Oregon knows this appalling Trump abuse cannot stand up in court

Donald Trump’s lawless cabal has just declared war on an imaginary dragon they call “antifa.” National security directive NSPM-7 stipulates that anyone who insults Trump, calls him or his enablers “fascist,” or opposes Christo-nationalism is anti-American. Anyone deemed “anti-American” is a proper target of persecution.

To support the directive, Trump’s Department of Justice first removed from its website a National Institute of Justice study on domestic terrorism. The removed study showed that right-wing extremists are responsible for far more politically motivated violence than far-left extremists.

Having removed accurate crime statistics from public view, Trump then issued a national security directive based on false ones.

In it, he ticked off a curated list of violent acts he blamed on the left, deliberately omitting the attempted torching of the Pennsylvania governor’s home; the assassination of Minnesota House Democrat Melissa Hortman and her husband and the attempted assassination of Sen. John Hoffman and his wife; the hammer attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband; the plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer; last week’s Mormon Church attack by a Trump supporter; and all the political violence executed on his behalf since 2015 when he began encouraging MAGA to assault others.

Perfecting his dark art of projection, Trump declared that violence from the left is “designed to silence opposing speech,” then issued a directive to do just that.

Trump’s blatantly unconstitutional directive calls for “A new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies.” According to Trump, people will be targeted as domestic terrorists if they hold views that diverge from the far right’s views on “family,” “morality,” “race,” “gender,” “migration,” “Christianity,” or “capitalism.” Even trespassing is now considered a ‘politically motivated terrorist’ act, which is meant to repel reporters from ICE facilities.

Planning to silence political organizations that oppose him, Trump is declaring a “crackdown” on anyone whose speech offends “democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental civil liberties,” as he alone decides. Applying plain English to his directive, Trump should have been imprisoned years ago. Failure to hold him legally accountable is the predicate crime now threatening the union.

Oregon mocks Trump’s false narrative

Pursuing these directives, Trump threatened to invade Portland, Oregon, where green hair and Kombucha kiosks scream “antifa,” to the MAGA faithful at least. Incensed by the spectacle of nose rings and flannel, Trump posted that he had authorized federal troops to protect “War ravaged Portland” with “Full Force, if necessary,” because Oregon’s ICE Facilities are “under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”

Portlanders pushed back immediately by livestreaming images of farmers markets focused on local produce, artisan goods, and community. Memes of colorfully knitted tree trunks popped up threatening, “We knit at noon.” The City of Portland showcased locals in faded denim overalls “visiting Saturday Markets, feeding geese, sipping espresso, biking, playing in the park, and going to food carts.”

A social media post mocking Donald Trump.

Nonetheless, on Sept. 28, tone deaf and possibly impaired “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth sent a memo to Gov. Tina Kotek authorizing the Oregon National Guard to descend on Portland.

Four hours later, Oregon’s Attorney General sued Trump, Hegseth, et. al in federal court.

Challenging Trump’s patently unlawful plan, Oregon’s complaint for declaratory action somberly notes, “Traditional and strong resistance of Americans to any military intrusion into civilian affairs has deep roots in our history…” It recounts how Oregonian officials gave Trump repeated assurance that state and local law enforcement were well equipped to handle public safety without federal interference, and that federalizing the National Guard therefore lacked legal basis.

Citing the Posse Comitatus Act, Oregon notes the obvious absence of any emergency, uprising or invasion that would warrant Trump’s power grab. Posse Comitatus forbids the use of soldiers for domestic law enforcement except when “expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress.” The primary exception, which arises under the 1792 Insurrection Act, allows a president to use the military “to control civil disorder, armed rebellion or insurrection,” none of which are present in Portland.

Instead, it looks like Trump wants to endanger Portlanders by deliberately inciting a violent response to his overreach.

If the absurd optics of masked, armed soldiers vs. granola hippies weren’t bad enough, the whole plan appears to have been hatched while Trump was watching a misleading segment on Fox News.

Evan Watson of KGW8 in Portland, Oregon, reported that Trump said during an interview he had spoken to Oregon’s governor, and “she was very nice. But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place ... it looks like terrible.”

Yes, Mr. President. We’re sorry to inform you, Sir, that Fox News lies. The Oregonian/OregonLive noted in a timeline that Trump issued his first threat to militarize Portland on Sept. 5, the day after Fox aired a “special report” on Portland that misleadingly mixed in outdated video clips from 2020 showing violence from Black Lives Matter protesters.

Trump later suggested he was backing off from his threat, but it appears troops are still heading to Portland.

Military rule is incompatible with liberty

Oregon’s complaint provides historic context for what our country is now facing:

“Our nation’s founders recognized that military rule — particularly by a remote authority indifferent to local needs—was incompatible with liberty and democracy. Foundational principles of American law therefore limit the President’s authority to involve the military in domestic affairs…”

The suit correctly traces historical resistance to deploying the military domestically to the U.S. Constitution, which reserves general policing powers to the states. It also establishes civilian control over the military and gives Congress, not the President, the power to deploy the militia.

Trump’s finger on the trigger is clearly twitching, so if it’s not Portland, it will soon be another Democratic-led city. Elizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center for Justice told the Washington Post, “In the 250-year history of this country, presidents have deployed troops to quell civil unrest or enforce the law a total of 30 times. This would be President Trump’s third time in nine months.”

Here’s hoping he climbs into his MedBed for the next three years and wakes up refreshed, detoxed from the addictive hatred coursing through his veins. If he ever finds peace, maybe he’ll try a shot of Kombucha and take up knitting.

  • 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 have proof Trump is unfit for office. Will these key players use it to bring him down?

Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News bobblehead with documented alcohol problems, summoned the military’s top 800 generals, admirals and flag officers to Quantico, Virginia this week to degrade them with a juvenile rant he could have delivered on Zoom.

Pacing back and forth in front of a backdrop from Patton, cosplaying Hegseth delivered what’s been called “an unhinged address filled with confusing contradictions, wild-eyed cheerleading, and politically charged rhetoric.”

Hegseth seemed oblivious to the fact he was lecturing brass with far more military expertise and experience than his own.

Hegseth’s speech was a tired attack on “woke.” He told the officers, “No more identity months, DEI offices, dudes in dresses. No more climate-change worship. No more division, distraction, or gender delusions... As I’ve said before and will say again, we are done with that shit.”

He then suggested hazing and harassment are now OK, assuring brass that they shouldn’t be overly concerned with legalities. He offered up new directives “designed to take the monkey off your back and put you, the leadership, back in the driver's seat.”

He defined, for the four-star generals, what it means to be in the US military: “We don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country.”

The enemies of our country, they would next learn from Donald Trump, are Americans.

Proof of insanity

At the conclusion of Hegseth’s immature rant about beards, killer ethos and real men, Trump stepped into the spotlight like it was a MAGA rally.

Meandering from topic to topic for more than an hour, Trump mused on his fondness for the television show Victory at Sea, asserted his claim to a Nobel Peace Prize, criticized how former Presidents Obama and Biden walk down stairs, described how he walks down stairs, insulted “radical Democrats,” declared his love for tariffs, attacked Biden or his autopen 11 times, criticized how military ships “look,” mentioned making Canada the 51st state, and described the kind of thick paper he prefers to use when signing promotions.

Trump bizarrely told the officers he’d ended more than six wars, even though many people in the room continue to work on his “resolved” conflicts as they rage on. He also repeatedly mentioned nuclear weapons.

“I rebuilt our nuclear … I call it the N-word. There are two N-words, and you can’t use either of them.”

Several officials called Trump’s speech truly disturbing and evidence its speaker is unwell — “even for Trump.”

After bragging earlier in the day that he could and would fire “any officer” he “doesn’t like … on the spot,” Trump told assembled brass they were crucial in his fight against the “enemy from within.” Distilled, Trump said they would soon be fighting Americans.

Hyping the pitch, Trump claimed, “We’re under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms.” He then added ominously that “our inner cities” were becoming “a big part of war now,” and that “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”

Using American cities as “training grounds” for Hegseth’s extra-legal “lethality” operations meant to “kill people and break things” is batshit Reichstag Fire lunacy.

If we had a functioning government, Trump’s speech would already have triggered his 25th Amendment removal for mental infirmity, and his declaration(s) of war against American cities would be adjudicated as “levying war” against the US, otherwise known as treason.

Silence isn't golden

CNN reports that Trump was thirsty for a reaction, but the brass sat quietly.

Trump’s frustration was clear, given that he had so successfully whipped up lower-ranking troops at Fort Bragg earlier in the year. In June, he shamefully got young enlistees to boo as he attacked Biden. This week, in front of a mature audience, he got crickets.

At one point, Trump implored the audience to applaud him, saying, “I’ve never walked into a room so silent before … If you want to applaud, you applaud.” He then attempted a joke, saying hey, “If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank. There goes your future.”

Hilarity did not ensue.

Instead of clapping wildly — or even at all — the Generals served up discipline, delivering the silent message that they took an oath to the Constitution, not to him.

Attendees were aghast at the whole affair. The Intercept reports multiple officials who called Trump’s speech “embarrassing” and criticized Hegseth for gathering top commanders from around the world for a speech that was just like “his social media posts.”

One officer called Hegseth’s address “garbage.” Another said: “We are diminished as a nation by both Hegseth and Trump.” Another called it disqualifying, adding that, “It shocks the conscience to hear Hegseth — he is no warrior — endorse bullying and hazing of service members. How dare this former National Guard major lecture our military leaders on lethality.”

Patriots worried about the Constitution should take heart. The disastrous spectacle delivered a silver lining that may well save the republic.

Generals know what they must do

The silver lining is that every high-ranking officer stationed everywhere in the world now knows, without a doubt, two crucial facts they may only have suspected before Quantico:

  1. Hegseth plans to disregard the rules of engagement to deliver maximum “lethality,” regardless of domestic and international law; and
  2. Trump is unwell, and mentally unfit to serve as Commander-in-Chief.

Knowledge of those two facts will inform decisions on how to respond to illegal orders. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, they are required to disobey illegal orders, including those that violate US law as well as the Constitution.

Having heard Hegseth’s criminal intent, and having experienced Trump’s insanity, the officers’ resolve to disobey any and all illegal orders will only strengthen.

  • 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.

All Trump's lethal buffoonery is contained in this pathetic suit

The first thing experienced defense attorneys do when they get a new complaint is read it end to end, to see if it tells a compelling story. Did my client say something so stupid, so damaging, his transcript is already at FedEx Kinkos, blown up billboard size for opening statements? Is there a hidden narrative lurking that plaintiffs’ own counsel has, miraculously, somehow missed?

But once in a while, you get a complaint so full of bombast, ignorance, and braggadocio you assume the lawyer was drunk when they filed it. Pleadings, after all, can become trial exhibits, and if your client is a self-impressed a------, you don’t want to advertise that fact to the jury.

When you get that complaint, you share it among peers, because your friends are all litigators who love a good laugh. Had I been on the receiving end of Trump’s New York Times complaint, I’d have sent it out as an early Christmas gift.

Choking on its own puffery

Now the whole world knows Trump can’t take a joke, Jimmy Kimmel should deadpan deliver a few pages of Trump’s vanity suit against the NYT as his sidekick Guillermo runs and hides.

Much like Trump’s embarrassing tirade at the UN this week, his defamation complaint pays cringing, fawning tribute to himself, literally citing his own “singular brilliance” and describing his 1.5-point election win in 2024 as “the greatest personal and political achievement in American history.”

Eighty-five pages of Trump anointing himself begins by claiming he won “in historic fashion,” securing a “resounding mandate from the American people.” Unless you watch Fox News exclusively, you know that to be a lie. Trump’s win over Kamala Harris was one of the smallest presidential victories in US history.

An experienced plaintiff’s attorney would have warned Trump that shooting his own credibility in the first pages is ill-advised. Once juries roll their eyes, it’s hard to get them to focus.

‘You’re Fired!’

Trump’s suit then whines about NYT articles that panned The Apprentice, the show that, lamentably, made him a household name. Trump boldly claims he invented the phrase, “You’re fired,” as if every single person ever fired prior to the year 2004 was told, as a matter of fact and law, “You’re terminated.”

Trump insists that he made The Apprentice a success — and not the other way around. He does not claim the NYT defamed him over The Apprentice, but that they groveled insufficiently over it. If anything, his complaint suggests the American people would have a legal claim against the producers of the show if it weren’t for the statute of limitations.

After his NDA finally expired, Bill Pruitt, producer of the first two seasons of The Apprentice, was free to tell the truth. He said Trump “was not, by any stretch, a successful New York real estate tycoon like we made him out to be… We needed to legitimize Donald Trump as someone who all these young, capable people would be clamoring over one another trying to get a job working for.”

Pruitt readily admits the whole show was a con job that worked, because Trump recognized the show would “elevate his brand.” It’s also likely where Trump grew addicted to being called “Sir,” not recognizing the sarcasm of an inside joke.

Lucky Loser

Trump’s complaint also harangues the Times about the book “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success” by reporters Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner, now available on Kindle for $13.99.

Written by the authors who wrote the 2018 NYT exposé of Trump’s finances, Lucky Loser exposes how “one of the country’s biggest business failures lied his way into the White House:”

“Trump spun a hardscrabble fable of how he parlayed a small loan from his father into a multibillion-dollar business and real estate empire.

This feat, he argued, made him singularly qualified to lead the country.

Except none of it was true. As his wealthy father’s chosen successor, Trump received the equivalent today of more than $500 million in family money…”

One assumes defense counsel is already making oversized exhibits of Trump’s silver spoon, complete with charts and quotes.

Judge not amused

Last week, Republican-appointed Judge Steven Merryday struck down Trump’s $15 billion lawsuit, giving Trump’s counsel 28 days to file a version that complies with federal pleading rules.

Merryday wrote that the complaint included legally improper puffery, “florid and enervating” pages lavishing blind praise on Trump while indulging his nonstop grievances. Merryday dressed down Trump’s legal team for violating pleading rules “every member of the bar of every federal court knows, or is presumed to know…”

After recounting with scorn some of the more lurid absurdities in Trump’s complaint, Merryday reminded Trump’s counsel that a complaint at law is not an ego stroke for Trump, a PR tool for Fox News, or a rally speech for MAGA voters who don’t know any better.

He closed by warning counsel that if they refile the thing, the case will proceed in his courtroom in a “professional and dignified” manner — or not at all.

The joke lives on

In response, Trump told ABC, “I’m winning, I’m winning the cases.” Because of course he did.

His legal team backed him up, claiming Trump “will continue to hold the Fake News accountable through this powerhouse lawsuit… in accordance with the “judge’s direction on logistics.”

The “judge’s direction on logistics,” (writer smacks the back of her own head to dislodge her rolled eyes) is face-saving spin for the judge’s obvious smackdown: a snarly dismissal order dripping in sarcasm, a 40-page limit for any re-do, and the judge’s suggestion that counsel learn civil practice rules before they come back.

  • 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 GOP fire eaters are preparing their supporters for war

In the decade before the Civil War, slave-owning men known as “Fire Eaters” started ratcheting up public discourse in stark, divisive, all or nothing terms. They cast their interests not as political differences, but as an existential crisis facing the nation. They used public speeches to vilify people who disagreed with them, spreading hatred in the hearts of men until it grew hot, and war became inevitable.

It’s impossible to read the words of those men without hearing the voices of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller speaking at Charlie Kirk’s memorial.

Using that solemn occasion to deliver a message of hatred and division, two weeks after Kirk’s murder, Trump and Miller are still exploiting it. Despite the lack of clarity about both the killer’s motive and his shifting political ideologies, they continue to spread false rhetoric blaming the “radical left,” projecting their own wish for political violence just as the Fire Eaters of the 19th century did.

Words of war

Anyone who expected a respite, or dared to hope for a “presidential” message during Kirk’s memorial service, was sorely disappointed. After a MAGA speaker lineup, Trump walked onto the stage while Lee Greenwood sang “Proud to be an American,” also known as “God Bless the U.S.A.” In Trump's heavily choreographed entrance, raucous applause erupted as live fireworks exploded across a stage more reminiscent of a used car clearance event than a somber memorial.

After Kirk’s grieving widow spoke of forgiveness and grace, Trump batted her words away. Trump relayed to the audience how Kirk said he didn’t hate people who disagreed with him.

“But,” Trump said, “That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them, I’m sorry.”

Miller, the presumed architect behind Trump’s attacks on immigrants and minorities, delivered his own ghoulish invective, eulogizing Kirk with dark images of us vs. them:

“The light will defeat the dark. We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened. They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us. Because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble.

And to those trying to incite violence against us, those trying to foment hatred against us, what do you have? You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred. You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing. We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity.”

Miller didn’t define who he meant by “we” and “they.” He didn’t need to.

Right v left

Trump and Miller are getting their wish: Political violence in the US is on the rise. Violent attacks against US government personnel and facilities more than doubled between 2024 and 2025. Contrary to what Trump and Miller keep claiming, however, it’s coming from the right, not the left.

Analyzing political violence according to the views of the perpetrator is complicated in part because interpreting motive can itself be subjective. It’s also complicated because different organizations use different terminology. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security define domestic violent extremism as violence “intended to influence government policy or intimidate civilians for political or ideological purposes,” while researchers, including universities, use more operational definitions.

Despite these challenges, data clearly show that right-wing political violence has been far, far deadlier than left-wing political violence.

Based on government and independent analyses, PBS reports that right-wing extremist violence has been responsible for the overwhelming majority of fatalities in the US, listing recent examples such as the 2015 Charleston church shooting, the Pittsburgh 2018 Tree of Life synagogue attack, and the anti-immigrant 2019 El Paso Walmart massacre. The report also lists deaths caused by left-wing extremist incidents, including anarchist and environmental movements like the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front, arson and vandalism campaigns that often targeted property rather than people.

When compared side by side, violence from right wing extremism amounted to approximately 75 percent to 80 percent of U.S. domestic terrorism deaths between 2001 and the present, while violence from the left comprised about 10 percent to 15 percent of such incidents and less than 5 percent of fatalities overall from political violence.

Violent words elicit violent responses

Mark Hertling writes in his excellent essay “Beware today’s fire eaters” that the 1861 onset of Civil War can be attributed to political arsonists who portrayed compromise and coexistence as dishonor, promoting national violence as the only resort.

Hertling, a former commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, writes that the Civil War agitators “moved beyond grievance into agitation and violence. They … treated any dissent as an existential threat to their way of life. They cultivated a rhetoric that was designed not to persuade opponents but to radicalize their many followers,” ultimately celebrating political violence as necessary.

The tactics of the fire-eaters, Herling notes, reveal the same playbook we are witnessing today as Trump radicalizes his base by demonizing and dehumanizing his political opponents.

Fire Eaters of the Civil War, like Trump and Miller, painted their political adversaries as mortal enemies. As Trump has demonstrated repeatedly with Executive Orders that have no basis in law, the Fire Eaters also normalized extralegal responses. They claimed political violence was a patriotic duty, just as Trump exalted J6 rioters to fight like hell or they wouldn’t have a country left, then rewarded even the worst among them with a pardon.

As Trump, Miller, Hegseth and Bondi build the world’s largest and most lethal police state, they are equipping Trump with his own private militia. As Trump teases a third presidential run, it’s not hard to see that, for him, January 6 was but a rehearsal.

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

Trump's racist Supreme Court has committed its worst outrage yet

Jason Brian Gavidia, a Trump supporter and U.S. citizen, has described how federal agents treated him during an immigration stop in June.

Gavidia runs an autobody shop in an eastern suburb of LA. One afternoon, a white unmarked van drove by, then did a sudden U-turn. Masked Border Patrol agents jumped out from all doors, carrying handguns and military style rifles.

Two agents approached Gavidia, pushed him up against a metal fence, and twisted his arm backward as they asked an odd question: What hospital was he born in?

Gavidia happened to be born in a neighborhood hospital, close by, so they were satisfied. But his friend and co-worker Javier Ramirez wasn’t so lucky.

Even though Ramirez, a U.S. citizen and father of four, approached the officers with his hands up to show he was no threat, two agents tackled him to the ground. They shoved him facedown, one agent kneeling on his back as he struggled.

Ramirez spent several days in detention. Still traumatized months later, he habitually looks over his shoulder in fear.

Luckily for both men, their ordeal was caught on video. Other recordings of incidents with worse outcomes have gone viral. They show federal immigration officers’ aggression and violence increasing in pursuit of Trump’s daily “detention quotas” to fill for-profit detention centers.

Before Trump

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1791 as part of the Bill of Rights, prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

Under clear 4th A precedent, reasonable suspicion is required before any person — U.S. citizen or not, documented or not — can be stopped by law enforcement. Under Terry v. Ohio, settled law since 1962, officers must have specific, articulable facts suggesting that someone is involved in or is about to be involved in criminal activity.

Skin color, a foreign accent, or a racist officer’s hunch were not enough.

The 14th Amendment prohibits the government from denying any person “equal protection of the laws,” meaning the government needs a valid reason before they can treat people differently.

Different conduct was always a valid reason. Different skin color was not.

Until now, both amendments forbade the government from using race as the motivating factor in any government action.

Masked federal agents could not jump out from behind a tree, or an unmarked van, to harass brown people. They couldn’t run up and demand to see their “papers.” They couldn’t throw people into an unmarked van for no reason other than not carrying the right documents in their pocket or purse.

Unequal protection

On July 11, following 4th and 14th Amendment law as it then existed, a District Court enjoined U. S. immigration officers from making investigative stops based on:

  1. presence at particular locations such as bus stops, car washes, day laborer pickup sites, and agricultural sites
  2. the type of work one does
  3. speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent
  4. apparent race or ethnicity.

Two months later, six Trump-aligned Supreme Court justices lifted that injunction.

On September 8, in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, the Republican majority scoffed at significant evidence of racial profiling by ICE agents, similar to what Gavidia and Ramirez endured, and allowed it to continue.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a smug concurring opinion, rejecting plaintiffs’ standing, then clarifying that “ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion,” but could be a “relevant factor” when considered along with other salient factors.”

He never defined, explored, or explained what “other salient factors” might be, but seemed to think working in a low-paying job was one of them.

Kavanaugh stressed the significance of the government’s immigration enforcement efforts like he was a talking head on Fox News, while ignoring harms to plaintiffs.

In “close cases,” he wrote, citing Hollingsworth v. Perry, “the Court considers the balance of harms and equities to the parties, including the public interest.”

Kavanaugh presumed irreparable injury to the government any time it is “enjoined by a court from effectuating statutes,” without examining how the government effectuates those statutes.

Kavanaugh did not discuss harms caused to children when their parents don’t come home for days, weeks, or months.

He did not discuss fear, marginalization, or the psychological harm of being tackled to the ground by masked federal agents.

He did not weigh the corrosive harms to a nation that no longer trusts but fears the federal government.

Kavanaugh focused only on people who are in the country illegally, ignoring harms to US citizens and their families, writing, “The interests of individuals who are illegally in the country in avoiding being stopped by law enforcement for questioning is ultimately an interest in evading the law. That is not an especially weighty legal interest.”

He bypassed plaintiffs like Gavidia and Ramires, roughed up and wrongly detained for days, weeks and months even though they are citizens, writing blithely that although the fourth amendment still applied, excessive forces was not part of the underlying injunction.

What’s a brief attack among friends?

Kavanaugh indulged in the delusion that immigration stops are always “brief,” and that brief abuse at the hands of government is fine.

Demonstrating not only naivete but a complete disregard of the record before him, he wrote that when officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they “promptly let the individual go.”

He wrote multiple times that officers only stop people “briefly,” that “reasonable suspicion means only that immigration officers may briefly stop the individual,” and that “Individual(s) will be free to go after the brief encounter…”

The brevity of Gavidia’s encounter did not remove the harm, which may stay with him for the rest of his life. Ramirez’ encounter was not brief, but lasted for days. ICE has wrongly detained hundreds of US citizens for days, weeks, and months.

As Justice Sonia Sotomayor writes in the dissent, the Court has now “declared that all Latinos, US citizens or not, who work low-wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction.”

Republicans on the high court did this after giving Donald Trump immunity for heinous crimes, as long as he’s carrying out ‘official’ duties, like murdering brown people in fishing boats.

The only silver lining is that when — not if — people start dying at ICE’s hands, ICE agents will not share Trump’s immunity. That must be why they wear masks.

  • 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 latest bullying frenzy has set him up for a mortifying defeat

If Donald Trump’s skin gets any thinner, the US will have its first translucent president.

Trump, who relishes belittling people with unpresidential insults, like calling Democrats “scum” and “the enemy within,” can’t take it when his slurs boomerang back at him.

Instead of accepting that jokes, jabs and insults come with the territory — satirizing presidents is an American tradition — Trump reacts like an enraged teenager when anyone insults him.

Whenever the media fail to fawn, or worse, accurately report Trump’s unprecedented corruption or ineptitude, Trump’s first instinct is to use federal resources to seek retribution against them. He’s like a schoolyard bully who punches and punches and punches down. When his victim finally hits back, he runs away terrified.

Strongmen can’t handle ridicule

While Trump works to silence media outlets that cover him truthfully, comedic ridicule seems to sting him most acutely.

As authoritarian expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat points out, “humor has long been one of the most effective weapons of anti-authoritarian politics. Behind the facade of their omnipotence, most strongmen are brittle and insecure personalities. They don’t mind being called evil, but being ridiculed is a different matter.”

Trump personifies that observation:

Kimmel on the block

Kimmel’s show was suspended after Kimmel talked about the horrific Charlie Kirk murder during his comedic monologue.

Kimmel said, “We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”

Whether Kimmel’s remarks were funny or not, anyone who spent five minutes online after Kirk was shot knows that statement to be largely true: right-wing commentators, Trump, and Trump supporters were salivating over the prospect that Kirk’s shooter was from the left, even before his identity was known.

Then, after the shooter was identified as coming from a pro-Trump MAGA family, the right rejected that narrative and insisted the crime was attributable to Democrats, using it to foment and harness political hatred.

Nice network you got there…

Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, Brendan Carr, decided to escalate matters, threatening ABC over Kimmel’s joke, apparently not understanding that what he was delivering was an admission of liability.

Flexing legal muscle he doesn’t have, Carr doesn’t seem to understand that neither he, nor Trump, nor the Attorney General can use federal resources to silence Trump’s critics, because political speech is strictly protected under the First Amendment.

Since the famous New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), political speech has enjoyed strong protection from the courts, arguably the most rigorous legal protection of any category of speech.

In a statement that should go directly into Kimmel’s First Amendment complaint, Carr said Kimmel’s joke that Kirk’s shooter “was somehow a MAGA or a Republican-motivated person” — clear political speech — would be punished.

Expressly threatening ABC’s broadcast license over the statement, Carr stated, “I've been very clear from the moment that I have become chairman of the FCC … what people don't understand is that the broadcasters … are entirely different than people that use other forms of communication. They have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest.”

Reflecting Trump’s mob-boss mentality, Carr then threatened ABC and its parent company, Disney, over Kimmel’s joke, stating, “Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”

How the First Amendment works

Just after Trump AG Pam Bondi was widely panned by legal critics on both sides of the political aisle for her threat of a government “crackdown” on hate speech, Trump’s FCC chair demonstrated similar ignorance of the First Amendment.

Carr and Bondi, like their boss, seem to enjoy threatening coercive government action to silence voices they don’t like. They could all use competent counsel to explain the limits of their own authority.

At first blush, it looks as if Kimmel has no First A claim because Kimmel is a private party working for a private company, and the First Amendment does not protect private speech.

However, his employer, ABC is subject to regulation by the FCC. It has been the law for decades that under the First Amendment, government agencies cannot coerce a private employer to restrict, censure or control someone's speech by threatening legal action. When an FCC official like Chairman Carr threatens a broadcast network for political speech he doesn’t like, he is using government resources to coerce silence, a clear violation of the First Amendment.

The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring or threatening private media outlets for political speech, because threats of government sanction, retribution or punishment have a direct chilling effect on that speech. Just last year, the Supreme Court ruled in National Rifle Association v. Vullo that government officials cannot use coercive tactics to suppress disfavored speech, stressing that government officials cannot achieve indirect censorship by threatening private companies (like ABC) to punish certain viewpoints (like Kimmel’s).

The FCC cannot punish broadcasters that disparage Trump, or use its authority to pressure private employers to suppress objectionable opinions. The Supreme Court has ruled consistently that using coercive tactics to suppress disfavored views is unconstitutional censorship, even if the government doesn't directly target the speaker, but, as here, targets his employer by threatening their FCC license.

Here's hoping Kimmel sues. If Carr is going to run the Federal Communications Commission, he ought to take a minute to study some First Amendment basics.

  • 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.

In this terrible moment, one decent Republican showed us the depth of Trump's depravity

A president who calls his opponents “scum” and “the enemy within,” who ordered the murder of 11 people in a boat headed for Trinidad then posted snuff photos of the hit, and who has repeatedly encouraged political violence in his name, is trying to catapult Charlie Kirk’s murder into a push for maximum state power. Deliberately stoking outrage on the right, Trump is riding Kirk’s death hard, using it to declare a crackdown against people who don’t support Trump politically.

Trump is specifically vowing to silence progressive voices who are critical of Kirk’s pro-gun, pro-violence, anti-diversity message, while he celebrates Kirk as an icon of free speech.

Setting aside the thick irony of celebrating Kirk’s free speech by shutting down voices against him, it is well settled legal precedent that government attempts to silence opposing political views violate the First Amendment. Although the six Trump-aligned justices on the Supreme Court have bent over backward to rule in Trump’s favor on the shadow docket, where legal analysis is conveniently optional, it would be nearly impossible — even for them — to contrive a free speech carve-out just for Trump.

SCOTUS allowing Trump to prohibit, regulate, repress, or punish anti-Kirk political speech would be a tacit admission that all six Republicans on the bench are in on Trump’s overthrow of the Constitution — an admission all but Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would be loathe to make.

Trump loves to hate

Although the alleged shooter is now in custody, before his identity was known, Trump politicized the murder.

In a televised statement from the Oval Office, Trump told the nation his own political opponents were responsible for Kirk’s death, claiming:

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now. My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and other political violence.”

Anyone outside the Fox News bubble knows that Trump himself is the Inciter-in-Chief, having encouraged violence against his perceived political “enemies” for years. He not only organized a violent physical attack against his own government on January 6, he pardoned everyone who committed violence on his behalf that day, including people convicted of other heinous crimes who violently attacked the police.

Whipping up his gun-toting base instead of urging healing, Trump is agitating about “radical left political violence,” to encourage his militant followers, including pardoned J6 rioters, to target them.

Trump claimed without evidence that Kirk was assassinated by “the radical left.” Again blind to his own rhetoric, Trump expounded, "It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree” — without acknowledging how he personally leads the effort to demonize anyone who doesn’t support him.

Trump, unlike any president before him, literally calls Democrats “the enemy within,” as he threatens to deploy the military against Democratic-run cities.

Unfit to serve

Trump’s Oval Office address deserves further reading. After praising pro-gun, anti-gay, anti-minority Kirk as the “ideal American,” Trump’s speech turned dangerously divisive. He said:

“This is a dark moment for America. On campuses nationwide, he championed his ideas with courage, logic, humor, and grace. It’s long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.

“For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.

“My Administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country. From the attack on my life in Butler, Pennsylvania last year, which killed a husband and father, to the attacks on ICE agents, to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York, to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives. Tonight, I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died: the values of free speech, citizenship, the rule of law, and the patriotic devotion and love of God.

“Charlie was the best of America, and the monster who attacked him was attacking our whole country…”

Trump did not mention Melissa and Mark Hortman, the Minnesota legislator and her husband who were murdered only two months ago.

He did not mention how in 2022 U.S. Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was beaten with a hammer, nor Donald Trump Jr.’s sickening mockery of the attack.

He did not mention the 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Witmer, any school shootings, the violence he encouraged on J6, nor any political violence executed on his behalf since he began encouraging political violence during his 2016 campaign rallies.

He failed to mention that last summer's assassination attempt against his own person was committed by a registered Republican.

Adult in the room

In direct contrast to Trump, Utah Governor Spencer Cox, the adult Republican in the room, is making a full-throated appeal for national healing.

Calling for forgiveness and national unity, Cox is doing what a responsible statesman does: trying to lower the political temperature in a deeply fraught moment.

Governor Cox said:

“We can return violence with violence, we can return hate with hate, and that’s the problem with political violence — it metastasizes. Because we can always point the finger at the other side. And at some point, we have to find an off-ramp, or it’s going to get much, much worse.”

Cox’s plea for calm and healing is a welcome balm to Trump’s bombast, which he continued to deliver on Fox News on Friday morning.

Still trying to rachet up the division, even after the shooter, who comes from a pro-Trump MAGA family, was caught, Trump said: “The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy.”

A Fox panelist pushed back, telling Trump: “We have radicals on the right as well. How do we fix this country?”

Trump said: “I'll tell you something that's gonna get me in trouble but I couldn't care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don't want to see crime. The radicals on the left are the problem.”

Governor Cox, in contrast, put the blame on one person: The shooter.

No democracy can survive when political differences become death sentences. Even if Trump doesn’t understand this, his immediate advisers do. By directly encouraging right-wing online agitators to attack people on the left, Trump is supporting something, but it’s not democracy.

Blaming Democrats, Trump hopes to trigger retaliation against them. The demonization Trump encourages, which culminated in Kirk’s horrific murder, is pure trickle-down hatred. The spigot of bigotry is his own mouth, and he’s keeping it open to serve his own interests over the best interests of the country.

  • Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

Trump's extrajudicial killings point to something even more chilling

The Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibits military troops from committing unlawful killings, defined at 10 USC et. seq. Troops can kill enemy combatants on sight, but only when engaged in armed conflict, or when there is an imminent threat. Even when we are at war, it is a war crime for troops to deliberately kill civilians unless it’s an act of self-defense in response to imminent danger.

On September 2, in international waters, on suspicion that a small boat off the coast of Venezuela was carrying drugs to Trinidad, President Donald Trump ordered a strike. The boat was carrying 11 people, all of whom were killed.

There were no efforts to speak to, arrest or interdict the traffickers. There was no sharing of intelligence, no imminent threat, and no diplomacy. Instead, Trump, unencumbered by constraints of law, ordered the boat blown out of the water.

The next day, the New York Times reported that “Pentagon officials were still working… on what legal authority they would tell the public was used to back up the extraordinary strike in international waters.”

Reckless violence

After the strike, Trump posted, “Earlier this morning, on My Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE!”

Pete Hegseth, the U.S. “Secretary of War,” took his own victory lap with, “We're going to go on the offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality.” His Neanderthalic bleating tracks similar talk from ICE and DHS as theyglorify militarism and violence to recruit new agents, for whom a criminal background is not an automatic disqualification.

Hegseth, a former Fox News host, has consistently defended war criminals, dismissing military law as an inconvenient intrusion onto combat authority. If his disdain for “tepid legality” in favor of maximum “lethality” in killing 11 people was not an admission of guilt — meaning he knew the order was illegal but didn’t care — nothing is.

Equally chilling, when Brian Krassenstein, a social influencer, noted online that “killing citizens of another nation who are civilians, without any due process, is called a war crime,” Vice President JD Vance wrote back, “I don’t give a s--- what you call it.”

Extrajudicial killings

When testosterone highs from the strike finally dissipated, military analysts began questioning the maneuver. They questioned, in particular, its legality.

Administration officials explained that narcotics on the boat posed an “imminent national security threat.”

But that claim doesn’t hold up, given that the boat was headed for Trinidad, even if drugs were on board. Worse, unlike typical drug interdictions by the U.S. Coast Guard, this strike was carried out without warning shots. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said simply that, “Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders they blew it up,” and promised more violence in the near future.

Whether drugs were on the ship or not, drug runners are criminal civilians, not enemy combatants. The closest thing I’ve seen to a law-adjacent defense is the administration’s bootstrapping claim that Trump could order a strike on Tren de Aragua because Trump has designated it a terrorist organization. But that’s like claiming the right to kill civilians by association. Experts appear to agree:

  • Frank Kendall, former secretary of the Air Force, said the kill targets, “weren’t engaged in anything like a direct attack on the United States” and weren’t afforded a trial to determine their guilt. He added: “Frankly, I can’t see how this can be considered anything other than a nonjudicial killing outside the boundaries of domestic and international law.”
  • Geoffrey Corn, a retired lieutenant colonel and former Army senior adviser on the law of war, said, “I don’t think there is any way to legitimately characterize a drug ship heading from Venezuela, arguably to Trinidad, as an actual or imminent armed attack against the United States, justifying this military response.”
  • Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer, agreed that even the designation of drug cartels as terrorist groups doesn’t translate into authority to use military force against them. Such designation enables the U.S. to levy sanctions and pursue criminal prosecutions, not to just open fire and kill them.

American lives at risk

The Venezuelan government is now legitimately accusing the U.S. of extrajudicial murder, and preparing for escalating violence. In response to Trump’s attack, President Nicolás Maduro ordered the deployment of 25,000 soldiers to Venezuela’s coastal regions, more than doubling the country’s military presence in those areas.

Maduro has said that he suspects Trump is really threatening regime change with the strike and the buildup of U.S. naval forces in the area, because Venezuela holds the world's largest proven oil reserves.

Others believe Trump’s escalating use of military force is an attempt to divert public attention away from the Epstein files, corruption and tanking economy.

Still others say Trump is dangerously unhinged, projecting imagery of power to mask his administration’s widespread ineptitude. While these motivations are not mutually exclusive, Venezuela’s long term allies, China and Russia, are watching closely.

Whatever his true reason, if Trump has the authority to unilaterally redefine civilian suspects as “combatants” even though they pose no imminent threat, he can redefine any group as a terrorist organization, and order them killed.

That may present a tidy solution to Trump’s stubborn due process problem, but it is the stuff of Nazis. Even though today’s victims are brown and Black, trapped in poverty, and therefore disposable to men like Trump, killing them extrajudicially is murder.

I don’t give a s--- what the administration calls 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.

Here's how blue states can devastate Trump's Confederacy

Don’t despair as authoritarianism marches around us. There is a thing that comes next. And it may come soon, as the realization spreads that blue states contribute the lion’s share of resources funding Trump’s mad theater of destruction.

As Democratic leaders consider how best to respond to a president’s unprecedented and unconstitutional efforts to harm them, they hold more cards than their attacker realizes.

Truth behind the ruse

By now everyone knows that Donald Trump is planning to deploy tanks and armed troops to occupy Democratic-controlled cities under one of two party lines: to “fight crime,” or to round up “illegals.”

But what some analysts have warned about since January is becoming clearer by the day: these reasons are pretextual. As ICEv rounds up migrant farm workers, food delivery men, and people who run stop signs, those arrests are building the scaffolding to let Trump stay in power and out of prison beyond 2028.

Governors in Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Missouri and other red states are dispatching their own National Guard troops to support Trump's “crackdown on crime” outside their own borders, despite these states governing cities with murder rates twice as high as that of D.C. Given that they govern the worst per capita violent crime rates in the country, these self-proclaimed “states rights” champions obviously don’t give a damn as they prepare to invade their sovereign neighbors.

Trump, JD Vance and Stephen Miller are now explicitly threatening domestic political opponents — Democratic-run states and cities — with military occupation.

That is the real reason behind the “Big Beautiful Bill” that funded the world’s largest police state.

That is the real purpose behind $45 billion to build new concentration camps, and a 265% increase in ICE’s detention budget.

Miller just admitted as much on Fox News, saying, “The Democrat [sic] Party…is an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gangbangers and illegal alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat [sic] Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”

So there we have it. Democrats have been Trump’s true “enemy within” all along. Democrats are the intended targets of illegal occupying forces, concentration camps, and tank-mounted rifles in the streets.

If this doesn’t sound like a red declaration of civil war against half the nation, nothing does.

Trump now has a domestic military force funded with a budget 62 percent larger than the entire federal prison system, where 155,933 inmates are currently incarcerated, some of them for life. Trump is now spending more on ICE than most nations spend on their entire military budgets.

When the concentration camps are built, it’s not hard to piece out who will fill them.

Stop paying for incompetent cruelty

Democratic leaders are responding to an unprecedented situation, where a US president is literally attacking them for partisan reasons.

Acting outside the scope of his Article II powers, Trump is also withholding billions of dollars in previously appropriated funding for services and programs blue states have paid into and rely on. He’s also trying to dictate state law by withholding federal funding from states with policies he disagrees with, like DEI, climate programs, and “sanctuary” policies for undocumented but otherwise law abiding immigrants. Although several funding freezes have been halted by federal courts, a Trump-packed high court has reversed most of those rulings.

The good news is that blue states hold far more resources than red states. If they decide to give Trump a taste of his own unconstitutional medicine by withholding, escrowing, or otherwise diverting federal tax dollars, fighting fire with fire, Trump’s vindictive plans could backfire.

The concept of blue states as federal donor states and red states as federal welfare states is gaining traction.

In a brilliant essay, “It’s Time for Americans to Start Talking About Soft Secession,” the analyst Chris Armitage writes:

“Currently, Massachusetts sends $4,846 more per capita to the federal government than it gets back. New Jersey and Washington are in the same position, bleeding thousands per person annually. Over five years, New York alone contributed $142.6 billion more than it received. Meanwhile, red states pocket $1.24 for every dollar they send to Washington. Blue states are essentially paying red states to undermine democracy.”

Awareness of this funding disparity is spreading like fossil-fueled wildfires. Democratic-led states have already introduced legislation to allow states to withhold federal taxes if the federal government unconstitutionally refuses to fund them. Connecticut, Maryland, New York, and Wisconsin have introduced bills. California and Washington are not far behind.

Democratic leaders could also pass legislation and ordinances instructing state and municipal employees to alter their federal withholding forms to cut off federal revenue. They could encourage residents statewide to withhold federal taxes, or put them into escrow.

As Trump’s unconstitutional power grabs expand, comptroller creativity will spread.

Soft secession?

Congress controls the purse under the 16th Amendment. Under the Supremacy Clause, any state law designed to obstruct federal tax collection likely would be unconstitutional.

But consider that Trump and his supporters have already lit the Constitution on fire by withholding hundreds of billions of dollars Congress previously appropriated for education, health, climate, foreign aid, medical research and social services.

Consider that Trump’s unilateral passage of tariffs is also unconstitutional.

Ditto the deployment of armed forces against unarmed citizens.

Why should blue states stand on constitutional ceremony when the Trump-packed Supreme Court refuses to?

This essay is not written lightly. It’s a dramatic paradigm shift reflecting a house divided, and with it long-held assumptions about federalism, including taxation. Democrats pay disproportionate taxes because we assume it will promote the greater good. But when our resources are used not to help the common man, but to maim him, we must examine those assumptions.

The University of Toronto, former Yale historian Tim Snyder writes, poignantly:

“It is one thing to believe that federal taxes are worthwhile because they are being spent to redress inequalities in health care or education. It is another to watch the federal government spread disease and ignorance. It is one thing to pay taxes every year, in the knowledge that eventually the power in the White House will change every four or eight. It is another to be confronted with a president who talks about third terms. It is one thing to believe that the Constitution will ultimately preserve the country. It is another to recognize that those in power scorn it.”

A new kind of civil war is here, but Democrats did not invite it. When our backs are against the wall, facing the firing squad of a rogue president, complicit party, and corrupt high court determined to destroy us, we must act in our own self-interest. Freedom and our nation’s survival depend on 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

At last, a Trump outrage to tear even MAGA SCOTUS from his side

Donald Trump thinks he can control all aspects of American life, including free market interest rates. The Fed chair, and the global economy, disagree.

If the Fed were to fall under the influence of an elected official seeking to tie interest rates to his political agenda, economic consequences would be dire: Investors would face heightened market volatility due to uncertainty and artificially manipulated interest rates, causing confidence in US assets to drop.

In his second term, Trump has made repeated threats to remove officials from the Federal Reserve, including Fed chair Jerome Powell and governor Lisa Cook. Trump is unhappy that the Fed has not yet lowered interest rates to mask economic fallout from his ill-conceived tariffs, which have caused unprecedented levels of volatility and uncertainty.

Trump’s threats have already jeopardized the Fed’s goals, destabilized global markets and eroded trust in US fiscal autonomy. AInvest reports early market responses to his threats and stresses in sum that “the Fed’s independence remains critical to global stability, as political interference risks undermining dollar dominance and triggering cascading effects on bond yields and equity valuations.”

Usurping the Fed’s role

In his latest attempt to pressure the Fed to lower interest rates, Trump seeks to fire Cook, whose appointment can only be terminated for cause under Section 10 of the Federal Reserve Act, in effect since 1913.

“For cause” in this legal context does not mean whatever Trump wants it to mean. It is statutorily defined as “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

Trump, no surprise, is trying to remove Cook for allegations falling outside that statutory definition. In response to unsubstantiated allegations from a Trump ally that Cook made false statements on a mortgage application in 2021, before she joined the Federal Reserve, Trump purported to fire her on Aug. 25.

In a letter addressed to Cook, Trump wrote, “In light of your deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter … I do not have confidence in your integrity.”

Trump, convicted of 34 felonies for falsifying business records, whose organization was found guilty on 17 counts of criminal tax fraud, whose “Trump University” defrauded students to the tune of 25 million dollars, and who is illegally enriching himself from the presidency in unprecedented ways, appears blind to irony.

If he succeeds in removing and replacing Cook, Trump will have appointed the majority of the seven-member Board of Governors, giving him direct, improvident, and economically catastrophic influence over their decisions.

Cook says not so fast

Cook is fighting back. In a civil suit filed on Aug. 28, Cook avers that the attempted firing violates her due process rights as well as the Federal Reserve Act. Seeking an emergency injunction to block her firing and confirm her status as a member of the Fed’s governing board, Cook’s attorneys pled that, “The President’s effort to terminate a Senate-confirmed Federal Reserve Board member is a broadside attack on the century-old independence of the Federal Reserve System.”

The Supreme Court, despite having granted nearly all of the Trump administration’s 19 emergency appeals on its shadow docket, may finally be poised to tell Trump ‘No’ on this one.

In May, SCOTUS reiterated the Fed’s independence in Wilcox v. Trump, ruling that, “the Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States,” distinguishing the operational independence of the Fed from that of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and other quasi-independent agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission.

Although the Roberts court often limited the powers of the executive under the Biden administration, it has done a 180 for Trump. The Republican majority now embraces the unitary executive theory on steroids, vesting an unstable president with broad Article II authority over the entire executive branch. They have let Trump ignore agency expertise, eliminate agencies altogether, and remove agency staff and directors without cause.

But in Wilcox, they bent over backward to protect the independence of the Fed, distinguishing it from other federal agencies now subject to Trump’s ruinous fiat and whim.

The law is not what Trump says it is

If Trump is allowed to go on a fishing expedition to discover infractions in personal life that he can then use to terminate employees whose terms are statutorily protected, regardless of whether those infractions have any bearing on their performance, then there is no such thing as “for cause” termination restrictions. This would suit delusional Trump, who claims Americans yearn for a dictator, just fine. But it would not serve Americans or the economy.

It is fairly obvious that short-term political interests of a president often diverge from sound long-term fiscal policy. It is also fairly obvious that Trump, who still doesn’t understand how tariffs work, is economically illiterate. Trump favors lower interest rates today to support the appearance of economic strength, because he doesn’t understand the long term economic implications.

Only an independent Fed can prevent administrations from using monetary policy for self-serving political ends in other ways, like simply printing more money to finance debt. If left unchecked, like his tariffs, Trump’s short-sighted and self-serving economic impulses could lead to total economic collapse. They could also lead to the collapse of the US dollar, which may explain Trump’s bitcoin obsession.

Even for a Trump-stacked MAGA court willing to let a criminal president run roughshod over civil liberties, the environment, education, science, and healthcare, letting him kill the US dollar may be a bridge too far.

  • 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 MAGA justices are letting Trump get away with murder

During an absurdly obsequious, three-and-a-half-hour televised “cabinet meeting” this week, Donald Trump said he can “do whatever he wants as president,” and suggested that Americans might support him becoming a dictator.

So far, the Roberts court seems to be goose-stepping along, having granted nearly all of the Trump’s administration’s 19 emergency appeals on its shadow docket, where rationale and legal precedent are conveniently omitted.

The Republican majority on the high court has long wanted to gut the administrative state in service to expanded executive power that will in turn protect oligarchic interests over those of the common man. Their nihilistic legal philosophy holds that almost all regulatory agencies and laws should give way to private, for-profit interests.

Although the court’s majority does not officially label itself free-market capitalist, it’s rulings reflect support for a severely limited regulatory environment and laissez-faire capitalism, where private entities rather than the federal government drive and regulate for-profit activity.

In their view, government services that protect, educate, and serve the public, science that saves lives, and social programs providing safety nets to vulnerable populations could be better provided — if at all — by private ventures that turn a profit.

As Trump and the MAGA majority on the high court gut the administrative state and eliminate federal services, American casualties will continue to mount.

Gutting FEMA, lying about climate science

In the southwest US, just since 1970, nighttime temperatures have increased by about 4.5 degrees. In that time span, US heat-related deaths have doubled.

As heatwaves intensify throughout the world, there’s no lingering scientific debate about the root cause: greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mostly from burning fossil fuels. The only truly emergent climate science is medical: data now show that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is killing more people, causing serious kidney damage, speeding up biological clocks and aging people prematurely — more than smoking or drinking.

In the UK, where news outlets are legally required to present information accurately, contrasted with US corporate-owned media selling propaganda, Imperial College London's Grantham Institute reported that heat-related deaths caused by climate change tripled this year alone, accounting for 1,500 deaths from climate change over a short 10-day period.

In the US this week, more than 180 Federal Emergency Management Agency employees wrote a letter to Congress criticizing Trump’s plan to drastically scale down FEMA as its unqualified director shifts more responsibility for disaster response to the states. Their letter commemorated the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, when 1,833 Americans died. For their candor and concern, many employees who signed their names have been placed on leave.

The anti-science movement now leading the US government refuses to acknowledge the link between carbon emissions and rising temperatures, in deference to Trump and the GOP’s fossil fuel donors, despite rising weather-related deaths in Texas, Arizona, and Florida, where heat deaths are the primary weather-related cause of mortality. At the same time, hurricanes, catastrophic flooding, and tropical cyclones along the Gulf Coast, wildfires in the West, and increasingly violent tornadoes in the heartland are killing more people and destroying infrastructure at record pace.

In late July, as if mocking the loss of life and habitat, the Trump administration proposed to rescind several Environmental Protection Agency regulations, including the Endangerment Finding that served as the legal basis for regulating greenhouse gases. Trump’s EPA initiative will repeal carbon pollution standards for power plants and eliminate greenhouse gas emission rules for cars and trucks, simultaneously accelerating climate change and degrading public health.

Trump’s EPA heralded the legal reversal as undoing “the underpinning of $1 trillion in costly regulations (to) save more than $54 billion annually.” They did not factor in the tens of thousands of Americans now dying annually from heat and climate-related events, nor the cost of rebuilding communities destroyed by calamitous weather, which Forbes estimates will reach $38 trillion by the year 2049.

Anti-science governance kills

Republican rejection of climate science in favor of their fossil fuel donors is already killing thousands of Americans each year. Their rejection of medical science is killing Americans in other ways.

Under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., medical science has become so politicized that long-accepted medical data is now questioned. This week, CDC Director Susan Monarez refused to rubber-stamp Kennedy’s unscientific directives to fire dedicated health experts, and accused him of weaponizing public health for political gain. Kennedy urged Monarez to resign for “not supporting President Trump’s agenda.” Monarez refused, so the White House fired her, prompting three top agency scientists to resign rather than be complicit in causing unnecessary death, including the chief medical officer and the director of the CDC’s infectious-disease center.

The Monarez firing comes on the heels of Kennedy restricting approval of COVID vaccines to high-risk groups, which will lead to more preventable deaths. It is undeniably true that the coronavirus killed Americans at far higher rates than people in other wealthy nations, with more than 1.2 million U.S. covid deaths.

Due in large part to Trump’s denials and mismanagement, the COVID-19 pandemic ranks as the deadliest disaster in US history. If a new and more virulent strain returns, the death count could increase exponentially.

MAGA Court should check its Catholic bona fides

Republicans politicized the pandemic just as they have politicized gun control and climate science, churning anti-vax, anti-mask, and anti-climate-science sentiment into political power through culture wars. These initiatives are killing Americans in record numbers, and the MAGA majority on the Supreme Court is letting Trump get away it.

Last week, by a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court allowed the National Institute of Health, the largest public funding source for biomedical research in the world, to terminate $783 million in medical grants on the thinnest of rationales: because they were “linked” to DEI initiatives.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent described the ruling as “Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.”

She might have added, “No matter how many Americans die in result.”

The Republican majority on the court consists of six Catholic justices. They should be ashamed of the loss of life they are condoning.

In the words of Father Michael Pfleger, a priest for more than 50 years, they should look into the “mirror and address the violence coming from the White House … address the violence of cutting Medicare and Medicaid … address the violence of refusing to ban assault weapons.”

They should accept responsibility for the loss of human life and liberty that attends their dismantling of an imperfect but salutary federal government 250 years in the making.

  • 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 Republican hero is right about one big thing — and also so wrong

Arnold Schwarzenegger, a lifelong Republican, has benefitted the world in immeasurable ways.

As California’s 38th governor, he reduced the state's greenhouse gas emissions by moving the state away from fossil fuels and toward renewables, particularly hydrogen and solar. He sought and obtained a waiver to allow California to adopt more stringent greenhouse gas emissions standards for passenger vehicles than those mandated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He’s been named an EPA Climate Change Champion for his work in green energy, clean technology and the overall struggle against climate change.

Schwarzenegger’s climate progress is even more impressive considering the size of California’s economy, now the fourth-largest in the world. With a $4.1 trillion GDP, California’s economy is larger than that of almost all countries, including Japan, Russia, and India. Only the economies of China, Germany, and the US are larger.

Given the cost and complexity of transitioning industries away from fossil fuels, especially 20 years ago, Schwarzenegger’s success demonstrates deep intelligence and an ability to see beyond the immediate. His prescience makes his “vow to fight” California’s redistricting efforts all the more puzzling.

Texas is rigging the midterms

At Trump’s insistence, Texas is passing a law designed, by intent and craft, to rig future elections beginning with the 2025 midterms.

Sensing voter backlash, Trump demanded that Republicans gerrymander Texas years ahead of its scheduled census. Having just completed its congressional maps in 2021, Texas wasn’t due to re-draw them until 2031. On Wednesday, the Texas House of Representatives obliged, creating five new Republican-leaning Congressional seats. The Texas Senate is following suit and Abbott will soon sign it into law.

Republicans don’t hide the fact that they’re manipulating voting boundaries to carve up Democratic voters, merging them with heavily Republican districts where their votes will be outnumbered. The practice got the green light in 2019 in Rucho v. Common Cause, when the Supreme Court ruled that partisan gerrymandering was a political question beyond the reach of the federal courts.

Rigging elections to protect Trump in perpetuity portends too many disastrous consequences to list. So California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing back with a plan to redistrict five Congressional seats. Newsom vowed only to move forward with his plan if Texas states continued theirs. Texas is moving forward, and now Trump is pushing other red states to do the same.

Arnie is right about gerrymandering

Newsom’s “Election Rigging Response Act” is a defensive move to counteract what Trump and Republicans are doing. The challenge for California is that in 2010, when Schwarzenegger was governor, an independent commission approved by voters redrew maps with the laudable goal of reducing partisanship in districting.

Although Newsom’s plan would only temporarily suspend the commission's authority, Schwarzenegger has come out swinging against it, hoping to “terminate gerrymandering.”

Schwarzenegger, who successfully campaigned for independent redistricting in California, argues correctly that gerrymandering undermines democracy and voter trust. His spokesperson said Schwarzenegger “calls gerrymandering evil, and he means that. He thinks it’s truly evil for politicians to take power from people.”

Schwarzenegger isn’t wrong. It is truly evil, as well as despotic, for politicians to choose their voters instead of the other way around. But if Newsom and other Democrat governors fail to counter Trump’s partisan redistricting war in Texas and elsewhere, Republicans will seize power nationwide, possibly permanently.

Schwarzenegger’s ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’ principle is no defense to concentration camps, book bans, state forced births, and Trump’s ever-spreading police state, to say nothing of accelerated climate destruction.

Welfare state v. donor state

Compared to California, Texas is a welfare state. In 2022, Texas received approximately $71.1 billion more from the federal government than it paid in. In contrast, California taxpayers pay far more than they receive from the federal government. In financial year 2023-24, California’s total federal taxes were $806 billion — nearly twice as much as Texas, which contributed $417 billion.

Comparative economic health is relevant here because most of the Republican-led states seeking to rig elections for Trump are also welfare states presenting drains on federal resources.

California leads not only Texas, but the nation in Fortune 500 companies, high-tech industries, new business start-ups, venture capital access, manufacturing output, and agriculture.

Despite their decades-long campaign claims, Republican economies create poverty, not wealth. Nineteen of the 20 richest states are predominantly Democratic, while 19 of the 20 poorest states are predominantly Republican. Letting poverty-producing states steer the national economy is economically backward, especially as they reject science, pretend climate change is a hoax, and ignore evidence that climate devastation is accelerating.

The partisan redistricting fight could deliver a fatal blow to democracy. Schwarzenegger is right about that, as he’s been right about so many existential challenges. The Brennan Center for Justice warns of an extremely dangerous time for American democracy: “Gerrymandering … flips the democratic process on its head, letting politicians choose their voters instead of the other way around.”

But that’s where we are: the president’s party is committed to seeking power at all costs.

As Schwarzenegger continues to lead globally on climate, pushing back against ignorance from the right that threatens to drown coastal regions and incinerate habitats out of existence, he should see that California’s redistricting response is a matter of survival. California voters will stand on Schwarzenegger’s ceremony at the nation’s peril.

  • 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 will find this atrocity isn't covered by immunity

Last week, Donald Trump directed hundreds of masked agents and soldiers, who may soon be armed, to “do whatever the hell they want,” presumably to whomever the hell they want, on the streets of the US capital.

Someone should do Trump a solid and explain, slowly, that when ICE starts murdering civilians on his request, he will be criminally liable for the bloodshed, and the Supreme Court's immunity ruling won’t save him.

US soldiers, trained to kill, are also trained to obey. But when a Commander-in-Chief authorizes clear violations of federal law, soldiers have a legal duty to disobey.

The good news is that four out of five troops who were recently polled said they understand their duty to reject illegal commands.

The bad news is human nature.

As Trump sends more and more newly minted ICE agents marching across the streets of Washington D.C. and other Democrat-run cities, along with the FBI, the DEA, U.S. Marshals, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, on top of the National Guard, MAGA extremists among them will grow more and more confident in roughing people up and worse.

It's no secret that Trump’s MAGA fans, including the violent January 6 criminals he pardoned, are champing at the bit to engage in more political violence in Trump’s name, especially if they are let loose on immigrants, democrats, Black, brown, or gay people.

At Trump’s insistence, this is the targeted “enemy within.” When extremists are armed, pumped, and encouraged by the President of the United States to brutalize his domestic “enemies” any way they want, they won’t wait to be reminded.

Trump’s directive, issued in conjunction with an unprecedented military deployment on domestic soil, literally invited federal troops to commit felonious assault on American citizens. Because such a blatantly illegal and unconstitutional directive falls outside Trump’s preclusive constitutional authority as defined in Trump v. United States, he will find no presumptive immunity for the bloodshed he causes.

A president's role as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military falls under his "exclusive constitutional authority," but encouraging soldiers to execute American citizens would not fall within this authority because it is patently unlawful.

A president enjoys broad authority to direct the military with very few limitations, but one such limitation is that his orders may not contravene the Constitution or the laws of the United States.

Although the line between official and unofficial conduct requires further legal analysis, there is no immunity shield for blatantly unconstitutional acts, and there never will be. If Trump hadn’t traded competent legal advisors for bobble-headed Fox News sycophants, counsel would have told him that by now.

Despite lamentations from the dissent, the Roberts Court’s immunity ruling did not license Trump to commit murder. While Trump would argue that he has unchecked authority to declare bogus national emergencies, even under Justice John Roberts' unitary executive license, Trump is only presumptively immune for actions taken in pursuit of his constitutional role as president.

Article II of the Constitution vests the president with the duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” Encouraging federal troops to assault, physically abuse, or murder citizens is not an act to faithfully execute the laws, it is the opposite.

Under the Constitution, no one in the national government — including Trump — may deprive another “of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” A presidential command to dismantle this constitutional protection could never, even under Roberts’ permissive structure, be deemed a ‘core constitutional function’ cloaked in immunity.

In Trump v. United States, the Court made very limited factual findings. Instead of addressing how Trump assembled and incited the January 6 mob to violence, the court basically only ruled that the president was immune on charges related to Justice Department communications, not for the violent acts that followed.

The court did not rule that Trump could organize a mob to attack the capital, or that Trump could murder his political adversaries, racial minorities, or members of the opposing political party. Post immunity, Trump’s executive power still remains subject to constitutional constraints.

What Trump is doing to incite political violence under his maximalist approach to power will produce both predictable and unpredictable results. Along with offering signing bonuses of $50,000, and student loan forgiveness of $60,000, ICE is now recruiting Trump loyalists to join the fun in “deporting illegals” with “your absolute boys” — directly tapping MAGA’s thirst for aggression.

The most violent day in our capital’s recent history was January 6, 2021. On that date, Trump lied about the outcome of the 2020 election to incite mass violence. This year, he’s lying about a “crime wave” in D.C., a migrant invasion in LA, and other manufactured “emergencies” to incite mass violence.

Five people died from Trump’s three hour attack on J6, and those cases are still pending.

How many people will die over the next three years of Trump telling masked agents to do whatever the hell they want?

  • 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 despicable move just exposed what really drives Trump

In 1989, Donald Trump purchased full-page ads in four New York newspapers, including the New York Times, calling for the return of the death penalty after a white jogger was brutally attacked in Central Park. Five Black and Latino teens were arrested for the assault, and, after confessions later determined to have been coerced by the police, they were convicted, even though there was no physical evidence linking any of them to the crime.

In 2002, after the five young men had spent years in prison for a crime they did not commit, their convictions were vacated when DNA evidence linked a serial rapist, Matias Reyes, to the crime. Reyes ultimately confessed, and provided an accounting of the crime that matched details prosecutors already knew, and forensics confirmed he had acted alone.

After the crime was solved, the case became symbolic for systemic injustice, police brutality, and racial profiling. Trump never apologized to the five men, and has never acknowledged what would have happened to them had his death penalty campaign succeeded.

He wants to hate

Trump’s vitriol has percolated in the intervening decades since the Central Park Five. After his full-page ads claimed “roving bands of wild criminals” were controlling NYC streets in 1989, this week he claimed “roving mobs of wild youth” were terrorizing streets in D.C.

Again using inaccurate claims to portray soaring violence, Trump announced on Monday that he was deploying the National Guard and federalizing the D.C. police department in order to rein in “complete and total lawlessness.”

Trump’s falsified charts with selectively outdated D.C. crime statistics were so patently wrong he was factchecked by the BBC, NPR, NYT, PBS and the Justice Department, whose data show that violent crime in Washington is at a 30-year low.

Trump’s addiction to hate and division, promoted through falsehoods, has persisted since the Central Park crime. When then-Mayor Ed Koch called for public healing, seeking to unite rather than divide his city, Trump wasn’t having it. His ad shot back, “"Maybe hate is what we need… I want to hate these muggers and murderers... They should be forced to suffer … Yes, Mayor Koch, I want to hate these murderers and I always will…”

Trump has been true to his word at least on this, and has continued ratcheting up false portrayals of dystopian urban hellscapes riddled with crime. Experts have shown a link between Trump’s language, trickle-down racism, and an increase in hate crime.

Support for police brutality

Trump’s early death penalty ads also revealed his thirst for police brutality. He wrote in 1989 that police should be “unshackled” from the constant threat of being called to account for “police brutality,” a sentiment he has echoed ever since:

The problem with getting “tougher” on crime, without addressing community needs, is that it doesn’t work, and often leads to an increase in crime.

Trump’s ineptitude also undermines police accountability efforts, further eroding trust between police and communities. By encouraging police to use excessive force, Trump spreads distrust of police among the public, needlessly endangering the lives of both citizens and police officers.

He may get the violence he craves

It is widely assumed that Trump is using D.C. as a test run for the federal occupation of other Democratic-led cities. During the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020, when Trump still had adults in the room to advise him, Trump also wanted to “take over” D.C., but officials warned that such a heavy-handed approach could backfire. This year, in the absence of competent advisors, Trump is indulging his most dangerous impulses.

We now know that, aside from the D.C. “takeover,” Trump is developing a National Guard “strike force” to confront and quell protests, demonstrations, and civil dissent. This “strike force” will act as Trump’s personal militia to crush constitutionally protected speech, in Democratic-run cities, located in Democratic-run states.

Setting aside the glaring unconstitutionality of his plan, military service members aren’t trained to de-escalate tensions, manage crowds, or solve crimes. They are trained to kill. That is why the Posse Comitatus Act forbids using military forces against civilian populations, except in cases of rebellion or insurrection.

The purpose of Trump’s “takeover” of Washington D.C. isn’t to address escalating crime, because D.C. crime isn’t escalating. It isn’t to deal with potholes, beautification, or anything else Trump mentioned in his incoherent August 11 press conference.

Trump is “taking over” D.C., sending in federal troops just as he did in Los Angeles, to normalize an expanded police state. He hopes to keep control of D.C. until it’s time for a J6 rerun, as he scales his 1989 declaration of hate, control, and brutality nationwide.

  • 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 sick charade will show us Trump's true master

On Friday, on American soil, Donald Trump will entertain a brutal war criminal whose critics are poisoned, imprisoned, or dropped from high story windows. As Vladimir Putin continues reducing Ukraine to rubble, Trump will generate headlines with no grasp of the underlying history at issue.

In 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to the formation of 15 states, including Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. In the process, Ukraine was left with an outsize stockpile of nuclear weapons, including 1,700 nuclear warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 44 strategic bombers, which put Ukraine in possession of the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world.

In 1994, in exchange for Ukraine’s agreement to move these weapons into Russia, the US, the UK, and Russia agreed, jointly and severally, to protect Ukraine and to secure its borders. This was consistent with the US’ global efforts to control nuclear proliferation through diplomatic, legal, and operational channels. The terms of Ukraine’s disarmament were hammered out in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances.

The US, UK, and Russia gave their security assurances to Ukraine in an express exchange under which Ukraine gave up the weapons, joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation pact, and became a non-nuclear state.

Ukraine, to its peril, kept up its end of the deal. Russia did not.

Because we effectively disarmed Ukraine three decades ago, the US has a continuing obligation to help defend it against Russian aggression, but more crucially, US military aid is prophylactic. Before Trump, the US upheld democratic values and international order, including respect for sovereignty and existing borders, as a matter of self-preservation. Last year the U.S. Department of Defense described Ukraine’s fate as a battle between freedom and tyranny, and a defense of the rules-based international order. U.S. officials shared the EU’s belief that supporting Ukraine advanced global stability and thereby U.S. national security by strengthening NATO, and perhaps most importantly, by deterring future Russian aggression.

Dangerous alliance

Enter Trump, who promised to end the Russian-Ukraine war on “Day One” of his presidency, a promise he now calls “sarcasm.”

Rejecting NATO’s interests, and dismissing military alliances that have kept America safe since WWII, Trump has instead consistently advanced Putin’s interests. Since Trump returned to the White House in January, Russia has more than doubled the number of drones and missiles fired at Ukraine; recorded aerial attacks from Moscow have now reached their highest levels since the invasion began.

Trump has paved Putin’s way, by:

There’s little doubt that Trump has nursed deep, personal animus toward Zelensky ever since Trump was caught trying to condition military aid on an “investigation” into Joe Biden’s son, which Zelensky never did. There’s also little doubt that Trump is openly protecting Putin’s interest. The question is, why?

What kompromat or career-ending evidence might Putin have over Trump? Perhaps Putin is holding proof of steps he took to assure Trump’s electoral wins, and threatening to go public if Trump crosses him. Perhaps Trump really was Russian agent Krasnov in the 1980s, as many believe. Or perhaps Trump is neck-deep in Russian money laundering schemes, including the financing of Trump Tower, going back to the 1990s.

The only thing that’s certain is that Trump’s on again, off again efforts to look like he’s “pressuring” Putin somehow never materialize. Trump last week “declared” that peace between Russia and Ukraine would involve “some swapping of territories,” parroting Russia's demands for territorial concessions from Ukraine. He then invited Putin to a personal Ukraine “summit” in Alaska, as if carving up nations after a meal were a game of monopoly.

Elevating a war criminal

By inviting Putin to meet on US soil, Trump is conferring legitimacy onto a mass murderer credibly accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Putin has been isolated since 2023, when the ICC issued arrest warrants for him and several advisors for crimes against humanity. Putin has been unable to travel outside Russia, because many of the ICC’s 125 member states have agreed to arrest and detain him if he sets foot on their territory.

The crimes for which the ICC issued the warrants include well documented abductions of over 19,000 Ukrainian children aged four months to 17 years. The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab is tracking Russia’s systematic campaign to kidnap Ukrainian children and move them to Russia where they are issued new identities and advertised for adoption after they undergo “re-education” to erase their emotional connection to their families, language and heritage. Putin has set up an online “catalog of Ukrainian children,” a photo database searchable by personal characteristics such as size and hair color, as Ukrainian parents wail.

The Alaska “summit” will be Putin’s first international trip since the warrants. European leaders question the invitation while Russians crow over it as a national coup, since Trump’s invitation came without any concessions from Putin.

A King’s College professor of Russian history said, “The symbolism of holding the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska is horrendous — as though designed to demonstrate that borders can change, land can be bought and sold.”

No one knows what the outcome will be, but it’s a safe bet that Trump will issue platitudes that sound tough on Russia while delivering Putin’s ultimate goal: cementing his territorial gains in Ukraine, thereby rewarding Russia for its aggression.

Zelensky will reject the plan, Trump will demand the Nobel peace prize, and pundits will continue to wonder if Putin’s get out of jail free card is a product of blackmail.

  • 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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