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In the days leading up to the No Kings protests of Saturday, October 18, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) attacked the gatherings as "Hate America rallies" that would be dominated by a combination of Antifa agitators, Hamas supporters, and far-left communists. But the protests, which attracted millions of participants nationwide, were considerably different from what Johnson predicted.

Expressing their opposition to President Donald Trump's policies, the demonstrators ranged from centrist Democrats to democratic socialists to liberals to right-wing Never Trump conservatives and libertarians. Conservative attorney George Conway, a Never Trumper and veteran of the right-wing legal movement, marched in the No Kings protest in Washington, D.C.

The New Republic's Michael Tomasky, in an article published on October 20, argues that Johnson's comments about the protesters show a fundamental lack of understanding about the U.S. population.

Tomasky explains, "It was one thing to distort the intent and nature of these rallies in the run-up to them by saying they were for violent terrorists who despise the United States of America…. But by late afternoon Saturday, the events had happened; the smaller ones like mine finished in the early afternoon…. There was no violence at all. Seven million people attended. There were American flags everywhere. The rallies were the very definition of patriotism: People who love their country and want to do what they can to save it from tyranny."

Johnson, Tomasky notes, "spent the days leading up to the rallies saying they were essentially going to be (George) Soros-backed terrorist gatherings."

"Last Friday," Tomasky writes, "Johnson said, 'You're going to bring together the Marxists, the socialists, the Antifa advocates, the anarchists, and the pro-Hamas wing of the far-left Democratic Party'…. He should be ashamed of himself. He should also have gone to one of the rallies in his congressional district — there appear to have been three of them, and two more right nearby — and seen for himself the flags and the 'I love my country' signs and talked to some of the good and decent people from all walks of life who attended."

Johnson and "others of his Trumpist ilk," Tomasky laments, showed that they "truly understand nothing about the United States of America."

"They think this is a Christian nation," Tomasky observes. "They want a country based on 'biblical principles.' I'm not sure which biblical principles he means. The biblical principles I was taught as a young Episcopalian were to love thy neighbor as thyself, be compassionate toward the poor and needy, treat the stranger among you with love, and don't ever lie. The principles Johnson follows as a legislator are hate thy neighbor, to hell with the poor and needy, throw strangers in detention camps, and worship a man who lies every time he opens his mouth…. And no, the United States is not a Christian nation and was never intended to be."

Michael Tomasky's full article for The New Republic is available at this link.

White nationalist influencer Nick Fuentes, who infamously once dined with President Donald Trump and Kanye West (Ye) at Mar-a-Lago, blasted the president last week as a "weird guy" who is "not right in the head."

"Look, something's wrong with him, man," Fuentes told a viewer on his online streaming show, as Mediaite reported. "And I'm not saying that to be nasty, but like, he's a weird guy."

"And some of the stuff that he does, just the way that he's always glazing himself, and repeats himself."

READ MORE: ‘Existential Threat’: U.S. on Path to Authoritarianism Warn Ex-Intelligence Officials

"Something's, he's not right in the head, and I don't know if that's his psychology or if it's just his age, but there's something not right there, and anyone that's been around him will tell you that," Fuentes charged.

"He's a weird dude," he added. "Like, he's an odd cat, and maybe you need to be to be as tough as he is, but he's not sharp. If there was something wrong with him ten years ago, it was a lot less apparent, because ten years ago, he's a lot more sharp, and, I think, compelling, and general, and now, he's just slow and monotonous, and repeats himself, and seems to really not know what's going on."

Fuentes was responding to a viewer who had written, “Looks like your assessment of Trump as a tired old man is correct.”

“Saw a report today that lots of his view of Chicago or NYC is from old BLM riot clips people show him. He just wants to play golf, fly on AF1, have fancy dinner parties, sign Oval Office EOs, watch 80s movie and get told he is getting revenge on [John] Bolton.”

Something is not right with Trump...
"The way that he's always glazing himself and repeats himself. He's not right in the head." pic.twitter.com/oHksiLQ3Uo
— Fuentes Updates (@FuentesUpdates) October 18, 2025

READ MORE: ‘Sick’: Jeffries Torches Trump’s ‘Out of Control’ Press Secretary

Roughly 2500 No Kings Day protests were, according to organizers, scheduled in cities all over the United States for Saturday, October 18. The events, expressing opposition to President Donald Trump's policies, were a follow-up to the previous No Kings Day marches and protests held on June 14.

MSNBC covered the No Kings protests extensively as they got underway. During Ali Velshi's show, the liberal-leaning cable news outlet interviewed participants in a No Kings rally in New York City — including attorney and MSNBC legal analyst Maya Wiley.

Another participant was 82-year-old Vietnam veteran Fred Pereira, who MSNBC's Antonia Hylton interviewed as protestors were marching along Manhattan's 7th Avenue.

Pereira, voicing his opposition to the methods used in Trump-era U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, told Hylton, "When I saw young kids being dragged out — I've dealt with real soldiers, American soldiers, North Vietnamese soldiers. These are real soldiers. These are brave men. Soldiers fight other soldiers. Soldiers do not fight women and children. What ICE is doing is outrageous. They are a paramilitary force. That's why I'm using the term soldier."

Hylton asked Pereira to address Americans who are "maybe fearful of taking part in a protest" because they're "worried that this administration will crack down on them or their loved ones."

The Vietnam vet responded by holding up an anti-Trump sign that read, "Protest now or bow down later."

Hylton, describing the size of the protest in Manhattan, reported, "We're now on 26th and 7th, and we have a producer who's more than ten blocks behind us and says there is no end in sight in terms of how far this protest is going. We're trying right now to get an updated estimate. Originally, they thought about 200,000 people. But right now, best guesses are that they far exceeded that."

- YouTube www.youtube.com

The partial shutdown of the United States' federal government continues to drag on after more than a month. Thousands of federal workers remain furloughed, while workers deemed essential — such as air traffic controllers — are required to show up for work but with partial or no pay.

President Donald Trump, however, has found a way for members of the military to keep getting paid during the shutdown.

In an article published on October 20, Politico reporters Jennifer Scholtes and Meredith Lee Hill stress that while GOP lawmakers are "happy" that "military troops are getting paid during the shutdown," they are frustrated by the way Trump is "claiming vast power over the federal spending process to do it."

"In a sweeping order last week," Scholtes and Hill explain, "Trump gave both the Pentagon and the White House budget office the green light to use 'any funds' left over for the current fiscal year to bankroll paychecks for active-duty servicemembers, which were due to be withheld last Wednesday amid the government funding standoff. The move took the onus off lawmakers to vote on standalone legislation to pay troops during the funding lapse — something House and Senate GOP leadership had resisted, fearing it would reduce pressure on Democrats to vote for the Republican plan to reopen the government as the minority party demands bipartisan negotiations on health care."

But according to the Politico reporters, Republican lawmakers who "oppose Trump's troop funding gambit" are being "careful to couch their criticism of the method with support for the end result."

Conservative Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) told Politico, "While it's a desired outcome, there's a process that's required — by Constitution and by law — for Congress to be not only consulted but engaged."

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told Politico, "There’s a way we take care of this. It's called appropriations. It's called reprogramming. And I don’t think that process is being respected."

Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) told Politico, "The appropriations committee in general believes that it should get more information and that we should receive a list of canceled work (and) contracts."

Sen. Brian Shatz of Hawaii, a Democrat, spoke to Politico as well, saying, "Look, I want the troops to be paid. But, as usual, they find the most illegal way to do everything."

Politico's full article is available at this link.

The Trump administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has reportedly surged spending this year on domestic weapons — including guns, chemical weapons, explosives, and guided missile warheads — by 700 percent.

“Records from the Federal Procurement Data System reveal that ICE has increased spending on ‘small arms, ordnance, and ordnance accessories manufacturing’ by 700% compared to 2024 levels,” according to a report by Popular Information. “Most of the spending was on guns and armor, but there have also been significant purchases of chemical weapons and ‘guided missile warheads and explosive components.'”

“More weapons, more violence,” wrote Popular Information founder Judd Legum, noting that the “surge in spending on ICE weaponry has coincided with a wave of violent incidents by ICE officers.”

Legum pointed to several well-publicized incidents, including one recently where a Christian pastor, David Black, reportedly was shot in the head with a pepper ball.

“In another September incident, an ICE officer dropped his gun while violently making an arrest and then pointed it at bystanders,” Legum wrote.

“All over the country, federal agents have shot, gassed, and detained individuals engaged in cherished and protected activities,” a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Illinois reads.

“What we’re seeing is a general escalation of violence and the use of excessive force by ICE officers,” Ed Yohnka of the ACLU Illinois told NPR.

“Late last month,” NPR also reported, “a local CBS reporter said a masked ICE agent fired a pepper ball at her car … causing her to vomit for hours. The reporter, Asal Rezaei, said there was no protest happening at the time. Broadview Police are now investigating.”

Increasingly critical of her own party, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) issued her "bluntest warning yet" Monday in which she predcits the Republicans will "lose the House" if they fail to address the cost of living before next year's midterm elections, Mediaite reports.

Greene predicted a midterms meltdown in an interview with Semafor, saying that rising prices will hand the House over to the Democrats next year.

“I can’t see into the future, but I see Republicans losing the House if Americans are continuing to go paycheck-to-paycheck,” she said.

The Trump ally turned GOP critic says that Americans' rising credit card debt is proof of her party's inaction.

"They’ll definitely be going into the midterms looking through the lens of their bank account," she said.

Greene also pointed to House Republicans' failure to pass appropriation bills and refusal to negotiate health care reforms without tying them to government funding battles as the source of her ire.

"“That is something I’m really disgusted with,” she said, adding that her party's strategy of repeatedly voting on the short-term spending bill was "a complete failure," and one she will always "completely disagree with."

The Georgia Republican has raised eyebrows over her vocal criticism of her own party, and she seems to be doubling down on it.

“It’s an America Last strategy, and I don’t know whose strategy that is, but I don’t think it’s a good one," she says.“Everyone keeps saying I’ve changed, and I’m saying, ‘No, I haven’t changed,’ I’m staying focused on America First, and I’m urging my party to get back to America First," she says.

Greene says this is how she got elected in the first place, reminding that “I actually ran for Congress in 2020 angry with Republicans in Congress — which is pretty much where I’m at now again,” she said, adding at another point, “I’m mad about a lot of things and I’m not going to stop talking.”

Saturday, millions of us affirmed the foundation of the common good.

Across America, people who never before participated in a demonstration showed their solidarity: with immigrants being targeted by Trump, with current and former public officials whom Trump is prosecuting, with the students and universities whose freedom to learn and speak is being threatened by Trump, and with every American who’s determined to reject dictatorship.

Most of the people who came together in Guthrie, Oklahoma, and Mineola, Texas, and Newberry, North Carolina, and thousands of other towns and cities to express their outrage at what Trump is doing weren’t heard or seen by the rest of the nation.

But their solidarity is echoing across the land.

That solidarity is stronger than Trump and his lapdogs. Our determination is more powerful. The connection between yesterday’s demonstrations and our coming victory over tyranny is clear:

As our solidarity grows, we feel more courageous.

As we feel more courageous, we are better able to resist Trump and his tyrannous regime.

As we resist Trump and his regime, we weaken it.

As we weaken Trump and his regime, we have less to fear and more reason for hope.

As we have less to fear and more reason for hope, we are able to vanquish tyranny and build a better future.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Late Sunday night, October 19, Politico reported that federal prosectors "may seek to boot" Patrick Fitzerald — former FBI Director James Comey's main defense lawyer in the indictment against him — from the case because of "alleged involvement in disclosures to the media shortly after President Donald Trump fired Comey as FBI director in 2017."

"In a submission Sunday evening," according to Politico reporters Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, "prosecutors suggested to U.S. District Judge Michael Nachmanoff that Fitzgerald, Comey's lawyer and close friend, could have an insurmountable conflict of interest as a result of the disclosures. Fitzgerald is representing Comey in a criminal case ordered up by Trump and brought last month in Virginia, where Comey faces two felony charges for making a false statement and obstructing a federal proceeding."

Politico's reporting is generating a lot of comments on X, formerly Twitter.

Self-described "lifelong Democrat" Thomas Reich tweeted, "They'll probably prosecute Fitzpatrick as well. Meanwhile, most of the Jan 6th Insurrectionists walk free. Prosecutors may move to oust James Comey’s defense lawyer."

X user Diana Price wrote, "lol the real 'conflict of interest' is Fitzgerald being a really good lawyer who they don't want to face in court."

Referring to Lindsey Halligan — the Trump loyalist who is prosecuting the cases against Comey and New York State Attorney General Letitia James — physician Sue Jones commented, "A beauty pageant is saying her opinion on lawyers. Prosecutors may move to oust James Comey's defense lawyer."

X user Recumbent Rider posted, "This is a gross over reach and injustice - They are playing dirty pool to rob Comey of Due process. Source: Politico."

Another X user, Adam E. Moreira, argued, "The motion against Halligan must be decided first. If she's ineligible to be the prosecutor, and because she participated in the grand jury phase, the indictment is void and the case is essentially over."

Read the full Politico article at this link.

The phrase that has come to define the Trump administration’s message on climate change was born in Durham, New Hampshire, on December 16, 2023.

Flanked by flannel-clad supporters holding “Live free or die” signs, then-candidate Donald Trump wished the crowd a Merry Christmas before launching into what he saw as the biggest faults of the current administration. He swung at President Biden himself (“crooked Joe”) and the state of the economy (“Bidenomics”). About 10 minutes in, he arrived at Biden’s climate policies, which he said were “wasting trillions of dollars on Green New Deal nonsense.”

But Trump wasn’t satisfied with his choice of insult, perhaps recognizing that echoing “Green New Deal” served to amplify his opponents’ pro-climate action rallying cry. So in front of the crowd, he began riffing on ways to undermine it in real time.

“They don’t know what they’re doing, but you’re going to be in the poorhouse to fund his big government Green New Deal, which is a socialist scam. And you know what? You have to be careful. It’s going to put us all in big trouble,” he said. “The Green New Deal that doesn’t work. It’s a Green New Scam. Let’s call it, from now on, the ‘Green New Scam.'”

The crowd roared, shaking their signs in approval. “I do like that term, and I just came up with that one,” Trump said. “The Green New Scam. It will forever be known as the Green New Scam.”

There’s been plenty of attention on Trump’s purge of climate change language, and for good reason: Government workers are tiptoeing around vocabulary they once used freely. “Clean energy,” “climate science,” and “pollution” are on the list of “woke” words federal agencies have told employees to avoid. Recently, a memo circulated at the Department of Energy’s renewable energy office advised employees to remove or rephrase basic terms including “climate change,” “emissions,” and “green.” But the administration is doing more than making these phrases disappear. It’s also introducing new language designed to undermine the foundations upon which trust in climate science and policy is built.

In the nine months since Trump began his second presidency, the phrase “Green New Scam” — always capitalized — has appeared in White House fact sheets and press statements, echoed across federal agencies and by Republicans in Congress.

“He’s quite effective at creating sticky phrases and using repetition to amplify them,” said Renee Hobbs, a communications professor at the University of Rhode Island who wrote a book on modern propaganda. “That’s the classic propaganda strategy, right? You repeat the phrases that you want to stick, and you downplay, ignore, minimize, or censor the concepts that don’t meet your agenda.”

It’s part of a broader effort to erase information about how the planet is changing. In recent months, the administration has axed entire pages about climate change and how to adapt to it, said Gretchen Gehrke, who monitors federal websites with the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. The 400 experts working on the government’s next official climate report were dismissed, then all the past reports vanished, too. The administration has proposed stopping long-running projects that monitor carbon dioxide levels, and the Environmental Protection Agency is no longer collecting greenhouse gas emissions data from polluting companies.

You could see it as a three-pronged strategy. First, erase language related to climate change. Second, dismantle the scientific foundation supporting it. Third, fill the void with a message that matches Trump’s political priorities — like the “Green New Scam.”

“We’ve always understood language shapes reality, and language can create unreal realities,” Hobbs said. “And I think that’s what Trump is doing with his language of climate change.”

In Trump’s growing arsenal of anti-climate catchphrases, “Green New Scam” remains a go-to weapon. The Green New Deal concept was a ripe target for Trump because it serves as a catch-all for progressive positions, said Josh Freed, senior vice president for climate and energy at the think tank Third Way. “That was the target that I think Trump honed in on and flipped the script on, and turned it into a vulnerability and catchphrase for what he felt the public would see as positions that were extreme,” he said.

Trump has taken the idea to an international audience. In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last month, he spent a full 10 minutes ranting off-script about climate policy, deriding renewables and international efforts to address climate change. “If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail,” he told the world leaders in attendance.

In the same speech, he went on to call climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He also claimed that “the carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions.”

Conspiracy theories are a common tool in propaganda, according to Hobbs. “Conspiracy theories are catnip because they postulate this malevolent actor who’s doing something secretly to hurt people, and humans are hardwired to pay attention to stuff like that,” she said. Studies have shown that fake news about climate change is more compelling to people than scientific facts.

Still, Trump is fighting an uphill battle trying to paint climate change as fake. About 70 percent of Americans acknowledge that global warming is happening. Meanwhile, recent polling found that most Americans don’t trust Republicans on the environment, with only 23 percent preferring the party’s plan for tackling environmental issues.

But if a phrase gets repeated often enough, it can begin to bend reality, even if it’s inaccurate. It’s a rule that Trump intuitively understands, and a driving force behind his linguistic prescriptions. “I have a little standing order in the White House — never use the word ‘coal,’ only use the words ‘clean, beautiful coal,’” Trump said in his speech to the U.N. “Sounds much better, doesn’t it?”

Coal may be dirty by basically every yardstick people use to decide whether something is clean, but the phrase “clean coal” could still change people’s associations with the fuel. “If you can control vocabulary, you’re controlling thought,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania who has spent decades studying campaign messaging. Once we adopt a new set of terms, those words start doing the thinking for us, she said. People absorb the assumptions that are baked into them, often without even noticing.

Jamieson says it’s part of a broader strategy to boost fossil fuels over renewable energy sources like solar and wind. The Trump administration has canceled billions of funding in clean energy projects while simultaneously fast-tracking permits for new pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure. Last month, the Energy Department announced it would pour $625 million into rescuing the coal industry, which has been dying as natural gas and renewables have taken off.

“The administration is trying to align the vocabulary through which we talk about the environment with policies that are consistent with increased drilling,” Jamieson said. “You don’t have to do much work to see the relationship between the policies and the language.”

As for how to respond to propaganda, Hobbs said that turning to facts — like scientists and journalists often do — is not the most effective strategy. Research has long shown that feelings are more important than facts in changing people’s minds. “You fight propaganda with propaganda, right?” she said. Climate advocates are increasingly connecting climate change to inflation and the rising cost of living, in an effort to reach Americans struggling with high electricity bills.

On the micro level, Hobbs said she’s seen success in online experiments where people engaged in genuine, open conversations about different propaganda topics, from free speech rights to the role of social media influencers. The format prompted people to talk about conspiracy theories they’ve encountered, what feelings those stories evoked, and which ones were harmful. Participants were encouraged to open up about their uncertainties and where they were coming from — and in doing so, they often came to their own realization that their beliefs might be influenced by propaganda. Hobbs said that people decreased their fear of others who thought differently and became more critical about the information they were receiving.

“We can’t help but be exposed to propaganda,” Hobbs said, “but how we react to it is up to us.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/language/strategy-behind-trump-climate-catchphrase-green-new-scam/.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) is a "self-proclaimed beacon of Christian morality" who is silencing the victims of the Jeffrey Epstein to protect President Donald Trump, writes Salon's Amanda Marcotte.

"The Louisiana Republican has already gone to great lengths to make sure FBI files chronicling the alleged misdeeds of Epstein and his associates never see the light of day," she writes. "The reason for Johnson’s action wasn’t mysterious. Trump, whom Epstein called his 'closest friend,' is reportedly in the files."

Marcotte says Johnson is using the government shutdown as an excuse to block a House vote to release the elusive Epstein files, refusing to seat Rep.-Elect Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ) "blaming the shutdown — despite the fact that the Senate is still open and holding votes."

Johnson, she says, has ulterior motives. "He knows that if Trump turns against him, he would likely lose the speakership. Hiding the Epstein files appears to be Johnson’s first priority, even above reopening the government so federal employees can be paid," she writes.

Marcotte also says that Johnson's blocking the release of the Epstein files is proof that there was no backlash to the #MeToo Movement against sexual abuses being publicly outed.

"For years, there has been a wave of whiny 'manosphere' influencers and right-wing pundits telling men that they are the real victims — that feminism has gone 'too far' and masculinity is under attack," she writes.

"This anti-feminist reaction has been wrapped in a misleading moral justification regarding 'innocence.' Women, we’re told, got so revenge-minded about sexual abuse that they went overboard, sweeping up blameless men in the cancel culture dragnet," she adds.

Johnson's actions —or lack thereof — tell an "uglier truth," Marcotte says.

"The backlash to #MeToo was never about male innocence. It was about protecting those who are likely guilty — and reasserting male privilege to abuse women, and even children, without consequence," she says.

Trump's determination to quash the Epstein scandal and bury the evidence, she writes, "shows he’s deeply worried about the truth getting out."

The Speaker, she says, knows exactly what he's doing.

"There can be little doubt that Johnson knows he’s covering for a sexual abuser. This has been adjudicated twice by civil courts, with juries finding that Carroll told the truth when she said Trump sexually abused her in a department store dressing room. There is also a tape of Trump bragging about grabbing women by the genitals in a way that directly echoes Carroll’s experience," Marcotte says.

Epstein, she notes, was charged in 2019 because of the #MeToo movement, and the backlash against it, "is also geared toward silencing victims of sexual assault."

"There is no doubt of the message being sent to abuse victims by Johnson, Trump, Bondi and everyone else involved in the cover-up: There’s no use in speaking out, because you will never see justice," she writes.

"The GOP’s shameful actions are just the most blatant example of how the #MeToo backlash has nothing to do with innocence, and everything to do with shielding men from the consequences of bad behavior," Marcotte says.

She writes that columnist E. Jean Carroll has become an icon, facing backlash for her successful pursuit against Trump.

"She didn’t just sue Trump for sexually assaulting her, but for repeatedly defaming her by accusing her of lying. Even after she won $5 million, he continued to defame her. So she sued him again, this time winning $83 million in damages," Marcotte says.

Carroll's critics, Marcotte says, knew she told the truth about Trump, but their attacks on her weren't about the truth.

"Those two cases laid bare the ugly truth about the backlash to #MeToo. Carroll’s critics didn’t think she was lying. They were mad she told the truth — and they want victims to shut up and let men get away with abuse. It was never about anything else," Marcotte says.

President Donald Trump's recently declared war on "antifa," writes Michael Gould-Wartofsky in The New Republic, is a dubious one that's bound to fail.

Labeled a domestic terror organization, the non-existent group that stands for "anti-fascist" has attracted the ire of Trump's circle, which has "vowed to deploy the full force of the federal government against it—whatever it, in fact, is," Gould-Wartofsky writes.

Trump even "proffered the death penalty" when asked by a reporter last week what would happen if someone identified themselves as antifa, he says.

"Speaking of anti-fascists, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem assured us the government would 'root them out and eliminate them,' while likening the movement to MS-13, ISIS, Hezbollah, and Hamas," Gould-Wartofsky says.

This crusade, he writes, is just another of Trump's follies that is doomed to fail.

"It is likely that this war on anti-fascism will backfire, leading to a heightened profile for the movement and a deepening identification with its ideas and values among the broader populace. In the end, the White House’s strategy, even by its own logic, will prove to be pure folly," he writes.

But it's no laughing matter, he says, and "not to diminish the very real threat to democracy, human rights, and civil liberties that this latest war on 'terrorism' inevitably poses."

That threat "In the name of the war on antifa," includes political profiling that "will expand into every corner of everyday life, including the nonprofit sector, the public university, and private industry, among others," Gould-Wartofsky says. "All of this will unfold against the backdrop of ongoing military incursions, at the behest of the president."

These are dangerous times, he writes, and it is "entirely possible" in the days ahead that resistance movements will be muzzled, but "despite the perils of the political moment, the war on antifa is ultimately doomed to fail."

"For one thing, in branding the movement Public Enemy #1, and in tarring it as a terrorist entity, this administration has massively raised the profile of anti-fascist politics," he writes.

Trump, he says, is also giving the whole anti-fascist movement more exposure and as a result, it may have far reach.

"The Trump administration, in spite of itself, may be helping the words, the images, the ideas, and the values associated with anti-fascism reach millions more Americans than they otherwise would have reached," he writes.

Trump's obsession with antifa will only serve to raise its profile amongst Americans as a counterpunch to his power grabs.

"Over time, the ideas and values on which anti-fascism is predicated will likely prove more popular than an increasingly authoritarian presidency," Gould-Wartofsky argues.

Polls have shown that "public sympathy with the anti-fascist movement has only grown in recent years," and by 2024, support for the movement —or, rather, "a movement of movements" — has more than doubled according to a Harvard CAPS Harris poll.

"Antifa has become a sort of stand-in for resistance writ large. This is surely one of the reasons the movement has become a favorite bogeyman for the far right," he writes.

Because of that, "the politics of anti-fascism in America" could very well come to be identified, in the near future, "with a majoritarian movement against authoritarianism," he says, in which "antifa will be increasingly associated not with fringe groups of street-fighting 'Supersoldiers' but with a growing base of ordinary Americans who stand opposed to this administration’s all-out assault on their hard-won rights and freedoms."

Gould-Wartofsky says that we've seen this playbook before, from the Popular Front movement against fascism in the 30s and 40s and the civil rights coalition of Jim Crow to the 99 percent movement against economic inequality.

It's the people, not the president, who are actually in control, he argues.

"Which direction this country takes—toward democracy or autocracy, racial justice or white supremacy, gender justice or theocracy—will ultimately be decided not only by the orders of the imperial presidency, but also by the actions (or inaction) of ordinary people in the face of its ever more authoritarian onslaught," he says.

And based on what's been going on, Gould-Wartofsky says, this latest war of Trump's may be his biggest loss yet.

"If current trends are any indication, however, the Trump administration’s war on anti-fascism could prove to be its most unpopular war yet—one it has already lost before it has even begun," he says.

Vermont state Sen. Sam Douglass is set to step down Monday after being exposed as a participant in a Young Republican group chat in which members—including at least one Trump administration official—exchanged hate-filled messages.

Douglass, a Republican, said in a statement Friday: “I must resign. I know that this decision will upset many, and delight others, but in this political climate I must keep my family safe.”

“If my governor asks me to do something, I will act, because I believe in what he’s trying to do,” the 27-year-old freshman lawmaker added, referring to Republican Vermont Gov. Phil Scott’s call for him to step down.

“I love my state, my people, and I am deeply sorry for the offense this caused and that our state was dragged into this,” Douglass added.

Douglass is the only known elected official involved in a leaked Telegram chat first reported by Politico on Tuesday in which members of Young Republican chapters in four states exchanged racist, anti-LGBTQ+, and misogynistic messages, including quips about an “epic” rape and killing people in Nazi gas chambers.

Group chat participants included Michael Bartels, a senior adviser in the office of general counsel at the US Small Business Administration.

The chat included one message in which Douglass equated being Indian with poor hygiene, and another exchange in which his wife, Vermont Young Republican national committee member Brianna Douglass, admonishes the organization for “expecting the Jew to be honest.”

Prominent Republicans have rallied in defense of what Vice President JD Vance called the private jokes of “young boys”—who are apparently all in their 20s and 30s.

The fallout from the group chat leak has cost a majority of participants in the Telegram chat their jobs or employment offers.

Most prominently, ex-New York State Young Republicans chair Peter Giunta—who posted “I love Hitler”—was fired from his job as chief of staff to New York Assemblyman Michael Reilly (R-62).

Many social media users had the same reaction to Douglass’ resignation: “Good riddance!”

Miles Bruner, a top Republican strategist who "worked inside GOP circles through Trump’s takeover of the party" is quitting the party and encouraging others to do the same, he writes in The Bulwark.

Under President Donald Trump, the Republican party, he writes, has "devolved into a cult of personality that mirrors the worst authoritarian regimes of the last one hundred years."

But Trump hasn't worked alone, Bruner says. "While Trump and his supporters in Congress have been the driving force behind the right’s descent into despotism, it would not have been possible without the thousands of consultants, aides, and politicos working behind the scenes to fully execute their systematic dismantling of American democratic norms," he writes.

For 12 years, Bruner worked in various facets of the GOP, from grassroots voter outreach to digital fundraising.

"I worked inside GOP circles through Trump’s takeover of the party, his initial downfall, and his resurgence in 2023–2024. At every step along the way, I rationalized, compartmentalized, and found excuses to stay tethered to the party, even as I grew to believe it was undermining the foundations of our constitutional republic," he says.

Bruner says he could no longer rationalize any of it, leading to his decision to leave the party.

"But over the last few months, the compartmentalization and coping stopped working to silence my conscience," he says, using this piece in The Bulwark as his resignation letter.

"I quit. I quit the Republican party and my job as an accomplice to the party in the throes of an authoritarian cult. Today, I resigned from my career as a senior fundraising strategist for one of the leading Republican digital fundraising firms in Washington, D.C," he says.

Bruner says his decision was twofold: "first, to shed light on why someone would continue to work for an increasingly corrupt and authoritarian political party despite their divergent ethical and political beliefs; second, to convince any number of consultants, staffers, and former colleagues to follow their consciences and leave with their integrity still intact."

Bruner says that he wasn't fully on board with Trump at all in the beginning and he didn't take him seriously either.

"The thinking was that Trump’s candidacy was a joke—why alienate the sliver of voters Trump was holding when he’d be out of the race in a few months? From that point on, my anxiety began to fester," he says.

As political coordinator for Republican Janet Nguyen’s state senate campaign in California, Bruner says they were horrified at the Charlottesville, Virginia white supremacist rally which Trump excused with that now infamous "good people on both sides" statement.

"We buried the condemnation of Trump on Twitter, believing that fewer of her Republican supporters would see it," Bruner says, but within minues, Nguyen was attacked by Trump supporters.

"It was the first time I should have drawn the line and said I quit. But, again, I stayed," he said. And it weighed on him.

"The emotional and mental weight one feels when one’s career suddenly conflicts with one’s beliefs," he says. But when a new job came along, Bruner found himself deeper in the Trump world.

"In my new position, I became enmeshed in the D.C. Republican consulting ecosystem that was now fully orbiting around Trump," he says, and his clients were "100 percent pro-MAGA."

After President Joe Biden won and the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol happened, Bruner thought Trump would go into exile at his Palm Beach country club "as a political pariah."

As Bruner's career took off during the years after, which went by "uneventfully," Bruner writes, "at a superficial level and putting my ethics aside, I was living the life I had imagined having as a teenager."

And it wasn't Trump that broke him out of his "comfortable cocoon," Bruner says. "Rather, it was the rightward lurch of the Supreme Court and the lengths to which the right was willing to go to undermine established legal precedents and access to reproductive rights."

Bruner says it was his and his wife's experience trying to start a family that broke him out of his staunch pro-life stance and he "slowly became pro-choice."

To a degree, I understood the selfishness of my reaction. I had been willing to work in a system and for a party that had allowed rulings like these to take hold—that had celebrated them, in fact—only to find it unbearable when I felt personally attacked," he admits.

"It is not to excuse my actions that I note that sometimes a personal experience is what it takes for an awakening like this to occur," he adds.

That's when he began plotting his exit from the Republican party, and while he previously excused Trump's role on Jan. 6, "his lack of leadership during the COVID pandemic," and his "migrants are rapists tirade," Bruner says "our nation has arrived at a moment in its history where staying silent for personal comfort isn’t an option anymore."

"I know now that if I continue to stay, I won’t be able to explain to my children why I didn’t take a stand when I had the chance," he says. "I wish I had realized this sooner and I applaud my colleagues who did so long before me."

Bruner's clarion call encourages those who care about the country to speak out and do something.

"If you believe in this country now is the time to refuse to ferry its destruction for a tainted livelihood. Take a stand. Speak out. Show your pride as an American who believes in the Constitution and the values we grew up with. Today, I quit allowing my complacency to destroy America, and I urge you to quit, too."

MSNBC's opinion writer Hayes Brown says that President Donald Trump is not only being a "petty tyrant" in his quest to persecute his perceived enemies, but the allegations he has tossed at them shows a "startling lack of creativity," relegated to "the realm of supervillain gimmicks."

Brown says this is most evident in the recent indictment against Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton, in which "we see a set of charges orders of magnitude less staggering in their blatant criminality than the allegations Trump faced after his first term for hoarding documents at Mar-a-Lago."

New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey, Brown says, "are also facing minor-league versions of the big-league crimes and civil infractions Trump was accused of."

"It’s a level of 'I’m rubber and you’re glue' absurdity akin to if Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who successfully secured a 34-count conviction against Trump last year, were to himself be charged with election fraud," Brown says.

The president's pettiness, Brown argues, goes beyond "using the criminal justice system to target" his enemies.

"He’s also been using the ongoing federal government shutdown as an excuse to torment Democrats as a group," he writes.

Trump's brand of pettiness, Brown says, is pure.

"Real pettiness is the refusal to turn the other cheek against purposeful slights, the willingness to cling to a grudge after your opponent has faced defeat," he says. "It’s, say, Kendrick Lamar, making his 2025 Super Bowl halftime show a 13-minute slam dunk against Drake and the (recently dismissed) defamation lawsuit Drake had filed against him."

The problem with Trump's pettiness, Brown says, is that he's "seldom right in his quest for vengeance."

"As The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols noted earlier this year, we’ve had plenty of presidents who had tempers and a penchant for grievances. We’ve even had several of them attempt to use the power of the U.S. government as the engine of their payback," Brown writes.

"What sets Trump apart is how unfettered he is from the shame that keeps pettiness in check. Instead, he is openly willing to use all the might imbued within the presidency for the smallest of reasons, transforming any critic into a target," he says.

A federal prison consultant has revealed to The Daily Beast, in a piece entitled "Prison Is Running Massive Ghislaine Maxwell Coverup for Trump: Insider," that Ghislaine Maxwell, cohort of the late Jeffrey Epstein, was moved to a country club prison after an order came from "well above their heads."

Sam Mangel, a former inmate turned prison consultant for high-profile names like Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro told The Daily Beast podcast that the Bureau of Prisons said that in Maxwell's case, they disregarded protocol to move her to fancier digs.

According to The Daily Beast, they too the "rare step of waiving the public safety factor related to her sex crime conviction to overcome 'a very severe restriction' that would have prevented her transfer to a minimum-security prison in Texas from a federal prison in Florida."

The Supreme Court declined to hear Maxwell's appeal, meaning, minus a coveted pardon from President Donald Trump, the former socialite will serve 20 years in the Bryan, Texas federal prison camp, a privilege that Mangel says is unheard of.

“Anything involving a sexual act is the most serious—or one of the most serious—public safety factors someone can have on them, and that specifically precludes an individual from serving their time in a camp,” Mangel told The Daily Beast podcast host Joanna Coles. “I’ve helped thousands of people… They will not waive that public safety factor,” he said of the BOP. “So getting your transfer to a camp is crazy.”

Other inmates sharing dorm-like accommodations in the camp are former Real Housewives castmembers and Theranos fraud star Elizabeth Holmes. Most recently, reports have seen a very relaxed Maxwell heading to yoga class within the camp.

The August transfer of Maxwell from a Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, Florida came following an unprecedented, hours-long interview with Trump-appointed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

That move, Mangel said, was well coordinated and came from inside the White House.

Mangel said Trump appointees BOP Director William Marshall and Deputy Director Joshua Smith “really tried to clean everything up, get things moving in the proper direction."

“So it’s my understanding that the directive to move her to a minimum security camp, Bryan, came from well above their heads,” he said.

Mangel said that whateve Maxwell promised Blanche was well rewarded — and protected.

“I truly believe that once she started cooperating, the Bureau of Prisons had to move her,” he said. “It was the only solution for the Bureau of Prisons if their goal was to keep her safe and alive. If they moved her to another low-security [facility], they would have had the same challenges.”

Speculation that Trump would pardon Maxwell has been swirling, despite the president denying he even remembers Maxwell, but Mangel said that Trump likely has given Maxwell a lot already and this may just be the beginning.

“I have to imagine that getting her to Bryan was the starting point to getting her out of custody, whether through commutation or pardon. It just seems to me that you don’t move someone to that type of facility with this kind of protection and precautions if you’re not overly concerned about her safety and what she has to say and offer,” Mangel said.

“So my guess, and purely speculation, is that at some point she will receive some form of clemency.”

The US Coast Guard has purchased two luxury private jets for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a total cost of more than $170 million in taxpayer money as the federal government remains shut down, imperiling food aid and other assistance for tens of millions of Americans.

The decision to buy two Gulfstream G700 jets for Noem—a central figure in President Donald Trump’s lawless mass deportation campaign—drew swift criticism from Democratic lawmakers, who said the purchase underscores the administration’s corruption and contempt for those struggling amid a government shutdown with no end in sight.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the top Democrat on the House Committee on Homeland Security, called the spending “wholly inappropriate,” “blatantly immoral,” and “probably illegal” in a statement issued Sunday.

“While the nation suffers under this corrupt and extreme administration, Secretary Noem is fleecing the American taxpayers to live in luxury,” said Thompson. “Not only does she now have multiple fancy jets to use, she lives rent-free on Coast Guard property.”

In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security—which oversees the US Coast Guard (USCG)—Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.) pointed to Noem’s policy of personally reviewing and deciding whether to approve any contract exceeding $100,000 in value, an indication that the secretary signed off on the new procurement of private jets from Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation.

The purchase, wrote DeLauro and Underwood, “reflects a continuing trend of self-aggrandizement” during Noem’s tenure as head of DHS. The two Democrats demanded answers from the agency about the contract, including the names of those who reviewed it and the funding source.

“In addition to raising serious questions about your ability to effectively lead an agency whose procurement strategies appear to vary on a whim, the procurement of new luxury jets for your use suggests that the USCG has been directed to prioritize your own comfort above the USCG’s operational needs, even during a government shutdown,” DeLauro and Underwood wrote. “We are deeply concerned about your judgment, leadership priorities, and responsibility as a steward of taxpayer dollars.”

News of the Coast Guard’s private jet purchase, which DHS claimed was a “matter of safety,” comes as the Trump administration continues to exploit the government shutdown to inflict partisan funding cuts and accelerate its assault on the federal workforce.

Recipients of federal nutrition assistance are among those set to face significant harm if the shutdown persists.

According to the Trump administration’s own estimates, more than 40 million Americans could soon see disruptions or cuts to their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits if the government remains shut down into November.

The US Department of Agriculture reportedly warned state agencies last week that the federal government would have “insufficient funds” to fully pay out benefits. The average monthly SNAP payment is $177 per person, according to the USDA.

“Can’t pay federal workers. Can’t reopen the government. But sure, let’s buy Kristi Noem TWO private jets,” Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) wrote in a social media post on Sunday. “Republicans have lost absolutely all touch with reality.”