The physical proofs seem to support that claim:

  • A forensic pathologist hired by Epstein's brother, Dr. Michael Baden, noted multiple fractures in the hyoid bone and thyroid cartilage of Epstein’s neck, and concluded they were more indicative of homicidal strangulation than suicide by hanging.
  • Reports and photos from Epstein's jail cell indicate that both his mattress and his body had been moved before FBI investigators arrived, and basic forensic tests were not conducted.
  • Crucial surveillance video footage taken outside Epstein's cell at the time he died either went missing, was recorded over, or came from feeds other than the camera pointed at Epstein’s cell door.

Fear factor

Now Epstein is back in the headlines, Trump is again bullying Republicans into looking the other way. Trump warned on Wednesday: “Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that (Epstein hoax) trap.”

In February, Rep. Eric Swalwell, (D-CA), said Republicans were “terrified” of crossing Trump, and it was not as simple as being afraid of being primaried: “It’s their personal safety” they fear for, with their spouses saying, “We will have to hire around-the-clock security” (if you cross Trump).

In April, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) confirmed Swalwell’s comments, and that US senators have genuine fear of Trump.

The evidence matches the hunch. Trump has killed 66 people so far, that we know of. Sixty-six people on fishing boats have been murdered without legal process, murdered without evidence of crimes. That Trump calls them “Narco-terrorists” and “unlawful combatants” offers cold comfort, given Trump has also issued an Executive Order labelling all Americans who dislike him “domestic terrorists.”

Whatever new atrocities Trump has planned for Americans, he is obviously pre-selling his narrative, getting his Proud Boys riled up. Whatever his plans, they will be executed miles away from due process and the rule of law, just like Epstein’s life and death and 66 people buried at sea.

  • 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.

Dark motive behind Trump maneuver revealed in ominous court filing

On Monday, the Trump administration submitted arguments to the Supreme Court claiming that no court — including the Supreme Court — can question Trump’s decision to deploy military troops against US cities.

Trump lawyers wrote that “the President’s determination to call up the National Guard is a core exercise of his power as Commander in Chief over military affairs, based on an explicit delegation from Congress. That determination is not judicially reviewable at all; at minimum, it is entitled to extremely deferential review, under which (Trump’s deployment) should be upheld.”

Claiming Trump called up the National Guard in Chicago “in light of the violent, organized resistance” ICE agents face, Trump attorneys insist his decision is not subject to judicial review, citing a case from 1827 that they apparently have not read.

Martin v. Mott arose from the War of 1812, and held that military subordinates could not second guess a president’s judgment about military threats. Although it is often mis-cited, Martin did not even discuss judicial review, much less hold that no court can ever review a president’s decision.

Americans don’t want this

Most Americans have a strong moral resistance to military intrusion into civilian affairs. An easy majority of Americans today, across party lines, oppose sending military troops into US cities in the absence of a foreign threat.

Our resistance can be traced back to the Revolutionary War. After living under the tyranny of King George III, whose hated armed troops ate their food and slept in quarters they were forced to provide, colonists held a widespread fear of a national standing army, because it threatened individual liberty and the sovereignty of the separate states. Because of that distrust, the founders carefully apportioned responsibility over the “militia” — today’s National Guard — between the federal government and the States.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 15 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress, not the president, the power to call forth the National Guard “to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.” That foundational authority in turn supports Title 10 USC 12406, which allows a president to call forth the militia but only under specific, statutorily defined circumstances. It also supports the Posse Comitatus Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1385, which forbids the use of any part of the federal armed forces to execute laws, except where “expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress,” reflecting “the deeply rooted and ancient opposition in this country to the extension of military control over civilians.”

Exaggerated threats

Trump officials, with daily assistance from Fox News, report extreme violence among ICE protestors, significantly more violence than eyewitnesses, or state and local law enforcement officers, have observed.

Trump lawyers claim ICE agents “are facing incessant violent resistance on the streets of Illinois — including ambushes where their vehicles are rammed by trucks and dangerous projectiles are thrown at them, potentially motivated by bounties placed on their heads by violent gangs and transnational cartels. Federal agents faced with such threats and violence — in Chicago and elsewhere— operate, on a daily basis, in a climate of fear for their lives and safety, forced constantly to focus on self-defense and protection instead of executing federal law.”

It is no surprise that eyewitness accounts largely dispute these claims, often with video evidence. Examples of disputed ICE claims include:

To date, there is no known case addressing what happens when an unhinged president deliberately escalates violence and civil unrest in order to feel powerful/beat his chest/justify siccing the military on US citizens.

'Regular forces'

The Ninth and Seventh Circuit Appellate courts have addressed Trump’s National Guard deployments into US cities. Both appellate courts rejected Trump’s argument that military deployments are not reviewable, noting that the statute’s plain text lists specific predicate conditions before a president can deploy the National Guard, and “nothing in the text … makes the President the sole judge of whether these preconditions exist.”

The Ninth Circuit decision is awaiting full en banc review, while the Seventh Circuit concluded that facts on the ground weren’t what ICE said they were. The Seventh Circuit decision is now before the US Supreme Court, which recently directed the parties to file supplemental brief letters on the meaning of 10 USC 12406(3), which allows a president to call up the National Guard when he is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”

Trump’s belief that his deployment of military forces is immune from judicial review is ominous, given his demonstrated lust for violence against unarmed people. His sinister plans for Americans who don’t support him, now officially labeled “domestic terrorists,” will depend greatly on whether the Supreme Court checks him with this case.

  • 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.

This law could force Fox News to flee the US

In 2021, following MAGA’s J6 storming of the US Capitol, media columnist Margaret Sullivan observed that such orchestrated violence could not have happened without Fox News. She wrote, “The mob that stormed and desecrated the Capitol … could not have existed in a country that hadn’t been radicalized by the likes of [Fox News hosts] Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, and swayed by biased news coverage.”

Fox News didn’t deny that it platformed Trump’s stolen election claims after knowing them to be false, nor could it after Dominion Voting brought the receipts. In the run up to J6, Fox anchors laughed to each other that Trump’s and his supporters’ election claims were “ludicrous” and “totally off the rails”(Tucker Carlson); “F’ing lunatics” (Sean Hannity); “Nuts” (Dana Perino); “Complete BS” (Fox Producer); “Kooky” (Maria Bartiromo); “Mind Blowingly Nuts” (Fox VP); and that, “There is NO evidence of fraud. None” (Bret Baier).

And yet, to the American people, Fox hosts said the opposite, relentlessly, and kept at it until the manufactured outrage crescendoed in the J6 attack.

Fox is normalizing and selling Trump’s police state

In 2025, Fox is at it again, this time parroting Trump’s false claims about immigrants, crime, and ICE. As Trump’s masked agents commit widely documented atrocities in Democrat-run cities, Fox hosts call ICE protesters “domestic terrorists,” while platforming false claims that ICE officers have “federal immunity“ for their crimes.

Last week, when Kristi Noem claimed that “No American citizens have been arrested or detained” by ICE agents, Fox News and affiliates ran the entire segment with no fact checks and no clarification. It is well publicized and well known that more than 170 American citizens have, in fact, been tackled, arrested and detained illegally by Noem’s ICE agents. When Fox showed a masked, male agent slamming a 5-foot-tall woman onto the concrete, Fox’s Laura Ingraham ran the clip praising ICE’s excessive violence with, “good job.”

By ignoring (or encouraging) ICE brutality, while overstating threats against federal agents, Fox News is, once again, radicalizing viewers with falsehoods.

Fox is also normalizing a police state, grooming the public to welcome the specter of Trump’s secret police in their daily lives. As Trump gears up to invade and oppress citizens in every state with "quick reaction forces" trained to control "civil disturbances" that Trump himself will cause, Fox News will, yet again, be an accomplice to the criminal violence. Only this time, far more than 5 people are likely to die.

Fox has an outsize megaphone

Fox News is the most-watched news channel in the US. It has consistently led the charts in both total viewers and key demographics, over competitors like MSNBC, CNN, and broadcast networks such as ABC and NBC.

In 2020, Pew Researchers found that Fox News viewers are far less likely to diversify their news sources, compared to viewers of other outlets. As a result, a significant portion of the American public consumes unfiltered, un-factchecked Trump propaganda all day, every day. Small wonder we are a nation so dangerously divided. Small wonder that how people feel about ICE depends on where they get their news.

Trump and his rightwing echo chamber specialize in manipulating an uninformed public by fomenting and amplifying hatred. Hatred, of course, sells. But when charismatic leaders pair hatred with a manufactured fear of “other,” unspeakable atrocities follow.

Fox News couldn’t spread lies in the UK, so they left

Before it was repealed in 1987, US broadcast media operated under the Fairness Doctrine, an FCC rule that required stations to be both balanced and fair. Since its repeal, the U.S. has grown significantly more polarized, a trend supported by multiple studies and metrics.

Today, with Trump illegally threatening the US media Putin-style, American audiences are increasingly turning to British news sources like the BBC for accurate reporting. Independent analysis and media watchdogs agree: British public service broadcasters provide more accurate Trump coverage than Fox News. That accuracy is the by-product of strict impartiality rules enforced by Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator.

Several years ago, when Fox News tried to air in the UK, it could not meet that nation’s impartiality and accuracy standards. Fox found non-biased reporting so challenging that it ultimately chose to stop broadcasting in the UK altogether.

If the UK can require accuracy in the media, so can we

When media in the UK present partisan viewpoints, they are subject to England’s “due impartiality” and “due accuracy” rules, legal mandates that require broadcasters to present multiple viewpoints. The same rules require broadcasters to timely correct significant errors, prohibiting UK channels from serving up one-sided propaganda.

Under the UK’s Communications Act 2003, all broadcasters are also prohibited from airing ‘unjust or unfair treatment’ of individuals or organizations. On matters of major political controversy, the media must present a wide range of differing views on the same topic. Individuals and organizations facing reports of significant wrongdoing are given the opportunity to timely respond (a “right of reply”).

These are not onerous requirements; they are minimal, and, if shepherded by a bipartisan coalition in the US, could go a long way in reducing media bias on both sides. So far, attempts to introduce similar legislation in the US have failed, in part because there is no public outcry demanding it.

It is time to demand it. If we continue to allow propaganda to be sold as ‘news’ to unsuspecting viewers, ideological differences will deepen, legislative gridlock will continue, and political violence from Fox News’ homegrown radicals will continue to worsen and spread.

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.

Supreme Court conservatives are about to rain misery on MAGA

The tariffs case pending before the Supreme Court is one of those rare cases where, even as a federal litigator, I hope the Republican majority does the wrong thing.

Against the odds, I’m rooting for a Trump win. Not because I think that’s the correct legal outcome (it isn’t, see below), but because Trump’s disastrous tariffs, if sustained, could deliver a sorely-needed political lesson to Americans flirting with autocracy.

MAGA voters need to experience real and sustained pain in the pocketbook to learn the perils of electing a charismatic imbecile. The other cohort responsible for this mess, 86 million voters who couldn’t be bothered last November, needs to find out what happens when a felon campaigning on revenge and terror isn’t real enough to move them to vote. They may not care about ICE brutality, but they will care about soup kitchen lines when they’re standing in them.

The economic pain is real, and worsening, even after Tuesday’s election blowout. But if there’s any upside to giving nuclear codes to a toddler, it’s that Americans, myself included, are learning an abiding lesson: We’ve been taking our precious democracy for granted.

Trump’s tariffs announced our folly to the world

Trump’s haphazard and sloppy imposition of tariffs confirmed to the world that the US is led by a man who knows nothing about economics, who lacks an understanding of contemporary manufacturing. He has no idea, for example, that car manufacturers rely on global supply chains, using components sourced across multiple countries. If nine components come from nine different countries, taxing the assembling parts each time they go back and forth is asinine.

Because he lacked the curiosity or discipline to learn which US manufacturers would be affected by which tariffs, or which components would become prohibitively expensive due to retaliatory tariffs, Trump first proposed a lazy, across the board tariff formula that foreign media described as “insane.” He said each US tariff would be half the rate of the other country’s tariffs, with a 10% floor. But this was based on eliminating trade deficits, an impossible goal due to differing population sizes, differing economies, trade barriers, and currency differences.

The Constitution vests power to regulate commerce and tax with Congress

Tariffs are not all bad, all the time. Used surgically, they can help strengthen key industries struggling against imports. Precise, agreed, or reciprocal tariffs can also solidify trade partnerships in service to national security.

But even when tariffs make sense economically, which Trump’s do not, how they are adopted matters. The Supreme Court confirmed long ago that all presidential power must stem from either the Constitution or an act of Congress. That means Trump cannot just grab power because he likes how it feels on his fingers.

Plaintiffs challenging Trump’s tariffs before the Supreme Court point out that “Tariffs are taxes. They take dollars from Americans’ pockets and deposit them into the U.S. Treasury.” The founders gave taxing power to Congress alone in Article I of the US Constitution which vests Congress — not the President — with the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” and to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” Unless Congress clearly and specifically delegates that authority through valid legislation, it remains as written.

Why didn’t Trump involve Congress to begin with?

At the heart of the case, Trump’s attempt to usurp Congressional power over commerce offends the Constitution’s separation of powers, the lynchpin that holds the Constitution and the rule of law together. Because he lacks an appreciation for the US Constitution, Trump seems unable to comprehend the importance, or even the meaning, of the separation and balance of powers.

Having imposed the tariffs by fiat, Trump now claims the tariffs case is “one of the most important cases in the history of our country,” and “literally, LIFE OR DEATH for our Country,” claiming a Supreme Court reversal of his tariffs could “lead to another Great Depression.”

Economists say Trump’s economic incompetence could trigger a depression or at least a recession, regardless of tariffs. So it appears that Trump’s drama is an early attempt to scapegoat the high court for his own economic malfeasance, because he knows economic collapse is a real possibility.

Trump’s devout prayer for tariffs also invites the question: if he felt so strongly that only tariffs can restore the nation to greatness, why didn’t he pursue them the legal way, and get Congress to pass legislation? Republicans have a majority in both houses, why must he rule by tantrum?

Giving Trump authority to define “emergencies” is in fact a life and death matter

Following Wednesday’s oral arguments, the Supreme Court will consider whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) delegated tariff authority to the president and whether, under the major questions doctrine, the IEEPA did so with a clear Congressional mandate.

The most critical part of the case, as I see it, will be how an ‘emergency’ can be declared. The IEEPA requires an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US that constitutes a national emergency to trigger the president’s powers under the Act. Trump’s top henchman Stephen Miller claims that Trump’s declaration of a national emergency is never subject to judicial review, arguing that the president has absolute power in such matters and that “the judiciary is not supreme.”

It’s ludicrous that Trump would try to declare trade imbalances an “emergency,” given that trade imbalances have existed for decades. But far more consequential than tariffs is Trump’s dangerous assertion that he alone can decide when there’s an “emergency” triggering expanded presidential powers.

If the Supreme Court gives credence to this claim, granting Trump the authority to declare any “emergency” he wants, independent of facts on the ground, concern about tariffs, commerce, and the price of cars will seem trite.

If Trump can make up emergencies to expand his own power as he goes along, he will continue to murder people in fishing boats in South America based on suspicion alone, as his masked ICE agents at home start replacing pepper balls with bullets.

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.

This jolting reaction is a clear warning to Trump — yet he marches on

In December, 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was tragically gunned down in Manhattan after receiving numerous threats relating to his company’s denial of healthcare coverage. The shooter, Luigi Mangione, harbored hatred towards corporate America. In a rage over corporate profiteering that hurts the little guy, he shot Thompson in the back as he was going to a meeting.

While the violence was shocking, even more shocking was that a sizable number of Americans sympathized with the murderer rather than his victim. Public polls found that a majority could personally relate to Mangione’s rage over deny, delay, don’t pay rejections of private insurance claims.

What is clear is that Americans harbor pent-up resentment and despair toward private insurance. Ordinary Americans report ongoing battles with coverage denials, ballooning medical bills, and cumbersome appeals processes that drag on for months or years as insurers seek to maximize profits by minimizing what they pay.

Trump’s plan to privatize the federal government

Characteristically tone deaf to the wants and needs of ordinary Americans, Donald Trump is seeking to increase rather than decrease privatization of all government services, seeking to extract profits from heretofore not-for-profit entities.

Thanks to Citizens United, the disastrous 2010 Supreme Court case that gave wealthy corporations outsize influence over elections, Trump is indebted to hundreds of industry leaders from tech, auto, education, banking, arms, prison, healthcare, and fossil fuel sectors. Attuned to quid pro quo expectations, Trump is working out which government agencies to hand over to his billionaire donors, and which agencies should be shuttered altogether because they are unable to turn a profit.

Pursuant to the mandates of Project 2025, which Trump disavowed adamantly but disingenuously during his 2024 campaign, the Trump administration is actively seeking to defund many departments entirely. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) called it a tool of “creepy billionaires” who seem to get unhealthy pleasure from depriving Americans of the government services their tax dollars have paid for.

In service to Project 2025’s oligarchic takeover of the remaining agencies, Trump is targeting these federal agencies for privatization:

  • U.S. Postal Service (USPS)
  • Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
  • Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
  • Transportation Security Administration (TSA)
  • National Weather Service
  • Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage companies
  • National Parks
  • Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Handing agencies to wealthy donors

Trump and his billionaire cabinet are either unaware or uninterested in the fact that most Americans oppose privatizing most government services. In a 2022 survey, 85 percent of Democrats and 74 percent of Republicans said the federal government should play a major role, for example, in responding to natural disasters.

It also doesn’t take much imagination to envision national parks Disneyfied for maximum profit, or how Trump’s plans to extract resources like coal and rare earth minerals will affect America’s public lands and the remaining animals that live there.

In a 2025 survey, the vast majority of Americans also opposed privatizing the U.S. Postal Service, with APWU’s president noting that plans to privatize the Post Office “are about enriching Wall Street and not serving Main Street,” as privatization will lead to higher prices for postal services across the board.

Research confirms system abuses, other ugly effects

While some claim a profit motive could make some government services more efficient, research shows the harmful effects of privatization across a broad spectrum:

  • Healthcare: A recent study published in Annals of Internal Medicine examined outcomes at hospitals over a 10-year period, concluding that private equity ownership of hospitals resulted in measurably higher— 13 percent--death rates among Medicare emergency patients caused by corporate owners’ pursuit of higher profitability. Data illustrate that when hospitals companies cut costs leading to staff cuts, lower wages, and more patient transfers, more patients die.
  • Education: Research from the National Coalition for Public Education concludes that vouchers do not significantly increase test scores on average, and may even result in worse outcomes for students. Not only do many students’ test scores deteriorate when they attend private schools through voucher programs, research from the Economic Policy Institute confirms that vouchers also harm the quality of education delivered in public schools by diverting resources from them.
  • Corruption: Privatized corrections also introduce a new avenue for corruption. One documented example was the “kids for cash” scandal in Pennsylvania, where judges were bribed by a private prison company to give harsher sentences to juvenile offenders instead of probation, to order to increase occupancy at for-profit detention centers.

The transfer of governance to private entities not only consolidates power in private hands, but also erodes fundamental legal safeguards, including environmental, civil rights and accountability. We have recently seen how Trump’s private ICE detention centers evade standards of civil rights imposed on government-run facilities, resulting in cruelty and violations that remain hidden from public view unless someone sues, and even then, public disclosures may be limited by protective orders.

In his poignant Substack essay The Age of Bought Loyalty, former Wall Street healthcare analyst Mark McInerny observes, “What we’re seeing isn’t generosity. It’s the transfer of sovereignty from public to private hands.” To paraphrase the rest, when billionaires run the government, they aren’t patching a hole in the system — they’re proving the system now belongs to their class.

  • 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.

This startling act suggests Trump might be planning to flee the country in 2028

During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump disavowed familiarity with Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation plan for autocratic takeover of the US. That disavowal proved as truthful as Trump's promise not to disturb the East Wing of the White House.

Curtis Yarvin, whose philosophy punctuates the main tenets of Project 2025, supported Trump’s campaign because he thought Trump would overthrow democratic institutions and replace the presidency with a “Monarchist CEO,” who would run the country like a for-profit corporation.

Profiting from office like no other president in US history, Trump is well on his way. On Oct. 28, Forbes reported that only ten months into his second term, Trump has nearly tripled his net worth, from $2.5 billion in 2020 to $7.1 billion today, largely from crypto schemes and pay-to-play federal transactions.

Accumulating corruption

Last week, Trump announced a list of 37 wealthy donors funding his 90,000 square foot $300 million gilded ballroom. Donors include several billionaire individuals, along with data-analytics company Palantir, defense contractor Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, YouTube, Apple, Comcast, Amazon, T-Mobile, Chevron, Google, Hard Rock International, and Meta, most of whom have already seen or expect to see a surge in federal contracts.

In The Corruption Chronicles, Issue One compiled a partial list of other ways Trump has monetized the presidency by transforming it into a vehicle for his own private gain. From selling access to his administration to using foreign visits to attract financial support for his own businesses, Trump has officially turned his presidency into a for-profit venture.

Examples of illegal, shady, or ethically suspect activities to date include:

Billionaires can’t directly fund government agencies

After openly soliciting and accepting sums of money the corporate media is reluctant to call bribes, Trump most recently announced a $130 million “gift” to help pay military service members during the government shut down. Timothy Mellon, of the Carnegie-Mellon robber-baron dynasty, wrote the check. Mellon, who donated even more than Elon Musk to get Trump re-elected, is a recluse who opposes immigration and programs for the poor, while he supports deep tax cuts for the rich.

A long-standing federal law prohibits Mellon’s type of “gift” for several reasons. The primary issue is Article I of the Constitution, which directs Congress, not the executive, to control federal spending. Because of Art. I, a president’s ability to spend money or incur debt requires explicit congressional approval. The Antideficiency Act protects the balance of power at the same time it guards against foreign and domestic private influence over federal affairs.

Trump ignored this Constitutional constraint and seems to regard federal assets, including the armed forces, as his personal property. By letting a wealthy heir cut a check for the military, Trump circumvented the Constitutional framework under which both he and Congress are supposed to operate, and permanently sealed his contempt for Congress.

Project 2025 and the roots of Trump’s takeover

The New Yorker reported that Yarvin, the Project 2025 philosopher, proposed “that the U.S. government be replaced with a monarchy led by a ‘CEO-king’ that would have “absolute power, dismantle democratic institutions, and liquidate the existing government bureaucracy.”

But earlier this month, Yarvin lamented on his Substack that Trump hadn’t gone far enough, fast enough.

Perhaps Trump’s unprecedented 13 billionaires serving as his “cabinet” can read Yarvin’s lament and get to the part where he intuits that Democrats’ 2026 midterm blowout will bring a tsunami of legal reckoning. Yarvin is so fearful of what he calls “liberal vengeance” to come that he has publicly revealed plans to leave the country.

There’s also speculation that Trump and his enablers will do the same rather than face legal fire if Republicans can’t rig the 2026 midterms.

What really may be driving Trump’s private ventures abroad is his predator’s sense that his second coup attempt, like his first, will fail.

  • 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.

Copyright © 2025 Raw Story Media, Inc. PO Box 21050, Washington, D.C. 20009 | Masthead | Privacy Policy | Manage Preferences | Debug Logs
For corrections contact corrections@rawstory.com , for support contact support@rawstory.com .