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A cruel irony sits at the heart of Trump's holy war

When church and state overlap, brutality follows and justice bends with the whip. Blurred lines between religion and government produced the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, the Crusades, the Huguenot persecutions, and the brutality campaigns of the Holy Roman Empire, to list an easy few, all featuring sadism, torture, and bloodlust in the name of religion.

The centuries have proved that entangling religious dogma with state power always leads to brutal oppression. That’s why founders of our republic, who keenly understood the danger, wrote, as the very first Constitutional guarantee, that church and state would remain forever separated.

So when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and U.S. military commanders pressure U.S. troops to conform with their own Christian fundamentalist beliefs, they not only spit on the Constitution they’ve sworn to uphold, they beckon history’s darkest years with a blind compulsion to repeat them.

Armageddon in Iran?

Religious extremism has taken Iran back to the seventh century, yet somehow, even as Trump tries to topple Iran’s brutal theocracy, his own Christian nationalists can’t see that their own agenda leads to the same place.

Hegseth, a far-right Christian zealot with extremist views and tattoos, is now running the DOD and spreading a dangerous message. Hegseth airs monthly prayer meetings on loudspeakers and televisions throughout the Pentagon. Attending his prayer meetings in person is “voluntary,” but apparently listening to them isn’t. Hegseth proselytizes evangelical Christianity throughout the upper ranks of the U.S. military, so it comes as no surprise that his commanders are now doing the same.

Right after the U.S. and Israel started bombing Iran, several commanders in the U.S. military started framing the war as biblical, spreading the message throughout every branch. According to more than 200 complaints filed with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), first reported by Jonathan Larsen, U.S. combat-unit commanders urged officers in more than 50 separate military installations to tell U.S. troops that the war in Iran is “all part of God’s divine plan,” specifically citing the Book of Revelation on “Armageddon” and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

The commanders want U.S. troops to know that Trump has been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” While this may finally solve the mystery of why Trump took us to war with Iran in the first place, proselytizing — using the military to spread Christian nationalism — blatantly violates the Establishment clause of the First Amendment. It also propels the U.S. toward theocracy, just as we’re fighting a war in Iran against it.

Is it too much to expect such irony to announce itself?

A teachable moment for MAGA?

Life under theocratic rule has always been dark, and Iran is no exception. If Trump, Hegseth and his commanders took a moment to study their targets, they would know that Shia Islam law permeates Iran’s entire political system, and it won’t be easily undone.

In Iran, all laws and regulations conform with the official interpretation of Sharia (Islamic law). A body of clerics and jurists known as the Guardian Council reviews all proposed legislation for conformity with Islamic principles, subjecting all aspects of Iranian life to religious control, including the legislative process, judicial system, banking, education, commerce, the military, and politics whether local, regional or national.

Ayatollahs, mullahs, and clerics interpret the law. They do not tolerate differences in opinion. Under the Islamic Penal Code, adulterers can be publicly stoned to death. Women can be executed for showing their hair or too much skin, and any conduct that amounts to “corruption on earth,” including peaceful activism, is punishable by death.

Enforcement on the streets is carried out by roving bands of armed thugs called Morality Police or “Guidance Patrols,” radicals who enforce the rules, meet out punishment, and haul the accused away. Is a comparison with ICE, Trump’s own street militia, unfair?

Dissent viewed as heresy

Hegseth, Trump, and MAGA’s Christo-nationalists want to tear down the Constitutional wall between church and state because, like centuries of monarchs and bad actors before them, they think citing God’s “divine will” excuses their illegal conduct and adds legitimacy to their mission of oppression. Domestically, they have already begun to use extreme violence and the suppression of personal freedoms. If they are not stopped, torture and public executions will follow.

Trump is already seeking to outlaw political dissent, criticism, and opposition, just as Iranian extremists have done. He is also increasing Christian nationalist messaging throughout the White House, as Karoline Leavitt and Pam Bondi brandish crucifixes and Hegseth’s commanders claim God wants them to bloody Iranians.

It all looks like a sick dress rehearsal for when Trump claims the divine right to imprison (or worse) critics and political opponents at home.

Right after reports of American casualties in Iran started peppering headlines, Hegseth urged the media to stop “obsessing” over fallen U.S. soldiers, suggesting they focus instead on the “death and destruction” being wrought by U.S. air power. The ghoulish subtext: Troops dying in Iran is expected, and violence is entertainment. It’s all part of God and Trump’s plan.

For the rest of us, it’s also a real time illustration of why the First Amendment must be protected at all costs.

  • Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the Substack, The Haake Take.

Trump is about to get a brutal history lesson

On Monday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth held a press briefing to justify the war in Iran. Praising Donald Trump’s lawlessness, he said, “America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history … No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win.”

Aside from such dangerous hubris befitting a 12-year-old boy, the most shocking aspect of Trump bombing Iran without Constitutional or Congressional authority is that the administration’s “planning” does not seem to match or even appreciate the risks involved.

Many security analysts agree with Sen. Mark Kelly (R-AZ) and Trump that Iran should never be allowed to have nuclear weapons, because no state that exports jihadist martyrdom should have nuclear weapons.

But the precarity of attacking a nation allegedly only one week away from nuclear capacity demands precision and sober objectives, not saber-rattling or changing rationales tweeted at two in the morning. The Trump administration’s lax and lawless messaging suggests either chilling indifference, lack of discipline, or rogue intentions, all dangerous characteristics in the context of nuclear weapons.

Trump has not offered clear political or military objectives, nor explained how the use of force, at this time, is in our best national interest. Instead, Trump’s rationale for war keeps shifting, from immediate national security threats, to humanitarian concerns, to regime change, suggesting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played Trump to do what no other president was reckless enough to do in service to Israel’s interests, not our own.

Even the laudable goal of eliminating Iran’s nuclear capacity becomes suspect in light of Trump’s worldwide victory tour last June, declaring that airstrikes then had “totally eradicated” Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium.

On June 25, 2025, the White House released an official statement titled “Iran's Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated — and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News.” Either Trump was lying then or he is lying now. It’s never smart to trust liars on matters of life and death.

Anti-American sentiment

Human rights organizations reported that tens of thousands of Iranian civilians were executed in January for protesting their repressive governance under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He is now dead. Other than an estimated 15 percent of Iranians who support the Islamic Republic theocracy, no one will miss him, least of all families of people he tortured and slaughtered.

But for everyone involved, in the absence of a clear strategy, purpose, method, or plan for what comes next, the only reliable predictor of outcome is the recent past.

This is not the first time the U.S. has gone to war in the Middle East, seeking regime change. We’ve tried it multiple times, and in every case we have learned that the initial success of ousting a leader is not followed by the establishment of a long-term, stable, or Western-friendly alternative.

Instead, just the opposite happens. When we create a power vacuum, someone even more dangerous, more radical, and more antagonistic rises to power. In fact, Khamenei came to power as a direct result of the last time the US sought regime change in Iran.

Regime change efforts

Americans now slave to algorithms may have forgotten that we were responsible for putting the Islamic Revolution in motion. In 1953, the CIA and British intelligence organized a coup to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, who was democratically elected, because he nationalized the Iranian oil industry. (Sound familiar?)

After the overthrow, the U.S. reinstated Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who implemented such increasingly autocratic rule that the Iranians began to hate both him and the U.S., for putting him in power. Hatred of the Shah led to intense anti-American sentiment. The 1979 Islamic Revolution to get rid of the Shah ended with a new Islamic Republic empowering Ayatollah Khomeini and his extremist, stone-women-to-death-for-showing-their-hair clerics. We are now bombing Iran to topple the regime we caused.

History suggests we are also repeating mistakes from other Middle East interventions:

  • Iraq: In 2003, the US invaded Iraq under the color of a claim that it was developing weapons of mass destruction. The invasion removed Saddam Hussein, which lead to a power vacuum, sectarian violence and the rise of extremist groups like ISIS. More than 20 years later, Iraq remains destabilized.
  • Afghanistan: Following 9/11, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan to remove the Taliban from power. After a 20-year occupation and US-led efforts at nation-building, the Taliban returned to power in 2021, after Joe Biden withdrew U.S. forces.
  • Libya: In 2011, a U.S.-led NATO intervention was meant to protect civilians by removing Muammar al-Qaddafi. As in Iran today, there was no post-regime plan, which left a power vacuum and transformed Libya into a failed state of widespread misery, a current training ground for militant extremists.
  • Syria: Also in 2011, the U.S. provided aid and military assistance to opposition groups in the Syrian Civil War with the stated objective of pressuring Bashar al-Assad to leave office. He remained in control of much of the country until 2024, even using chemical agents against his own citizens.

The results are clear and consistent: toppling Middle East authoritarians has, in every case, led to the emergence of even more radicalized factions, resulting in more danger and unintended national security consequences for America.

In just over a year, while seeking praise as a “peacemaker,” Trump has authorized military action in seven nations. In Iran, we are once again ignoring history, this time under an administration that can’t seem to comprehend laws, norms, or nuance.

  • Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the Substack, The Haake Take.

This Trump goon's bizarre threat sounds like it came from a drunk guy on a barstool

On Friday, Trump barred an American AI developer, Anthropic, from doing further business with the federal government, and barred all contractors from doing business with Anthropic — an extreme punishment typically reserved for adversarial countries.

Anthropic’s crime? Refusal to let the Department of Defense use its AI system, Claude, for surveilling American citizens or in autonomous weaponry that removes humans from decisions to kill.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — the man who group texted attack plans to a reporter, wanted to punish an astronaut for stating the law, then shot party balloons with potent lasers despite FAA warnings that the lasers could blind pilots while they were in the sky with passengers — demanded that Anthropic let him use its AI system without contractual restrictions. When Anthropic said no, Trump blacklisted them.

It’s hard to say what’s more appalling — that the Trump administration is building tools for mass public surveillance like China’s, or that an undisciplined dry drunk like Hegseth has access to lethal toys.

Keeping up with China … in the worst way

Trump has said he wants to keep up with China through “global technological dominance” and the “widespread use of AI.” China’s authoritarian government uses one of the most advanced public surveillance systems in the world, collecting extensive facial recognition, biometric data, and personal profiles from private citizens against their wishes.

China captures these data from citizens’ faces, conversations, social media posts, phones and other devices while people stand at crosswalks, ride the bus, and go to the store, then feeds the data into an AI database used for oppression: for law enforcement, “monitoring social behavior,” and controlling access to services.

China’s system is similar to what Trump oligarch-supporting Peter Thiel’s Palantir is building, namely, a high-level data integration platform that will enable U.S. law enforcement, ICE, the IRS, DHS, DOJ, the military, and any other rogue agency Trump wants to weaponize to collect facial recognition, license plate readers, and other biometric data for mass surveillance.

Poor Pete, nobody believes him

There were clauses in Anthropic’s contract with the DOD that prevented Claude from being used for either mass surveillance of Americans or autonomous weaponry. While Anthropic had integrated Claude into some classified military networks, that $200 million contract expressly prohibited using it for mass surveillance of Americans as well as autonomous weaponry, “killer robots” that can identify, select, and kill targets without a human in the decision-making loop.

These were the contractual restrictions Hegseth’s DOD demanded be removed. But Anthropic wasn’t having it.

Just before Trump blacklisted them, Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei said the company could not, “in good conscience” agree to the Pentagon’s request. Amodei has expressed concern that Claude could be used for mass surveillance by automatically assembling “scattered, individually innocuous data into a comprehensive picture of any person's life,” which seems to be exactly what Trump is trying to do.

In a series of angry social media posts, Undersecretary of Defense Emil Michael accused Anthropic of “lying” about using Claude for mass surveillance because the Dept. of Defense “doesn’t do mass surveillance as that is already illegal.”

Apparently the DOD does do comedy, because the suggestion that this regime will follow the law is a joke.

Forget about the hundreds of court orders Trump has already violated. How many people have been murdered off the coast of Venezuela with zero legal justification? Claiming without evidence that we’re in an "armed conflict" with "narco-terrorists" is not a legal justification; it’s a dictator’s “shoot now, ask questions never” strategy for breaking the law.

What can the AI do?

Most Americans are blissfully unaware of how the emerging AI landscape could change their lives, and not for the better. Since I’m no AI expert, I asked Google AI to explain in simple terms how Anthropic’s Claude, if left to Hegseth’s command, could be used to spy on Americans. Here’s how AI described Claude’s functional capacity, verbatim:

  • Mass Data Synthesis (Sorting Huge Amounts of Info): Imagine a super-fast robot reading billions of text messages, emails, and internet posts all at once. It looks for "moods" (like who is angry or unhappy) and makes a map of where those people live.
  • Intelligence Dossiers (Digital Secret Files): Using smart computer programs to read thousands of pages of documents about one person instantly. It acts like a digital detective, putting together a secret file on someone's whole life.
  • Automated Tracking (Digital Footprints): Looking at where people drive, what websites they visit, and who they talk to. This combines records to draw a map of where someone goes, like cameras on streets tracking cars.
  • Law Enforcement Support (Police Tech Tools): Companies like Palantir create software for the police. This software combines information from cameras, bank records, and phone calls to track suspects and help police find them quickly.

The dispute has put Silicon valley on edge. If Trump and Hegseth can change the terms of AI contracts after the fact, why sign contracts at all?

The regime’s dishonesty isn’t helping. Before Trump blacklisted Anthropic, Pentagon officials said they had “no interest” in using the illegal surveillance tools outlined above, while seeking unfettered access to them. Color me, and anyone with half a brain, skeptical.

  • 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 fate is written — if you know where to look

I’m usually glued to the TV when a president, sitting justices, and members of Congress come together in one room — separate branches in one hallowed space, a time capsule played forward from men in powdered wigs.

I’m still blown away that revolutionaries from 250 years ago had the emotional intelligence to predict demagogueries of the future. The complex checks and balances they built, intelligent reflections on hardships long suffered, were nothing short of genius.

The drafters mapped out an interconnected web of limited government powers with one overarching goal: the advancement of liberty. Centuries before our intellects were stunted by algorithm, while living under a self-serving monarch who rejected the will of the governed, they wrote a brilliant roadmap for how to contain a destructive force like Donald Trump, a roadmap Republicans today have all but abandoned.

Everyone knew what was coming

But for this State of the Union, since Trump posts like an angry teenager about who insulted him, who he hates, and who he wants to “destroy,” there was no room for mystery. We already knew Trump would call the U.S. the “hottest” country in the world, his favorite metric-free claim signifying nothing. We already knew he’d bleat out that everyone was “winning,” with false claims about the economy and all the wars he’s ended.

Going into the SOTU, people outside the Fox News bubble expected all spectacle and no substance. Since that’s exactly what we got, what could anyone, including me, say about it that hasn’t already been said?

Clocking Trump’s nonstop non-truths, knowing that 38 percent of the country still supports him because all they consume is Fox/Sinclair propaganda, is redundant already. So this year, to commemorate Trump’s SOTU, instead of reaching for insights as the speech played out, I resolved to look within. I decided to meditate.

Meditating to transcend the noise

Before I turned off the SOTU, I cut the sound and watched in silence. Trump kept lying, evidenced by his moving lips, while Mike Johnson & Co clapped like trained seals. The quiet uniformity of their subservient expressions somehow made it more clear that Republicans are chasing raw power, and the journey, to them, matters less than the destination.

Disgusted, dispirited, and more than a little depressed that human evolution seems stuck, toggling two steps forward then 1.9 back, I turned off the TV, all the lights, and sat in silent darkness.

I started the slow breathing exercise that, with some practice, coaxes the mind to be quiet. Eckhart Tolle teaches that we are not our thoughts; our parasitic mind only wants us to think we are. Breathe in, feel the blood carry oxygen to the feet, toes, thighs, up the abdomen to the chest, arms, throat and face. Breathe out. After few of these, slowly, all thoughts, fears, and judgment about how ugly humanity could be subsided. In fact, all thought subsided.

In the quiet darkness, unforced and unplanned, I somehow found myself connected with the night sky.

Stars are our ancestors

In that instant I not only saw the stars, I was among them, weightless, fearless, and blissfully judgment free.

In that momentary flicker of grace, I understood that nearly every element in the human body — minerals, oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus — was forged billions of years ago inside ancient stars. We are literally made from the remnants of stellar explosions; when we crawled out of the sea we carried starstuff within us, the same DNA inside the fish we left behind.

Astrophysicists explain that every single atom in our bodies, including the calcium in our bones, carbon in our genes, and iron in our blood, was created in a star billions of years ago. Almost all the mass of our bodies — 97 percent — comes from the stars. They are our ancestors, the stuff of life. The science within them is our guidepost, not the barking idiot with access to the nuclear codes who, for whatever reason, sees his mission as one of planetary destruction.

We are bigger than this moment

The night sky serves up human insignificance, yes, but there’s a deeper message. Atoms that make up our bodies are over 13 billion years old. It’s a message of endurance and hope.

MLK’s metaphor for transformation, “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars,” hit me hard during Trump’s SOTU. America has entered a dark period indeed, possibly darker than we’ve ever seen. But it’s so dark our stars from 250 years ago are finally re-emerging.

Destructive forces like Trump will always live among us. Like random atoms, they will always be aggressive and loud, their malignant thoughts craving other minds to infect, their ignorant egos insisting they are special.

But the intelligence of the universe will always clap back. Even if Trump gets the bloody civil war he so obviously wants, it will be a pivot, a reset. Our democratic principles will remain, with adjustments, and liberty will eventually prevail.

I wish I could offer a link for this sudden certainty, but I can’t. All I can say is that it’s written in the stars.

  • 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 absurd spectacle provided a brief respite from Trump's horror show

Last week I watched the Attorney General of the United States sneer at the rule of law, and felt sick. I’ve been a federal trial lawyer for decades, and there was the titular head of American law defecating on it to applause from Fox News, who called Pam Bondi’s performance “entertaining.”

Our legal system has never been perfect, but pre-Trump, it was the best in the world except for the Scandinavians (who passed Americans on the evolutionary chart years ago). Stuck where we are on our slow-moving timeline, watching Bondi serve up contempt as surrogate for legal accountability, trashing the only thing I’ve ever believed in, instilled a grief I haven’t been able to name or shake.

Bondi’s refusal to answer basic questions from members of Congress who have a statutory duty to ask them confirmed that, through Trump, we have entered a state of wholly performative politics. A curated reality show played exclusively for Fox and right-wing media, there is no government accountability under Trump, only deflection. There is no substance, only content.

The administration refuses to address necessary questions, instead ambushing anyone who asks them, or delivering fanciful fiction. Hair, makeup and volume matter, substance doesn’t. This is the same fraudulent strategy that Trump, an economically illiterate man, used to sell his economics acumen to gullible Americans despite six corporate bankruptcies.

Reaching back to a better world

What Americans are experiencing as a result of Trump’s conman reality — extreme distrust, polarization, vicious cruelty meted out as content, is not normal. We can’t let it become normal, or we’ll start to believe this is who we are. It isn’t.

After watching Bondi’s congressional “testimony,” in search of a palate cleanser, I looked for comic relief in, of all places, the very uncomedic state of Florida. I was in Wilton Manors, the celebrated gay mecca of the south, and went to see a play written and directed by Ronnie Larsen, the celebrated king of gay theater.

The New York Times clocked Larsen’s rare talent for mixing raunch with research, while other critics praise his genius at balancing comedy with deep pathos. I was drowning in pathos, searching for an antidote, and I found it.

Only truth can deliver us from despair

Larsen did not disappoint. His absurdly funny semi-autobiographical story of a young gay man searching for connection made me forget all about Bondi and the s--t-show playing out across Trump’s America.

It harkened back to The Actors, the first Larsen play I saw in New York, one that turned me into a fawning fangirl. In The Actors, also autobiographical, a middle-aged man had recently lost both his parents and was estranged from his brother. He was so devastated by the loss, fighting despair and emotional isolation, that he hired three actors to come to his home several times a week to act out simulations of family life. He paid them to play games with him, share meals, and tuck him into bed, allowing him to remember feeling loved and the comforts of his childhood.

As heartbreaking as the plot itself was, parading our searing human need for love and connection, Larsen served it up with such soul-baring honesty it caught in my throat. Just when I was ready to break down from the familiarity, the recognition that we are all so vulnerable and at times desperately lonely, he’d break out a visual absurdity for relief: a kitchen cabinet stocked only with children’s cereal, a balding man in a Superman onesie. At all times, Larsen played himself as himself. At ease bearing his decidedly non-washboard belly, Larsen constantly says this is who I am. Unadorned.

The through line of a Larsen play is that when we reach soul-baring honesty with each other and with ourselves, flaws and all, a better and more dignified reality emerges.

Lies destroy; truth heals

After watching Bondi smack down the rule of law with deflection and snide dishonesty, Larsen was the medicine I needed. While this administration employs lies and obfuscation to dehumanize others, truth allows us to do the opposite, to see ourselves in strangers, to recognize their suffering.

Bondi delivered performative dishonesty where integrity was expected, while Larsen delivered integrity through honesty.

Bondi’s incompetence and failure — her sneers, her jabs, her dishonest refusal to acknowledge mistakes in her disastrous handling of the Epstein files, re-injured women who were trafficked and raped as children, commodities to a wealth class that will not protect them. It also dealt a severe blow to the American justice system, advancing Trump’s goal of dismantling it.

In his play, using only unvarnished honesty and humor, Larsen modeled a better way. He demonstrated the binding power of truth and reminded us that even in this hour of darkness, our better angels are still here.

Bondi’s performance marked how low we’ve fallen; Larsen’s showed us how to fly above it. Critics call Larsen a prolific stalwart of queer theatre; I call him a national treasure.

  • 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.

Panicking Trump proves he sees a real threat

The pattern is clear: Corporate billionaires who either own or are purchasing U.S. media are censoring content to support Donald Trump. Trump’s blatantly illegal carrot is the conditioning of federal contracts, mergers, licensing, tax and regulatory relief on partisan fealty. His stick? Threatening the FCC licenses of networks that criticize him.

In January, singling out left-leaning shows like Saturday Night Live, The View, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, Trump’s FCC Chairman Brendan Carr resurrected a long dormant “equal time” policy to issue new regulatory guidance requiring these shows to give “equal time” to political candidates in an election period. The rule was originally adopted in 1934, but the shows Carr is now targeting had been subject to a “news” exemption since 1959.

Despite declaring that the new regulations apply to shows “motivated by partisan purposes,” Carr is not applying them to Fox News, a blended news and entertainment network that runs 24/7 Trump propaganda. Nor is he applying them to uber-partisan right-wing talk radio, which the FCC also regulates. Instead, Carr is focusing on what he calls “left-leaning” entertainment programming.

Selective application of federal communication rules based on partisan leanings obviously violates the First Amendment. While networks could sue the FCC on First Amendment and misuse of administrative authority grounds, whether the Roberts court would rule in time for it to matter is another question.

FCC targets Talarico

On Monday, after either the FCC or corporate-owned CBS threatened legal repercussions if Stephen Colbert aired an interview with James Talarico, a Texas Democrat running for U.S. Senate, the taped interview was removed from the show. Whether CBS was directed to pull the interview or bent the knee in advance has been the subject of debate, but it’s clear the Trump administration grew concerned about Talarico in particular after he appeared on The View in early February.

Talarico, a Texas state representative, is a deeply religious Democratic lawmaker making waves with MAGA’s religious hypocrisy. He looks like a southern Baptist preacher but he sounds like a true man of faith. Taking on Trump’s far-right base, Talarico rails about the shameful gulf between the teachings of Christ and the suffering Trump is inflicting throughout the country and around the world.

A Presbyterian seminarian, Talarico has gained national attention for using his theological background to criticize Chrisian nationalism, condemning it as a “betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth,” that “worships power in the name of Christ.”

Talarico: It’s time to start flipping tables

Talarico relies on the teachings of Christ to challenge corporate interests.

He identifies the right vs. left political divide in the U.S. as deliberately orchestrated, while the true divide is top wealth vs. bottom, saying, “Billionaires want us looking left and right at each other instead of looking up at them while they pick our pockets.” The Trump oligarchy divides us “so we don’t notice they’re defunding our schools, gutting our healthcare, and cutting taxes for themselves and their rich friends. It’s the oldest strategy in the world: divide and conquer.”

He also argues that the separation of church and state protects religion by maintaining the church’s ability to speak truth to power. His opposition to a Ten Commandments bill went viral: “Maybe they should try following the Ten Commandments before mandating them.” He calls school vouchers, which move education dollars from public to corporate-owned schools, “schemes,” scams, and “welfare for the rich.”

Trump’s FCC mocks Equal Time

The equal opportunity section (315) of the Communications Act of 1934 was a good idea. It was adopted to further First Amendment freedoms by requiring all broadcast licensees to give equal coverage to all legally qualified candidates for political office.

It tracked with the Fairness Doctrine, which required, when a political opinion was aired, that both sides be presented. The Fairness doctrine was repealed under Ronald Reagan in 1987, and our country has grown more divided ever since.

The irony in watching Carr resurrect “fairness” is that Republicans have long opposed fairness in the media; the Heritage Foundation railed against the Fairness Doctrine in 1993, arguing that requiring both sides of a political argument violated free speech. Watching Carr now apply “equal time” to left-leaning talk shows while exempting right wing views makes a mockery of fairness principles that drove the law in the first place.

Giving Talarico the last word

During an interview, Joe Rogan told Talarico he should run for president. That spells escalating attempts to censor him from Trump’s FCC, so he gets the last word.

During Colbert’s interview with Talarico, which aired on YouTube, Talarico noted that the right is now “trying to control what we watch, what we say, and what we read. This is the most dangerous kind of cancel culture, the kind that comes from the top. A threat to one of our First Amendment rights is a threat to all of our First Amendment rights."

On his campaign website, Talarico writes about a barefoot rabbi who issued two overriding commandments: love God, and love your neighbor, “because there is no love of God without love of neighbor.”

“Every single person bears the image of the sacred; every single person is holy — not just the neighbors who look like me or pray like me or vote like me. 2,000 years ago, when the powerful few rigged the system, that barefoot rabbi walked into the seat of power and flipped over the tables of injustice. To those who love our country, to those who love our neighbors: It’s time to start flipping tables.”

  • 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 spat in the faces of veterans from the halls of the White House

Parts of the winter world are frozen. Europe, the U.S. Midwest, and even southern states are enduring the worst cold in years as the North Pole rapidly melts, pushing frigid Arctic air through a weakened polar vortex into non-Arctic regions.

So far, in the U.S., power grids are holding. Although some states experienced significant power outages in late January, they were short-lived.

Ukrainians are not so lucky.

A monster tries to freeze a nation

On Feb. 13, more than half the residents of Ukraine woke up in one of the coldest winters on record with no heat, no electricity, and no water. Ukrainians are fighting both climate change and a Russian invasion, both driven by evil and greed.

When he attacked Ukraine in 2022, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin began strategically targeting its power grid, bombing one facility more than 200 times. By December 2024, more than half of Ukraine's energy-generating capacity had been knocked out. Now, roughly 60 percent of Ukraine’s families are living without heat during an extreme subzero winter, sleeping with pets and barn animals to share body heat and keep children alive.

Putin has targeted high-voltage substations and power lines to break electricity connections within and between geographic regions. Ukraine’s Minister of Energy, Denys Shmyhal, acknowledged that there is “not a single power plant in Ukraine” that Putin hasn’t bombed. Putin’s “plan is instability through total blackout.”

An American president celebrates a war criminal

Cutting off heat, electricity and water, deliberately freezing and starving non-combatant civilians to death, is a war crime. Kidnapping young Ukrainian children, stealing them to punish, torture or indoctrinate, is also a war crime. By credible counts, more than 19,000 Ukrainian children have been taken in Putin’s sick push to erase Ukraine’s national identity.

Putin is not only committing high-visibility war crimes in Ukraine as he murders critics at home, he is also responsible for the deaths of more than 50,000 Ukrainians whose only offense was choosing democracy over dictatorship.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Putin’s arrest. As a result, he is now barred from entering more than 120 nations including nearly all of Europe, where border officials would immediately arrest him for crimes against humanity.

Despite the ICC warrant, in August, 2025, Trump mocked the international rule of law and welcomed Putin on Alaskan soil.

Putin is a notorious war criminal, an international pariah hated by leaders of the free world. So, on Jan. 28, when Trump installed a framed photo of Putin, standing side by side with Trump, in the White House, the collective response was disbelief.

Leaders of the free world are aghast. As one European leader quipped, “The U.S. president considers it appropriate to hang on the White House wall a photo of the greatest war criminal of the 21st century.”

Meanwhile, Trump is too compromised — financially, politically, or cognitively — to comprehend that honoring THE enemy of NATO in the White House spits in the face of our allies, not to mention our veterans.

Get a room

Journalist Michael Andersen, who has written about Ukraine and the former U.S.S.R. for 15 years, asks whether Americans know, or even care, how this feels to people in Ukraine. He writes:

Dear Americans, your president just put up a photo in the White House of himself and the biggest war criminal of the 21st century, the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. It is ‘perfectly’ timed to mark that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is about to enter its fifth year. Do you understand the feeling this provokes in Ukraine? In Europe? 10 million Ukrainians have been forced to run away from their homes, maybe 200,000 have been killed — and your country celebrates the monster responsible?

It’s a fair question.

Political analysts have long speculated that Trump owes Putin something considerable. The sooner main stream media stop sugarcoating the obvious, the better.

A love that was never free

In the late 1990s, after U.S. banks stopped lending money to the Trump Organization due to its repeated bankruptcies, Trump sought and obtained alternative financing from Russian sources. Since then, his financial ties to former Russian apparatchiks have only grown.

Trump-branded condos in New York and Florida are owned by wealthy Russians, often purchased through shell companies. In 2019, Newsweek reported that “Crime Infested” Trump Tower was home to convicted Russian criminals and “mobster tenants.” Trump’s financial ties to Russia are beyond speculation: Eric Trump told a reporter that Trump’s businesses “have all the funding we need out of Russia.”

KGB-trained Putin plays Trump like a cheap instrument: through flattery. In October, when Putin complimented Trump’s ability to “solve complex problems” and fix “crises that last for decades,” Trump ran to post a video of Putin’s praise, writing, “Thank you to President Putin!”

That Trump has solved anything, complex or otherwise, comes as a surprise to Americans suffering under his asinine tariffs, unsolved inflation, climate denial, and massive civil rights violations. That he is too stupid or narcissistic to understand how honoring Putin hurts our allies, compromising America’s vital security interests in a real and material way, is dangerous.

Michael Andersen finished his commentary on Putin’s new photograph in the White House by asking, “Where is your red line, Americans?”

If a Putin photo in the White House is fine with Americans, “How about one of Adolf Hitler?”

It’s another fair question.

  • 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 brutal tactic crashed into a wall — and his new strategy isn't faring any better

The November midterms will hand Trump his ass on a platter, so he is doing everything a fascist can do to stop them.

He reassigned the Director of National Intelligence — statutorily assigned to guard Americans from foreign threats — to oversee the seizure of Americans’ confidential voter data in Georgia.

He issued an executive order, laughable for its breadth, trying to mandate new voter registration and rules nationwide.

He is urging Republicans to both gerrymander and “nationalize” federal elections, threatening to surround polling places with armed ICE goons.

After ICE killed two protesters in Minnesota, he tried to leverage the violence to obtain the state’s voter rolls. (Nice state you got there …)

Where brute physical force and intimidation won’t work, Trump is pushing the Department of Justice to fight for confidential voter rolls through the courts.

It’s not going so well.

Stolen election chorus

In multiple pending lawsuits, the Trump administration argues that it is entitled to access voters’ confidential information to “prevent the inclusion of ineligible voters” on states’ voting rolls. Using the ruse of a “stolen” 2020 election, the regime claims this litigation is designed to prevent “voter fraud” in upcoming elections.

The legal problem for Trump is that more than 60 judges in state and federal court, including judges appointed by Trump himself, have already examined all his theories and evidence and ruled that there was no voter fraud. Contrary to Trump’s obsession, it’s illegal and extremely rare for noncitizens to vote. The Brennan Center for Justice found just 30 incidents nationwide of suspected noncitizen voting in 2016 — or 0.0001 percent of votes cast.

That’s a formidable wall of evidence for Trump lawyers who value their law licenses to misrepresent in court.

Trump DOJ wants Social Security numbers

The Constitution says that states — not the federal government — are responsible for “the times, places and manner of holding elections.” Although Congress has limited power to make some rules, a president has no constitutional authority whatsoever over federal elections because the drafters knew a corrupt figure like Trump would eventually come along. They knew a charlatan president, if given any role at all, would use it to manipulate the process to stay in power.

Last summer, despite the glaring unconstitutionality of the move, Trump’s DOJ started requesting complete, un-redacted voter files from every state. Trump Attorney General Pam Bondi asserts her own statutory duty “to ensure States conduct voter registration list maintenance to prevent the inclusion of ineligible voters of any type on any state’s voter registration list.”

The DOJ is trying to sue the 20 states that told Trump to shove it.

Another smackdown

On Tuesday, in a 23-page opinion, another federal judge appointed by Trump told Trump’s DOJ lawyers to peddle their nonsense elsewhere.

Judge Hala Jarbou of the Western District of Michigan sided with the government of Michigan, ruling that the state was legally entitled to refuse Trump’s request for confidential voter data, including Social Security numbers, addresses and drivers license information, and dismissed the administration’s lawsuit.

The AG’s complaint in Michigan was carefully drafted to avoid any inference of partisan motive and instead focused on “data integrity.” In it, Bondi whined that states “submit dates of birth, driver’s license/ID card numbers, and Social Security numbers to ERIC, a voluntary democratic voter organization data base,” yet these same states refuse to give those same data to the federal government.

Bondi wonders why.

“Michigan provides the identical information that the Department has requested to ERIC, a private organization which lacks any enforcement authority, yet refuses to adhere to federal law and provide that same information to the Attorney General of the United States,” she wrote.

Why? Let’s let a federal judge in Oregon answer that question.

Strongarm tactics

In response to the Trump administration’s demand for confidential voter information in Oregon, Judge Mustafa Kasubhai said that the Trump administration, through its public statements and actions by the Justice Department, had forfeited any right to be trusted by the courts.

Kasubhai said the presumption that the DOJ “could be taken at its word — with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes — no longer holds.”

Kasubhai focused on the letter Bondi sent to Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota after federal agents killed two American citizens in January. Projecting Trump’s mob-boss mentality, Bondi said Walz could take “three simple steps” to restore order and stop federal agents’ violence in his state, including handing over Minnesota’s voter rolls.

Clearly disgusted, Kasubhai added that when the department claims “that any private and sensitive data will remain private and used only for a declared and limited purpose, it must be thoroughly scrutinized and squared with its open and public statements to the contrary.”

Let me in … cried the wolf

The DOJ’s complaint seeking voter rolls admits that, “Historically, elections in this country have been administered at the state and local level,” but adds that “the federal government can play a valuable [role] by assisting state and local government in modernizing their election systems.”

That explains it: Trump and Bondi are assisting us. They don’t want voters’ confidential data to feed Palantir’s national database. They only want to “modernize” Democratic-run voter rolls to help Democrats purge voters before November.

How magnanimous.

They must think we’re idiots.

  • 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 just proved he's a ghoul — or a moron

On Thursday, Trump addressed the 2026 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., a tradition President Dwight Eisenhower began in 1953 to solemnify the confluence of faith, gratitude, and public service. At Eisenhower’s ceremony, after he swore the oath of office, he delivered an unscripted and spontaneous prayer of humility, calling on God to “make full and complete our dedication to the service of the people.”

Seventy-odd years later, at this year’s breakfast, Trump met Eisenhower’s prayer of humility and raised him one.

Instead of somber reflection or words to soothe an anxious nation, Trump delivered a blasphemous meditation on Trump: 77 minutes of self-indulgence, grievance and hatred of others.

Making it political

Trump opened by maligning the press, complaining that he never gets “a fair break from the fake news, which is (points dismissively) back there.” By the third sentence he was referring to himself reverentially as “Sir” while calling everyone else by their first name.

Claiming he’d “done more for religion than any other president,” Trump announced that Democrats were anti-religion, and said anyone who votes for Democrats must be Godless.

Treating prayer like a stump ad, Trump claimed Democrats oppose voter identification because “they cheat,” and fondly reminisced over his election win like it was a good game.

“Beating these lunatics was incredible, right, what a great feeling, winning every swing state, winning the popular vote...”

Prayer to promote violence

Forgetting the prayer theme of the breakfast, Trump bantered about murdering people in fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela like it was locker room talk.

“I was just talking to a great leader from El Salvador and he said, man, that was some attack, I've never seen anything like that one. Right? Right?” Going in for the brag, Trump joked to the murderous Nayib Bukele from across the room, laughing, “That was good even by your high standard, right? That was a hell of an attack.”

Only ghouls or morons would think that was funny. In a rule of law world, Trump would be hauled into the International Criminal Court on multiple charges of murder.

He also used his remarks to admire El Salvador’s torture prison, CECOT, saying President Bukele (“so incredible, such a great ally”) operates “prisons so large you can't see from one side to the other.”

Trump said he’d sent CECOT “a lot of the people that we capture, the murderers, the drug dealers, the people that came into our country illegally and have already committed massive crimes… We had 11,888 murderers and many of them are in (Bukele’s) prisons right now.”

Eleven thousand murderers? Drug dealers?? Massive crimes??? Reports from CBS News and the Cato Institute found that under 12 percent of the 250 men illegally sent to CECOT had any prior criminal convictions, even minor. Meanwhile, Trump skipping due process to have innocent people tortured will go down as one of the worst abuses of government power in American history.

Demonizing immigrants

After lying about who he is having deported, and why, Trump continued his un-Christlike tirade against immigrants as "monsters" and "vicious people" who "only gave us the worst."

Encouraging Christians to fear immigrants, Trump said, “You can’t have people going to church and coming out and have criminals taking advantage, and doing things that nobody even wants to describe.” In response to calls from Pope Leo XIV for Trump to deal with immigrants “humanely” and with “dignity,” Trump reverted to, "we have to get the bad ones out."

On brand, he then segued to his ICE crackdown in Washington, D.C., claiming it removed more than 2,000 “monsters” from the streets. Federal arrest data show that over 80 percent of the immigrants arrested in D.C. under Trump’s “crime emergency” campaign had no prior criminal records. None at all, not even unpaid traffic tickets.

Thou shalt not lie

During Trump’s first term, one analyst counted more than 30,000 specific falsehoods. At least his National Prayer Breakfast remarks offered continuity. When he wasn’t lusting after violence and cruelty, every sentence out of Trump’s mouth was an easily disproved lie. In his national push to target law-abiding immigrants, Trump is bearing false witness.

The Bible doesn’t mince words about lying liars who lie.

But Trump’s flock, lavishing him with praise at the prayer breakfast, willingly overlooks lies from their golden calf.

That Christo-nationalists continue to idolize Trump as “Chosen” while he governs by falsehood proves that Christianity in the time of Trump is not about Christ. It’s not about loving thy neighbor, helping the poor, or peace. It’s about power: God’s name appears in the Bible 4,000 times, while Trump’s name appears in the Epstein files more than 38,000 times. Trumpers don’t care. There could be videos of Trump raping children in those files, it wouldn’t matter to MAGA’s “Christians.”

After erecting golden statutes of himself, Trump is now planning to build a 250 foot arch that will dwarf the Lincoln Monument. Trump’s arch, by design, scale, and metaphor, will shrink American history. Next to Trump’s imposing arch (let’s name it “Sir”), sacred monuments to the world’s greatest experiment will be reduced to doll-like replicas.

Christianity under Trump has rotted into unadulterated power-cult worship. It won’t end well. Someone should remind MAGA that God executed the Israelites who worshipped a golden calf, then sent them a plague for good measure.

  • 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 ridiculous plot will get Trump laughed out of court — but Fox News is salivating

Despite repeated judicial rulings rejecting Trump’s 2020 election claims, he persists. Proving that his ego burned through his prefrontal cortex and seared his last shard of reasoning capacity, after his attempt to extort Minnesota voter rolls failed, Trump’s FBI raided an election center in Georgia and seized them directly. Both acts were preludes to a dangerous fantasy, one that ends in ‘taking over’ national elections.

The illegality is glaring. Not only are U.S. taxpayers funding his well choreographed partisan theater, violating the Hatch Act, Trump is misappropriating intelligence resources by expending national security capital on political exploits. Instead of meeting escalating cyber, espionage and infiltration threats from China and Russia, Trump is spending national security resources to keep himself in power.

After snatching all Fulton County’s voter data, there’s little doubt that Trump lackeys will “find” the “missing” 11,780 votes he urged Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “look for.” Even after Raffensperger affirmed that the 2020 election was the most secure in Georgia’s history, Trump will manufacture outcome-changing evidence, “find” stolen votes, and demand that democratic poll workers be prosecuted.

Preparing allegations

The FBI procured a court order allowing them to copy Fulton County’s election records, but officials instead took physical custody of originals, including in-person, absentee, and provisional ballots, along with voter rolls. Filling a convoy of trucks, they seized ballots, tabulator tapes, digital data and voter rolls, leaving no reliable chain of custody for those materials.

In normal criminal cases, every officer who handles a physical piece of evidence signs a “chain of custody“ affidavit affirming that the item was locked, kept secure and otherwise untouched. But Trump’s FBI created no chain of custody for Georgia’s seized materials; his lawyers have been caught lying so many times such affidavits would be suspect in any event.

The upshot is that Fulton County Democrats will be unable to “disprove” the election crimes Trump’s FBI is manufacturing against them. Even though the story won’t hold up in court, it will dominate Fox News and Sinclair media-owned headlines, and the 39 percent of the country that believes Trump’s manufactured claims will become the scaffolding that supports his federal takeover.

Aspiring authoritarians

Trump has been trying to discredit U.S. elections, along with the rule of law, ever since he became financially indebted to Russia in the 1990s. Because he has relied on habitual deception for so long, he seems to toggle back and forth between lying and believing his own propaganda.

Hannah Arendt observed that, “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer … And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind … And with such a people you can then do what you please.”

Hitler understood this too well. Before transitioning to an overt campaign of terror, Nazi power expanded through lies, propaganda, and censorship orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.

Current authoritarians do the same. Putin in Russia and Orban in Hungary butcher the truth to such an extent that the media has no credibility; everything they report is suspect. In result, dictators are free to execute rivals, silence journalists and hold sham elections as Trump aspires to do.

An obvious plan

Discussing his blunders in Minnesota, Trump recently said on Dan Bongino’s show that he had “won Minnesota three times,” but “got no credit for it. I won that state three times, but it’s a rigged state. Really rigged badly.” Minnesota hasn’t voted for a Republican president since 1972.

Continuing the delusion, Trump also expressed his hope that Republicans would “take over” national elections, saying,“We should take over the voting in at least 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

The illegality, once again, is glaring. Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution vests election powers with the states, who prescribe the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding federal elections. If Trump had any grasp of U.S. history or the Constitution, he’d know the federal government has no legal authority to “take over” state-run election systems.

Trump’s overreach is galling. Federal courts have consistently ruled that Presidents have no constitutional role in administering elections. Even if there were statutory support for his takeover fantasy, Trump’s call for “Republicans” to nationalize elections ignores the separation of powers by, once again, disregarding the legislative role of Congress.

Time for arrests

Since Trump Republicans are demonstrating more affinity for power than the Constitution and their oaths to protect it, Democrats are on their own. They need to hit Trump hard and pre-emptively, before he sends tanks for their voter rolls.

It’s time for Attorneys General in all 23 Democratic-controlled states to file a class action or multistate action to prohibit Trump, his DOJ and the FBI from seizing confidential voter materials from any county election offices. Trump’s stated desire to take over federal elections establishes standing for states to sue for injunctive relief. State prosecutors should also start bringing state criminal charges against every Trump official who breaks state law, from murder to a conspiracy to interfere with elections and every state felony in between.

With his admitted intention to stop fair elections, Trump has shown his cards. Whether he serves Putin, dementia, or greed, he is an enemy to America and legal accountability is no longer optional. It’s the only way our democracy will survive.

  • 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 is a death sentence for ICE agents — and Republicans love it

The Fourth Amendment protects you from tyranny. It protects you from government agents busting down your door without probable cause. It says you are secure in your home “against unreasonable searches and seizures,” which means no warrants shall issue without “probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation.”

The Fourth Amendment didn’t materialize in a vacuum, but was the pained outcome of a despotic King’s overreach that brutalized early American colonists. It sprang from British officials using “general warrants,” or “Writs of Assistance” they ginned up themselves to search and seize colonists and their property whenever they got the urge.

Such “writs” gave officials unfettered power to violate anyone in their crosshairs. Like Trump’s immigration enforcement raids, “Writs of Assistance” were ostensibly aimed at enforcing the law — today it’s immigration, then it was smuggling — but quickly morphed into government brutality.

Colonists grew enraged as they watched British officials ransack the homes and businesses of their neighbors searching for “smuggled goods without specific evidence.” Community outrage spread across state lines and eventually became the Bill of Rights. Over 250 years later, the Fourth Amendment requirement of a judge’s signed warrant of probable cause remains the lynchpin of our criminal justice system.

ICE thinks it can issue its own warrants

That 250-year-old requirement is apparently news to ICE. Last week, a whistleblower disclosed an internal Department of Homeland Security memo advising federal ICE agents that they have unlimited power to enter people’s homes — by force — without a judge’s signed warrant.

On Jan. 21, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) sent an internal ICE memo and whistleblower complaint to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. The memo authorizes ICE agents to rely only on administrative warrants, rather than judges’ warrants, to bust into peoples’ homes.

The whistleblower complaint does more than allege — it attaches a written memo dated May 12, 2025, signed by Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, authorizing ICE agents to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judicial warrant, consent, or an emergency. In Exhibit 1 attached to the complaint, Lyons directs ICE agents to use Form I-205, Warrants for Removal, in order to enter places of residence.

Form I-205 warrants are administrative warrants signed only by ICE officials, not judges.

The complaint also details the steps ICE has taken to hide the directive. Because it is blatantly illegal, DHS allows the memo to be read only in person; it was disseminated to select DHS officials who were directed to read it and return it to their supervisors. Newly hired ICE agents are also instructed to “disregard any written training material” that contradicts instructors’ verbal directives.

Surely White House Deputy Chief of Staff and anti-immigration zealot Stephen Miller knows his warrantless directives could trigger more violence under Stand your Ground laws.

Breaking down doors

The Framers liked to say “a man’s house is his castle.” A phrase that’s been around since the 17th century, the “castle doctrine” is a foundational pillar of both the Fourth Amendment and Stand Your Ground laws now in effect in over 31 states.

Such legislation varies by state, but overall, in cases of self-defense, such laws remove the legal duty to retreat before using force, including deadly force. In the 1980s, states enacted similar "Make My Day" laws to provide immunity from prosecution for individuals who use deadly force against someone who unlawfully enters their residence.

It comes as no surprise that Republicans in general, and the National Rifle Association in specific, were aggressive proponents of such laws. As long as the person invoking the defense is in a place they have a legal right to be, if someone busts into their home illegally and they reasonably feel their life is in danger, they may be able to shoot first and ask questions later.

Making ICE agents sitting ducks

How those laws will play out between ICE agents and immigrants with valid visas, green cards, or specific legal statuses — in other words, people who have the legal right to be in their homes, is not yet known. But just as it was only a matter of time before ill-trained ICE agents shot innocent people on the streets, it’s only a matter of time before frightened victims shoot first when masked agents with flash bangs bust into their homes.

At least one state attorney general has come under fire for suggesting that Stand Your Ground laws could apply in these situations. But now that the whole world has watched ICE murder people, and everyone knows that people in ICE custody are dying in record numbers, even Trump must understand that people will reasonably fear for their lives when masked agents bust down their door.

It’s clear Trump and Miller are setting us up for accelerating violence. Pitting warrantless ICE home entries against Stand Your Ground laws presents another unwanted question of law that will only be settled after someone else needlessly dies.

DHS is putting ICE agents squarely at risk by ordering them into homes without legal warrants. They surely know that people in Stand Your Ground homes will be triggered, and that, sooner or later, victims will start shooting. No one, except an authoritarian who thinks more violence will lead to more power, wants to see that.

DHS needs to rescind the memo immediately and revert to legally issued warrants to save its own officers’ lives.

  • 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 perilous racket will do more than just stuff his pockets

Trump Tower. Trump Steaks. Trump University. Trump Watches. Trump cologne, candles, coins, robes, ornaments, towels, pens, gerbils, and gold-tipped suppositories. It’s hard to think of anything Trump hasn’t tried to monetize.

And now, from his premier fantasy collection, there’s Trump UN.

Last September, while Trump was busy solving eight wars that leaders of those countries say never started, never ended, or had nothing to do with him, Trump hatched a plan to line his own pockets with the misery in Gaza. He came up with a Gaza Board of Peace vested with magical powers to maintain order while steering private investments to his friends and family.

Billion-dollar racket

For a mere billion-dollar membership fee, you can join Trump’s Orwellian-themed Board of Peace and dine with the world’s most brutal dictators.

Trump, who invested his dad’s money in Middle East real estate decades ago, claimed last year that the U.S. would “run” Gaza, that he saw “long-term ownership” possibilities there. His “Riviera of the Middle East” proposal with son-in-law Jared Kushner floated luxury tourism and an economic hub, describing a “phenomenal location, on the sea, the best weather” with “unbelievable” potential.

The only hitch? Someone would first need to relocate more than two million desperately poor Palestinians who have nowhere else to go.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, no fan of international law or Palestinians, loved the concept. Arab leaders, not so much. Palestinians, leaders of surrounding Arab nations, and international organizations saw Trumps ‘Riviera’ as ethnic cleansing, ripe for war crimes under international law.

Trump’s peace deal didn’t survive

After widely congratulating himself for the Gaza ceasefire, Trump first mentioned a Gaza Board of Peace to govern reconstruction of the rubble pile last October. The ceasefire never really materialized — they’re still killing each other — but Trump’s Board idea took hold of his ego and ran with it.

As Trump originally designed it, the Board would provide a forum where Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and other Middle East countries could discuss political reforms and reconstruction of Gaza, the latter rife with private profit potential. Trump, who has already pocketed $1.4 billion in loose emoluments since re-assuming the presidency, magnanimously offered to serve as chairman.

By the time he got around to presenting the Board last week at Davos, it had become a barnacle attached to his id, distorted beyond recognition. The Times of Israel published the Board’s charter, announcing that it would “promote stability, restore dependable and lawful governance, and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.”

The grandiosity of purpose was not limited to Gaza; as the Times of Israel noted, the charter doesn’t even mention Gaza. Instead Trump’s Board aspires to be a private, mini United Nations divvying up the spoils of war and operating under one thumb: Trump’s.

Democratic leaders politely declined

The Board is Trump’s power fantasy strutting on a catwalk. Under Trump’s plan, he personally gets to decide policies for the world and declare resolutions by majority vote, reserving veto power for himself. He also gets to name his successor, which, preliminarily, will be Don Jr. (when he isn’t in a helicopter slaughtering animals endangered by his dad’s climate ignorance).

Trump has crowned himself and his smirking spawn Chairmen of the Universe of Rogue Actors which includes the leaders of Hungary, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan. They’re all royals or dictators or both, or they’re wannabes buying access. Their billion-dollar entrance fee is a solid investment in their oligarchs, not just in Gaza but around the globe.

When Trump presented the idea at Davos, EU leaders were already aghast at his Greenland blunder. When he invited Canada, the U.K, France, Germany, Italy, Poland and other European nations to join, the invitees had already gotten a good look at who he is, and what he is up to. Unsure whether to attribute Trump’s bombast to dementia, malice or some sick combination of hubris and ignorance, their unified response was to say no thank you, and back away.

What’s left for the Board to do?

While wrecking the global economy and trying to start a civil war at home to slake his midterm worries, Trump has awarded himself the power to “administer Gaza” even as European leaders roll their eyes and describe his derangement as “dangerous.” They are also walking the talk, pivoting away from Trump’s adulterated version of democracy.

This week India and the European Union closed a breakthrough free trade agreement reducing tariffs. German firms’ investments in China are at a four-year high. Working around Trump, Mexico, Canada and China are rapidly expanding their cooperation. Despite Trump’s stated goal of weakening China economically, his tariffs accelerated supply-chain reconfiguration, causing China’s 2025 trade surplus to surge to a record-breaking $1.2 trillion. After treating Venezuela like a real-estate acquisition, Trump can’t even convince his own big oil supporters to invest there.

Real leaders, in short, aren’t buying Trump’s “U.S. economy is hotter than ever” schtick or his Gaza “Peace” Board.

Trump thinks he can fool the world, but he can’t fool anyone outside the Fox News/Sinclair propaganda bubble. He will try to do his worst in Gaza, but the civilized world, fed up with Trump’s insanity, is moving on.

  • 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 glorious freedom is poisoning Trump

Following the murder of Renee Nicole Good, Donald Trump doubled down and sent more ill-trained, masked, and lethally armed occupying forces into Minneapolis. It’s a safe bet that his efforts to ratchet up community outrage and violence will succeed sooner or later, if not in Minneapolis then somewhere else controlled by Democrats.

While it’s clear that Trump is doing everything he can to bolster and hasten his invocation of the Insurrection Act, for online gamblers betting on predictable and stupid Trump moves, it’s just a question of when it will happen.

Astute betters might predict that Trump’s declaration under the Insurrection Act is still five or six months away, closer to November, the better to cancel the midterms. But Jeffrey Epstein could return to dominate headlines any day, and Trump will indulge his compulsion to out-noise him. Also, judging from his non-stop blunders in other areas (looking at you Greenland, tariffs, and the flop in Davos), Trump will likely stumble into another strategic error by invoking the act early, while there’s still time for SCOTUS to smack it down on First Amendment grounds.

In the meantime, Trump officials are sharpening attacks against peaceful protesters, treating the First Amendment like inconvenient fiction.

Targeting Don Lemon, hiding federal policy

When former CNN news anchor Don Lemon filmed a marathon seven-hour protest at a Minneapolis church last week, Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s Assistant Attorney General, publicly threatened him: “You (Lemon) are on notice! A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws! Nor does the First Amendment protect your pseudo journalism of disrupting a prayer service.”

Never mind that Lemon did not select the location, organize, or even participate in the protest — it’s apparently now illegal for journalists to breathe the same air as the protesters.

On cue, other Trump officials piled on, declaring the protest an “act of hatred against Christians.” Karoline Leavitt, her signature cross blazing, announced, “President Trump will not tolerate the intimidation and harassment of Christians in their sacred places of worship. The Department of Justice has just launched a full investigation into the despicable (Don Lemon) incident that took place earlier today at a church in Minnesota.”

Leavitt’s cross must be burning a charred replica on her throat. She forgot to mention that Trump reversed the policy that prohibited ICE from attacking people at places of worship in January 2025, after that policy had been in effect for 13 years.

Since then, Trump’s green shirts have arrested, brutalized, and tackled people in churches all across America. Although most ICE attacks go unnoticed by the media, ICE attacks on or near church grounds to date include a raid on Iglesia Fuente de Vida church in the Atlanta suburbs; a raid on United Methodist church property in Charlotte; raids at Our Lady of Lourdes in San Bernadino; throughout Puerto Rico during Sunday services; on numerous church grounds throughout California (Inland Empire, Downey Memorial Christian Church, Montclair, Highland and St. Adelaide); and in Washington, D.C., where the Evangelical Lutheran Church joined the Quakers in a suit to block ICE raids in places of worship.

On a better day, the hypocrisy would be laughable. Not only is ICE attacking people in their “sacred place of worship” under Trump’s own official policy, but the location isn’t what makes it un-Christian. Dragging people out of their beds with flash-bang grenades, tackling senior citizens to the pavement, and pulling handicapped people out of their cars are only Christian acts in Lucifer’s bible.

Full out assault against the First Amendment

The DOJ’s response to Don Lemon was a warning shot to all journalists: Reporting ICE brutality will cost you.

Dhillon said: “Everyone in the protest community needs to know that the fullest force of the federal government is going to come down and prevent this from happening and put people away for a long, long time.”

Perhaps Dhillon skipped Constitutional Law, or doesn’t understand the difference between interrupting church services, which may not be protected by the First Amendment, and protesting outside a church, which is. Ratified and in effect since 1791, the First Amendment is older and wiser than MAGA (low bar), and will still be standing long after Trump is horizontal and feeding worms. Putting protestors and journalists “away for a long, long time,” is straight out of Putin’s playbook, and is not going to happen here without the Civil War Trump so desperately craves.

Multiple cases pitting freedom of speech against Trump’s “executive authority” ICE brutality are pending in the lower courts, and ICE is going to lose bigly. A recent smackdown from a Reagan-appointed judge is instructive while we wait.

'Failed in their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution'

Last week, during a hearing over student speech on college campuses, US district judge William Young called Trump an “authoritarian,” and accused the administration of “an unconstitutional conspiracy” against the First Amendment. On Jan. 22, he issued a ruling that Trump officials had, under the law, “objectively chilled protected speech.”

Young found that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “have failed in their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution.”

“The big problem in this case is that the Cabinet secretaries, and ostensibly, the president of the United States, are not honoring the First Amendment,” Young said.

Describing the case as one of “the most important” of his career, Young asked: “How did this happen? How could our own government, the highest officials in our government, seek to so infringe on the rights of people lawfully here in the United States? It’s fairly clear that this president believes, as an authoritarian, that when he speaks, everyone, everyone in Article II is going to toe the line absolutely.”

Here’s to American judges never toeing the line for a fascist, to journalists never pulling their punches, and to the glorious and everlasting freedom to call Trump what he is: an idiot.

  • 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 world-class blunder has even Trump's kingmaker anguished

Before he TACO’d at Davos, Donald Trump’s vow to take Greenland by hook or crook because he didn’t win the Nobel Peace Prize was next level insanity prancing on the world stage. (No Donnie dear, they’re not laughing at you, they’re laughing because of you).

Prompting a collective eye roll from EU leaders at Davos on Wednesday, Trump’s bellicose nonsense — “demanding” that European sovereigns bow to him on Greenland or face economic blackmail via more tariffs — revealed a shocking combination of hubris and cognitive failure. Trump is at once illustrating his ignorance of the post-WWII NATO alliance that has kept America safe for 80 years, while showcasing an inability to learn from his own mistakes by doubling down on already ruinous tariffs.

Regardless of whether EU leaders ultimately placate the madman or punch him back, only harder, Trump’s threats against Greenland were a world class blunder.

Putin licks his lips

The only country poised to benefit from Trump’s Greenland insanity is Russia. After Vladimir Putin personally approved an operation to promote “mentally unstable” Trump (the Kremlin’s words, not mine) in the 2016 US election, weakening the U.S. and NATO looks like Putin’s payout. It may take years to unravel whether it was pre-planned between Trump and Putin, ie: treason, or simply reflects a global realignment driven by Trump and Putin’s self-interests and shared delusions of grandeur.

Putin and Trump have each expressed a preference for rule by force rather than law, with Trump recently claiming he has “no need” for international law. Putin concurs. After helping a “mentally unstable” man with no comprehension of world history achieve the US presidency, Putin knows that Trump’s threats against Greenland have permanently debunked the west’s criticism of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. Greenlanders may pay the price for Trump’s insanity in the near future, but Ukrainians are paying for it today.

Russia is hyperventilating with excitement. Breathlessly describing a scenario in which “one NATO member is going to attack another NATO member,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted earlier this week that, “It was hard to imagine before that such a thing could happen.” Lavrov said Trump’s threats against Greenland “have upended” the western concept of the “rule-based global order,” a concept Putin has long loathed.

By creating a vacuum where the rule of international law and respect for sovereignty once reigned, Trump has invited all rogue actors — not just Putin — to do their worst. Even Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the man who did more than anyone to put Trump back in office, gets it. Proving that broken clocks are right twice a day, McConnell said that Trump alienating allies on Greenland and “going it alone would be strategic malpractice. Courting Russia and its GDP of $2.5 trillion … At the expense of longstanding bonds with Europe and its GDP of $27 trillion? That doesn’t even align with U.S. economic interests, let alone our values.”

Glad to see the GOP still understands basic math when it wants to make a point.

Trump trashes instruments of peace

During the first half of the 20th century, more than 100 million people died agonizing deaths over the course of two world wars. The UN charter sprang from the wreckage, with the stated determination to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.”

In Article I, the charter seeks to ‘maintain international peace and security,’ by taking “collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace” in conformity with international law.

NATO complements the UN Charter by putting teeth into UN peace mandates. It backs the UN framework for collective security with military strength. NATO’s Article 5 states that if one NATO ally is attacked, every other member will consider it an “armed attack against all members.” If Trump invades Denmark’s territory, in other words, he will trigger 2.8 million active troops’ obligation to return fire- against the U.S. aggressor.

Evil started WWII. Cowardice may start WWIII

Trump has always shared Russia’s resentment of NATO. In 1987, after his first trip to Moscow, Trump took out full-page, anti-NATO ads, and has been at it ever since.

The maddening through line today is that Congress has the power to stop Trump, but Republicans who know better are refusing to act. Short of removing Trump from office, Congress could slam shut the purse, block Trump from “running” any country outside the U.S., restrict the use of appropriated defense funds, or pass a War Powers Resolution to stop Trump from starting WWIII. But they haven’t. All we hear from the GOP, despite the obvious danger of the moment, are speeches.

McConnell delivered a nice one. After he voted against the War Powers Act, he postured with a speech about Trump’s threats in Greenland: “Unless and until the President can demonstrate otherwise, then the proposition at hand today is very straightforward: (Trump is) incinerating the hard-won trust of loyal (EU) allies in exchange for no meaningful change in U.S. access to the Arctic.”

He added, “(T)his is about more than Greenland. It’s about more than America’s relationship with its highly capable Nordic allies. It’s about whether the United States intends to face a constellation of strategic adversaries with capable friends … or commit an unprecedented act of strategic self-harm and go it alone.”

By threatening a semi-autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, Trump issued a direct threat against Europe and NATO, deliberately weakening the alliance that fought to defeat Hitler and fascism in WWII.

On Monday, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe spoke directly to the 38 percent of US adults who consume Fox/ Sinclair media Trump propaganda exclusively:

“We need to ask ourselves, on both sides of the Atlantic, if we want to live in a world where democracy is recast as weakness, truth as opinion and justice as an option.”

He closed with a warning:

“When Europe insists on sovereignty and accountability, it is not posturing. International law is either universal or meaningless. Greenland will show which one we choose.”

  • 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.

How ICE recruitment propaganda targets the worst of the worst

Before Renee Nicole Good’s body was cold, Donald Trump, Kristi Noem, and JD Vance grabbed the national spotlight to defame her (terrorist mows down federal agents!) while defending the goon who murdered her.

The masked ICE agent who shot Good at close range held his cellphone in one hand while firing his gun with the other, showing more interest in spectacle than fear. His video will be added to the Department of Homeland Security library of recordings to generate bloodlust among the type of recruits ICE seeks: Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, pardoned J-6ers, and basement-dwelling incels craving skin on skin action of any kind.

Under Noem’s guidance, and on the American taxpayers’ considerable dime, DHS records high-resolution, highly-edited, "cinematic" style videos of their own brutality for recruitment propaganda. Like the midnight raid of a Chicago apartment building when DHS filmed a Black Hawk helicopter swooping in to terrify sleeping people with flash-bang grenades, most violence is staged, performative horror.

With the Supreme Court temporarily blocking Trump’s deployment of military forces into U.S. cities, ICE is stepping up, morphing into Trump’s Praetorian guard. A look at DHS’ recruitment materials makes clear that ICE isn’t targeting intelligent, law-respecting recruits, but a rabid ethnic cleansing force to serve Steve Miller’s white nationalist agenda.

Emotional appeals to racists

In ICE’s August recruitment push, DHS posted on X, “Which way, American man?” with signs on a deserted road pointing Uncle Sam to “Cultural Decline” and other destinations.

“Which way, American man” is a call for white nationalism, and was the title of William Gayley Simpson’s 1978 white nationalist, neo-Nazi book.

An online review shows DHS similarly misusing American iconography to recruit new agents, manipulating emotions with depictions of a fictitious, ‘happier’ time in America by turning homey Norman Rockwell-style graphics into sinister appeals for violence.

In September, DHS started using Rockwell’s images on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, starting with the 1946 Working on the Statue of Liberty. The image appears with ICE slogans, “Protect Your Homeland. Defend Your Culture,” and adds a racist dog whistle by Calvin Coolidge — “Those who do not want to be partakers of the American spirit ought not to settle in America” — along with a URL where people can sign up with ICE.

Rockwell’s family has asked federal agencies to stop using his work because DHS has “become infamous in recent months for its increasingly brutal and often illegal enforcement methods.” In early November, Rockwell’s family wrote an op-ed in USA Today complaining that the Trump messages behind the posts run so contrary to the artist’s personal beliefs that he would be “devastated” to see his art “marshaled for the cause of persecution toward immigrant communities and people of color.”

Us vs. them propaganda

ICE.gov features job postings in which a Civil War era Uncle Sam points and intones, “America needs you. America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out.” Then, in smaller print, “You do not need an undergraduate degree.”

ICE’s YouTube site features video after video of Fox News “interviews” — propaganda — alongside professionally filmed fast-action shorts. One video, “Veterans Day Message,” is an interview with acting Director Todd Lyons conflating ICE agents with the military. Spliced with war-time footage, it shows fast action war scenes, paratroopers dropping from planes, armed troops descending from helicopters, and a war-gaming situation room.

Another, “Florida 287(g) with Collier County Sheriff Rambosk,” is accompanied by video game music and features an “Alligator Alcatraz” sign above swampland complete with live alligators waiting for prey.

Another, “Break the law. We regulate” appeals to directly to thugs. It opens showing six masked ICE officers pulling a man out of his car and shoving him to the ground, then segues to other arrests as a narrator says, “Regulators. We regulate the stealing of his property. We damn good too. But you can’t be any geek off the street. You gotta be good with the steal, you know what I mean, to earn your keep.”

Another features an Ohio sheriff in a ten gallon cowboy hat bragging about how many illegal aliens are in his jail, proclaiming, “Thank God that we have an administration, that we have ICE and President Trump actually doing what people want.”

This racist, political propaganda, illegally funded with federal tax dollars, obviously targets low-intellect applicants.

Minnesota fights back

Immediately after Good’s murder, the Trump regime doubled down, and sent 1000 more ICE agents into Minnesota, on top of an already unwanted 2,100 DHS and Border Patrol agents.

Trump officials know that increased ICE forces, now expanding without legal authority into traffic stops, elevate the threat to civilians. Since increased violence and civic unrest will hasten the day Trump declares martial law, escalation appears to be the goal.

St. Paul, Minneapolis, and the state of Minnesota are fighting back. On Monday, they filed suit, alleging that thousands of armed and masked DHS agents have stormed the Twin Cities to conduct militarized raids and carry out dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional stops and arrests in sensitive public places, including schools and hospitals — all under the guise of lawful immigration enforcement.

This operation is driven by nothing more than the Trump administration’s desire to punish political opponents and score partisan points — at the direct expense of Plaintiffs’ residents. Defendants’ actions appear designed to provoke community outrage, sow fear, and inflict emotional distress, and they are interfering with the ability of state and local officials to protect and care for their residents….

Minnesota notes that state and city governments are bearing the costs of ICE’s civil rights violations. Government brutality, broad-scale and publicly excused by Trump’s spokespeople, “recklessly endangers the public safety, health, and welfare of all Minnesotans. Additionally, Defendants’ agents’ inflammatory and unlawful policing tactics provoke the protests the federal government seeks to suppress…”

Kristi Noem’s DHS podium is inscribed with “One of ours, all of yours,” the Nazi philosophy of collective punishment. By lore or fact, when one SS officer was killed in a Czech Village, the Nazis killed every resident of that village in retribution. Wildly disproportionate, lawless, ignorant, and brutal, the slogan complements ICE recruitment materials perfectly, and draws a map of where Trump’s ICE is heading.

  • 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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