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

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

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

Ministry of Truth

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

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

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

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

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

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

Illegal 'prior restraint'

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

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

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

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

National security risk

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

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

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

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

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

Press in MAGA hats

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

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

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

All of them signed Hegseth’s required pledge.

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

On November 26, 2025, in a quiet northern suburb of Hong Kong, an aggressive fire broke out in the middle of the day. The fire was unusual in its intensity and duration, consuming 7 of 8 high rise towers in a residential complex. Despite the quick response of well-equipped fire trucks, the blaze spread quickly and burned for more than 43 hours.

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

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

The fire could have been prevented with government inspections

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

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

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

The Trump administration has put Americans in danger

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

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

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

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

Trump’s attacks on regulatory agencies

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

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

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

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

Statistics are only dry until you’re in them

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strikes cannot be justified

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

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

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

JAGs come back to haunt

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

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

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

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

Guilt (and execution) by association

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rubio is exporting lies

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

In 2024, the National Institute of Justice released figures comparing arrest rates between undocumented immigrants and native born US citizens, tracked over a seven year period. The study found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born citizens for violent and drug crimes, and at a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes. For homicide, undocumented immigrants had the lowest arrest rates throughout the entire study, averaging less than half the rate of US-born citizens. Another multi-year study from Stanford shows the same, with immigrants 30% less likely overall to commit crimes than US born natives.

Studies in Europe show similar results. In Germany, where Elon Musk’s darling, the far-right Alternative for Germany party claims that “violent gang rapes” and “knife crimes” by immigrants are “skyrocketing,” media outlets' fact-checking teams showed those claims were false. In early 2025, researchers found no correlation between immigration and crime rates in Italy, Germany, the UK, France and Belgium. The same results were reported in August for Canada and Australia.

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

Trump is trying to export economic failures

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

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

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

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

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

Bad timing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Military is legally and functionally different from law enforcement

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

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

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

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

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

Attacking the truth

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

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

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

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

Doubling down on lies won’t make us safe

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

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

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

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

• Kak·i·sto·cra·cy- (kakə̇ˈstäkrəsē): a government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is exactly what happened with Halligan.

Trump tried to install a revolving door of lawless sycophants

Judge Currie held that the initial 120-day appointment clock began in January with Trump’s appointment of Erik Siebert, the previous interim U.S. Attorney. Seibert’s 120 day interim period expired on May 21, 2025, but the district court judges, following federal law, reappointed Seibert to serve until the vacancy was filled. Trump then nominated him for the full-term position, so he continued to serve.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Since Donald Trump has been back in office, energy prices have increased at more than double the rate of inflation. The Consumer Price Index from the end of October reported an “all items price index” increase for food, shelter, and transportation of 3.0 percent over a 12-month period, while energy services for the same period rose by 6.4 percent.

After promising to slash energy prices, Trump has done the opposite. His energy policies reflect the same ethos driving everything else in his retribution playbook: reward donors and inflict pain on Democrats, even when the economic consequences are nationwide.

Lust for retribution

In early October, Trump announced the claw-back of billions of dollars in federal funding for utilities, money that had been appropriated to reinforce power grids and reduce electricity prices.

Targeting blue states exclusively, Budget Director Russ Vought announced the cancellation of “nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda.” In all, 321 Congressionally set awards supporting 223 wind, solar, and transmission projects were trashed.

Trump’s aversion to clean energy isn’t the only factor driving costs. His refusal to upgrade the grid, his half-baked export and tariff initiatives, and his blind support for energy-sucking AI data centers are all contributing to surging energy prices with no relief in sight.

As Canary Media framed it, “Trump slapped tariffs on certain wind turbine materials and opened a sham “national security” probe to pave the way for even more. He halted construction on a nearly completed offshore wind farm and moved to revoke permits for two more. He canceled hundreds of millions in port funding critical to offshore wind development and imposed new directives to stifle renewable projects on federal lands.”

Trump’s dedication is showing: after only ten months of Trump 2.0, US household electric bills have increased by 10 percent, and are expected to continue climbing.

UN Climate Summit

Trump is doing more than reversing US climate successes, he’s also undermining progress in other parts of the world. Last month, when the International Maritime Organization agreed on the world’s first carbon tax on global shipping to encourage the transition to cleaner fuels, Trump released a childish Truth Social rant threatening to retaliate.

This month, he ignored the UN Climate Summit in Brazil. Thankfully, California Governor Gavin Newsom attended, representing the world’s fourth-largest economy. Newsom highlighted California's efforts to step up on climate where Trump has stepped out.

Facing down the embarrassment of an antiquated, know-nothing, pro-fossil fuel regime, Newsom didn’t hold back. When asked about the US retreat from global climate action, he called Trump “an invasive species … He’s a wrecking ball president trying to roll back progress of the last century … he’s doubling down on stupid.”

Newsom did more than talk. While he was at the summit, he signed new Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with Brazil, Colombia, and Chile to advance clean energy, wildfire prevention, and other climate-related initiatives. He also expanded California’s existing partnerships with China and Mexico on clean energy development and zero-emission freight corridors.

Newsom managed to bolster California's profile as a stable international business and climate partner despite the optics of a US president ruled by ego and impulse.

Our loss, China’s gain

In September, addressing the UN, Trump called climate change a “con job” and urged other world leaders to abandon their climate efforts despite the Earth’s rising temperatures. Trump claimed falsely that China sells wind turbines to the world without using them at home, and told assembled leaders, “If you don’t get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail.”

The next day, China pledged the reverse. Xi Jinping announced China’s plan to increase electric vehicle sales and dramatically increase wind and solar power, targeting a 600 percent increase over 2020 levels.

Despite Trump’s claim, China has vastly expanded wind power developments at home, adding 46 gigawatts of new wind energy this year alone, enough to power than 30 million homes. Meanwhile, our Cro-Magnon regime froze permits for wind farms and issued stop work orders, ending tens of thousands of wind energy jobs in the process.

Critics agree that Trump’s withdrawal from climate efforts ceded valuable ground to China, which is now rapidly expanding its renewable and EV industries. China’s Ming Yang Smart Energy just unveiled OceanX, a two-headed offshore wind turbine. OceanX is expected to cut offshore energy costs to one-fifth of Europe’s costs while allowing wind farms to operate with fewer, more powerful turbines.

“China gets it,” Newsom said at the UN Climate Summit, “America is toast competitively, if we don’t wake up to what the hell they’re doing in this space, on supply chains, how they’re dominating manufacturing, how they’re flooding the zone.”

Newsom is right. Americans are suffering the tragedy of an uninformed and unstable president who rejects science, a president who wants to take us back to the 19th century. We have also inflicted our tragedy on the rest of the world.

Pope Leo frames climate action as a moral and spiritual imperative, tying the “cry of the Earth” to the “cry of the poor,” because small island nations and the global south, including poor states in the US, will continue to suffer the most from extreme weather and climate destruction.

Trump will be dead before climate change becomes an obvious existential threat. As Newsom said, he is only temporary. But the global destruction he leaves behind could be permanent. We owe it to our children, ourselves, and all the earth’s inhabitants to never again elect an imbecile, and to shut this one down before he kills us all.

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

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) governs the conduct of every person in the United States military, and applies equally to all ranks and branches, whether in combat, or not.

All service members are taught, and are expected to understand, its core principles. Ignorantia juris non excusat, or “Ignorance of the law,” is not a legal defense in the US military. Under Art. 92 of the UCMJ, members have a duty to obey all lawful commands, and they have a parallel duty to disobey all unlawful commands. Obeying a manifestly illegal order, like an order to target civilians, can expose a service member to criminal liability.

The duty to disobey manifestly illegal orders is a cornerstone of international law, with foundations in Nazi atrocities-related post-WWII trials like Nuremberg. Orders of such nature that their unlawfulness is clear and obvious, such as an order to target unarmed civilians, are considered manifestly illegal.

Manifestly illegal orders

Donald Trump has ordered the summary execution of at least 83 people so far in strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth call these targets “narco-terrorists” because they think that means they can treat them as enemy combatants in a war that does not exist.

It doesn’t. Even if the victims were “narco-terrorists,” for which Trump has provided zero evidence, at worst, they are citizen criminals entitled to interdiction and legal process under US and international law.

No country has the right to execute non-combatant civilians unless faced with imminent threat, otherwise unhinged leaders could shoot people for sport, which Trump’s snuff videos are chillingly starting to resemble.

International condemnation of Trump’s campaign is growing, along with a global chorus accusing him of murder that would be louder if Trump weren’t threatening foreign trade like a mob boss. Formerly strong US allies, including the UK, Colombia, and the Netherlands, have either refused or suspended related intelligence sharing with the US. Military support groups are starting to talk in earnest, offering counseling and advice on what to do when faced with illegal order situations.

Calls to execute US lawmakers

Against this legal framework, the President of the United States has called for the prosecution, conviction, and death penalty for federal legislators, for reminding military personnel that they must follow the UCMJ. After Democratic legislators, all veterans of Intelligence or the US military, released a video reminding members of their duty to disobey illegal orders, Trump came unglued, unleashing a series of posts confirming that he is a danger to all Americans and unfit to lead the military.

Trump wrote:

"It’s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET."

"SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!" he added in a later post.

Eliciting stochastic violence, Trump then reposted other posts calling the lawmakers "traitors" and "domestic terrorist Democrats" and another reading, "HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!"

Trump is criminally insane. What are officials waiting for to remove him?

The evidence that Trump is unfit to lead, and is a metastasizing threat to the US citizenry, is objectively irrefutable:

• He is using the US military for domestic law enforcement, which has long been illegal under federal law
• He has openly turned the Department of Justice into a lawless political weapon
• He is sending armed, masked and insufficiently trained federal agents to attack people in their beds, at schools and churches, and on the sidewalks
• His closest advisors publicly encourage excessive brutality as his “War” Secretary praises “lethality” unconstrained by the laws of combat
• Advancing his violence toward the media, last week he defended the dismemberment of a journalist critic
• He has officially declared groups who oppose him politically to be “domestic terrorists” in clear violation of the First Amendment
• His administration has been caught lying about peaceful protestors threatening ICE agents in order to justify ICE brutality.

At the same time Trump is violating the rule of law at home, transforming the nation into an occupied military zone, his national security blunders have seriously increased the risk of harm from outside forces by:

• Sharing a plan of attack through unsecured sources
• Posting juvenile social media rants that gave Iran advance notice to move their enriched uranium
• Accidentally declaring part of Mexico as US territory now under US command
• Alienating NATO, demoralizing Ukraine, and supporting Putin’s murderous regime in Russia
• Claiming victory in Gaza even as both sides continues attacking on the other
• Selling fighter jets to Saudi Arabia despite national security warnings.

These cumulative blunders suggest he doesn’t care about long-term, or even short-term, risks to national security. For example, Trump’s plans to sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia ignores consistent warnings from national security officials that he will be letting China steal the American military’s advanced technology. Trump either doesn’t care, or lacks the cognitive capacity to understand, that Riyadh and Beijing have a formal security partnership.

“We will be doing that, we’ll be selling F-35s,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, because the Saudis “want to buy them, they’ve been a great ally.”

These facts trigger a duty to act, regardless of politics.

Federal officials, including his cabinet, and members of Congress, all swore an oath to follow the Constitution and protect the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Legal tools within their reach include impeachment and removal, Congressional oversight and the power of the purse, and the 25th Amendment.

This is not a partisan issue. America is in danger. Federal officials’ complicity and failure to act is now a dereliction of duty in deference to a man whose cognition is in question, who still has access to the nuclear codes.

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

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) governs the conduct of every person in the United States military, and applies equally to all ranks and branches, whether in combat, or not.

All servicemembers are taught, and are expected to understand, its core principles. Ignorantia juris non excusat, or ‘Ignorance of the law,’ is not a legal defense in the US military. Under Art. 92 of the UCMJ, members have a duty to obey all lawful commands, and they have a parallel duty to disobey all unlawful commands. Obeying a manifestly illegal order, like an order to target civilians, can expose a service member to criminal liability.

The duty to disobey manifestly illegal orders is a cornerstone of international law, with foundations in Nazi atrocities-related post-WWII trials like Nuremberg. Orders of such nature that their unlawfulness is clear and obvious, such as an order to target unarmed civilians, are considered manifestly illegal.

Trump, Hegseth are issuing manifestly illegal orders to murder civilians

Trump has ordered the summary execution of at least 83 people so far in suspected drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Trump and Hegseth call these targets ‘narco-terrorists’ because they think that means they can treat them as enemy combatants in a war that does not exist.

It doesn’t. Even if the victims were “narco-terrorists,” for which Trump has provided zero evidence, at worst, they are citizen criminals entitled to interdiction and legal process under US and international law. No country has the right to execute non-combatant civilians unless faced with imminent threat, otherwise unhinged leaders could shoot people for sport, which Trump’s snuff videos are chillingly starting to resemble.

The widespread international condemnation of Trump’s campaign is growing, along with a global chorus accusing him of murder that would be louder if Trump weren’t threatening foreign trade like a mob boss. Formerly strong US allies, including the UK, Colombia, and the Netherlands, have either refused or suspended related intelligence sharing with the US because of the illegal strikes. Military support groups are starting to talk in earnest, offering counseling and advice on what to do when faced with illegal order situations.

Trump calls for the execution of US lawmakers

Against this legal framework, the President of the United States has just called for the prosecution, conviction, and death penalty for federal legislators, for reminding military personnel that they must follow the Uniform Code of Military Justice. After democratic legislators, all members or Veterans of Intelligence or the US military, released a video reminding members of their duty to disobey illegal orders, Trump came unglued, unleashing a series of posts confirming that he is a danger to all Americans and unfit to lead the military. Trump wrote:

"It’s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET."

"SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!" he added in a later post.

Eliciting stochastic violence, Trump then reposted other posts calling the lawmakers "traitors" and "domestic terrorist Democrats" and another reading, "HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!"

Trump is criminally insane. What are officials waiting for to remove him?

The evidence that Trump is unfit to lead, and is a metastasizing threat to the US citizenry, is objectively irrefutable:

• He is using the US military for domestic law enforcement, which has long been illegal under federal law;
• He has openly turned the Department of Justice into a lawless political weapon;
• He is sending armed, masked and insufficiently trained federal agents to attack people in their beds, at schools and churches, and on the sidewalks;
• His closest advisors publicly encourage excessive brutality as his “War” Secretary praises ‘lethality’ unconstrained by the laws of combat;
• Advancing his violence toward the media, last week he defended the dismemberment of a journalist critic;
• He has officially declared groups who oppose him politically to be “domestic terrorists” in clear violation of the First Amendment; and
• His administration has been caught lying about peaceful protestors threatening ICE agents in order to justify ICE brutality.

At the same time Trump is violating the rule of law at home, transforming the nation into an occupied military zone, his national security blunders have seriously increased the risk of harm from outside forces by:

• Sharing a plan of attack through unsecured sources:
• Posting juvenile social media rants that gave Iran advance notice to move their enriched uranium;
• Accidently declaring part of Mexico as US territory now under US command;
• Alienating NATO, demoralizing Ukraine, and supporting Putin’s murderous regime in Russia;
• Claiming victory in Gaza even as both sides continues attacking on the other;
• And, most recently, selling fighter jets to Saudi Arabia despite national security warnings.

These cumulative blunders suggest he doesn’t care about long term, or even short term, risks to national security. For example, Trump’s plans to sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia ignores consistent warnings from national security officials that he will be letting China steal the American military’s advanced technology. Trump either doesn’t care, or lacks the cognitive capacity to understand, that Riyadh and Beijing have a formal security partnership. “We will be doing that, we’ll be selling F-35s,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, because the Saudis “want to buy them, they’ve been a great ally.”

These facts trigger a duty to act, regardless of politics.

Federal officials, including his cabinet, and members of Congress, all swore an oath to follow the Constitution and protect the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Legal tools within their reach include impeachment and removal, Congressional oversight and the power of the purse, and the 25th Amendment.

This is not a partisan issue. America is in danger. Federal officials’ complicity and failure to act is now a dereliction of duty in deference to a man whose cognition is in question, who still has access to the nuclear codes.

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

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

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

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

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

Americans don’t want this

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

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

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

Exaggerated threats

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

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

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

• In instances where ICE agents alleged their vehicles were rammed by activists, video footage showed the federal agents' vehicles were the aggressors, ramming the other vehicles first.
• Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino admitted he was not hit by a rock until after he deployed tear gas at a Chicago protest, contradicting earlier claims that it happened in reverse.
• DHS claimed a middle-aged, heavy set woman, a WGN news producer, went out of her way to assault an ICE agent; eyewitness said she was simply standing there taking video. She was eventually released without charges.
• After DHS claimed a “more than 1,000 percent rise” in assaults on ICE agents, reporting from NPR and a review of federal court filings found no public evidence to support that claim.
• Videos circulating online show unprovoked, excessive violence from federal agents against protestors, with several showing agents pointing guns at peaceful observers.

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

'Regular forces'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Epstein was shopping dirt on Trump

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

By now, most people have seen Epstein’s 2011 email to Ghislaine Maxwell about Trump not ‘barking.’ After he had been under criminal investigation for several years, an investigation that grew legs as more victims came forward and high profile “clients” were named, Epstein wrote to Maxwell, “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump. [Victim’s name] spent hours at my house with him.” Maxwell, obviously aware of Epstein’s meaning, replied, “I have been thinking about that…” Several years later, still shopping his dirt, Epstein asked a reporter, would you like to have “photos of donald and girls in bikinis in my kitchen?”

Epstein also turned to journalist Michael Wolff for advice how to hurt Trump. A few months after Trump announced his first run for president, Wolff advised Epstein that he should just let Trump ‘hang himself.’ Wolff wrote, “If (Trump) says he hasn’t been on (the Lolita Express) or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win (the presidency) you could save him, generating a debt.”

Trump had to know Epstein was gunning for him

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

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

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

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

Did Trump get wind of that and decide enough’s enough?

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

That fall, Epstein was confined at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, which was under the direct control of Trump’s Federal Bureau of Prisons. On August 10, 2019, prison guards found Epstein dead in his cell. Federal investigators concluded he killed himself by hanging.

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

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

The fear factor over Epstein files

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

In February of this year, Eric Swalwell, (D-CA), said his Republican colleagues were “terrified” of crossing Trump, and it was not as simple as being afraid of being primaried. “It’s their personal safety” they fear for, with their spouses saying, ‘We will have to hire around-the-clock security’ (if you cross Trump). In April, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) confirmed Swalwell’s comments, and that US Senators, indeed, have genuine fear of Trump.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump’s tariffs announced our folly to the world

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

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

The Constitution vests power to regulate commerce and tax with Congress

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

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

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

Why didn’t Trump involve Congress to begin with?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump’s plan to privatize the federal government

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

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

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

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

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

Handing agencies to wealthy donors

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

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

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

Research confirms system abuses, other ugly effects

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

• Healthcare: A recent study published in Annals of Internal Medicine examined outcomes at hospitals over a 10-year period, concluding that private equity ownership of hospitals resulted in measurably higher— 13 percent--death rates among Medicare emergency patients caused by corporate owners’ pursuit of higher profitability. Data illustrate that when hospitals companies cut costs leading to staff cuts, lower wages, and more patient transfers, more patients die.

• Education: Research from the National Coalition for Public Education concludes that vouchers do not significantly increase test scores on average, and may even result in worse outcomes for students. Not only do many students’ test scores deteriorate when they attend private schools through voucher programs, research from the Economic Policy Institute confirms that vouchers also harm the quality of education delivered in public schools by diverting resources from them.

• Corrections: As reported in Labour Economics, Washington State University researchers have shown that privatized prisons lead to more inmates, more abuse, and longer sentences. For-profit correctional facilities hinder rehabilitation rates because they receive funding through service contracts, many of which are based on the total number of inmates and their average length of time served.

• Corruption: Privatized corrections also introduce a new avenue for corruption. One documented example was the “kids for cash” scandal in Pennsylvania, where judges were bribed by a private prison company to give harsher sentences to juvenile offenders instead of probation, to order to increase occupancy at for-profit detention centers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Accumulating corruption

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

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

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

• Every nation Trump visited on the first official foreign trip of his second term had ongoing private business deals with the Trump Organization
• Trump has made billions of dollars through crypto ventures since last November, including his (and Melania’s) launch of memecoins — cryptocurrency products widely understood as having no utility
• 92 percent of the top 25 investors in Trump’s cryptocurrency memecoin scheme appear to be foreign nationals
• The United Arab Emirates’ investment fund, MGX, recently made a $2 billion investment into the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, using a stablecoin called USD1, created by a firm with close financial ties to the Trump family
• Trump accepted a $400 million luxury jet from the royal family of Qatar which could cost American taxpayers up to $1 billion to retrofit into Air Force One
• After private prison company GEO Group gave $1.75 million to pro-Trump super PACs and Trump’s inaugural committee, Trump awarded them a 15-year government contract to reopen an immigrant detention facility
• Private investors spent $148 million to attend an exclusive dinner with Trump at his golf club in the northern Virginia suburbs of D.C. in May
• The Pentagon, according to the Financial Times, recently awarded a significant contract to Unusual Machines — a drone company in which Donald Trump Jr. owns millions of dollars of stock
• Trump is selling a new $5 million “Trump gold card” investment visa to give wealthy foreigners permanent US residency status and the ability to make political contributions
• Trump raised Mar-a-Lago membership fees to $1 million, up from $200,000 in 2017
• Donald Trump Jr. co-founded a Trump-aligned private club in Washington, D.C., charging a $500,000 membership fee to rub shoulders with administration officials, “with no danger of running into reporters”
• Trump is now demanding a quarter-billion dollar private payment, threatening to sue the federal government he “runs” if he doesn’t get it.

Billionaires can’t directly fund government agencies

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

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

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

Project 2025 and the roots of Trump’s takeover

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump has ordered more deadly bombings of small boats, killing everyone onboard, this time in the Eastern Pacific ocean. After another strike was carried out on Friday, killing six more people, Pete Hegseth announced the bombing of 4 additional ships on Tuesday, killing 14 more people and bringing the number of civilian fatalities to 57.

Not long after the bombings began off the coast of Venezuela, unidentified bodies with burn marks and missing limbs started washing ashore on the coast of nearby Trinidad. Without releasing photos or any credible evidence to back it up, Trump claimed that the victims’ vessels were “stacked up with bags of white powder that’s mostly fentanyl and other drugs, too.” Trump says they were “smuggling a deadly weapon poisoning Americans,” on behalf of various “terrorist organizations.”

Trump is calling the victims ‘terrorists’ so that he can treat them as enemy combatants in a war that does not exist, just as he is doing at home.

Domestically, we know Trump calls groups who oppose him politically “domestic terrorists.” We know he fabricated a domestic terrorist organization he calls ‘Antifa’ to sell his plan for violence. We also know his administration is lying about peaceful protestors threatening ICE agents in order to justify ICE brutality, and that ICE refuses to wear body cams.

Details in South America are sketchy in part because Hegseth tightly controls what the media can say about military operations. The only media outlets now covering the Defense Department are pro-Trump right wing propaganda machines, but Trump’s firehose of lies about domestic ‘terrorists’ cast doubt on his similar claims about ‘terrorists’ on the high seas.

Is Trump confusing South America with China and Mexico?

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro has credibly accused Trump of murder. In response, instead of offering legal justification, Trump said he was cutting off foreign aid to Colombia.

Bragging about the killings, Trump falsely claimed that every exploded shipping vessel “saves 25,000 American lives.” In the factual world, about 100,000 Americans die each year from drug overdoses, mostly by fentanyl, which does not come from Venezuela, Colombia or any South American country.

The fentanyl killing Americans comes from labs in Mexico and China. Given his difficulty with geography, Trump may not know the difference. At any rate, South America produces marijuana and cocaine, not fentanyl. Most of the killing fentanyl is smuggled into the country by US citizens, over land.

Legal arguments don’t hold water

Legal experts on the use of armed force say Trump’s campaign is illegal because the military is not permitted to target civilians who are not directly participating in hostilities.

Key legal instruments prohibiting extrajudicial killings and murder include the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Statute of the International Criminal Court, and customary international humanitarian law. The Trump administration has not publicly offered a legal theory that comports with any of these laws.

Designating drug cartels as “terrorist organizations” is also factually suspect. Drug cartels exist for profit; all purveyors of illicit drugs are in the business to make money. In contrast, “terrorists” by definition are motivated by ideological goals often involving politics or religion—not profit. Even if they were terrorists, international law would only allow the executive branch to respond through legal methods like freezing assets, trials and imprisonment.

Hegseth and others involved will eventually face court martial

Trump and Hegseth’s legal arguments have been universally rejected by military legal experts including former lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, who have condemned the attacks as unlawful under both domestic and international law. Undeterred, Hegseth has stated enthusiastically that the military will continue these executions.

In February, Hegseth fired the JAGs whose job was to assess the legality of military actions. He may have deliberately done so to engage in illegal conduct and later claim a ‘mistake of law’ defense, but that maneuver won’t save him. In US Servicemembers’ Exposure to Criminal Liability for Lethal Strikes on Narcoterrorists, Just Security lays it out:

An extrajudicial killing, premeditated and without justification or excuse and without the legal authority tied to an armed conflict, is properly called “murder.” And murder is still a crime for those in uniform who executed the strike even if their targets are dangerous criminals, and even if servicemembers were commanded to do so by their superiors, including the President of the United States.

Under this analysis, “every officer in the chain of command who … directed downward the initial order from the President or Secretary of Defense” would likely fall within the meaning of traditional accomplice liability, and could be charged for murder under Article 118.

Even if a partisan Supreme Court gave Trump criminal immunity for murder (an unsettled question), that immunity does not extend to Hegseth, or to other service members piloting the drones or firing the missiles. These orders are obviously illegal, and trigger service members’ obligation to disobey them.

Those who choose to follow them should expect to follow Hegseth to court martial when this period of insanity ends.

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.

Back in February, the thinking public scratched its collective head as Elon Musk and DOGE took a chainsaw to agencies that serve the public. Federal agencies created to protect public health, serve veterans, advance education, maintain infrastructure, keep the public informed, and protect the safety of air and water were largely dismantled. Even before the government shutdown, those agencies were either closed or not functioning, operating with skeleton crews.

This month, the reason for the mass destruction crystallized: Trump and Russell Vought, architect of authoritarian cookbook Project 2025, stripped federal service budgets in order to move those dollars to another ledger, the one that funds federal agencies that control, police and punish the public. Those budgets have exploded, none more than that of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Analysis of government procurement data first reported by Popular Information shows a 700 percent increase in weapons spending by ICE this year. From January to October 2024, ICE spent under $10 million on weapons. For the same period ending this month, that amount jumped to more than $71 million.

Even more alarming than the amount is what ICE spent it on. Public data from the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) show that ICE procured chemical weapons, “guided missile warheads” and other explosive components. (Note: Wired reports some confusion over how the purchase was categorized and concludes that ICE “probably” didn’t purchase guided missile components, but the entry on the procurement system says they did.)

WTF does ICE want with such weapons?

Americans who watch something other than Fox News’ curated reality show have already seen videos of masked ICE agents engaging in wildly disproportionate violence against members of the media and public. Over the past few weeks, federal officers shot a woman five times in Chicago, killed a man during an arrest attempt in the suburbs, and shot a priest in the head with a pepper ball, knocking him to the ground, even as he was holding his arms up in prayer.

If shooting, body slamming, and menacing members of the public at close range wasn’t enough, now ICE will have access to even more chemical weapons. ICE has already lobbed chemical irritants like tear gas, pepper spray, HC smoke grenades, and pepper balls at peaceful protesters just to create the appearance of chaos for right-wing consumption; it is unclear what an unhinged and vengeful president might order them to do with nerve agent-adjacent chemicals.

Purchasing guided missile components for ICE would be equally astounding. A “guided missile” is any missile that uses a guidance system to steer toward a target. Such missiles can destroy a target with conventional, chemical, or biological warheads. “Guided” just means the missile can navigate and adjust its flight path to a chosen target along the way, using technologies like GPS and terrain mapping.

Since Kristi Noem keeps repeating false claims that ICE only engages in brutality when agents feel threatened, query what legitimate need those agents could possibly have to strike a person, car or building that’s miles away.

A toddler with the nuclear codes

Trump, who openly fantasizes about s------ on and destroying half the county, even as he literally destroys the White House like he owns it, probably thinks he could nuke California and get away with it. Never mind that California has the world’s fourth-largest economy, contributing $81 billion more to the federal government than it receives — long-term, mid-term and even immediate consequences are not accessible to Trump’s pre-frontal cortex.

ICE is also building a public surveillance system that would make Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping salivate. The “crowd control” surveillance system features iris scanners that photograph and record facial measurements. The system includes phone hacking and tracking, and facial recognition tools loading data into AI.

ICE has partnered with Palantir Technologies, a software company co-founded by JD Vance’s BFF and anti-democracy mentor, Peter Thiel. Palantir plans to use artificial intelligence and data mining to identify, track, and deport suspected noncitizens, collecting data on US citizens along the way. According to Business Insider, ICE is paying Palantir $30 million for the platform; Palantir was slated to deliver a prototype of the ImmigrationOS platform in September.

Keep in mind that Trump has increased spending on deadly weapons for ICE by over 700 percent, yet ICE continues to claim it can’t afford bodycams for its masked agents.

Judd Legum at Popular Information sums it up: “If the immigration enforcement apparatus of the United States were its own national military, it would be the 13th-most heavily funded in the world. This puts it higher than the national militaries of Poland, Italy, Australia, Canada, Turkey, and Spain — and just below Israel.”

Trump is building a police state to keep himself in power

Stephen Miller recently told assembled law enforcement officers in Memphis, Tennessee, that they should now consider themselves “unleashed.” Addressing a “crime task force” comprised of ICE, local police, the FBI, U.S. Marshals, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Miller encouraged them to go forward and “police aggressively,” concluding his talk with praise for their anticipated ruthlessness.

It’s the same unhinged directive for “unrestrained lethality” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered to military generals at Quantico last month.

It’s all of a piece: deploying the military against US citizens, pitting red states against blue, and arming masked ICE agents with sophisticated tools of war signal that Trump is building his own domestic paramilitary force to try to remain in power past 2028.

We have to admit this reality before we can prepare to meet it.

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

This week, blind to constitutional law and US history, Trump Border Czar Tom Homan said that protesting ICE “could lead to bloodshed and people dying.”

By suggesting that masked ICE agents could kill protestors for simply shouting hateful things at them, Homan was building the permission structure for federal agents to use “full force” violence against non-violent protestors.

More than that, his statement was meant to groom the public. The Trump administration is trying to get US citizens used to the idea that federal agents could use lethal force — to the point of killing people — against anyone who exercises their constitutional right to peacefully protest government actions they don’t like.

On too many videos circulating on social media to count, masked ICE agents have been recorded getting more and more aggressive with members of the public, deliberately escalating non-violent exchanges into violent ones.

Federal agents have been caught on video body slamming people to the ground, kneeling on people’s necks, and pointing armed weapons at close range. More than 20 people have died at ICE’s hands, including US citizens, but this tally is artificially low because the Trump administration tightly controls media access to ICE detention facilities.

Team Trump has no idea what the First Amendment means

Homan, like Trump, seems oblivious to what the First Amendment says.

“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech … or the right of the people peaceably to assemble…”

This protection was extended from Congress, or the federal government, to the states in 1868 through the passage of the 14th Amendment.

It was the very first amendment to the Constitution, and was the key to getting states to go along with the Constitution at all. Many states refused to sign or support the Constitution after it was drafted in 1787 because they were fearful of a strong federal government with no constraints to protect people from overreach. It was the sticking point that refused to yield, as the objecting states would not support the Constitution without a guarantee of individual liberties, including freedom of religion and, most importantly, the freedom to speak openly, to gather, and to criticize the government.

James Madison rose to the challenge and drafted the First Amendment, the language of which remains to this day, and has never been changed.

The world is envious of our freedom of speech

Freedom of speech beyond the reach or control of the government stands as a beacon of freedom throughout the world, a marker of man’s evolution from the Dark Ages when rulers often punished and tortured people for their beliefs.

That’s why Trump’s Executive Order declaring that the federal government would now punish dissenters, whom he labelled “domestic terrorists,” sends chills down the spine of anyone who has the slightest concept of world history.

People in MAGA who support Trump’s centralized thought control have no concept of what it’s like to live under authoritarian rule. In China, Xi Jinping has installed facial recognition software into China's public security apparatus, where it records everyone at cross lights, bus stops, transport hubs and in public spaces. Xi uses it for mass surveillance, to record, identify, track and persecute anyone who criticizes the government.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin is just as bad. Aside from famously having critics poisoned, or pushed out of helicopters and windows, Putin has imposed severe prison sentences of up to 15 years for spreading "deliberately false information" about the Russian military.

Last week, Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth tried something similar. Hegseth announced new rules threatening journalists’ access to the Pentagon if they did not agree to publish only information that he wants released, and was shocked when most of the press refused to go along with it.

The faction of MAGA clamoring to relax the division between church and state today have no idea what they are asking for either. Trump’s Christo Nationalists claim the U.S. was founded by and for Christians, and that its laws and government should therefore impose Christian values over all of society. They have no understanding of world or human history, or that freedom of religion grew out of the Inquisition, when torture was common.

James Madison would be proud of No Kings Day

Yesterday, huge crowds marched in major cities, as smaller gatherings sprung up across small town USA for “No Kings” protests against the Trump administration.

There were more than 2,500 events in all 50 states, predicted to be one of the largest demonstrations in US history.

Demonstrators spoke out against Trump’s policies, including perceived threats to democracy, ICE raids and Trump deploying military troops in US cities. The signs speak for themselves.

As I marched inside my bear inflatable, I’ve never been more proud to be an American.

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 month, Donald Trump signed an Executive Order formally designating “antifa” a domestic terrorist organization.

Vowing to unleash the full might of unrestrained federal firepower against its members, organizers and funders, the president declared: “Antifa is a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.”

In follow up, last week Trump held an “antifa roundtable” at the White House to “brainstorm” for Fox News cameras about how Trump could use armed forces to bring “antifa” down. Trump invited right-wing media influencers to the meeting, including Andy Ngo, Jack Posobiec, Nick Sortor, and Brandi Kruse, to infuse them with manufactured outrage, knowing they would dutifully spread “antifa” panic among their millions of online followers.

The session’s rollcall readout reflects trademark sycophancy. After Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem thanked Trump for “focusing on Antifa and the terrorists that they are,” she told the influencers: “These individuals do not just want to threaten our law enforcement officers, threaten our journalists and the citizens of this country, they want to kill them.” FBI Director Kash Patel, not to be outdone, vowed “to bring down this network of organized criminal thugs, gangbangers and, yes, domestic terrorists because that's what they are.” Multiple members of Trump’s Dear Leader cabinet amplified these claims in turn, each upping the fear and drama from the speaker before.

A construct, not an organization

The problem with Trump’s EO and roundtable is that none of it was true. It’s time for someone to let Trump in on a little secret: most Americans know that Trump knows that we know there’s no such thing as “antifa,” and that what Trump is really trying to do is outlaw his political opposition.

Experts and security analysts from PBS, the Associated Press, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and the Anti-Defamation League have all confirmed that “antifa” is not an organization. It is, instead, a decentralized ideology based on anti-fascist principles.

There is no organization called “antifa.” There are no headquarters, membership rosters, dues, press releases, or rules. There is no leader, unless you count Aunt Tifa, who, in fairness to Trump, could be intimidating in her “Passion for knitting, cats, and taking down the patriarchy.” Aunt Tifa has 162 followers on Facebook, and admittedly, 162 pairs of knitting needles — or 162 cats for that matter — could intimidate ICE goons when they aren’t busy body slamming peaceful protesters.

“Antifa” is a concept, an idea, a decentralized belief that fascism is wrong.

Hitler was a fascist. Benito Mussolini was a fascist. The murderous sycophants surrounding them, enabling their blood lust, were fascists. In 1945, the world reeled from unspeakable horrors they orchestrated. Millions upon millions of people perished in WWII — 15 million soldiers were smeared across battlefields; 45 million civilians were killed, including 11 million Jews, gay people and other minorities who drew their last breath in Hitler’s death camps. Together, Hitler and Mussolini devised the most sinister means of slaughtering humans the world has ever seen.

In World War II, every soldier, sailor and pilot who fought on the side of the Allies — and every woman who stayed behind to work in the munitions factories — fought to defeat Hitler’s fascist machine. That means my grandfather, your grandfather, and everyone who fought against Axis powers in WWII was aligned with “antifa.”

Every man, woman and child who emerged from the carnage committed to a collective global defense to avoid Hitlers of the future was “antifa.” The North Atlantic Treaty that established NATO and gave teeth to a free world order against fascism and governed by the rule of law? “Antifa.” Prized for its armed deterrence, NATO delivered the somber recognition that although Hitler was gone, the power-lust, brutality and villainy that drives evil men like him would remain.

To Trump, ‘Antifa’ means opposition

For world leaders who pushed the NATO alliance, the question wasn’t if Hitler-caliber evil would reappear on the world stage, but when. Small wonder Trump is antagonistic toward NATO. Small wonder groups fighting fascism today scare Trump so much he needed a label to vilify them.

It should be clear by now that “antifa,” to Trump, means anyone who opposes him politically. Trump’s chief henchman Stephen Miller said as much on Fox when he said the Democratic Party is “an entity devoted exclusively to the defense of hardened criminals, gang-bangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”

Miller called “Democrats” a domestic terrorist organization back in August, before the White House hatched the “antifa” plan in September.

Trump and Noem, aided by Fox News, are spreading panic and fear about “antifa” preparing to “kill” as a political strategy. If the public truly believes “antifa” threatens them, they will support Trump’s unwarranted aggression in rounding people up. If they truly believe “antifa” wants to kill them, they will be supportive when ICE and the National Guard start killing protestors.

Noem hit it home at the roundtable, telling the influencers: “This network of Antifa is just as sophisticated as MS-13, as TDA, as ISIS, as Hezbollah, as Hamas, as all of them. They are just as dangerous. They have an agenda to destroy us just like the other terrorists.”

“Antifa” is Trump’s rallying cry. When he calls Democrat-run cities a “war zone” before he invades them with occupying forces, understand that he is planning to turn them into one.

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 weekend, Donald Trump ordered another summary execution of people on a fishing boat off the Venezuelan coast. The administration claims the dead were engaged in drug trafficking. Despite international outcry over the violence, Trump officials have provided no intel, no intercepted communications, no photos — no evidence whatsoever — that drugs were even onboard when the strike command was given.

It was the fourth such strike by the US in as many weeks. The ship exploded on contact, bringing the death toll to 21 people killed on mere suspicion of drug trafficking.

Trump defends the strikes as countering “narco-terrorist” members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang Trump has unilaterally designated a foreign terrorist organization.

But equipment analysis rebuts his claim, because the small fishing boats could not have reached the US mainland due to distance and fuel limitations of the vessels’ small size.

Whether they were engaged in drug trafficking or not, law-abiding nations do not kill without honoring protocol and process. The United Nations condemned the strikes because “International law does not allow governments to simply murder alleged drug traffickers.” Under international law, suspected drug traffickers should be “disrupted, investigated and prosecuted in accordance with the rule of law, including through international cooperation.” Extrajudicial killings are also forbidden under the US Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Excessive force against Americans

Instead of careful introspection in the wake of what appears to be murder on the high seas, Trump’s Secretary of “War” published snuff videos bragging about the violence, offering up raw meat for MAGA fans watching Fox News. During his recent speech to officers gathered in Quantico, Virginia, Pete Hegseth made his yearning for unrestrained “lethality” known, as he and Trump push Border Patrol, ICE and the US military to escalate barbarism at home.

Trump’s unconstitutional war of brutality against Democratic-run cities has centered on LA, Chicago, D.C., and Portland, but it is just beginning. In last week’s middle-of-the-night ICE raid on a Chicago apartment building, sleeping families were jolted awake by masked strangers suddenly in their bedrooms. Children ripped from their beds were zip-tied and thrown outside, naked and screaming. Armed federal agents in military fatigues busted down doors, pulling men, women and children from nearly every apartment in the five-story building, most of them U.S. citizens. Federal agents used flashbang grenades to burst through doors, deployed drones and helicopters, and left the building trashed.

Trump is champing at the bit to do the same and worse in Portland, Oregon, where he promised this week to send troops to attack “domestic terrorists,” authorizing the use of “Full Force, if necessary.” Trump justified the command in Portland by claiming it is necessary to protect ICE facilities, which he falsely described as “under siege from attack by Antifa and other domestic terrorists.”

Brutality without restraint

Robert Arnold, “the Poet of the South,” has recorded a hauntingly beautiful rejoinder to the Trump administration’s lust for violence. After witnessing Trump and Hegseth’s shameful speeches at Quantico, where Hegseth called for lessening the rules of conflict in favor of muscular lethality, Arnold wrote “On the silence of the generals.”

Arnold’s talk is a seven-minute review of why military restraint makes nations strong, and how discipline rather than unbridled “lethality” advances humanity through peace. Every American should watch it. Arnold observes correctly that lethality without restraint is not strategy. It is butchery. As if responding to Trump’s and Hegseth’s snuff videos, Arnold notes that even during the Civil War, “General Grant, bloody and relentless, knew victory meant binding the wounds of the nation — not gloating in violence.”

Arnold rejects Hegseth’s call for weakening the rules of conflict, and noted the silence of the generals in the room at Quantico as they listened to Hegseth and Trump debase the seriousness of combat:

“Our Generals understand war is the most consequential of human actions — their decisions carry lives in the balance. They know that raw violence is a tool only to be used with precision, justification, and the dignity of restraint. They know war has consequences that echo for generations.

Hegseth does not know this.

Hegseth mistakes slogans for wisdom, violence for professionalism, brute force for strategy. He preaches lethality like a child who’s never had to carry the ghosts from a battlefield home with him. He sees the military as a weapon to be swung, not a burden to be borne.”

Heed Arnold’s warning

Arnold’s words are haunting because they are true. The US military is the most lethal force on earth, “not because it is the most violent, but because it has chosen discipline over chaos, professionalism over cruelty.”

Arnold warns correctly that the world will backslide into barbarism if Trump doesn’t stop. He stresses our nation’s “pride in knowing that we do not wage war like a third-rate regime.” If we abandon rules under the Geneva Convention and “reduce ourselves to brutality and call it strength, then the world will follow us into the pit. Other nations will cast off restraint, and humanity will slide backwards into darkness.”

Trump and Hegseth know this. They know that murdering helpless people at sea will create permanent enemies, radicalized South Americans who hate us. Arnold points this out:

“Every officer in the room at Quantico has seen insurgencies grow of careless violence. (They’ve seen) reports that turned into viral recruitment videos for radicals. (They’ve) knelt next to cots where names were written on slips of paper and learned that nothing erases a family’s grief except truth and restraint and accountability.”

The silence of the generals at Quantico reflected the arithmetic of consequence:

“For every enemy struck without care, there are 10 who will rise in hatred, and 50 children who will remember the smoke … To adopt third world cruelty is not to become stronger. It is to become smaller than what we claim to be.”

The generals who sat quietly at Quantico did not need to say this out loud. Their silence said it for 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oregon mocks Trump’s false narrative

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Military rule is incompatible with liberty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Proof of insanity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silence isn't golden

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

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

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

Hilarity did not ensue.

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

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

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

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

Generals know what they must do

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Choking on its own puffery

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

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

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

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

‘You’re Fired!’

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

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

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

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

Lucky Loser

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

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

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

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

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

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

Judge not amused

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

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

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

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

The joke lives on

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Words of war

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Right v left

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

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

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

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

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

Violent words elicit violent responses

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before Trump

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unequal protection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What’s a brief attack among friends?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strongmen can’t handle ridicule

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

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

Trump personifies that observation:

• He remains obsessed with comedian Rosie O’Donnell, and recently threatened to strip her of her US citizenship, which he can’t do.
• Comedian Stephen Colbert’s show was cancelled in July after Colbert criticized CBS's parent company, Paramount Global, for paying $16 million to settle Trump’s bogus lawsuit claiming the network interfered in the 2024 election because they edited a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.
• The White House issued a formal response attacking the comedy South Park for jokes about Trump’s penis size; look for Trump to seek the show’s cancellation in the future.
• And yesterday, ABC indefinitely suspended long-time Trump critic Jimmy Kimmel’s show. Kimmel’s crime? A political joke about Charlie Kirk’s shooter.

Kimmel on the block

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

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

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

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

Nice network you got there…

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

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

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

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

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

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

How the First Amendment works

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.