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.

NOW READ: It is happening here — and we just witnessed the moment everything changed

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Usurping the Fed’s role

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cook says not so fast

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

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

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

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

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

The law is not what Trump says it is

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gutting FEMA, lying about climate science

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anti-science governance kills

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

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

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

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

MAGA Court should check its Catholic bona fides

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Texas is rigging the midterms

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

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

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

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

Arnie is right about gerrymandering

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

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

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

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

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

Welfare state v. donor state

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bad news is human nature.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He wants to hate

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

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

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

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

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

Support for police brutality

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

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

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

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

He may get the violence he craves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dangerous alliance

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

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

Trump has paved Putin’s way, by:

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

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

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

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

Elevating a war criminal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh Canada!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A mature contrast

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

McEntarfer should sue

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

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

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

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

Presidents not immune from civil prosecution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maxwell’s convictions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Epstein won't go away

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

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

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

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

Another key witness

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

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

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

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

Rabbits from the hat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Harvard refused to comply, and sued instead.

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

Trump’s pressure campaign against Harvard

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

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

The oral argument

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other presidents respected Congressional authority

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

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

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

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

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

Decision supports what Trump started

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

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

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

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

Separation of powers is becoming a quaint memory

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

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

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

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

SCOTUS approves Trump’s disregard for the law

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Defiance is patriotic

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

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

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

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

Conflicted emotions

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

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

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

Politicizing the military puts service members at risk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SCOTUS defends another executive order that endangers lives

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

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

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

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

Lives lost won’t be limited to weather calamities

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

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

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

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

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

High court protects Trump’s lawlessness — again

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

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

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

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

High court shares Trump’s contempt for federal judiciary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Republicans just created an American police state

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Republicans have empowered a lunatic

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

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

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

Trump was barely elected; this is not a mandate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sinful celebration of cruelty

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

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

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

The Catholic majority on the High Court paved the way

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

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

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

SCOTUS chose the worst possible time to disarm federal judges

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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