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 snuf photos of the hit, and has repeatedly encouraged political violence in his name, is trying to catapult Charlie Kirk’s murder into an expansion of his own powers. Trump immediately used Kirk’s death as a catalyst to declare a nationwide crackdown against political adversaries, vowing to silence progressive voices who are critical of Kirk’s pro-gun, pro-violence, white nationalist message, while he celebrates Kirk for being 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 1st Amendment.

Trump loves to hate

Although the shooter, who comes from a pro-Trump MAGA family, is now in custody, Trump immediately politicized the murder before the shooter’s identity was even known.

In a televised statement from the Oval Office, Trump told the nation that Trump’s 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 J6, 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 national healing, Trump keeps agitating about “radical left political violence,” to encourage his militant followers, including pardoned J6 rioters, to target them.

Trump expounded that, "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 politically. Trump, unlike any president before him, literally calls Democrats ‘the enemy within’ as he threatens to deploy the military against them.

Trump’s outrageous oval office address demonstrates his unfitness to serve

Trump’s oval office address after Kirk was murdered deserves a verbatim reading. After praising pro-gun, anti-gay, anti-minority Kirk as the “ideal American,” Trump’s speech turned dangerously divisive. He said:

“… Americans and the media (should) 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…”

Trump did not mention the Minnesota legislator and her husband who were murdered only two months ago. He did not mention how Nancy Pelosi’s husband was beaten with a hammer, nor Don Jr.’s sickening mockery of it. He did not mention the plot to kidnap Michigan’s Governor Witmer, any school shootings, the torching of the Pennsylvania governor’s home, the violence he encouraged on J6, nor any political violence executed on his behalf since he began his 2016 campaign. He also failed to mention his unprecedented, nonstop attacks against federal judges who rule against him, or that last summer's assassination attempt against his own person was committed by a registered Republican.

Thankful for an adult in the room

In direct contrast to Trump, Utah’s Republican Governor Cox is the adult in the room making a full-throated appeal for national healing. Cox, calling for forgiveness and national unity, is doing what a responsible stateman does: he’s trying to lower the political temperature in a deeply fraught moment as Trump does just the opposite.

Governor Cox said in a press conference, “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.”

Trump does not want an off-ramp. On Fox News Friday morning he was still trying to rachet up the hatred even after the shooter was caught. When a Fox panelist pushed back with, “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.”

Trump keeps demonizing democrats in an effort to foment violence against them, but no democracy can survive when its leader turns political differences into death sentences.

Trump is supporting something with his rhetoric, but it’s not democracy.

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

The 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.

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

The truth behind the ruse

By now everyone knows that Donald Trump is planning to deploy military tanks and armed troops to occupy democrat-controlled cities under one of two party lines: to “fight crime,” or to round up “illegals.” But what some analysts have warned about since Januaryis becoming clearer by the day: these reasons are pretextual. As ICE and the national guard round 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 DC’s. Given that they govern the worst per capita violent crime rates in the country, these self-proclaimed ‘states rights’ championsobviously don’t give a damn about that as they prepare to invade their sovereign neighbors.

Trump, Vance and Stephen Miller are now explicitly threatening domestic political opponents—Democrat 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. Stephen Miller just admitted as much on Fox News, saying, “The Democrat Party…is an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gangbangers and illegal alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat 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 beneficiaries 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.

Blue states may soon stop paying for Trump’s incompetent cruelty

Democrat leaders are responding to an unprecedented situation, where a US president is literally attacking them for partisan reasons. Acting outside the scope of his Art. II powers, Trump is also withholding billions of dollars in previously appropriated fundingfor 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. Chris Armitage writes in his brilliant essay, ‘It’s Time for Americans to Start Talking About Soft Secession:’ “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. Democrat led states have already introduced legislation to allow states to withhold their own federal taxes if the federal government unconstitutionally refuses to fund them.

Connecticut, Maryland, New York, and Wisconsin have already introduced bills that would allow them to withhold federal payments if the federal government is delinquent in funding them, and California and Washington are not far behind. Democrat 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 also encourage residents statewide to withhold their federal taxes, or put them into escrow.

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

Soft secession may be unavoidable

Congress controls the purse under the Sixteenth 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.

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.

NOW READ: Trump just accidentally revealed a dirty secret — and it has America's CEOs panicking

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.

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.

NOW READ: There's a reason Trump 'loves the poorly educated'

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

• In a 2017 speech, Trump said police should not to be “nice” to suspects and encouraged arresting officers not to shield suspects’ heads as they loaded them into squad cars
• In 2020, he celebrated the police killing of Micael Reinoehl, a community activist
• In 2020, in response to protests over police brutality in the George Floyd case, he asked his staff if the protestors couldn’t “just be shot”
• In 2023, he said police should respond to shoplifters by shooting them
• In 2024, he said that one day of “violent policing” would end crime, suggesting that if police could brutalize the population, crime would disappear
• In April, he issued an Executive Order “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement” promoting aggressive police tactics and making it more difficult to punish brutality
• On August 11, announcing his “federal takeover” of Washington D.C., Trump said police and military forces could “do whatever the hell they want” to people on the streets, expressly encouraging brutality.

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.

NOW READ: Trump's cult of loyalty breeds incompetence and corruption

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

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:

• Publicly blaming Ukraine for Russia’s invasion, bizarrely stating in February that Ukraine “should have never started” the war.
• Directing his administration to pause military aid to Ukraine.
• Calling Zelensky “a dictator without elections,” echoing Russia's propaganda.
• Criticizing the amount of military aid provided to Ukraine.
• Staging a public humiliation in the Oval Office where he and VP JD Vance insulted Zelensky in a fully choreographed, made-for-Fox-News-and-Putin televised takedown.
• Publicly praising/failing to condemn Putin’s brutality in Ukraine, calling Putin a “genius” and “savvy” after he attacked.

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

The latest version of Trump’s mood-contingent tariffs took effect Thursday, prompting Trump to post-boast two minutes before midnight that “BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN TARIFFS” are now pouring into the US. He skipped the part where American companies pay those tariffs, which soon will trickle down to consumers in the form of higher prices.

The vast majority of economists and CEOs reject Trump’s market mayhem and predict that his tariffs will have disastrous consequences on the US economy. Outside Fox News, where Trump’s economic illiteracy is celebrated, economists are aghast. In April, dozens of top economists, including two Nobel laureates, signed a letter advising that Trump’s tariffs have “no basis in economic reality,” calling Trump’s tariff policy ‘misguided,’ and warning it could cause a “self-inflicted recession.”

Hard data mapping the tariffs’ effects won’t be available immediately; if Trump can help it, judging by his handling of the jobs report, that data won’t come out at all. But it’s already clear, contrary to his promise of creating more factory jobs, that Trump’s tariff threats coincided with job losses nationwide.

Trump has purposely upended domestic and world trade, leading both the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development to downgrade their predictions for global economic growth. Economists John Silvia and Brad Jensen argue that Trump’s tariffs will slow the economy, resulting simultaneously in fewer jobs and lower real wages. They predict the economic erosion will be a slow, steady process rather than an immediate collapse.

Oh Canada!

While some US trade partners are shocked at the lack of pushback from Trump’s allegedly “pro-business” Republican Party, no trading partner has been jilted quite so ignominiously as Canada.

Despite having only about 11 percent of the population of the US, Canada was the single largest importer of U.S. goods, and our second-largest foreign investor. Trump’s mean-spirited tariffs and rhetoric gutted that symbiosis for good. Trump hit Canadian steel and aluminum with up to 50 percent tariffs, and slapped Canadian pharmaceuticals and autos with 35 percent tariffs, depending on where components are made. The tariffs have already triggered Canadian layoffs, including at General Motors Canada, a subsidiary of American GM, and will soon jack the prices of $3 billion worth of Canadian pharmaceuticals consumed in the US annually.

Doug Ford, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario, urges forceful pushback. Instead of rolling over to please an irrational Trump, Ford wants Canada to “Hit that guy back as hard as we possibly can.” Trained economist and banker–turned–Prime Minister Mark Carney, however, takes a more measured approach. He recently noted that Trump, in effect, is now charging for access to the US economy, causing trading partners to look elsewhere.

Carney’s response has been a diplomatic and classy middle finger. Instead of tit for tat, Carney is pivoting Canada with precision toward alternative trade blocs like Europe and the Pacific rim. He’s also seeding more self-reliance manufacturing, re-targeting billions into Canadian manufacturing investments as he approaches other nations where “free trade is a commitment, not a condition.”

Thanks to Trump, what was once one of the most stable, peaceful, and lucrative relationships in the world has been destabilized. One in four Canadians now views the U.S. as an enemy, while 76 percent hold an unfavorable opinion of Trump and consider him “dangerous.”

Impatient Canadians are taking matters into their own hands, boycotting U.S. products and promoting “Made in Canada” goods. A majority of Canadian provinces are boycotting certain American products altogether. US-made beer, wine, and spirits have disappeared from Canadian shelves, leading the CEO of Jack Daniel to call the boycott “worse than tariffs.”

Angry Canadians are also boycotting American foods, especially fast food chains like McDonald's, Burger King, Subway, Wendy's, and Domino’s. Other American owned restaurants including Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell, and Popeyes, are also facing boycotts, while US coffee chains Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Keurig have already reported losses of Canadian sales. Canadians are buying local and rejecting American products like butter and dairy spreads, prepared bakery foods, pizza, pastries, and even US-made condiments, and tourists are skipping US destinations, with Forbes reporting a 33 percent reduction in June.

A mature contrast

As Canadians sour on the US under Trump, anti-American rhetoric is spreading and Canadian nationalism is surging. Aside from the tariffs, Canadians are triggered by Trump’s repeated insults against Canadian sovereignty as he urges them, like a sarcastic mob boss offering protection, to become the 51st state. Disgusted Canadians are calling for further trade retaliation against the US, with over 60 percent of all Canadians urging Carney to adopt retaliatory counter-tariffs.

But instead of responding impulsively, Carney is playing the long game. Lamenting that Canada can “no longer count on” the US, which had been its “most valued“ trading partner, Carney is shifting Canada away from US customers, helping affected Canadian companies find new buyers, forge new partnerships, and develop new products.

In contrast to Trump’s bluster-filled, roulette approach to tariffs, Carney stresses that he “will apply tariffs where they have the maximum impact in the United States and minimum impact in Canada.”

Suggesting he will study the facts in product-specific markets before he acts — another marked contrast to Trump — Carney said he would not respond quickly but would adjust after the facts come in, and develop a strategy that is industry specific.

This embarrassing Gufus and Gallant study in contrasts has led an unprecedented number of Americans to research how to export an entirely new product to Canada: themselves.

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.

Walmart, Apple , and Amazon, the most successful companies in the U.S., base their corporate strategies on data: consumer behavior data, market research, financial, product, and competitive analysis data.

Any CEO who deliberately relied on falsified data, or who demanded cooked books, would be fired immediately — and likely sued by the Board of Directors.

Any CEO of any company who tried to manipulate the appearance of short-term success for his own personal gain, at the expense of long-term viability for the company, would also be fired and likely sued for malfeasance, and worse.

A successful CEO knows that falsifying economic or financial data can lead to charges of securities fraud, wire fraud, and other financial crimes, because false data can ruin investors, corporations, and markets overnight.

Enter Donald Trump, whose self-proclaimed governing philosophy is “running the country like it’s a business.” Debunking the lie of his own manufactured image as a “successful businessman,” last Friday Trump angrily fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner because he didn’t like her data — even as he wears 34 felony convictions for falsifying records.

Dr. Erika McEntarfer, a widely respected statistician, enjoyed bipartisan support, including confirmation votes from Marco Rubio and JD Vance. Appointed commissioner under the Biden administration, she holds a Ph.D. in economics from Virginia Tech, and served at the Census Bureau for two decades under both parties prior to her BLS appointment.

By federal law, McEntarfer’s appointment ends in 2028. Trump fired her anyway because he was embarrassed by jobs data that didn't match his own hype.

In May, the White House said that April's jobs report "proved" that Trump was "revitalizing" the economy. In June, Trump posted, "GREAT JOBS NUMBERS." After the Labor Department released revised jobs figures for those months — a common practice because jobs reports are sample projections that get adjusted when actual employer data come in — Trump fired the messenger.

Trump’s penchant for hiding and falsifying data has put American corporations and the economy in more danger. Just as he scrubbed government websites of climate data to bolster his fossil fuel donors, just as he ordered the Smithsonian to remove an exhibit accurately reflecting his own impeachments, Trump thinks reality is whatever he says it is.

As he fantasizes about returning America to the Gilded Age, where robber barons extracted the earth’s resources for unimaginable profit while laborers worked for starvation wages, he’s forgetting that his oligarch donors need accurate economic data too. At least oligarchs creating real products and delivering real services—as opposed to merely speculating in Trump’s image—need real, reliable, and uncooked data.

McEntarfer should sue

When Trump fired McEntarfer in a social media post, he declared that her numbers were “phony.” He wrote on Friday, “In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” adding: “But, the good news is, our Country is doing GREAT!”

He said the numbers had been manipulated for political purposes, and announced he fired McEntarfer as a result.

Trump also baselessly accused McEntarfer of manipulating jobs numbers before the November election to advantage Kamala Harris. Trump said to reporters, “I believe the numbers were phony, just like they were before the election, and there were other times. So you know what I did? I fired her, and you know what? I did the right thing.”

When asked what his source was, he said, “my opinion,” confirming that there was no evidence to back up his reckless claims, claims that permanently tanked the reputation of a celebrated career professional.

Presidents not immune from civil prosecution

No doubt Trump slurred McEntarfer based on his own “opinion” to avoid defamation liability, but an opinion that implies a false fact is still defamatory, it is still actionable, and presidents are not immune from civil lawsuits for defamation.

The four legal elements of defamation are easily found here: false statement; publication; negligence in repeating the falsehood; and reputational harm.

More, a president has immunity from civil lawsuits only for actions taken in furtherance of his core constitutional powers. One of the main “core constitutional powers” of a president is ensuring the faithful execution of laws, such that acting to impede the execution of federal law would fall outside core official responsibilities. (As an aside, even under the disastrous Trump v. US criminal immunity ruling, Trump’s J6 conduct would likely have fallen outside his core function, had it proceeded to trial.)

Trump knowingly and intentionally lied about the BLS commissioner in a manner that directly conflicts with the Department of Labor’s statutory mission; as such, it was not a “core Constitutional function.” Announcing that previous labor reports were “falsified” causes immediate reputational harm to the Commissioner, the Department of Labor, and the US economy overall. It directly impedes the accurate compilation of labor data, a charge mandated by the Wagner-Peyser Act of 1933 as well as the Fair Labor Standards Act.

By implicitly directing that all future US data should be falsified to suit his own political narrative, Trump’s statements not only harm America’s economy, but they hinder rather than aid the faithful execution of laws.

As McEntarfer’s predecessor puts it, McEntarfer’s “totally groundless firing” sets a dangerous precedent and “undermines the statistical mission of the bureau.”

“We need accurate Jobs Numbers,” Trump told reporters, suggesting McEntarfer’s jobs numbers weren’t.

“She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified,” he added, suggesting McEntarfer was neither.

Missing the risible irony as he seeks manipulated jobs data for his own political purposes, Trump added, “Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.”

NOW READ: Don't 'have any other choice': Outrage grows in the midwest as political crisis spirals

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

Trump just took a taxpayer funded golf trip to Scotland, where he shamelessly and illegally promoted his own for-profit golf venture.

If he had hoped to outrun the Epstein story, the Scots weren’t having it—they skewered him mercilessly. In Aberdeenshire, Scotland, a van “welcoming” Trump showed a young Trump smirking next to Jeffrey Epstein. One Scottish satirist quoted Trump saying, as he golfed, “I make the best putts!,” “I invented golf!” and, “I’m the rightful King of Scotland!... Everybody says so!”

Meanwhile back in Tallahassee, Florida, Trump’s criminal defense attorney turned Deputy AG, Todd Blanche, met privately with convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. Blanche, who spent two days with Maxwell to craft a new narrative about the Epstein files, was treated to an aerial banner advertising that “Trump and Bondi are protecting predators” as billboards about the Epstein files went up elsewhere.

Years after trial by jury, team Trump wanted a private meeting

In 2021, Maxwell, criminal accomplice to the late Jeffrey Epstein, was afforded the full complement of legal protections during a jury trial that lasted over a month. Maxwell was heard, observed, and considered by a jury of her peers that was selected by her own counsel. Jurors watched and listened to evidence from all sides, where witnesses were presented and cross examined under oath— or not at all.

Attorneys for several victims were present when Maxwell and other fact witnesses testified at her trial. Attorneys for all sides listened, objected, and clarified when questions were leading or intentionally ambiguous, and immediately cross examined all witnesses— including Maxwell—to get to the truth.

But now, years later, Trump sends his personal criminal defense lawyer to speak to Maxwell alone, outside the presence of opposing counsel, outside the presence of a court reporter, outside the presence of counsel for any victims, outside the presence of any attorney other than Maxwell’s and Trump’s, in pursuit of a new spin about the same crimes to serve Trump’s political interests.

Maxwell’s convictions

At the conclusion of all the evidence, a jury found Maxwell guilty on December 29, 2021, of conspiracy to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts with Jeffrey Epstein, conspiracy to transport minors to participate in illegal sex acts, transporting a minor to participate in illegal sex acts, sex trafficking conspiracy, and sex trafficking of a minor, all separate offenses.

In June 2022, back when the Public Corruption Unit of the DOJ still endorsed the rule of law, the DOJ posted this public statement:

From at least 1994, up to and including in or about 2004, GHISLAINE MAXWELL assisted, facilitated, and participated in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of minor girls by, among other things, helping Epstein to recruit, groom, and ultimately abuse victims known to MAXWELL and Epstein to be under the age of 18.

The victims were as young as 14 years old when they were groomed and abused by MAXWELL and Epstein, both of whom knew that their victims were in fact minors.

The statement went into specifics, stating that Maxwell personally enticed and groomed minor girls to be abused in multiple ways, and gave these examples:

MAXWELL acclimated victims to Epstein’s conduct simply by being present for victim interactions with Epstein, which put victims at ease by providing the assurance and comfort of an adult woman who seemingly approved of Epstein’s behavior…MAXWELL also normalized and facilitated sexual abuse for a victim by discussing sexual topics, undressing in front of the victim, being present when the victim was undressed, and encouraging the victim to massage Epstein.

Maxwell also participated sexually. She was present during sexual encounters between minor victims and Epstein, and at least one victim described at trial how Maxwell personally fondled her.

Trump wants to supplant the rule of law with his own political needs

Several former federal prosecutors described Blanche’s ‘interview’ as both unorthodox and concerning. Elizabeth Oyer, former Justice Department pardon attorney and federal public defender told CBS News, “(Maxwell is) somebody who has been sentenced by a court to 20 years in prison, and she is likely also desperate to get out from under that sentence. It's hard to really believe that the Justice Department would rely on anything that she might have to say.”

Maxwell’s private interview with Trump’s attorney also makes it less likely Maxwell will testify before Congress after she was subpoenaed to do so by the House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee’s. After all, it’s up to Trump’s DOJ to prosecute her if she doesn’t, and why would the DOJ do anything that could unravel or poke holes in Maxwell’s privately curated statement to Blanche?

Blanche’s private after-the-fact interview was another slap in the face to the more than one thousand victims of Epstein/Maxwell’s sexual crimes, including Virginia Giuffre, who, at the age of 14, was coerced into intercourse with Epstein while another teenaged victim watched. Giuffre was one of the earliest voices pushing for criminal charges against Epstein and Maxwell; other Epstein victims later credited her with giving them the courage to speak out. Giuffre never got over the assault, and killed herself last April.

The court of public opinion should not let Trump, another convicted felon and adjudicated rapist, substitute his political needs for the rule of law. Maxwell’s jurors, victims, and the rules of evidence, have already spoken.

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.

Earlier this week, when reporters asked him about Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump deflected with a planned story about former President Barack Obama's "criminality." His unhinged expose deserves a verbatim read:

“After what they did to me — and whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. Obama’s been caught directly… What they did in 2016 and 2020 is very criminal. It’s criminal at the highest level. So that’s really the things you should be talking about (instead of Epstein) … Look, he’s guilty. It’s not a question … This was treason. This was every word you can think of. They tried to steal the election. They tried to obfuscate the election.”

Trump’s rant followed Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s claims that she uncovered “overwhelming evidence” that Obama’s administration manipulated intelligence to “lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.” No doubt seeking to recover favor after she crossed Trump on Iran’s enriched uranium plans, Gabbard announced on social media that she was making a criminal referral of the case to the Justice Department.

Epstein won't go away

Trump’s well-photographed and documented relationship with Epstein, including regular appearances at social events in Palm Beach and New York, dates back to the 1980s. Their close friendship fell apart in the mid-2000s, according to the Washington Post, over a real estate deal.

Bondi informed Trump in May that he was named in the Epstein files, which Trump denied. In response to current demands to release the Epstein file in its entirety, Trump is now directing his AG to release “all credible” evidence from those files, meaning, whatever information Bondi, in her sole discretion, deems “credible.” If that directive isn’t code for “scrub my name off those files and accuse my critics,” nothing is.

It's painfully obvious that if Trump really wanted to release “all credible evidence,” including how many times he flew on the Lolita Express, he would simply release the files. Instead, House Speaker Mike Johnson sent the House home early to avoid a vote forcing the release of the files.

Trump does not want the public musing over how close he and Epstein actually were, so he’s dancing around it, creating a ruse about “credible evidence” and “grand jury testimony” that has absolutely nothing to do with Trump and Epstein’s decades-long, one- -on-one relationship built on “shared secrets.”

Another key witness

On Wednesday, Bondi also posted a statement from her Deputy AG, Todd Blanche, saying he was seeking access to Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell, serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking minors for Epstein, hopes for clemency to avoid spending the rest of her life in prison.

Hmm, what could be inappropriate here? How about the fact that Trump is trying to turn a convicted sexual predator into a pro-Trump character witness in the court of public opinion? How about the fact that Maxwell would likely say what Trump wants to hear only if there's something in it for her, like a presidential pardon or a commutation of her sentence?

Blanche announced that, “If Ghislaine Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the DOJ will hear what she has to say.” Never mind that Maxwell told the judge during her trial she had no other information to add. Trump wants his people to get to Maxwell first, to shape and tease out any additional “information” with implied incentives.

Maxwell’s obvious incentive to tell Trump what he wants to hear already makes her credibility suspect. Equally important, the DOJ previously named Maxwell a “pervasive liar.” In 2021, prosecutors told the judge overseeing her trial that Maxwell was willing to “brazenly lie under oath about her conduct.” They noted two prior perjury counts that showed “her willingness to flout the law in order to protect herself.”

Rabbits from the hat

Trump has been pulling every rabbit out of every purple hat to make Epstein go away. This past week, in a press statement with 25th Amendment incapacity written all over it, he said he was going to arrest President Obama and Hillary Clinton and the “many, many people” who worked under them. The batshit lunacy of his words should be savored verbatim.

Trump even inserted immigration and his universally debunked stolen election claims into the attack, adding, “And by the way, it morphed into the 2020 race, and the 2020 race was rigged, and it was, it was a rigged election. And because it was rigged, we have millions of people in our country, we have — we had inflation, we solved the inflation problem. But millions and millions of people came into our country because of that, and people that shouldn't have been, people from gangs and from jails and from mental institutions…”

Following Trump’s word salad breakdown, President Obama’s spokesperson responded with: “Out of respect for the office of the presidency, our office does not normally dignify the constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House with a response. But these claims are outrageous enough to merit one. These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction. Nothing in the [Tulsi Gabbard] document issued last week undercuts the widely accepted conclusion that Russia worked to influence the 2016 presidential election but did not successfully manipulate any votes. These findings were affirmed in a 2020 report by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by then-Chairman Marco Rubio.”

Russia’s interference on Trump’s behalf was confirmed in a 950-page bipartisan Senate report: “The Committee’s bipartisan Report found that Russia’s goal in its unprecedented hack-and-leak operation against the United States in 2016, among other motives, was to assist the Trump Campaign. Candidate Trump and his Campaign responded to that threat by embracing, encouraging, and exploiting the Russian effort.”

Trump’s treason accusation is an obvious attempt to steer national headlines away from Epstein. It is absurd enough to be humorous. But given that Trump routinely projects his own crimes onto others, and consistently supports Putin over America’s interests, perhaps his “treason” allegation is, in fact, Trump’s confession.

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

Oral arguments were heard this week in Harvard v. Trump’s cross motions for summary judgment. Summary judgment, or “judgment on the papers,” means both sides agree on the facts but disagree on how the law applies to those facts.

Neither Harvard nor the Trump administration dispute that Trump made certain unprecedented written demands to the University, accompanied by unprecedented threats if they refused to comply.

Harvard refused to comply, and sued instead.

Whichever party loses summary judgment will appeal, and the final disposition will likely, eventually, come from the Supreme Court. If the high court’s republican majority further empowers Trump’s edicts under their misguided “unitary executive theory,” our 249 year history of ideological freedoms will come to an end and the nation will yield to Trump’s revenge.

Trump’s pressure campaign against Harvard

The Trump administration, ostensibly seeking to reduce campus antisemitism following widespread protests over Gaza, threatened to withhold billions in federal funding from Harvard, place a lien on University assets, and put academic departments in receivership, unless Harvard agreed to:

• Exclusively promote faculty committed to Harvard’s mission and Trump’s viewpoints;
• Submit the university to a Trump administration review of “viewpoint diversity;”
• Scrutinize any “programs and departments” that might, in Trump’s judgment, fuel ‘antisemitic harassment;’
• Submit all faculty to outside review for alleged ‘plagiarism;’
• Submit to a comprehensive hiring and review audit conducted by the federal government;
• Implement a comprehensive mask ban and suspend anyone who wears a mask;
• Report to the federal government on any faculty members who “discriminated against” Jewish or Israeli students;
• Screen student applicants to reject those with viewpoints “hostile” to Trump/ Israel’s policies;
• Establish outside review for Harvard programs that reflect “ideological capture” ie, programs where classroom messaging does not reflect Trump-supportive dogma;
• Diminish the influence of its own professors and faculty over the university; or
• Establish “merit based” hiring and admissions policies that pleased the Trump administration.

The oral argument

Oral argument was both testy and basic. The lone DOJ lawyer arguing the motion, Michael Velchik, asserted that the administration “has the power to decide” where it will spend taxpayer money and that, “the government does not want to fund research at institutions that fail to address antisemitism to (the government’s) satisfaction.” According to Velchik, when Harvard refused to go along with Trump’s demands, Trump was free to terminate any and all contracts with the university.

Trump essentially argues that the federal government can terminate or withhold funds under a contract for any reason at all, even if that reason violates free speech, the right of free association, or any other rights protected under First Amendment.

Steven Lehotsky, Harvard’s counsel, countered that Trump’s attempts to control the University, including telling the University what it can teach and how it can teach it, represents Trump’s blatant “and unrepentant” violation of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has long held viewpoint discrimination to be such a serious violation of the 1st A that it is treated as ‘presumptively unconstitutional.’ Lehotsky argued plainly that, “It’s the constitutional third rail, or it should be, for the government to insist it can engage in viewpoint discrimination.”

Trump has been consistent in his belief that he can punish speech and political conduct he doesn’t like, notwithstanding clear and unequivocal legal precedent to the contrary. He has applied the same strong-arm tactics to boardrooms and corporations, national media outlets, law firms, and, most recently, comedians. If the Roberts court continues to enable him, Trump will extend the same reasoning to imprison or otherwise punish anyone who criticizes him, following the same authoritarian playbook that produced such hits as Nazi Germany, Viktor Orban’s Hungary, and Putin’s Russia.

How does Trump tie withdrawal of medical research funding to the civil rights of Jewish people?

Even if Harvard allowed the expression of antisemitic views on campus—despite a strong Jewish presence among Harvard faculty—there still has to be some nexus, or some connection, between what the government is trying to fix (antisemitism) and the methods it uses to fix it. The judge went to the heart of this concept when she asked Trump’s counsel to explain the relationship between antisemitism and cutting off unrelated cancer research funding, noting that Trump is “not taking away grants from labs that have been antisemitic.”

An amicus brief filed in the case by Jewish scholars also points out that Trump routinely uses “antisemitism” as a ruse to attack freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom of association. As noted in their amici brief, many Jewish scholars reject the notion that being Jewish “requires adherence to a specific conception of Zionism or support for the Israeli government or its policies and practices.”

Judge Burroughs noted that if Trump, or any federal administration, could punish a university without due process simply because they don’t like their politics, or their message, or the substance of their curriculum, the constitutional consequences would be “staggering.”

The outcome of Harvard v. Trump will determine whether we still have a democracy

Harvard v. Trump asks the most fundamental questions one can ask about the relationship between the government and the governed. Under the First Amendment, can the federal government control what is taught in the classroom and what is said on campus at various universities? Can the federal government withhold federal funds if it doesn’t like what it hears, or doesn’t agree with the viewpoints expressed?

If the answer is no, then our Constitution stands. Trump will join a 249 year line-up of presidents who have to grin and bear it when students call them ugly names and protest their policies. Who knows, Trump might even someday learn why the framers made free speech and association the very first amendment to the Constitution.

But if the answer is yes, the First Amendment will fall under the Roberts court, and there’s no reason to believe any other Constitutional protection will stand. Trump will forcibly insert his right-wing ideology onto campuses, boardrooms, and legacy media nationwide. That ideology will serve a madman’s lust for power and revenge, and America’s democracy will cease to exist.

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.

When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it.— Dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education, et al., vs. New York, et al.

The Supreme Court’s Republican majority just authorized Donald Trump’s complete dismantling of the US Department of Education. In another shadow docket ruling that lacks legal precedent, facts, or justification, the court dealt an even more serious blow to separation of powers than to public education.

The Education Department was established by federal statute in 1979, to “strengthen the Federal commitment to ensuring access to equal educational opportunity for every individual.”

Congress not only created the Department by federal statute, it tasked it with specific priorities:

• Funding kindergarten through 12th grades with over $100 billion annually (around 11 percent of all funding for such public schools)
• Running the federal student financial aid system which awarded over $120 billion a year in student aid to over 13 million students
• Ensuring equal access to education for poor, disabled, and disadvantaged students
• Administering the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) with special education services for more than 7 million students
• Administering grants for students seeking college degrees or higher education.

Congress expressly prohibited the Secretary of Education from “abolishing organizational entities established” in the Department’s founding statute without following prescribed steps. Those steps require 90 days’ advance notice to Congress providing factual support and explanations for each of the proposed actions of abolishment. None of those statutorily-mandated steps were followed by the Trump administration.

Other presidents respected Congressional authority

Presidents have felt differently about the value and purpose of the US Department of Education, but all of them, prior to Trump, recognized that they lacked the unilateral authority to eliminate a federal department that Congress specifically created. Not only did Congress create the Department of Education, it passed education-related mandates and tasked the department with carrying them out.

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan wanted to dismantle the department, and submitted a proposal to Congress that would have done just that. Reagan withdrew his plan after it garnered little support in Congress.

Trump, in contrast, appointed Linda McMahon to lead the department with a mandate to “put herself out of a job,” meaning, to eliminate the entire agency. Commencing with immediate layoffs in March, McMahon confirmed that her first reduction in force (RIF) — which cut the Education department’s staff in half — was “the first step on the road to a total shutdown” directed by the president.

McMahon’s first RIF came with employee lock outs, which made it impossible for terminated staff to hand off work to remaining staff. Like 500 tons of USAID food that Trump just ordered incinerated rather than let it feed people, all the education department work that went into those projects was simply destroyed.

At a Congressional budget hearing, when McMahon was asked if she or the department had conducted “an actual analysis” to determine what the effects of the reduction in force would be on the Department’s statutory functions, McMahon testified, simply, “No.”

Decision supports what Trump started

The Court’s decision came two weeks after states received a three-sentence email from the US Department of Education advising them that $7 billion in education funding — which was scheduled to arrive the next day — was being frozen indefinitely, without providing a reason.

The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 says the president cannot refuse to spend funds Congress previously appropriated. But Trump claims that act is unconstitutional, and that he should have greater control over Congressional spending.

Impounded funds had been earmarked by the states to provide afterschool and summer programs so students nationwide would have somewhere to go while their parents are working, along with adult literacy classes, in-school mental health support, smaller class sizes for elementary classrooms, and services for students learning English.

Alabama’s Superintendent of Education, Eric Mackey, told ABC News that Trump’s funding block would hurt students with the greatest need, and that, “The loss of funding for those rural, poor, high poverty school districts” makes it all that much more difficult to educate poor children in those communities.

Separation of powers is becoming a quaint memory

Our constitutional order, for the last 250 years, has been that Congress “makes laws” and the President “faithfully executes them.” There is no language in the Constitution that authorizes a President to unilaterally enact, amend, or repeal statutes.

Republican justices on the Supreme Court read history selectively, as they consistently bend existing statutes to satisfy Trump’s will. The Education decision followed a similar shadow docket ruling made just one week ago in Trump v. American Federation of Government Employees.

In American Federation, the Court allowed the Trump Administration to fire tens of thousands of workers at 19 federal government agencies — the bulk of the federal government — while appeals over the firings continue.

The dissent in both cases was livid. Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the Education decision “indefensible” because it “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out.” Aside from supporting public education in general, the gist of the dissent was that allowing an executive to unilaterally dissolve a federal department expressly created by Congress poses a grave threat to the separation of powers by diminishing the role of Congress.

SCOTUS approves Trump’s disregard for the law

Aside from the fatal blow to the separation of powers, the Republican majority on the high court has rewarded a thuggish president for his continuing pattern of breaking the law first and seeking permission later.

Congress expressly barred the Secretary of Education from altering functions assigned to the Department by statute, and barred her from abolishing organizational entities established by law.

But Secretary McMahon, directed by the president, did it anyway.

As the dissent put it, “The Executive has seized for itself the power to repeal federal law by way of mass terminations, in direct contravention of the Take Care Clause and our Constitution’s separation of powers.”

The Court’s majority has now altered our Constitutional makeup, conferring on Trump the power to repeal laws by firing all employees necessary to carry them out. Instead of taking care that the nation’s laws are “faithfully executed,” the court’s majority has told Trump he can simply discard them.

NOW READ: Donald Trump Jr. gets the revolting last word

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.

Yesterday I played tennis with a couple players I’d never met before. We met at Chicago’s Waveland Park along Lake Michigan, where we played next to a leafy municipal golf course built in 1901.

About 30 minutes into our set, something extraordinary happened. Just as I was serving, ten or so ominous-looking helicopters came flying out of nowhere from the east. Matte brown, thundering low to the ground, they reminded me of military tanks Trump recently sent to scare people in LA’s MacArthur’s Park. The choppers didn’t say ‘ICE,’ “Coast Guard,’ or any words I could see, but they were on a loud and intimidating mission all the same.

I stood transfixed. For a moment, standing safely on a tennis court, in a grand municipal park of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, I caught a glimpse of living under siege. I thought of cities turned to rubble under direct orders from Hitler, Putin, Netanyahu, and other authoritarians cursing the planet who brutalize “other” for power. In that instant, intuiting that Trump calls Democrat-run cities “war zones” because he plans to make them so, I saw the violence to come from republicans giving Trump $170 billion to arm domestic ICE agents: the deafening noise, the surprise of imminent sweep.

But instead of feeling intimidated or afraid, I was overwhelmed with an odd emotion: anger. I instinctively swung my racket at the helicopters with my left hand, while the middle finger of my right hand shot up to the sky. I started jumping in place and screaming at the helicopters like an insane person, “Fuck You!! Fuck You!! Fuck You!!,” wet with tears of rage.

I wasn’t embarrassed. I didn’t care if I’d embarrassed the friend who’d invited me, either. I didn’t know if her friends were MAGA and it didn’t matter. I screamed with righteous abandon, even as I imagined the choppers turning back to open fire on the lot of us.

Defiance is patriotic

My middle finger has a recurrent case of Tourrets; it gets stuck upright every time I walk by the Trump high rise defacing Chicago’s river view. But that’s not remarkable.

What was extraordinary was that, while I assumed my playmates were either disgusted at my outburst or waiting for my serve, they weren’t. All three of these middle aged, white women some would call bougie were giving the same salute to the helicopters, perhaps with a tad less vigor.

Then I looked at the courts surrounding us—we were playing on the second of six full courts— and saw that we weren’t alone. Standing on one court to the west and four courts to the east, every single player, singles or doubles, had stopped playing, arrested by the rumbling sky overhead.

When I saw that all the players around me were doing the exact same thing I was doing, the bitter tears turned sweet.

Conflicted emotions

It's hard to say it was a proud moment. I don’t feel proud for hating my government. I don’t feel proud to reflexively disrespect the military by conflating it with the drunk who commands it. I know that’s unfair, even as I worry about enlisted troops serving under a Fox News clown, especially after he botched Signalgate, Iran’s enriched uranium, and the withholding of weapons for Ukraine.Plus, I come from a military family. My dad and his dad retired from the Navy, my brother was in the Marines, two aunts and an uncle served in the Air Force, etc.

But my anger, and that of everyone else on the courts that morning, wasn’t at the people in the choppers. It was at their Commander in Chief, an unhinged and dangerous man who should’ve been taken down already under the 25th A.

Our anger wasn’t subversive. It was patriotic, and it was electrifying. It restored hope just when the Supreme Court’s rapid fire perfidy had almost erased it.

Politicizing the military puts service members at risk

I’m guessing people on the courts saluting the choppers had seen footage of ICE goons, tanks, and roof-mounted military rifles terrorizing soccer players at LA’s MacArthur’s park. Or maybe they saw the video that went viral of masked criminals with ICE badges repeatedly punching and beating a landscaper, a portly middle-aged father of three US Marines. Or it could have been a segment on the nightly news showing ICE raiding a farm with giddy brutality, using tear gas on peaceful protestors who ran, clutching their eyes.

Whatever horrors inspired them, their tiny acts of defiance on the tennis courts, as ridiculous as it may sound, made me proud to be an American. It made me proud, even as I know in my bones that Trump’s immigration raids will soon encompass other undesirables, and that I am one such undesirable. It made me proud, even as I sense that his detention centers will likely, within the year, imprison political adversaries and media figures who criticize him.

I know the violence and injustice that are coming, and I still feel proud of where it sits with me. I feel proud because, more than fear, I feel anger.

I feel anger at an “Attorney General” telling Americans they’d better watch out. I feel angry that our “Homeland Security” Secretary says ICE will hunt detractors down. I feel anger—and disgust— at a “president” who announces, on the 4th of July, that he “hates” over half the citizens in our country.

Trump, Bondi, Hegseth, and Noem are grotesqueries wrapped in American flags, and 166 million Americans who did not vote for Trump see them for what they are. Trump may well get the Civil War he’s itching for, but he and his posse will eventually lose, and every one of them will be held to account.

People resisting Trump are the best, brightest and bravest of America; we are the true Revolutionary throwbacks unwilling to love a king. We so fiercely love our imperfect country and the perfect ideals it stands for that no force of darkness will ever be able to defeat it.

Middle fingers on Chicago tennis courts delivered that optimistic clarity more forcefully than any op ed ever could.

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.

As the death toll rises in Texas, Trump has done everything but tap dance naked to deflect the media from discussing climate change (hoax), or how his staff cuts to the National Weather Service (600 in May) likely affected flood warnings.

So it is understandable that in the clickbait environment of today’s media, the significance of Tuesday’s American Federation of Government Employees v. Trump decision was largely upstaged.

In American Federation, the Supreme Court reversed both the district court and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and granted Trump’s request to dramatically restructure the federal government even while cases challenging it are pending.

Although agency-specific plans were not before the Court, American Federation allows Trump’s unilateral destruction of federal agencies to continue without congressional input. In yet another no-reasons-given shadow docket ruling, the high court allowed Trump to trash congressional mandates through executive fiat.

SCOTUS defends another executive order that endangers lives

In February, Trump issued Executive Order No. 14210 to “eliminate” major components of the federal government. The rub is that most of the components Trump seeks to eliminate were established through acts of Congress.

In its underlying decision, the district court wrote a 51-page opinion detailing just a few of Trump’s restructuring plans, which included:

• Cutting 93 percent of employees at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Firing half the workforce at the Department of Energy
• Firing more than half the workforce of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association
• Cutting 70 percent of the staff at the Department of Labor Headquarters
• Cutting 83,000 workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs

Trump’s team argued this was an appropriate exercise of “existing executive-branch authority to make staffing decisions,” rather than a fundamental takedown of the federal government. But any American who watched DOGE take a chainsaw to federal agencies without bothering to learn what those agencies did, knows better.

Lives lost won’t be limited to weather calamities

Well before the Texas floods showed the danger of blindly dismantling federal services, the Ninth Circuit court of appeals affirmed the district court’s injunction to preliminarily stop Trump’s wrecking ball until the cases challenging it could be heard on the merits. Issuing its own 35-page ruling, the Ninth Circuit identified other risks of dismantling the federal government, including:

• Proliferating food-borne disease
• Perpetuating hazardous environmental conditions
• Eviscerating disaster loan services for local businesses
• Drastically reducing the provision of healthcare and other services to veterans

They might have added that Trump is deliberately accelerating climate change; spreading preventable diseases like black lung, polio, and measles; and allowing real terrorist operations to bypass national security while Kristi Noem stages fake terror photo ops for Trump TV.

Nonetheless, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the district court that the few concerns it listed were enough to pause the mass firings, at least temporarily.

These concerns are of no moment to Trump, who ordered his cabinet to “promptly undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force.” As Project 2025 prescribes, Trump will now fire more career civil servants with deep subject matter expertise. He will either replace them with know-nothing loyalists, or farm out their agencies to wealthy donors champing at the bit to privatize the federal government.

High court protects Trump’s lawlessness — again

As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted in her dissent, lifting the stay and disregarding the extensive findings of fact developed by the District Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals was the wrong decision at the wrong moment. Considering the horrors that Trump has already unleashed, that was an understatement.

Under Stephen Miller’s direction, military tanks and masked ICE agents are swarming parks, courts, and schools. They are raiding homes, farms, and places of employment and worship. Operating as Trump’s Gestapo, masked agents are grabbing brown people out of their beds, off commercial farms and off soccer fields, leaving screaming children and spouses behind. Despite having committed no crimes, these people are headed for inhumane detention centers and likely deportation to foreign gulags.

Republicans on the high court are well aware of these abuses, but have begun greenlighting them nonetheless. Last week, they ended nationwide injunctions, the main tool in federal district courts’ quivers to stop a rogue president, despite allowing them under Joe Biden. The week before that, they approved Trump’s plan to deport migrants to gulags in war-torn countries, to hell with the Eighth Amendment.

Query what role will be left for Congress, or the lower courts, when SCOTUS and Trump have finished their collusive handiwork.

High court shares Trump’s contempt for federal judiciary

Disregarding the evidence and decisions of both the district and appellate courts, the Supreme Court wholly disregarded 69 sworn declarations and 1,400 pages of evidence in the underlying case. They also disregarded long-standing precedent directing that stays pending appeal should only be granted in “extraordinary circumstances.”

Without offering any review at all of the case from the district court, the majority summarily wrote that, “the Government is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and Memorandum are lawful,” without explaining how or why Trump’s power grab order would survive a merits review.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred only because Trump’s executive order directs agencies to plan reductions in force “consistent with applicable law,” entitling Trump the benefit of the doubt until he breaks the law. Again.

As Jackson’s dissent put it, “What one person (or President) might call bureaucratic bloat is a farmer’s prospect for a healthy crop, a coal miner’s chance to breathe free from black lung, or a preschooler’s opportunity to learn in a safe environment.”

The bottom line for Jackson was that Trump’s wrecking ball is aimed at agencies and policy choices Congress made, without congressional consent. She allows that while presidents have the authority to manage the executive branch, “our system does not allow the President to re-write laws on his own under the guise of that authority.”

American Federation will deliver long-term consequences, as yet unseen, for Congress and the federal judiciary. Although MAGA Republicans groveling before Trump divested themselves of power willingly, the rest of Congress did not. Arrogating legislative powers for himself through 170 largely lawless orders to date, Trump will diminish the role of Congress until it is nearly meaningless.

The federal judiciary has also been weakened. Query how federal district and appellate court judges must feel, knowing that their life’s work — their trained distillations of facts in evidence and analyses of binding precedent — are now worthless exercises awaiting shadow docket reversal by a partisan and demonstrably corrupt high court.

NOW READ: Trump's goal isn’t to restore American greatness — it's much more sinister

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

Republicans in Congress have just passed Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” Widely dubbed the cruelest piece of legislation in US history post Civil War, it will:

• Remove over $1 trillion from Medicaid, which will leave 12 to 14 million Americans without health care;
• Adjust Medicaid payments so that most rural hospitals will have to close their doors;
• Slash Food Stamps and food assistance for approximately 42 million Americans, mostly children and senior citizens;
• Give and extend already unaffordable, already budget-busting, damn-near-theft tax cuts to wealthy Americans and corporations; while
• Increasing the already-bloated federal deficit by $3.4 trillion, which will affect interest rates and our childrens’ cost of repaying the national debt to foreign governments, including China.

What about the political backlash, you ask? Ever so clever, republicans delayed cuts to medical coverage until after the midterms, so they won’t suffer any professional or political consequences.

Republicans just created an American police state

Equally or more repugnant, mood contingent, the bill specifically funds a new American police state. Draped in anti-immigrant language, the bill creates a standing army of masked ICE agents, and funds enough of them to terrorize any city in the nation. We’ve all seen the videos of ICE goons beating migrants in front of their children; any one of them could have been recruited from Trump’s applicant pool of pardoned felons.

It also provides $45 billion to build new immigration detention centers, a 265 percent annual budget increase to ICE’s current detention budget. This funding level is a 62 percent larger budget than the entire federal prison system, where 155,933 inmates are currently incarcerated.

After Trump was somehow re-elected, despite his well-publicized attempt to block the transfer of power when he lost, he acquitted or pardoned rioters who were convicted of violent felonies and personal violence against police officers during Trump’s January 6, 2021, uprising. Here, Trump at least gets a nod for sinister efficiency: J6 cultists who thrive on hate in service to Trump needed something to do. They were already pumped up and armed and in search of political violence, why not give ‘em an ICE badge? If they were recorded while beating capital police with vigor, or carrying a noose for Mike Pence because he honored the Constitution over Trump, all the better.

Trump’s $1 trillion defense budget will not end well

Trump now has $1 trillion—with a T— to spend on his defense budget. Anyone wondering how he’s going to spend it, after shamefully withholding military aid and weaponry Congress already approved for Ukraine, should consider Pete Hegseth. Hegseth recently testified before Congress and described how national defense, under Trump, is transitioning from a force fighting foreign threats into a “domestic affair:”

“I think we’re entering another phase, especially under President Trump with his focus on the homeland, where the National Guard and Reserves become a critical component of how we secure that homeland.”

Juxtapose that promise over Trump telling reporters that the worst threat to national security is ‘the enemy within,’ ie, democrats, independents, and republicans who don’t support him, and it all comes into view. Pan wide for Trump’s new gulag agenda: ICE facilities where migrants, as well as political prisoners and journalists, are baked alive, fed to the reptiles, or denaturalized and deported.

Republicans have empowered a lunatic

With this bill’s passage, Trump has now been handed the most heavily funded law enforcement agency in United States history. This happened just after the Supreme Court handed him the most presidential power in the last 100 years of history by 1. Declaring him immune from criminal laws; and 2. Blocking federal judges from stopping him through the issuance of nationwide injunctive relief.

Not only did SCOTUS tell a criminal president that he was immune from criminal prosecution for anything related to being a president (fyi, rage tweeting childish threats that endanger our national security at 3 a.m. is related to being president; intentionally devaluing the US dollar to boost his own bitcoin grift is related to being president; ordering the execution of all redheads for “national security” purposes would be related to being president), by blocking nationwide injunctions, they also knee-capped federal judges doing their best to block America’s Hitler from doing his worst.

In service to Trump, Republicans on the high court banned injunctive relief, despite it’s use throughout the last 100 years, with no discussion or thought about how, under a criminally insane president who wants to put military tanks on every city street, it might have been important.

Trump was barely elected; this is not a mandate

Despite Trump’s bluster, which Fox News repeats on the nanosecond, Trump was not elected “by a mandate.” He eked out his win by a margin of only 1.5 percent over Harris, while 91 million voters were so disgusted by the election, or so disillusioned, or so stoned, they didn’t bother to vote.

Trump’s abominable bill squeaked by in the Senate by one vote when JD Vance voted to break the 50-50 tie. It passed by only two votes in the House; no Democrat voted in favor, in either chamber. Polls show most Americans oppose the bill that was just passed, which suggests one of the following:

• Republicans in Congress assume Americans’ world-renowned short attention span and memory loss will save them; or
• They have faith in Trump’s spin machine to control the narrative and blotto the facts, presented 24/7 by Fox News, OAN, Newsmax and more than 1500 rightwing radio stations; or
• They know there won’t be a real mid-term election.

Whatever pep talk they gave themselves, Congress passed Trump’s bill because Trump demanded it, imposing an artificial deadline of July 4 so no one would have time to read the whole 950 page bill.

If anyone, including SCOTUS and voters, doubted Trump’s death grip on the Republican Party, this should remove all doubt. Republicans will die with Trump, or democracy will die with them.

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.

Concentration camps are often compared to prisons, but that comparison is inaccurate. In the United States, inmates arrive in penitentiaries only after they have been convicted of serious crimes, under criminal processes constrained by the US Constitution at all times. Starting with probable cause (which brown skin is not); then arrest (you have the right to remain silent); followed by voluntary pleading (coerced confessions are thrown out); leading to formal trial (bench or jury, defendants’ choice), based only on admissible evidence (hearsay/unsupported opinions are not admissible), Constitutional constraints apply at every juncture. If they falter, appellate courts are watching.

While innocent people assuredly have been wrongly convicted since our penal system was created in the late 1700s, their wrongful convictions were not produced by system design. Before Trump, wrongful, sloppy, or vengeance-driven criminal convictions of the innocent were the product of flawed men, not a flawed system.

People in concentration camps, in contrast, reflect an illegal system. The crucial distinction between prison and concentration camps is that concentration camp detainment is independent of any judicial review; inmates in camps have not been convicted of any crime. Concentration camps are most often used for political reasons, or to incarcerate people whom the governing regime sees as a threat.

A sinful celebration of cruelty

Rounded up under maniacal whims of an autocrat, concentration camp inmates don’t represent the rule of law, they represent an autocrat’s lust for power. This week, Donald Trump, accompanied by grinning ghouls Kristi Noem and Ron DeSantis, toured their newest and cruelest toy to date, Alligator Alcatraz, where they laughed in anticipation of the upcoming cruelty.

Because the people headed there have not been convicted of any crime, the facility is a concentration camp. It consists of metal cages surrounded by tents, with no air conditioning and no shade, in the heat of the Florida Everglades where temperatures have reached 107° F. By design, the tents will trap and exacerbate these pre-existing heat levels. The only way to escape is by wading through alligator and Burmese python-infested swamps.

This level of cruelty by design is new to America, even as Fox News celebrates it, and Trump laughs about it. Father Federico Capdepón, a retired priest from the nearby Miami Archdiocese who is monitoring the situation, describes both the camp and the inhumanity it reflects, as, quite simply, “sinful.” The six Catholic justices who paved the way for Trump’s cruelty must know that their complicity is an assault on the teachings of Christ.

The Catholic majority on the High Court paved the way

Contrary to Trump’s misinformation spread on the hour by Fox News, multiple studies show that immigrants, whether documented or not, account for disproportionately low crime. The most recent nationwide data show that only 3% of people who are jailed are non-US citizens, even though that group comprises over 14% of the population.

Supreme Court justices are aware of these statistics, just as they are cognizant of the sinister methods Trump has cooked up to dismantle the Constitution. At least 192 judicial rulings have blocked or paused Trump’s initiatives, while the Supreme Court itself has conducted multiple reviews of Trump’s Executive Orders. And yet, informed by the gross inhumanity and illegality of Trump’s official actions to date, on June 27, the court outlawed nationwide injunctive relief, the main tool available to protect people from Trump’s lawless cruelty.

Three days later, Trump celebrated the opening of Alligator Alcatraz, with the promise of more to come.

SCOTUS chose the worst possible time to disarm federal judges

Judges of all stripes have argued both for and against nationwide injunctive relief; the merits of those arguments are worthy of careful review. Who can forget rightwing Texas judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issuing an injunction during the Biden administration to try to outlaw the contraceptive mifepristone on a nationwide basis?

SCOTUS dismissed the mifepristone case because anti-abortion doctors did not have standing to bring their challenge. But the court left the tool Kacsmaryk used, the nationwide injunction, undisturbed. The Supreme Court’s republican majority could have blocked all nationwide injunctions then—in response to a federal judge so clearly trying to write new federal law— but did not. The Court also allowed a nationwide injunction against Biden’s student loan forgiveness, then struck the loan forgiveness on the merits without addressing injunctive relief.

Choosing to end nationwide injunctions now, despite Trump’s cruel, dangerous, and despotic agenda, while they allowed nationwide injunctions under Biden, leaves an inescapable whiff of partisan stench.

It also imparts the stench of immorality. Republicans on the high court have empowered a rogue president of dubious sanity after Trump’s DOJ disobeyed federal court orders, including their own; after he sent military troops to LA to intimidate peaceful protestors; after he punished law firms for protected political speech; after he attacked American universities; and after they’ve watched Trump tighten his unconstitutional grip on freedoms of the press. They also disarmed federal judges after giving Trump nearly carte blanche immunity to break criminal laws.

How will the Roberts Court defend Trump’s alligator cruelty?

The Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishments, does not just apply to US citizens. It applies to everyone within the United States, regardless of their immigration status, which means an 8th A case from the Florida Everglades will eventually reach SCOTUS. One dreads the verbal gymnastics the majority will employ to defend cooking migrants alive, or feeding them to alligators, as something other than cruel and unusual.

One year ago, on July 1, 2024, the same republican supermajority ended the foundational premise of our nation: that no one is above the law. I imagined then that the rule of law had run its course in the US. If Trump is above the law, there is no limit to what he will do to stay in power, and there is no shortage of lackeys who will enable him to share in that power. Apprehending and detaining political enemies could soon become Trump’s ‘national security’ agenda; no doubt, Trump’s trillion dollar military budget will come in handy for that purpose.

In the meantime, maybe each new Alligator Alcatraz can be named for the six high court Catholics who paved its way. Perhaps the cruelest sites, where ICE henchmen feed detainees’ body parts to pythons for fun, can be reserved for Thomas and Alito.

What will become of this country because SCOTUS first immunized a criminal president, then disarmed federal judges to protect him, remains to be seen. But what the court has done to defend and thereby enable Trump’s cruelty is un-American, unprecedented, and vile.

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.

No, the Supreme Court did NOT strike down birthright citizenship in the decision handed down Friday, Trump v. Casa et.al. Instead, the Republican majority voted to purposefully sidestep the merits and substance of the birthright citizenship question and decided to treat the case as a procedural issue.

The result of the 6-3 ruling along partisan lines? The Roberts court just gave Trump unfettered power to continue s---ting on the Constitution.

As a 30-year federal litigator, I am outraged. I don’t see how the rule of law can survive this decision, especially at a time when our executive is so clearly and demonstrably unhinged.

What the partisan majority did

Focusing on equitable authority to issue injunctions instead of the 14th Amendment right to birthright citizenship, the Roberts court elevated procedure over substance.

As explained in the dissent, the majority opinion “ignores entirely whether the President’s Executive Order (on birthright citizenship) is constitutional, instead focusing only on the question whether federal courts have the equitable authority to issue universal injunctions. Yet the (Executive Order’s) patent unlawfulness reveals the gravity of the majority’s error and underscores why equity supports universal injunctions as appropriate remedies in this kind of case.”

What the Republican majority did was far worse — and far more dangerous — than ending birthright citizenship:

Held: Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts. The Court grants the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue. Pp. 4–26.

Translation: they struck down nationwide injunctions, the main tool federal courts have used to stop Trump from bulldozing the Constitution. Their shameful decision is NOT limited to the birthright citizen question; it applies without limitation. It gives Trump license to trammel every law, every clause, and every amendment to the Constitution.

Writing for the partisan 6-3 majority, Coney-Barrett continued:

The Court’s early refusals to grant relief to nonparties are consistent with the party-specific principles that permeate the Court’s understanding of equity. “[N]either declaratory nor injunctive relief,” the Court has said, “can directly interfere with enforcement of contested statutes or ordinances except with respect to the particular federal plaintiffs.” Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc., 422 U. S. 922, 931. In fact, universal injunctions were conspicuously nonexistent for most of the Nation’s history. Their absence from 18th and 19th century equity practice settles the question of judicial authority.

It's Dobbs déjà vu all over again

Just as these same partisan hacks did in Dobbs to erase abortion rights that had been in existence for 50 years, they are erasing the history of nationwide injunctions, focusing on what happened in the 1700s and 1800s instead of the last 100 years.

Nationwide injunctions have been used in the U.S. for over 60 years. They are the strongest and surest remedy to keep elected officials from violating federal law or the Constitution. Now, in service to Trump, that remedy has been removed, that protection for the little guy has been erased.

From Sotomayor’s dissent: “The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along. A majority of this Court decides that these (birthright) applications, of all cases, provide the appropriate occasion to resolve the question of universal injunctions and end the centuries-old practice once and for all. In its rush to do so the Court disregards basic principles of equity as well as the long history of injunctive relief granted to non-parties.”

Translation: Everyone who wants to stop Trump from illegally harming them now has to sue, and appear personally before the court, or join a class action, which can take years to certify. I defended class actions for over 15 years — they are an expensive, time-consuming and cumbersome way to try to fight back against the government.

Sotomayor ‘s outrage is also palpable. She continues: “In partially granting the Government’s remarkable request, the Court distorts well-established equitable principles several times over. A stay, this Court has said, “‘is not a matter of right,’” but rather “‘an exercise of judicial discretion….For centuries, courts have “close[d] the doors” of equity to those “tainted with inequitableness or bad faith relative to the matter in which [they] seek relief… Yet the majority throws the doors of equity open to the Government in a case where it seeks to undo a fundamental and clearly established constitutional right. The Citizenship Order’s patent unlawfulness is reason enough to deny the Government’s applications.”

Hear, hear. I second, third, fourth and fifth amendments that. This horrific, legally absurd, and grossly partisan decision comes just as Trump’s goons are becoming more and more violent.

They are physically tackling Democrat officials to the ground. Bored ICE agents on power trips are attacking brown people on the streets, in parking lots, in restaurants, beating them in front of their children.

The Roberts court is aware of what Trump is doing; the justices don’t live in caves and presumably are well-read. They know exactly what is happening, but have shamefully chosen to look away and let Trump do his worst AFTER they gave him immunity to break criminal laws.

Justice Jackson’s dissent hit it hard: “The Court’s decision to permit the Executive to violate the Constitution with respect to anyone who has not yet sued is an existential threat to the rule of law. It is important to recognize that the Executive’s bid to vanquish so-called “universal injunctions” is, at bottom, a request for this Court’s permission to engage in unlawful behavior. When the Government says “do not allow the lower courts to enjoin executive action universally as a remedy for unconstitutional conduct,” what it is actually saying is that the Executive wants to continue doing something that a court has determined violates the Constitution— please allow this. That is some solicitation. With its ruling, the majority largely grants the Government’s wish. But, in my view, if this country is going to persist as a Nation of laws and not men, the Judiciary (had) no choice but to deny it.

The Roberts Court will will have blood on its hands within the week. This decision will be cited in history books explaining how the fall of America’s rule of law converted the world's strongest democracy into a fascist autocracy.

That is if history books are even allowed in five years.

NOW READ: This lifelong Republican was always wrong — until now

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.

While the long or immediate-term fallout from Trump’s decision to bomb Iran’s enriched uranium facilities remains to be seen, legal experts are still debating whether Trump’s conduct was Constitutional.

There are plenty of legal opinions on both sides. Here’s mine: No, it wasn’t, because there was no evidence that either the US or Israel faced an imminent threat; Israel announced that it had set back Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon by several years days before Trump jumped into the brawl. Three or four years is not “imminent” under anyone’s definition.

Worse, by unilaterally bombing a sovereign nation that had not attacked the US, despite the laudable goal of disarming a terrorist-supporting state, Trump has accelerated the US’ dangerous slide into authoritarianism.

The Founders intended for Congress, not the president, to declare war

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power “To declare War.” In contrast, Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution names the president commander in chief of the armed forces. The point at which Art. I cedes to Art. II or vice versa, ie, the point at which a president needs congressional approval before launching military activity, can be grey and is fact-contingent.

To Constitutional originalists, who claim to hew to the original language, intent and meaning of the Constitution as it was written during the founding era, no, the Constitution does not authorize presidents to deploy military forces against foreign seas, soil, or sky, without advance congressional authorization.

Kermit Roosevelt, constitutional law expert at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, wrote, “The Constitution says that Congress has the power to declare war, and the records of the Constitutional Convention are pretty clear that the drafters did not want to give one person the power to take the United States into war. Presidents (can respond unilaterally) to attacks by using the military, but that’s not relevant to this situation because obviously we were not attacked. So the president was not supposed to be able to start a war without Congressional authorization. That’s pretty clear.”

The counter position

Well before the Iran attacks, Republicans in Congress had essentially rolled over for Trump by failing to push back meaningfully on his unprecedented power grabs at the expense of their own. As Senator Lisa Murkowski admitted, many Senators are genuinely afraid of Trump, too afraid to follow their own Constitutional oaths. Whether that fear is political intimidation—based on Trump’s promise to primary anyone who opposes him—or existential, given Trump’s explicit encouragement of political violence against anyone who opposes him, remains unclear.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s most reverential sycophants, has declared that Trump did not need Congress to send ordnance bombs to Iran. Appearing on NBC news right after the bombs fell, Graham claims Trump acted “within his Article II authority. Congress can declare war or cut off funding. We can’t be the commander in chief. You can’t have 535 commander in chiefs. If you don’t like what the president does, in terms of war, you can cut off the funding. All of these other military operations were lawful. He had all the authority he needs under the Constitution. They are wrong.”

The right assessment, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson, is whether the situation was so urgent the president calculated whether the “imminent danger outweighed the time it would take for Congress to act. The world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, which chants ‘Death to America,’ simply could not be allowed the opportunity to obtain and use nuclear weapons.”

Both positions would sound plausible, or at least not dangerous, if at any time there was any evidence of an “imminent danger.” Not only did Israel announce that it, alone, had bought several years with its own bombs, removing it from immediate harm, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence testified in March that intelligence assessed that there was no development of weapons-grade uranium in Iran. When asked about that assessment, Trump said, bluntly, “I don’t care what she said” and offered no countering facts or theories whatsoever.

What motivated Trump’s decision?

So what, then, did Trump care about before taking the extraordinary risk of entering the Middle East’s forever war? The timing suggests it wasn’t strategy. It was ego.

Trump pulled the trigger following two globally embarrassing events. His $45 million strongman military parade was an international joke outside of Fox News stations. Equally awful for a demagogue, Trump was roundly embarrassed at the G7 meeting while Netanyahu was enjoying extraordinary success in Iran.

In a widely under-reported story, Trump said he left the G7 early to “deal with” Israel, which apparently meant posting childish and impulsive warlock braggadocio on truth social. He beat his breast hard enough to signal Iran to move its 900 lb stash of enriched uranium, which put Israel—and us—in further danger, the outcome of which cannot yet be known.

The horrifyingly probable truth

Global press rejected Trump’s explanation for leaving the G7 early, reporting instead that he left early because the adults in the room refused to show him artificial deference. During the G7 opening press conference, Trump went on an inappropriate partisan tirade so bizarre that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney interrupted him and ended the press conference. The Italian Prime Minister was seen rolling eyes, presumably at Trump, and the world laughed at Trump’s petty insults against France’s Prime Minister Macron, of whom Trump appears to be jealous.

After all that, Trump tried to flex mob-boss strength to the press, announcing that the British Prime Minister had earned a trade framework protecting British trade because “I like them, that’s why. That’s their ultimate protection.” Those sound like words from a man who knows he's just been insulted by people he doesn’t like.

Humiliated on the global stage by both events, unwisely hidden from viewers at home by Fox News, Trump desperately needed to recast himself as a strongman for the rest of the world. Some have speculated with credible evidence that Trump resented watching Netanyahu get all the glory, especially after it became clear that Israel’s aggression against Iran had been spectacularly successful. On June 13, while Israel’s bombs were falling, Trump told New York Times reporter Helene Cooper that he still held his “America First,” ie, isolationist, perspective.

The next day, however, after a full day of watching Fox News lavish Netanyahu with praise, Trump changed his mind. Even though no new intelligence had come in, and Israel was already winning its fight, one official told Cooper that Trump’s shift in attitude started early the next morning when he woke up and watched Fox News. When he saw how Netanyahu was being praised as powerful and strategic, he wanted in on the action. Cooper noted that, “Israel was hitting all of these Iranian sites, it was taking out military commanders, nuclear scientists, and that was being presented on Fox as this huge victory. And (Trump) decided that he wanted a piece of it.”

In further support of this theory, Trump also started taking immediate credit for Israel’s successes. He claimed on June 17 in a truth social post that, “We” have taken control of Iran’s airspace,” and that a meeting with his national security advisers had cemented the decision to enter the war.

In close, this is one column in which I hope fervently to be wrong. The fallout from Trump’s unilateral and unconstitutional decision to bomb Iran may take months. It may take years.

Despite Iran agreeing to a ceasefire, only a moron would think “Death to America” Iranian mullahs will walk away and convert their 900 lbs of enriched uranium to candle wax. It’s virtually certain that they, or their terrorist proxies, will strike back when we least expect it.

If Trump visited this level of risk on Americans based on jealousy and his personal ego, we won’t survive his presidency.

NOW READ: This lifelong Republican was always wrong — until now

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 reckless bluster about his “spectacular military success” in Iran has just been thoroughly debunked. A classified defense report has surfaced, indicating that the US targeted bombing campaign barely made a dent in Iran’s nuclear program. While the attack set Iran’s nuclear enrichment program back by “only a few months,” the global fallout will last years.

As Trump was braying to the world about his singular spectacularity, claiming US bunker buster bombs had “totally obliterated” Iran’s enrichment sites, no one—including Trump—knew the extent of the damage, including the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

To the exact point, no one knew then, or knows now, where Iran hid its enriched uranium, but US bombs apparently didn’t hit the stash. Had the uranium been struck, a significant increase in radioactivity would have been detected at the bombsites, which the IAEA confirmed did not happen well before team Trump claimed otherwise.

Speculation about what comes next, including whether the paper-thin ceasefire will hold, is just that. While we wait, several things are true at once:

• A nation that supports terrorists like Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis rebels should not have world-annihilating nuclear weapons.
• Israel has been trying to get the US to deploy ordnance bombs, claiming Iran was hours away from having nuclear weapons, since 2005.
• Trump is directly responsible for ending the Iranian nuclear agreement in 2018, which he replaced with absolutely nothing, enabling Iran to proceed with the enrichment program he just attacked.
• After Trump ordered Qassem Soleimani killed in a U.S. airstrike in January 2020, Iran announced it would no longer abide by any restraints on its nuclear program under the previous agreement.
• Article I of the US Constitution says only Congress, not the president, can declare war except in cases of emergency.
• On June 21, Israel’s foreign minister said that Israel’s own previous bombing campaign had already set Iran’s nuclear weapons development back by several years, which means,
• The US did not face an imminent threat or emergency on June 22 when Trump unilaterally pulled the trigger, therefore,
• Trump’s action violated the US Constitution which reserves war powers, except in genuine emergencies, to Congress.

What intelligence did Trump rely on?

At least when Bush/Cheney attacked Iraq, they did so after spending a year presenting data and rationale to the American public, leading Congress to authorize the attack. Trump rejected US intelligence, disregarded Congress’ constitutional role, and ordered massive attacks based on Netanyahu’s word alone.

Despite a tenuous two-day old ceasefire, international fears of a dangerously escalating conflict throughout the Middle East persist. Just yesterday, JD Vance acknowledged that Iran’s 900 lb. stockpile of enriched uranium remains intact. Intelligence cited trucks moving materials assumed to be enriched uranium out of two bombed sites, Fordo and Natanz, right before the US attacks. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the material could be used to build about 10 nuclear weapons.

Minimizing the importance of the uranium’s location, Vance said the crucial question is whether Iran can still “enrich the uranium to weapons-grade level and can they convert that fuel into a nuclear weapon?” It sure seems like knowing where the uranium is located, including whether it has been moved to an as-yet undetected enrichment facility, would be the first step in assessing the risk of its conversion to weapons-grade. But when Trump killed Iran’s nuclear deal in 2018, we lost strict monitoring and verification safeguards including the ability to inspect facilities. Unknown facilities could be anywhere, thanks to Trump, and it’s impossible to know what we don’t know.

Experts also seem to agree, despite Trump and Fox News’ non-stop bluster, that Fordo’s deeply buried equipment may also have survived.

Geopolitical blowback is not yet known

After unilaterally killing the Iranian nuclear deal, Trump has now unilaterally bombed a sovereign nation that had not attacked the US, while still claiming to the world that he was “negotiating” with them. Any countries considering “a deal” with Trump saw exactly what happened, just as NATO watched in horror as Trump embraced the aggressor in Ukraine. Fallout from our allies’ inability to trust the US will take years to assess, and will fall equally on successor administrations.

Even though Iran has accepted a cease fire, query what that ceasefire is worth to the US given that Iran will now likely develop weapons-grade uranium with a vengeance. We don’t know when it will happen or what form it will take, but the most dangerous fallout of all is that, following US attacks, Iran now sees the development of nuclear weapons as existential. Iran’s clerical rulers have long chanted “Death to America,” and Iran’s foreign minister now warns of “everlasting consequences.”

If Iran now rushes to build nuclear weapons with its enriched uranium, which US intelligence confirmed had not already happened before the bombing, Trump’s blunder could become existential for both the US and Israel. That’s why diplomacy was crucial. But Trump couldn’t resist being the big bully on the playground, and he still can’t. What purpose does it serve, what diplomacy does it advance, for Trump to contradict his own administration, and even his “America first” base, squawking about regime change on social media?

Just as sending the US military into LA risks escalating the violence there, Trump’s regime-change rhetoric, coming on the heels of his dubious bombing campaign, virtually guarantees that Iran will hit back. It may take months, it may be direct or through its terrorist proxies, but Iran will eventually retaliate and escalate, which is why no US president before Trump ordered the strike he did.

On Sunday, the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency session, where Secretary-General António Guterres described the US bombing as a “perilous turn” in global affairs. Although allies and foes alike urge an immediate return to diplomacy, the prerequisites for any successful outcome—trust and credibility—have dissipated, possibly for good. If Trump has “totally annihilated” anything, it’s the antecedent trust, goodwill, and appearance of fair dealing required for diplomacy to succeed.

This is not a wish for diplomacy or the ceasefire to fail, but a realistic assessment of the likelihood of its long-term success.

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

The US Massive Ordnance Penetrator (“MOP”), weighing in at 30,000 pounds, was designed to destroy weapons of mass destruction buried in mountains or deep below the earth’s surface. The MOP is so heavy it can only be lifted by a B-2 bomber, which “can perform attack missions at altitudes of up to 50,000 feet.”

Israel does not own an MOP bomb or the B-2 bombers needed to carry it; both were developed and are owned exclusively by the United States Air Force. Although Trump claims credit for it, the MOP was developed in 2004 under the Bush administration, and US weapons engineers have tested and refined its capacities ever since.

Israel has been asking the US for an Ordnance Penetrator for years, and lobbied for it hard in 2004 during the George W. Bush administration. Until now, no prior administration would commit. But this week, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu- either seeking to prolong his own rule, or because he found evidence of an “imminent” threat, depending on what media sources you consume, forced Trump’s hand by unilaterally attacking the sites of Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities. And, despite saying he’d decide in “two weeks,” on Saturday, Trump pulled the trigger.

Israel will fail to end Iran’s nuclear program without the MOP

Without the MOP, Israel’s laudable goal of ending Iran’s nuclear weapons proliferation-if, indeed, that is what Iran is up to- cannot succeed. There is no disagreement among military experts about the necessity of the bomber; it’s use is the only way to effectuate Israel’s goal of disabling Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities.

Netanyahu, however, started the attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities without consulting, conferring or strategizing with Trump, while Trump was still trying to get Iran to negotiate an end to its uranium enrichment. In March, Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence, testified before Congress that the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” Just last week, Trump was still trying to negotiate an agreement with Iran, and “remained hopefulthat his Middle East peace negotiator, Steve Witkoff, who had been scheduled to conduct another round of peace talks in the region Sunday, could soon get an agreement over the line.”

But out of nowhere, lacking any hint of strategy, and without any evidence to support an about face, Trump posted that everyone in Tehran, a city of 10 million, should “immediately evacuate,” and demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender” then proceeded to bomb Iran.

So much for Trump’s oft-repeated promise to pull America out of endless wars.

Bibi played Trump’s hand

The Fordo enrichment lab, under the control of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, is a uranium enrichment facility buried deep in the mountains outside the Iranian city of Qom. It’s size, secrecy, and location led analysts to doubt Iran’s proffered non-military purpose of the facility, despite Gabbard’s assessment. Many experts agree that Iran built the Fordo lab for the covert production of weapons-gradehighly enriched uranium (HEU), making it a key target in Israel’s strikes.

Brett McGurk, who worked under four successive American presidents of both parties on Middle East issues, told the NYT, that Fordo has “been the crux” of Iran’s weapons development all along. McGurk, along with other weapons experts, agree that if Israel’s newest bombing campaign against Iran ends with Fordo still enriching uranium, Israel’s strike campaign will have failed.

US military strategists have been testing the MOP bomb in simulation labs enough to know that one bomb won’t do it. To successfully wreck Fordo, the attack will have to come in waves, with one B-2 firing one bomb after another down the same hole into the mountain. The operation as described was executed Saturday by an American pilot and crew.

A reality TV president would deploy the bomber to appear strong

The timing, in terms of US national security, could not have been worse. Trump is fresh off the heels of a globally embarrassing military parade that cost taxpayers $45 million.Hundreds of thousands of spectators were expected to attend, but most media outlets, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, reported spare attendance, extremely low energy, and mostly empty bleachers. The optics were painful. Trump’s Kim Jong-un style parade quickly became an international joke, with the most viral social media clip showing a tank rolling by empty spectator benches accompanied only by the lonely sound of creaking metal.

Fox News, of course, fawned over tanks in the street, and praised the parade with uninterrupted coverage. But the rest of the world saw the real spectacle happening at the same time: over 5 million people turned out to protest against Trump in over 2100 cities across the nation. The anti-Trump No Kings Day demonstration was hailed as the largest protest in US history.

Following this embarrassing split screen, publicized around the world, Trump embraced Israel’s ability to change the channel by bombing Iran and pulling the US into its war.

Trump, through arrogance, weakness, or ignorance, brought us here

It can’t be forgotten that Trump led us to this precarious path when he withdrew from the Iranian nuclear agreement in 2018, after it had been painstakingly hammered out among several nations including the US, Iran, France, Germany Britain, China and Russia. At the time he withdrew from the agreement, Trump’s move was expected to embolden hard-line forces in Iran, supercharging Iran within a Middle East arms race. If Bibi is to be believed, that is exactly what happened. President Obama, whose team negotiated the agreement, predicted that Trump’s withdrawal would “leave the world less safe,” and confronted with “a losing choice between a nuclear-armed Iran or another war in the Middle East.”

And that losing choice is exactly where we faced when Trump, without Congressional action, without debate, without US intelligence, decided to go to war.

It was fairly obvious that Trump would do it. Trump’s parade flop denied him the spectacle of military lethality he so desperately craves. Deploying the bomber will now allow 24/7 Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax coverage of Trump beating his chest. Keep in mind that Trump is demanding a $1 trillion dollar defense budget while purporting to keep the US out of foreign entanglements. It’s only a matter of time before Senators put two and two together and figure out that Trump wants that $1trillion to morph the military into a domestic attack force to be deployed on American soil, against American citizens who live in democrat-run cities. Deploying the Ordnance against Iran will help delay that moment of realization and provide republicans with some diverting optics- cue Hegseth in aviator glasses manning a fighter jet. It could even help Trump’s budget negotiations.

It's too much to expect an effective Israel strategy from Trump, given that Netanyahu and his advisors are operating well above the second grade level of intellect parading in the White House. Afghanistan should have taught us—even Trump— that it is far easier to topple a hostile foreign regime than it is to replace it with a functioning government acceptable to its people. Israel, if it topples the Khamenei regime, could end up leaving Iran in the hands of violent factions even more dangerous than they are now.

Now having ordered the attack, Fox News will re-write the narrative and sell it as proof of Trump’s genius, which 45% of the country will buy, and the US will find itself in another Neanderthalic war that will never end.

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are found @ Alternet, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

Ever since he was ignominiously blocked from shooting George Floyd protesters, Donald Trump has been itching to sic the military on U.S. citizens. Seizing California’s National Guard and sending U.S. Marines into Los Angeles to deliberately escalate violence brings his long-festering fever dream closer to life.

Trump’s former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has recounted how, during a White House meeting in 2020, Trump looked at Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and asked why he couldn’t just shoot protesters, adding, “It was (both) a suggestion and a formal question. And we were just all taken aback at that moment as this issue hung very heavily in the air.”

Milley pushed back on that suggestion and other illegal Trump impulses, eventually leading Trump to call for Milley’s execution and revoke his security detail. During Trump 1.0, Trump apparently suggested shooting protesters enough times that Esper issued a public statement opposing the use of the Insurrection Act against protesters, enraging Trump.

Trump made sure that would not happen again in his second administration by appointing a dangerously unqualified defense secretary with few moral qualms. As a Fox News host, Pete Hegseth echoed Trump’s desire to deploy the military against protesters. He defended war criminals who ‘killed the right people in the wrong ways,’ advocating “total war against our enemies… All of ’em, you stack bodies, and when it’s over, then you let the dust settle and you figure out who’s ahead.”

A trillion-dollar defense budget to kill whom, exactly?

Even though the U.S. is not at war, and Trump has shamefully abandoned our NATO military alliances, Hegseth waxes hard on “lethality,” and rails against “woke” laws that punish soldiers for indiscriminate killings. Trump/Hegseth seek a trillion-dollar defense budget, not to defend America from foreign enemies who are now Trump’s mentors, but to attack “enemies within,” i.e., Americans who oppose Trump’s agenda.

None of this, including Trump’s deliberate escalation of violence in LA, was unforeseen. Who can forget how Kamala Harris was panned as histrionic when she said Trump would sic the military on U.S. citizens, following his promise to do just that? In October, 2024, Trump said he’d use the military against the biggest threat to America — Americans who don’t support him.

“I think the (main problem we face) is the enemy from within,” Trump said, adding: “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”

Both he and Hegseth have already weeded out military officers who would honor their oaths to the Constitution over illegal orders from Trump. This week, Hegseth inadvertently confirmed that the military, under Trump, will become a domestic force when he testified before Congress, saying, “We’re entering another phase, especially under President Trump with his focus on the homeland, where the National Guard and Reserves become a critical component of how we secure that homeland.”

It’s galling that no congressman has connected the dots and asked about explosive military spending that Trump/Hegseth have signaled will be used against Americans.

Dubious legal grounds

As of this writing, Trump has not declared martial law, but recent Trump history, paired with his glaring mental illness, suggests it’s “when,” not “if.”

Trump’s plan to use troops to impose his domestic agenda is decidedly un-American. Today it includes deportations and manufacturing civil unrest; tomorrow, Trump’s goons will round up journalists who criticize him, judges, Democrats, and political opponents, as just happened Thursday when Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) was tackled to the ground for trying to ask Kristi Noem questions.

If you have any doubt, watch Trump’s illegal and partisan address at Ft. Bragg, where he led troops in uniform to wildly “boo” journalists, California’s governor, and LA’s mayor. If you have any lingering naivety, still hoping soldiers will honor their oaths and not follow America’s Hitler, that speech will erase it.

For now, Trump is acting in LA pursuant to a presidential memorandum deploying the National Guard under a rarely used federal law, 10 U.S.C. § 12406. Under that code, a president possesses the power to federalize the National Guard only when there is “a rebellion or danger of rebellion” against federal authority, or when the president cannot execute federal laws. As Trump sees it, this assessment depends on his own untrained and undisciplined opinion. Under that statute, however, the National Guard can only support other law enforcement officers and defend federal property.

The Posse Comitatus Act also remains in effect, prohibiting the use of the military as a domestic law enforcement agency, except in extraordinary circumstances not yet present in LA despite Trump’s best efforts. The Insurrection Act of 1807, the authority under which Hegseth sent active Marines to LA, is a broader set of statutes granting Trump the power to use military force in specific circumstances, including suppressing armed rebellion, civil disorder, or other extreme circumstances where the states are unable to maintain public order.

Gov. Gavin Newsom formally objected to Trump sending troops, because California in general, and LAPD in particular, have sufficient resources to maintain order. Newsom knows that when US Marines start shooting civilians, whether in LA, Chicago, or New York, violence will ratchet up to the necessary threshold to circumvent Posse Comitatus and allow Trump to declare martial law.

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are found @ Alternet, Chicago Tribune, Howey Political Report, Indiana Democrats’ Kernel of Truth, Inside Indiana Business, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, South Florida Gay News, State Affairs, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

Federal district courts are pushing back against the Trump administration, and at least so far they’re holding. During May, as reported in Democracy Docket, federal judges dealt Trump an embarrassing 96% loss rate, agreeing with plaintiffs who challenged his overreach in 26 of 27 cases.

Federal judges across the ideological spectrum concur that most of Trump's executive orders, along with official actions undertaken to effectuate them, exceed the scope of presidential authority, either by exceeding what Congress has explicitly authorized, or, in the absence of controlling legislation, by exceeding Article II authority.

Trump’s propaganda machine spins these losses as “judicial activism,” advancing Trump’s false narrative that adverse rulings have come fast and furious from “activist” judges appointed by Joe Biden and other Democrats. Trump media claim that these judges have acted out of partisan malice to “block President Trump’s agenda.”

But the data doesn't bear that out. According to a recent analysis by Adam Bonica, a political scientist at Stanford, judges are ruling against Trump regardless of ideology. Overall, Trump has lost 72% of cases decided by Republican-appointed judges, compared to an 80% loss rate from Democrat-appointed judges. Given that facts and procedure vary widely by case, Trump’s loss rates of 72% and 80%, although remarkable, are too similar to support any inference of partisan bias.

Unprecedented losses reflect unprecedented actions

Conservatives have advised Trump that he could better shield his agenda from judicial scrutiny by working through Congress instead of trying to govern through fiat. Legislation, after all, could achieve his same policy objectives. Given the abdication of duty on display from GOP legislators, that’s fairly sound advice — if Trump were willing to exert more effort than tweeting threats from the toilet, “his” legislators, holding majorities in both chambers of Congress, would likely serve him well.

Other analysts, including Professor Bonica himself, interpret Trump’s judicial losses as pushback to his escalating attacks against the judiciary. Bonica believes that Trump’s attacks on the legal profession itself, including targeting judges and major law firms, triggered a defensive reflex. Since even partisan judges are loyal to the judiciary as an institution, Bonica writes, “When forced to choose between political allegiance and professional identity, many are choosing the latter.”

But legal analysts don’t see Trump’s losses as anything other than defense of the rule of law itself, something all judges take an oath to uphold. Trump’s efforts to expand his own authority are far, far beyond anything our relatively young democracy has ever experienced.

The Constitution incorporated express limitations, including separation of powers, to meet this very moment. These limitations were designed to check a rogue president of questionable sanity. Judges have put them into play as intended, as Trump has already:

• Defied at least three judicial orders on deportations, including a unanimous order from the Supreme Court
• Gutted federal agencies with no understanding of how they functioned or who they served
• Attacked institutions of higher learning by trying to infuse propaganda into their curricula
• Tried to reorder the global economy through nonsensical tariffs
• Tried to re-draw maps starting with the Gulf of America while hinting at a takeover of Canada, war with Denmark, and invasion of Mexico
• Ushered in a police state where masked agents with no badges grab people off the streets and imprison them abroad without due process
• Defied Congressional actions to address worsening climate change by blocking offshore wind projects, prioritizing coal and fossil fuels, and canceling $20 billion in clean air and affordable energy grants.

The only thematic consistency driving these acts is the goal of expanding Trump’s naked power, injury to the nation be damned.

Trump was triggered most by the tariffs ruling

Judicial pushback has been consistent, but the opinion that seems to have triggered Trump the most was the unanimous decision from the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) that struck down most of his tariffs, now stayed temporarily.

The CIT held that Trump’s broad tariffs usurped Congress’s powers based on supposed “emergency” powers. The CIT ruled that the 1974 Trade Act barred the president from using emergency powers in response to trade deficits, in part because trade deficits reflect many factors and many decades of policy decisions, refuting Trump’s “emergency” claim. The court found that Trump's use of emergency tariffs to gain leverage over other countries was not authorized by Congress, checking Trump’s attempt to confer unlimited powers on himself by recasting long-existing problems as “emergencies.”

The unanimous CIT decision, which Trump aide Stephen Miller called “judicial tyranny,” and press secretary Karoline Leavitt called a “brazen abuse of power,” came from three appointees — one from Ronald Reagan, one from Barack Obama, and one from Trump himself.

Trump attacks the Federalist Society

In response to the CIT ruling, Trump pointedly attacked Leonard Leo, the architect of the conservative judicial movement. Leo, who has long led the Federalist Society, is credited with stacking federal courts with conservatives including Trump’s own Supreme Court nominees Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, all of whom voted to overrule Roe v. Wade, the number one, decades-long goal of conservative activists.

All three justices also gutted Chevron to block administrative expertise, and joined the legally infirm 2024 immunity opinion that enabled Trump’s current crime spree, paving the way for him to solicit gifts from foreign leaders, pursue private real estate deals with dictators, sell presidential access through a family Bitcoin scheme, and issue pardons for tax evaders and anyone who commits political violence in his name.

But a license to crime is not enough for Trump. Trump’s attack on Leo shows that he expects “his” appointed judges to give him carte blanche permission to decimate the Constitution, to so grossly expand his own power that he’ll never face legal accountability again. Calling Leo a “sleazebag” and “a bad person,” Trump claimed Leo “probably hates America,” projecting his own animus onto Leo in trademark Trumpian fashion.

Leo brushed off Trump’s insults, essentially noting that with Trump, the Federalist Society got what it came for, and what’s a little name-calling among friends? Trump now knows he was Leo’s useful idiot, the same lesson he’s learning slowly, slowly — ever so slowly — from both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the same lesson he’s learning from much sharper negotiators on the other side of the ‘taco.’

As Trump rails against the power his originalist enablers hold over him, the bitter irony is that if it weren’t for Federalist Society judges, Trump would be in prison today instead of gleefully wrecking the country.

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are found @ Alternet, Chicago Tribune, Howey Political Report, Indiana Democrats’ Kernel of Truth, Inside Indiana Business, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, South Florida Gay News, State Affairs, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

Seven months past the November election, Donald Trump's supporters are still talking a big game about an electoral “mandate.” Justifying their actions under Trump’s largely unconstitutional executive orders, cabinet members sing a constant chorus about a November “landslide” and voter “blowout.” Trump's spokes-child repeats the phrase, “President Trump’s resounding mandate” ad nauseum, like a talisman that makes critics disappear.

But counting by the Electoral College vote or the popular vote, it was anything but. The election results reflect a nation nearly split down the middle, with 49 percent voting for Trump and 48 percent voting for Kamala Harris.

If there is any insight to be had about why the US is veering dangerously close to fascism, the most pressing — but under-analyzed — question isn’t why people voted how they did, but why a plurality of qualified voters didn’t bother to vote at all. Trump won 77,304,184 votes compared to Harris’ 75,019,616, but an even greater number than either candidate won — 90,000,000 qualified voters — stayed home. We need, urgently, to understand why.

Disengagement may be personal more than political

Scholars are examining loneliness as an independent predictor of electoral abstention. Loneliness is defined clinically as a subjective perception of a misalignment between one's expectations and the actual state of social relationships. Researchers at MIT report that political participation becomes less likely among people who suffer from loneliness due to alienation from society, real or perceived.

There’s a body of accumulated evidence that loneliness has severe and negative consequences on a person’s perception of the trustworthiness of other people. An in-depth 2021 study of voting patterns and mental health concluded that loneliness is associated with a reduced sense of the duty to vote, and correlates with lower voter turnout, concluding that, indeed, “loneliness is associated with political disengagement.” Strong empirical evidence suggests that “lonely individuals tend to feel detached from society and are less likely to feel obligated to participate” in civic functions, including the electoral process.

The US is not alone in this finding. Recent studies report an association between perceived loneliness and reported voter turnout in several representative samples from all around Europe. A study of European loneliness and political participation concluded that loneliness could increase the probability for political participation, but only if the political act fosters social belonging and interaction, which may explain why lonely people are more drawn to political extremist groups offering instant social support.

The youth factor

Gen Z is chronically online, reflecting increased social isolation and loneliness. Living in a hyper-connected online culture, young people report high levels of loneliness, anxiety and disconnection, with nearly a third of Gen Z respondents reporting that they “always” feel lonely. These feelings manifest in low voter turnout: over half, despite youth-correlated concerns over climate change regardless of political affiliation, didn’t bother to vote in November.

Extensive research shows that problematic social media use causes youth to disengage from social interactions, civic duties, and political engagement. A recent poll in Singapore found that significant cohorts of young adults aged 21 to 34 experience higher levels of loneliness compared to older demographics. These same youths also prefer online communication to in-person interactions, reinforcing the conclusion that social media usage perpetuates a habit of digital isolation.

In all voter age groups, loneliness and social isolation are highly correlated with low interpersonal trust and reduced political agency, defined as the extent to which a person thinks their vote matters. The same studies report that lonely individuals are more inclined to engage in risk-taking behaviors, which may explain why, for those who did vote, Trump’s January 6 attempted coup may not have deterred them.

Just Add Water

In Just Add Water, a delightfully quirky movie about loneliness, a 32-year-old woman searches for human connection. Dancing alone in her room and taking out personal ads to meet new friends, she explores the complexities of modern loneliness. Her isolation and search for genuine connection manifest in misfit humor, like trying too hard, or making weird noises when you meet someone. The movie resonates with anyone who has ever been lonely and wondered if they are normal.

Indie film-maker Renee Simone is a young, Black Princeton grad. She owns her loneliness. She said she “directed this film after several profound experiences of loneliness. Loneliness felt embarrassing, like I had somehow failed.”

The movie opens with her alone on a beach, lighting candles on a birthday cake for one. As she moves through one uncomfortable social attempt after another, her mainstay is a virtual pet named Molly. Molly, a blue goldfish, thanks her for the fish food, and tells her goodnight as she closes her laptop.

One marvels that a filmmaker so young can so readily laugh at her own pain. But in making the movie, Simone said she learned how common, and just how modern, loneliness is.

“In talking with others, I realized how common the experience (of loneliness) is for many people. I wanted to create this film to express the nuances of these feelings that we don’t often like to share, and at the same time show the beauty within each of us and our potential to reconnect with one another and ourselves.”

If only young people will get offline and show up in person, that is.

I’ve watched Just Add Water a couple times. It made me cry, but it also gave me hope. If a filmmaker so young can laugh at her own loneliness, and recognize it as impermanent, maybe we can laugh at our ridiculous date with extremism, recognizing that it is only temporary. As lonely people begin to realize that their online presence is robbing them of life and connection, maybe they will put down their devices and save themselves, just in time to save our country.

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are found @ Alternet, Chicago Tribune, Howey Political Report, Indiana Democrats’ Kernel of Truth, Inside Indiana Business, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, South Florida Gay News, State Affairs, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

Just as another judge conveyed his outrage at Donald Trump’s use of “staggering punishment” to silence his critics, the administration has begun exporting its war on the First Amendment. This week, the State Department announced that it is formally increasing “social media vetting” for all student and exchange visitor visa applicants. Enhanced “vetting” means federal employees will scourge the laptops, cellphones and personal devices of applicants seeking entry to the US on F, M, or J visas to see what they’ve posted, re-posted, engaged with, and liked on their personal Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp, and Instagram accounts.

The move comes on the heels of escalated attacks against universities including Harvard, where Trump went straight to cancelling foreign student visas on May 22, a move blocked by a federal judge on May 29. Trump not only hopes to cripple America’s most iconic and independent educational institutions, he seeks to infuse higher learning with Trump-aligned political propaganda.

Setting aside the ick factor of a bunch of suits poring over teenagers’ hypersexualized social media accounts, that Trump is employing the ruse of “antisemitism” to attack fundamental freedoms is an affront to Jews everywhere. Peace-loving Jews who are committed to personal freedoms and social justice don’t appreciate it. In April, 800 Jewish professors, scholars and students advised the Trump administration that targeting universities to impose a political litmus test “did nothing to protect Jews, and in fact, could be used to target them.” Twelve national Jewish organizations, including J Street and T’ruah, have warned that Trump’s use of antisemitism to justify suppressing political dissent threatens Jewish safety as well as democracy itself.

Viewpoint discrimination

When the government engages in viewpoint discrimination, it singles out a particular opinion, perspective or “viewpoint” for treatment that differs from how other viewpoints are treated. Viewpoint discrimination, where the government persecutes or otherwise punishes someone for expressing views it dislikes or disagrees with, is illegal.

In 1995, the Supreme Court explained: “When the government targets not subject matter but particular views taken by speakers on a subject, the violation of the First Amendment is all the more blatant. Viewpoint discrimination is thus an egregious form of content discrimination. The government must abstain from regulating speech when the specific motivating ideology or the opinion or perspective of the speaker is the rationale for the restriction.”

Someone needs to read that memo to Trump’s legal advisors, who, under the ruse of “combatting antisemitism” concocted Trump’s EO, “PROTECTING THE UNITED STATES FROM FOREIGN TERRORISTS AND OTHER NATIONAL SECURITY AND PUBLIC SAFETY THREATS.”

Under the lizard-brain braggadocio of that EO, the administration announced its intention to “ensure that admitted aliens” in the US do not “bear hostile attitudes” toward the government. Given the depth and breadth of Trump’s illegal attacks against law firms that represented his political adversaries, mainstream media outlets that criticize him, and universities protecting academic freedoms, it is fair to assume that “hostile attitudes toward the government” means whatever Trump and his unqualified goons say it means.

Trump’s insecurities are churning

As Trump officials invade the privacy of international travelers by scrutinizing their social media accounts, administration officials are making it up as they go along. During Trump’s first administration, officials declared that, “Every visa adjudication is a national security decision,” but what constitutes “national security” changes by the hour, on whim.

Trump’s obvious goal is to impose a political litmus test under which only pro-Trump, anti-liberal, and for now pro-Netanyahu visa holders are permitted entry. People who criticize the war in Gaza need not apply today. Tomorrow, the ban will apply to anyone who criticizes Trump’s destabilizing tariffs, his efforts to accelerate climate change, or his unprecedented corruption.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed last month that the State Department was revoking visas held by visitors who were acting “counter to national interests.” Despite campaigning on an isolationist agenda, apparently, Israel’s war in Gaza is now America’s war, because criticizing it is deemed “counter to US interests.” According to an Associated Press review, students at more than 160 colleges and universities have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated for expressing the wrong opinion, unprecedented aggression that has “stunned colleges” across the country.

Know your rights

As Trump spreads his thin-skinned efforts to kill the First Amendment, reports from non-student travelers are surfacing. Travelers report that they are “preparing for the worst” by deleting social media apps, destroying text messages, and removing identifiers from personal devices. After US citizens started reporting on TikTok that they were detained for hours on re-entry, an immigration lawyer’s video on citizens’ rights racked up more than 8 million views.

Reports of long detainments, deportations and higher personal scrutiny at airports are causing anxiety among US citizens. Americans who oppose Trump — over half the country — are starting to rethink upcoming trips, out of fear of being interrogated, detained, or worse when they return home.

While U.S. citizens can be detained at the border and made to feel fearful or uncomfortable, under federal law they cannot be denied entry or put into detention without reasonable suspicion similar to (but not the same as) probable cause. American citizens also have the right to remain silent to border agent questions. If a border patrol agent asks you for the password(s) to unlock your devices, understand that U.S. citizens cannot be denied entry for refusing to provide passwords or unlocking devices. However, your refusal might lead to significant delay, intense questioning, and/or officers seizing your device for further inspection.

As a US citizen coming back into the US, you may be questioned, have your luggage confiscated, and undergo intense scrutiny based on jacked up suspicions of a bored and/or power drunk border patrol agent.

But, at least as of this writing, US citizens who criticize Trump cannot yet be deported to El Salvador. Trump is working on that.

NOW READ: What the science of predators tells us about the obscenely rich

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.

I went to law school at night because I had a day job working for, believe it or not, a Republican governor. Governor Orr walked the talk, and I respected him.

Orr was such a big believer in spreading democracy through global commerce, he forged an early, formal trade relationship with China. Indiana’s partnership with Zhejiang Province promoted economic growth between the two regions, and the trade relationships it nurtured continue to this day.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, Governor Orr was also a dinosaur. He was one of the last principled Republicans to walk the halls of government.

I have missed real Republicans since their tragic mass extinction, and mourn their disappearance. I sometimes leaf through “All my friends are dead,” a book about the last dinosaur, in their memory.

What I learned in China

I left Indiana to finish law school at the East China University of Political Science and Law in Shanghai. Studying the Chinese Commercial Code paid off, in that I could fake it enough to get a job later, but the most valuable lessons I learned in China came from outside the classroom.

First, I learned that communists in China placed more value on public surveillance than on public health. This was the nineties, when Chinese people were overly plentiful, so it’s possible Deng Xiaoping didn’t much care if his people died young, fewer mouths to feed and all.

The government’s dismissive attitude toward—and its failure to fund—public health manifested most clearly in China’s lack of plumbing. Their public toilets were nasty affairs, consisting of holes carved in wooden planks that hovered over a long, shared, communal trough that smelled like the color of necrosis.

Money for plumbing was spent on spies instead

The telling contrast with these non-funded public toilets was this: Xiaoping didn’t care enough about public health to modernize China’s plumbing, but he cared mightily- some might say obsessively- about what Chinese citizens read in the privacy of their homes.

As a group of foreign students, we’d been told to bring inexpensive gifts for the new friends we’d meet. Chinese youth loved Americans back then, so they wanted gifts reflecting Americana: Levis 501s, packs of Marlboros, CDs they couldn’t yet play in their cassette players.

More than any of these things, however, the young Chinese we met wanted western magazines. Sports, fashion, or cars, the subject didn’t matter, Chinese students wanted to study them to improve their English, and to glance at life in the west.

But a few days after these exchanges started, we found out that every magazine and newspaper we gave them was confiscated by the government. As soon as we dispersed at night, authorities crawled out of the woodwork to take each and every magazine, every brochure, every piece of paper we shared. Not one Chinese student was allowed to look at them because their Communist government did not want them to know what the world looked like outside China.

Messed-up priorities

Cocky law students that we were, we asked our new friends how many government spies were watching us at any given moment, and how many descended on them every night to confiscate the Rolling Stones we gave them. We calculated the costs nationwide, assuming starvation wages, and deduced that Xiaopeng’s government was spending three times what it would have cost to modernize China’s plumbing, just to pay spies whose only job, whose only purpose, was to keep Chinese citizens uninformed.

It was a lesson in autocracy I will never forget.

Today we see similar upside down priorities parading in the Trump administration. In executive orders that would make Xi Jinping proud, Trump hints at siccing the military on US citizens, and announces that federal agents will now scour the social media pages of every student coming into the country. We don’t have spies snatching magazines, but Fox News keeps 45% of the country uninformed while Trump tries to put other networks out of business.

In his Big, Beautiful Bill, Trump wants to spend a trillion dollars on the military while gutting medical research, education, and healthcare. Trump wants to let an alcoholic who can’t shut up about “lethality” manage a trillion dollar defense budget. Hegseth and Trump keep flexing empty-brain machismo, dreaming of nineteenth century conquests despite Trump stressing isolationism. What’s the purpose of a trillion dollar military when we’re shirking our national security alliances, including in Ukraine? Gold trinkets in the sky and ego-stroke parades are expensive, but they’re not that expensive.

Venom of the red scorpion

The second lesson I learned in China wasn’t about plumbing or spying. It was about science.

The university had these wide, white marble stairs that curved around to the first floor, where the base opened to the front desk. I was walking down the stairs when I almost stepped on a blood red scorpion. I don’t mean russet or sepia toned, I mean that scorpion was blood red, like a crayon in a primary color box. I was spooked by its aggressively curled tail, so I motioned the guy at the front desk, and within nano-seconds, a least twenty scientists were positioned in a circle around the creature, two and three lab coats deep.

I later learned that scorpion venom is one of the most rare and precious materials in the world. As a medical compound, Stanford University’s Richard Zare said it would “cost $39 million to produce a gallon of it.” Biotech scientists have only recently developed applications using the venom for pain management and pain blocking, immunosuppressive therapies, and drugs to treat glioma, leukemia, human neuroblastoma, brain tumor, melanoma, prostate cancer, and breast cancer.

Will the US survive its know-nothing leader?

My take away was that scientists in China are serious people. They immediately recognized the medicinal value of the scorpion, as well as the research gift that had landed in their laps. Again, the contrasts with Trump’s America sting:

University scientists in China are making people healthier; research scientists in the US are looking for a job. In China, science is revered; in Trump’s America, science is silenced.

Just this week, Chinese scientists enabled paralyzed patients to walk again using a world-first brain-spinal implant. Just this week in the US, advanced clinical trials on everything from cancer to dementia were defunded.

While Trump is trying to ruin universities and end scientific research, letting China pull ahead, he’s expanding the use of the military to “enforce the law,” and quadrupling federal resources for prisons and detention-related facilities. Just like the authoritarians in China, instead of taking care of the nation’s health, Trump is expending resources to surveil us.

But if a red scorpion appeared on the steps of the Capitol, Trump would stomp on it, brag about how brave he was, and blame Biden if it bites him.

I never saw a scorpion as metaphor until now.

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.

To ensure that the United States will always be led by a coherent, functioning President, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment provides for the prompt, orderly, and democratic transfer of executive power in the event the president is incapacitated, physically or mentally. Trump’s tariff debacle, where he thrust out his chest, flung economic incoherence at the world, then flip flopped only two days later, was the strongest evidence yet- in a roiling sea of evidence- that he is mentally incapacitated.

Despite inheriting the strongest post-covid economy in the world, Trump keeps insisting that the US economy is broken and in need of saving.He insists global trading partners who sell us more than they buy from us- even countries that are a fraction of our size- are “taking advantage.”

Trump’s tariff drama was so asinine, he’s either self-dealing or insane. Frankly, although they are not mutually exclusive, I’d prefer the former. I only wish that rumors swirling in the media today, suggesting Trump’s tariffs were a hustle, an insider scheme meant to enrich his backers, were true. Trump being a self-dealing crook poses less danger to the world than him making than no sense at all.

Dementia and the Duty to Warn

Leaders of the EU are too intelligent to sneer out loud at Trump’s flip flop on tariffs. Aware of his deranged lust for revenge, they are reluctant to utter the truth about his economic ignorance. But the world is aware, even if Americans aren’t, that our president is deranged.

Because Trump’s administration hasrefused to release his medical records, other mental health professionals have come forward with their own assessments. The emerging consensus is that Trump, showing cognitive decline, is presenting signs of advanced dementia.

Psychotherapist Dr. John Gartner, former Johns Hopkins University Medical School faculty, is so alarmed about Trump’s cognitive impairment that he circulated a petition addressing it among thousands of psychiatrists, psychologists and other credentialed mental health professionals. Gartner wrote last year that Trump shows "progressive deterioration in memory, thinking, ability to use language, behavior, and both gross and fine motor skills," adding that he felt an ethical “obligation to warn the public, and urge the media to cover this national emergency."

Trump struggles to “even finish a sentence,” Gartner explained in an interview with MindSite News, elaborating that, “When we’re diagnosing dementia, what we need to see is a deterioration of someone’s own baseline of functioning. What we see that a lot of people don’t appreciate is that when Donald Trump was younger in the 1980s, he was actually quite articulate. His thoughts were logical and related: now they’re tangential. He goes off on these ramblings where he is confabulating things – weird things in which he’ll talk about Venezuelans and mental hospitals, and then he’ll talk about sharks and batteries or the late, great Hannibal Lector and Silence of the Lambs.”

Dr. Gartner notes how Trump is “losing his capacity for coherent speech,” identifying “dozens and dozens of Trump’s phonemic paraphasias, in which you use sounds in place of an actual word (a hallmark of brain damage and dementia).” Trump will say something like ‘mishiz’ for missiles, or 'Chrishus' for Christmas, because he can’t complete the word. Then we see also a lot of semantic paraphasias, in which he uses a word incorrectly, as in 'the oranges of the situation' because it rhymes with 'the origins of the situation.'”

Mental health professionals, mainstream media, sound the alarm

Main stream media, including the New York Times, have also questioned Trump’s mental state. In October 2024, the NYT reported that Trump now uses more “negative words than positive words compared with 2016, which can be another indicator of cognitive change.” And he curses far more often than he did when he first ran, “a trend that could reflect what experts call disinhibition,” another sign of dementia. They cited a study by health care news outlet, Stat, that reports similar findings.

Newsweek’s article, “Donald Trump Dementia Evidence 'Overwhelming,” cites New York psychologist Suzanne Lachmann. Lackmann describes how Trump "seemingly forgets how sentence began and invents something in the middle" resulting in "an incomprehensible word salad"—a behavior she argues is observed "frequently in patients who have dementia."

The Dementia Society notes that “forgetting names and dates is normal for people who are aging. But "confusing people and generations" is a sign of advanced dementia. During the campaign, Trump confused Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi on eight separate occasions, and said he was running against Obama. He said his father was born in Germany, when it was his grandfather who was born in Germany.

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump

With the assistance of other psychiatrists and credentialled mental health professionals, Dr. Bandy Lee wrote, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President near the conclusion of Trump’s first presidency. In the book, psychiatric experts came forward due to what they saw as their professional moral and civic “duty to warn” America about Trump’s dementia.This duty, they argued, supersedes their competing professional duty of neutrality.

Since then, more than 3000 credentialed mental health professionals have added their signatures to a petition concluding that the president has probable dementia.

They write, “Donald Trump is showing unmistakable signs strongly suggesting dementia, based on his public behavior and informant reports that show progressive deterioration in memory, thinking, ability to use language, behavior, and both gross and fine motor skills…. his vocabulary is impoverished, he often has difficulty finishing a thought, sentence or even a word. Typical of dementia patients he perseverates and overuses superlatives and filler words…”

Congress needs to act before Trump gets red-button happy

Trump, who caused global destruction with his mindless tariff wars, now has the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons as the Commander in Chief.

Evidence of his cognitive decline is everywhere. Mental health professionals have sounded the alarm, and met their professional duty to warn the world about Trump’s dementia.

Congress now has a duty to listen to the professionals. Republicans, on the whole, have a duty to act.

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment allows the Vice President and either the Cabinet, or a body approved “by law” formed by Congress, to jointly agree that “the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Democrats need to proceed under this clause, and frightened republicans need to join in before Trump commits another, potentially world annihilating, blunder.

NOW READ: There’s a new dress code in Trump’s DC — and it’s straight out of a dictator’s playbook

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense.Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

The world is watching in disbelief as the president of the United States goes full Aryan. After coaxing Black and brown voters into his tent, Donald Trump loaded a gun, trained it at their heads, and blocked the exits.

Trump’s racism surprises exactly no one, but his unprecedented aggression in arresting a Black member of Congress and sending brown migrants to prison without legal process hints at real strategy from an administration otherwise known for incompetence.

Political writers often quip that Trump’s racial animus is performative: red meat thrown to a carnivorous base, a little candy to keep MAGA extremists standing back and standing by. Plus, daily outrage keeps media focus where Trump wants it: on him.

But Trump is not just feeding and entertaining his base, he’s simultaneously trying to goad Democrats — racial minorities in particular — into violence. He’s deliberately trying to incite race riots in the streets, complete with looting and mayhem, as predicate to martial law.

America for me, Sudan for thee

In late March, Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, put on full makeup and a push-up bra to pose as jailer at a human zoo in El Salvador. She stood in front of brown human props caged in forever cells “stuffed to the rafters,” even though the vast majority of them have never been convicted of a crime.

Trump wants to boot 20 million brown and Black immigrants out of the country with no thought of the resulting labor shortage he’s creating for farmers, construction, and health care providers. He asked El Salvadorean dictator Nayib Bukele to build additional gulags for that purpose, and, in the meantime, has begun sending migrants to South Sudan, a country where they have no ties. On Wednesday, another judge found that Trump violated another federal court order by deporting brown migrants, without legal process, to a country so dangerous the State Department warns people not to set foot there.

Against this backdrop of staged cruelty toward migrants and refugees of color, Trump crafted a deliberate race-based contrast, by welcoming a “small subset” of other immigrants: white Afrikaners. Embracing the same racist minority that led South Africa's brutal apartheid regime, to whom Elon Musk has family ties, Trump is institutionalizing racial preference while also endorsing the racist violence of apartheid.

Ambushing South Africa’s president

If welcoming white Afrikaners wasn’t enough to punctuate the memo, Trump ambushed South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, showing a social media video distorted to support claims of an ongoing “genocide” against white farmers in Ramaphosa’s country.

After both presidents were seated, Trump dimmed the lights to show dramatic footage of a row of crosses, claiming, “These are the — these are burial sites right here … Each one of those white things you see is a cross. And there's approximately a thousand of them. They're all white farmers, the family of white farmers … Those people are all killed.”

Trump’s bogus video was instantly and widely refuted. Those crosses weren’t grave markers of murdered white farmers; they were placed along the road as part of a political protest over the apparent murder of two farmers at their home, not a thousand, back in 2020. Trump also showed an image he said was from South Africa but was actually from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Trump knows that 45% of the country will never hear that refutation, as Fox News praised the meeting and video, amplifying Trump’s false claims of white genocide to gin up racial hatred among white MAGA supporters.

Arresting Black officials

Trump is also flexing unconstitutional muscle to intimidate Black officials. Two weeks ago, ICE agents arrested Newark’s Black Mayor, Ras Baraka, while he and members of Congress were visiting a detention center. When that case was ignominiously dismissed, Trump officials pivoted and arrested Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), also Black, also touring the facility.

Federal law, under the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 at Section 532, grants members of Congress the right to inspect ICE detention facilities without prior notice, as a function of congressional oversight. Not only did McIver have the right to conduct oversight at the facility, she has a constitutional obligation to do so.

Democratic leadership released a joint statement calling the arrests “blatant attempts at intimidating” members of Congress. They might have added that the arrests were part of Trump’s strategy of fomenting race-based violence nationwide.

Inciting divisive racial violence as a segue to martial law

Backing up the camera from the micro to see the macro, Trump’s persistent DEI attacks against corporations and universities, his well-choreographed abuse of brown migrants, and his very public attempts to intimidate Black elected officials by arresting them supports a sinister theory: that Trump wants to trigger racial violence to give him cover to declare martial law before the midterms.

Rule by martial law is not a new concept; it exists throughout autocratic regimes and lies at the core of Project 2025, which Trump, despite disavowing, has been implementing with alacrity.

Architects of Project 2025 want a unitary government with power consolidated in a single, strongman executive. Their Mandate for Leadership is a 920-page road map directing Trump’s efforts to amass excessive power by sidelining both the legislative and judicial branches, efforts already well under way. Project 2025 champions a far-right, white, Christian nationalist, pro-corporate, and anti-worker philosophy. Enabled by removing checks and balances on Trump’s power, Christo-fascists want the state to regulate bedroom behavior, outlaw homosexuality and birth control, and impose state-forced births nationwide, including in democrat-run cities and states. They redefine personal autonomy as an asset that belongs to an all-powerful state.

The dictators’ playbook

The ever-prescient Thom Hartmann recently distilled the dictators’ playbook into two steps: Aspirant dictators must first create an ‘enemy within.’ Check. Then, they encourage or exploit “big, splashy attacks on the country” to seize more power. If race riots start, this second box will be checked.

Hartmann observes that, “Trump appears to be preparing for the type of authoritarian crackdown Germany saw after the Reichstag fire that propelled Hitler to power in 1933.” Trump’s chilling EO, “Strengthening and unleashing America’s law enforcement to pursue criminals and protect innocent citizens” makes plain that Trump intends to illegally deploy the military against American citizens.

Trump’s carousel of abuse is a sinister ploy to elicit help from the very minorities he seeks to oppress. He is poking us to explode in violent outrage so that he can declare martial law before the midterms, sic the military on US citizens, and “protect America” from yet another disaster he purposely created.

Americans should heed Martin Luther King Jr. and engage in non-violent, righteous resistance instead. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, show up on June 14 and show the world your disgust at America’s would-be king. You, me, and millions of Americans can stop him, and it starts by showing up.

NOW READ: The one way to stop the Republican threat to all of us — and we better make it fast

Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are found @ Alternet, Chicago Tribune, Howey Political Report, Indiana Democrats’ Kernel of Truth, Inside Indiana Business, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, South Florida Gay News, State Affairs, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.