<In the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term in office, his administration has made many attempts to suppress speech it disfavors – at universities, on the airwaves, in public school classrooms, in museums, at protests and even in lawyer’s offices.

If past is prologue, these efforts may backfire.

In 2018, I published my book “Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock.”

A devout evangelical Christian, Comstock hoped to use the powers of the government to impose moral standards on American expression in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. To that end, he and like-minded donors established the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which successfully lobbied for the creation of the first federal anti-obscenity laws with enforcement provisions.

Later appointed inspector for the Post Office Department, Comstock fought to abolish whatever he deemed blasphemous and sinful: birth control, abortion aids and information about sexual health, along with certain art, books and newspapers. Federal and state laws gave him the power to order law enforcement to seize these materials and have prosecutors bring criminal indictments.

I analyzed thousands of these censorship cases to assess their legal and cultural outcomes.

I found that, over time, Comstock’s censorship regime did lead to a rise in self-censorship, confiscations and prosecutions. However, it also inspired greater support for free speech and due process.

More popular – and more profitable

One effect of Comstock’s censorship campaigns: The materials and speech he disfavored often made headlines, putting them on the public’s radar as a kind of “forbidden fruit.”

For example, prosecutions targeting artwork featuring nude subjects led to both sensational media coverage and a boom in the popularity of nudes on everything from soap advertisements and cigar boxes to photographs and sculptures.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurs of racy forms of entertainment – promoters of belly dancing, publishers of erotic postcards and producers of “living pictures,” which were exhibitions of seminude actors posing as classical statuary – all benefited from Comstock’s complaints. If Comstock wanted it shut down, the public often assumed that it was fun and trendy.

In 1891, Comstock became irate when a young female author proposed paying him to attack her book and “seize a few copies” to “get the newspapers to notice it.” And in October 1906, Comstock threatened to shut down an exhibition of models performing athletic exercises wearing form-fitting union suits. Twenty thousand people showed up to Madison Square Garden for the exhibition – far more than the venue could hold at the time.

The Trump administration’s recent efforts to get comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the air have similarly backfired.

Kimmel had generated controversy for comments he made on his late-night talk show in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination. ABC, which is owned by The Walt Disney Co., initially acquiesced to pressure from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr and announced the show’s “indefinite” suspension. But many viewers, angered over the company’s capitulation, canceled their subscriptions of Disney streaming services. This led to a 3.3% drop in Disney’s share price, which spurred legal actions by shareholders of the publicly traded company.

ABC soon lifted the suspension. Kimmel returned, drawing 6.26 million live viewers – more than four times his normal audience – while over 26 million viewers watched Kimmel’s return monologue on social media. Since then, all network affiliates have resumed airing “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

‘Comstockery’ and hypocrisy

In the U.S., disfavored political speech and obscenity are different in important ways. The Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment provides broad protections for political expression, whereas speech deemed to be obscene is illegal.

Despite this fundamental difference, social and cultural forces can make it difficult to clearly discern protected and unprotected speech.

In Comstock’s case, the public was happy to see truly explicit pornography removed from circulation. But their own definition of what was “obscene” – and, therefore, criminally liable – was much narrower.

In 1905, Comstock attempted to shut down a theatrical performance of George Bernard Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” because the plot included prostitution. The aging censor was widely ridiculed and became a “laughing stock,” according to The New York Times. Shaw went on to coin the term “Comstockery,” which caught on as a shorthand for overreaching censoriousness....>

<....In a similar manner, when Attorney General Pam Bondi recently threatened Americans that the Department of Justice “will absolutely … go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” swift backlash ensued.

Numerous Supreme Court rulings have held that hate speech is constitutionally protected. However, those in power can threaten opponents with punishment even when their speech clearly does not fall within one of the rare exceptions to the First Amendment protection for political speech.

Doing so carries risks.

The old saying “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” also applies to censors: The public holds them to higher standards, lest they be exposed as hypocrites.

For critics of the Trump administration, it was jarring to see officials outraged about “hate speech,” only to hear the president announce, at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.”

In Comstock’s case, defendants and their attorneys routinely noted that Comstock had seen more illicit materials than any man in the U.S. Criticizing Comstock in 1882, Unitarian minister Octavius Brooks Frothingham quoted Shakespeare: “Who is so virtuous as to be allowed to forbid the distribution of cakes and ale?”

In other words, if you’re going to try to enforce moral standards, you better make sure you’re beyond reproach.

Free speech makes for strange bedfellows
Comstock’s censorship campaign, though self-defeating in the long run, nonetheless caused enormous suffering, just as many people today are suffering from calls to fire and harass those whose viewpoints are legal, but disliked by the Trump administration.

Comstock prosecuted women’s rights advocate Ida Craddock for circulating literature that advocated for female sexual pleasure. After Craddock was convicted in 1902, she died by suicide. She left behind a “letter to the public,” in which she accused Comstock of violating her rights to freedom of religion and speech.

During Craddock’s trial, the jury hadn’t been permitted to see her writings; they were deemed “too harmful.” Incensed by these violations of the First and Fourth amendments, defense attorneys rallied together and were joined by a new coalition in the support of Americans’ constitutional rights. Lincoln Steffens of the nascent Free Speech League wrote, in response to Craddock’s suicide, that “those who believe in the general principle of free speech must make their point by supporting it for some extreme cause. Advocating free speech only for a popular or uncontroversial position would not convey the breadth of the principle.”

Then, as now, the cause of free expression can bring together disparate political factions.

In the wake of the Kimmel saga, many conservative Republicans came out to support the same civil liberties also advocated by liberal Hollywood actors. Two-thirds of Americans in a September 2025 YouGov poll said that it was “unacceptable for government to pressure broadcasters to remove shows it disagrees with.”

My conclusion from studying the 43-year career of America’s most prolific censor?

Government officials may think a campaign of suppression and fear will silence their opponents, but these threats could end up being the biggest impediment to their effort to remake American culture.>

<Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s most polarizing superintendent of public instruction in modern history, has submitted his official resignation letter less than three years into his term. His departure, announced in a letter to parents and guardians, marks the abrupt end of a tenure defined by censorship, culture-war crusades, and a deepening crisis for students and teachers across the state.

In his resignation letter, Walters framed his exit as a victory lap, celebrating what he called “historic education reforms.” He boasted about eliminating “DEI, CRT, and woke indoctrination,” restoring the Bible to classrooms, expanding private school vouchers, and overseeing record bonuses for select teachers. “Serving as your State Superintendent has been an honor,” Walters wrote, before announcing his transition from state office to a national advocacy role.

A Culture Warrior in the Classroom

From the start, Walters made clear that his approach was seemingly less about teaching and learning and more about reshaping schools into battlegrounds for conservative ideology. He fought to impose religious texts in public schools, attempted to dismantle diversity initiatives, and used state resources to stoke fears of “indoctrination.”

Black communities experienced his tenure as a direct attack. By weaponizing words like “CRT” or critical race theory. Walters signaled his refusal to confront Oklahoma’s legacy of racial violence and inequity.

“But let’s not tie it [the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre] to the skin color and say that the skin color determined it,” Walters said at a meeting in reference to the Massacre. Descendants of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and Black educators working to ensure history is taught honestly saw his policies as erasure, not reform.

Walters also drew national headlines for supporting St. Isidore, the nation’s first religious charter school, in a move that many legal scholars argued violated the constitutional separation of church and state. His battles with civil rights groups, teachers’ unions, and even fellow Republicans made Oklahoma education a flashpoint in the broader culture wars.

Targeting Immigrant Children

Walters’ tenure also took aim at immigrant students. He pushed a rule requiring parents to show proof of citizenship or legal residency during school enrollment, effectively turning classrooms into immigration checkpoints. He even suggested cooperating with ICE to remove children whose parents faced deportation.

The proposal drew immediate backlash from educators and immigrant-rights advocates, who warned it would terrify families and violate the constitutional right to education. Governor Kevin Stitt ultimately blocked key parts of the plan, but Walters defended it as necessary to measure the “burden” of undocumented students — reducing children to statistics and deepening fear in vulnerable communities.

Turmoil, Transparency, and Silenced Voices

Walters’ administration became notorious for its hostility toward the press. In 2023, his office barred The Black Wall Street Times from conducting interviews, citing this paper’s critical coverage as an unprecedented attempt to silence a Black-owned newsroom. That move however underscored what many critics described as Walters’ authoritarian streak: intolerance for dissent and a refusal to be held accountable.

At the same time, Oklahoma classrooms faced worsening teacher shortages, declining test scores, and the loss of valuable instructional time. Educators reported feeling demoralized and vilified, while parents raised concerns about the politicization of their children’s education.

From State Office to National Stage

Rather than take responsibility for the controversies that defined his leadership, Walters is using his resignation to expand his reach. He will now lead the Teacher Freedom Alliance, a conservative group vowing to “destroy the teachers’ unions.” By leaving early, Walters is betting that his combative, grievance-driven politics will resonate with right-wing donors and media outlets....>

<....“It’s no surprise Ryan Walters has chosen his own personal ambitions over serving our students and teachers, like he always has,” Oklahoma Senate Democratic Leader Julia Kirt said. “Republicans failed to hold him accountable to do his job, and they should be embarrassed he’s left this office of his own accord.”

“Ryan Walters’ resignation is long overdue. Parents across Oklahoma have watched in frustration as he turned classrooms into culture-war battlefields instead of places where children learn and thrive. His attacks on immigrant families, efforts to erase the role of race in the Tulsa Race Massacre, and hostility toward educators created fear when what families need is hope,” Keri Rodrigues Langan, president of the National Parents Union, told The Black Wall Street Times.

Governor Kevin Stitt struck a different tone: “I wish Ryan and his family the best in this next chapter. Oklahoma students remain my top priority, and with my first appointment to this role, I will be seeking a leader who is fully focused on the job Oklahomans expect: delivering real outcomes and driving a turnaround in our education system.”

Stitt must now appoint a replacement to serve through January 2027. The transition gives Oklahoma a chance to turn the page on a turbulent chapter, though Walters’ imprint from voucher expansion to ideological curriculum mandates will not fade easily.

What’s at Stake for Black and Marginalized Students

For Black families in Oklahoma, Walters’ resignation raises urgent questions. Will his successor dismantle the policies that censored history and punished diversity efforts? Additionally, will students once again be free to learn the unvarnished truth about their state and America’s past and the challenges of its present?

The fight for public education is far from over. Walters may be leaving the superintendent’s chair, but his move to the national stage ensures that the same battles he waged in Oklahoma will continue to echo across the country.

For communities of color, educators, and parents who have resisted his agenda, the task now is clear: remain vigilant, amplify the truth, and hold the next superintendent accountable to the students who deserve more than politics in their classrooms.>

<Russell Vought has been planning for this moment for years.

President Trump’s budget chief—one of the main players in the government shutdown that has ground Washington to a halt—might also be one of its biggest beneficiaries, as the freeze gives him the opportunity to implement funding cuts he has long advocated.

Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, was quick Wednesday to target Democratic priorities and projects. In a move that affected Democratic Congressional leaders from New York, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Vought posted on X that a hold had been put on $18 billion in federal funds for New York City infrastructure work: a Hudson River tunnel project and a subway extension.

The Transportation Department pinned the blame on the shutdown, saying a review of the projects’ contracting policies and their relationship to diversity, equity and inclusion requirements couldn’t move forward. “Without a budget, the department has been forced to furlough the civil rights staff responsible for conducting this review,” the agency said in a statement.

Vought also posted that $8 billion in Energy Department funds for climate projects would be canceled in more than a dozen Democratic-leaning states. He didn’t specify which projects would be affected.

Last week, he issued a memo directing federal agencies to craft plans for widespread layoffs in the event of a shutdown. Vought told House Republicans on a conference call Wednesday that layoffs likely would begin in another day or two, according to people on the call. While he didn’t specify how many layoffs were in the pipeline, one person familiar with the call said Vought indicated it would be consequential.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), a close Trump ally, predicted a shutdown might not last long, in part because of the specter of Vought. “This OMB guy, you need to watch him,” Graham said. “I think there’s definitely a downside to a shutdown for the system…I think he will try to wreak havoc on the workforce.”

Vought “has been thinking for his entire life and career about how to downsize the government,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) told The Wall Street Journal, adding that “he’s acting very judiciously.”

The extent to which Vought plans to follow through on his threat remains to be seen. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R., N.D.) said he thought it was more a negotiating tactic, but “no one should doubt Director Vought’s willingness to carry out the threat. I know I don’t.”

Rep. Sean Casten (D., Ill.) said Vought was “threatening to fire federal employees for political reasons and without concern for the impact on the government.”

Even before the shutdown, Vought has outraged Democrats—and even some Republicans—by pushing a policy known as “pocket rescissions,” under which the executive branch asserts it has the right to withhold congressionally approved spending.

Vought’s posture in theory puts pressure on Democrats demanding the restoration of healthcare spending in exchange for support for funding the government. They have taken a defiant stance so far, pointing to Vought’s pocket rescissions as evidence that the administration will move forward with cuts with or without Congress, causing them to doubt it will negotiate in good faith.

“Our response to Russ Vought is simple,” Jeffries said. “Get lost.”

A longtime budget hawk and co-author of the conservative Project 2025, Vought is a veteran of the first Trump administration, when he also ran OMB, which acts as the budgetary and regulatory nerve center for the executive branch. He has been steeped in conservative causes for decades, working in Congress and later with Heritage Action, the lobbying affiliate of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

After President Joe Biden’s election, Vought started the Center for Renewing America, a Washington think tank focused on taking steps to reorder the federal government. He spent the next four years working on potential executive actions and policies to rein in Washington’s reach and cut spending—policies he is now working to implement.

Vought is “very dedicated to the idea of shrinking the government, getting rid of federal employees, and he’s really clever in finding a way to do that in any situation,” said David Graham, author of “The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America.”....>

<....The budget chief’s strategy has its roots in two shutdowns during the Trump administration: One was triggered by Democrats over a weekend in early 2018; and the other started in late 2018 and closed parts of the government for more than a month, the longest in U.S. history.

“He realized that it could be a powerful tool to help shrink the size of government if executed properly,” said Michael Williams, a lobbyist at government-relations firm Tholos who worked at OMB during Trump’s first term.

In a 2024 interview with Tucker Carlson, Vought said the executive branch has the right to oust federal employees who don’t support the president’s agenda. “You’ve got to know how to fire them,” he said. “And there are tools to do that.”

Vought has argued that Congress doesn’t have full control of the purse when it comes to federal spending, despite a 1974 law that limits the White House’s ability to rescind money appropriated by Congress. In January, he told the Senate Budget Committee that he thinks the 1974 law, called the Impoundment Control Act, was unconstitutional.

Democrats were outraged this summer after the Trump administration clawed back billions of dollars in congressionally approved foreign aid, a move supported by the Supreme Court.

Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, denounced the White House move as an apparent attempt to bypass Congress and “a clear violation of the law.”

Republicans say Democrats could be falling into a trap set by Vought. He is an “expert on how the system works,” said Kevin Madden, a strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Republican Mitt Romney and former President George W. Bush. “Democrats can’t stand him, but they probably secretly wish they had their own version of him.”

Democrats say the administration, led by Trump and Vought, has shown it is willing to take extreme measures to bypass their agenda and their votes, leaving them with little option but to withhold the votes Republicans need to keep the government open.

“You have an appropriations process where the president can just turn around and say, I’ll just do what I want to do,” said Sharon Block, a professor at Harvard Law School who served at OMB in the Biden administration. That process, she said, “sits at Russ Vought’s door.”>

<Trump’s assault on our elections system and the GOP’s successful 2024 effort to deny at least (according to official US government statistics) 4.2 million Americans their right to vote (which gave Trump the election and Republicans the House and Senate) was based on his 2020 Big Lie that our elections were corrupted by “millions” of “illegals” voting, along with “massive” voter fraud.

They’re continuing that Big Lie (which the GOP first embraced in the 1960s with Operation Eagle Eye that intimidated mostly Hispanic and Native American voters) going forward, with some observers expecting as many as 10 million Americans being denied their vote in 2028.

But corrupting and stealing elections was just their first effort, the one that brought them to power. Now, with that power, they’re doing their best to gut the basic guardrails of our 250-year-old constitutional system with brand-new Big Lies.

The newest Big Lie for 2025 is that America is racked by “radical left violence” leading to the disintegration of law and order in our cities and the spread of terror among politicians and anybody else who dares speak out about the issues of our day.

They’re using this to censor speech, ban comedians and commentators, prosecute people (including lifelong Republicans like Comey, Krebs, and Taylor) who’ve spoken out against Trump, violently attack protestors, and to justify the monopolization of our media by rightwing billionaires.

Most recently, when a Trump-supporting (Trump sign in his yard, Trump “Make Liberals Cry Again” T-shirt) straight, white, self-proclaimed Christian who thought Mormons were the anti-Christ murdered worshipers in a Latter Day Saints church in Michigan, Trump’s first response was to claim it was “anti-Christian violence.”

Instead, it appears this former Marine war vet with PTSD thought he was defending Christianity. But instead of asking if he was “radicalized” by preachers like Trump’s guy “Pastor” Robert Jeffress (who goes on and on about how the LDS Church is a “false religion”) or the algorithms on YouTube, Facebook, or X, rightwing media is today filled with rants about “attacks on Christianity,” blaming “the left” even for this attack.

It echo’s the GOP’s efforts to portray the two people who tried to assassinate Trump, Charlie Kirk’s killer, the ICE shooter last week, and other political violence as originating from the “radical left.”

Which is really and truly another Big Lie.

First, there’s basically no “radical left” in America anymore. The anti-capitalist pro-violence subset of SDS that I knew back in the 1960s when I was part of MSU’s SDS are long gone and well discredited (and a few imprisoned).

Second, the “far left” folks who are still around aren’t violent, by and large. Lefties are more interested in protecting Social Security, getting a national healthcare system into place, raising taxes on the morbidly rich, and getting guns off the streets instead of pointing them at people. The last high-profile “leftie” shooter was the mentally ill guy who shot Republican Congressman Steve Scalise back in 2017.

Even the FBI and the Department of Justice themselves had acknowledged the fact that the vast majority of politically-inspired violence in America was coming from the right, at least until puppy-killer Kristi Noem or one of her lickspittles (or her boyfriend) ordered the reports removed from the government websites.

The independent and nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies analyzed 893 terrorist plots that took place between 1994 and 2020. Their report concluded:

“Rightwing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994.”

But don’t expect to hear that from anybody in the administration or on Fox “News” or other rightwing media outlets. Instead, they’re using “far left violence” as their excuse to dismantle our rights, impose soldiers on cities run by Democrats, and pour your tax dollars into extreme policing and militarization of our society.

This isn’t the first time the GOP has used the Big Lie technique to sway public opinion in a way that demonizes Democrats. On September 23, 1944 President Roosevelt addressed the Teamsters and said:

“The opposition in this year has already imported into this campaign a very interesting thing, because it is foreign. They have imported the propaganda technique invented by the dictators abroad.“Remember, a number of years ago, there was a book, Mein Kampf, written by Hitler himself. The technique was all set out in Hitler’s book — and it was copied by the aggressors of Italy and Japan.

“According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature would make it more credible, if only you keep repeating it over and over and over again.”....>

<....He then did what Democrats — and what honest news media we have left — need to be doing today: he called out their lies and exposed their technique:

“Well, let us take some simple illustrations that come to mind. For example, although I rubbed my eyes when I read it, we have been told that it was not a Republican depression, but a Democratic depression from which this Nation was saved in 1933.“That this Administration — this one today — is responsible for all the suffering and misery that the history books and the American people have always thought had been brought about during the twelve ill-fated years when the Republican party was in power.”

He followed that with a list of four other Republican lies, including their assertion that he’d tried to get America into WWII, that he was secretly planning to prevent GIs from leaving the service when the war was over, and even a lie about his dog (Fala, after which his speech was named in the press). He summed it up:

“Well, I think we all recognize the old technique. The people of this country know the past too well to be deceived into forgetting. Too much is at stake to forget.”

They’re still doing it. Which raises the question: What will be Trump’s and the GOP’s next Big Lie?

They’ve already tried convincing Americans that:

・Immigrants are a major source of crime (when crime rates regarding immigrants are about half that of natural born Americans),

・Democrats are the party of rapists and pedophiles (ahem…Trump’s “best friend” Jeffrey Epstein, E Jean Carroll),

・Democrats want to defund the police (when they’re fighting for more cops in virtually every city in America),

・Are in favor of abortion “after birth,”

・That Biden wanted to ban gas stoves and gasoline cars,

・Biden wanted to “ban meat,”

・Democrats plan on huge tax increases on the middle class,

・“Antifa” (“Anti-Fascist”) is a domestic terrorist organization,

・Democrats are “deranged pieces of ----,”

・And liberals want to “force taxpayers to fund transgender surgeries for minors’ nationwide” and, yesterday, Trump said Democrats want to “reopen the wall.“

This after promoting the Big Lie that got three police officers killed and 140 hospitalized on January 6 about the 2020 election was “stolen” and their Big Lie about immigrants voting that resulted in over 4 million citizens being denied their right to vote last year.

Republican Big Lies have caused enormous damage, from FDR’s era through Joe McCarthy’s witch hunts to George W. Bush lying us into two illegal and unnecessary wars to today.

It’s way past time that Democrats and the media start calling these Big Lies exactly what they are, and pointing out that the strategy originated in the modern era with Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler.

Enough is enough.>

<Although 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris carried a handful of western states — including California, New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon and Washington — Nevada and Arizona were nail-biters that Donald Trump won by single digits in the end. Utah, however, remained deep red, with Trump winning it by 22 percent.

Yet one of Utah's biggest employers, an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) center in Ogden, is being adversely affected by the mass layoffs of federal workers being carried out by the Trump Administration with the help of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Now, Ogden is receiving another financial blow thanks to the partial government shutdown that went into effect on October 1.

MSNBC's "Morning Joe" took a look at Ogden's troubles in a report aired on Friday morning, October 3.

Reporting from Ogden, MSNBC's Rosa Flores described the "trickle-down effect" that the IRS center's problems are having in the Utah city: When IRS workers have less money to spend, the local businesses that they patronize also take a hit.

Flores emphasized that the businesses' "bottom lines" are hurting, adding, "There's also an emotional toll to the business owners who really devote their heart and soul to those businesses."

Flores interviewed Larry Whitnack, a 78-year-old man who, she reported, "had a coffee shop here on this street for 20 years," Jesse Jean's Café, before he had to close down. The business, according to Whitnack, suffered a range of hardships — from a previous government shutdown to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A tearful Whitnack told Flores, "It was family. The people we got to know — and so many have come and gone. So many have lived and died that it's provided life experience for me I never would have had without Jesse Jean's Café."

Flores told MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire, "You probably heard the emotion in Larry's voice. And he said that that pain is the price of human connection. And he said that human connection is what's missing in Washington right now. That human connection is what he says can cross the divides and unite America.">

We can only hope that so many who have supported <pick me girl> will come to their senses next year.

<While Democrats may be hoping to use the ongoing government shutdown to get Republicans to relent on their refusal to extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, one analyst is cautioning Democrats to not allow President Donald Trump to use the shutdown to advance his own goals of amassing power.

In a Thursday essay for the New Yorker, Susan Glasser — the wife of New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker — wrote that Democrats should "be careful what [they] wish for" in hoping that Americans will blame Republicans for the shutdown. She argued that Trump is already exploiting it in order to continue his "undoing of the Constitution’s checks and balances."

Glasser argued that the last government shutdown, which lasted for roughly a month in late 2018 and early 2019, taught Trump what he can get away with when Congress is out of session and federal agencies are shuttered. She noted that Trump had ended that first shutdown by relenting on border wall funding he insisted Congress appropriate, and that Democrats celebrated after reopening the government without caving to Trump's demands.

However, the New Yorker columnist pointed out that in his second term, Trump has claimed emergency powers to do everything from impose tariffs without congressional input, deploy the U.S. military to American cities and seal the Southern border, among other things. And she observed that Trump is banking on the Republican supermajority Supreme Court to not intervene and allow him unchecked emergency powers in spite of various lawsuits challenging his authority to claim an emergency. She posited that while Trump felt constrained by Congress in his first administration, he has a compliant Republican majority eager to act as a rubber stamp in his second term.

"The Trump 1.0 shutdown, in other words, was the precursor event for the Trump 2.0 power grab," Glasser wrote. "So no wonder that Trump is going big with this shutdown: as far as he’s concerned, there’s only upside. Who knows what additional authority he’ll have seized from Congress by the time it’s over?"

Trump has chiefly sought to carry out mass firings of federal workers during the current shutdown, even though a shutdown typically only allows for furloughs of workers, who are then given back pay for any days of missed work once their agencies reopen. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russ Vought has suggested he'll release plans for which agencies will see permanent firings in the coming days, and unions representing federal workers have promised to challenge the OMB's authority in court should it follow through on its threat. Glasser wrote that the administration is likely going to plow ahead regardless of whether or not their actions are deemed legal.

"Such layoffs would also be an unprecedented response to a shutdown. But this is Trump 2.0; where another President might hear words such as 'illegal' and 'unprecedented' as a warning sign, for Trump they are practically an invitation to act," she wrote. "He hardly needs an invitation, anyway."

"The mood in the Oval Office today when it comes to constraints of any kind can be best summed up by a photo that Trump posted of his pre-shutdown meeting on Monday with Democratic leaders, complete with two strategically placed TRUMP 2028 hats sitting atop the Resolute desk. Subtle, he’s not," she continued. "There’s a theme here to his entire second term: the Constitution — what’s that?">

<On Thursday night, President Donald Trump shared a music video on Truth Social. In it, an AI-generated Russ Vought—Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget and a Project 2025 mastermind—is the grim reaper, carrying a scythe along a hallway lined with portraits of Democratic leaders. Vought, the video’s soundtrack explains, “wields the pen, the funds, and the brain” to enforce the president’s plans to axe federal workers.

“Everyone still remembers when he said he wanted to cause maximum trauma to federal workers,” one neighbor said.

The budget chief has been in the spotlight lately as Trump’s shutdown enforcer. He is pressing on with threats to permanently cut federal workers en masse during this crisis. It is part of his long-held dream of shrinking the federal government and giving the president unrestrained powers. Vought’s combination of bureaucratic know-how and hardline ideology has made him a star in right-wing circles.

But on the quiet, residential street tucked in the Virginia suburb where Vought lives, the perception of him and his role in the shutdown is less than favorable. Several homes in the neighborhood have a yard sign in the front proudly declaring: “This house supports federal workers.” That includes the house right next door to his.

“So many people in this neighborhood are federal workers,” said Cathy Hunter, a 60-year-old archivist who has lived in the area since 1993. “They do really good work and they just feel so disrespected.”

The Bureaucrat Who Could Make Trump’s Authoritarian Dreams Real Residents said the signs started cropping up early on in the administration, after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) dismantled the US foreign aid agency and haphazardly purged government employees who are now being rehired by the hundreds. (A recent New York Times article included photos of a sidewalk chalk protest in the vicinity of Vought’s house that read: “I was hungry and the USA fed me. Until Vought cut USAID.”) Other chalk protests have popped up, too.

These days, the pro-federal worker signs have been sending an even louder message to Vought.

“People have strong feelings about him,” one person who lives further down the street told me, describing the neighborhood as solidly blue. “Everyone knows someone who lost their jobs.”

“He takes food and health care from the neediest and tries to, in his words, traumatize people—then he calls himself a Christian,” another neighbor told me. “Pretty despicable.”

Residents I talked to said that many federal employees, contractors, and active and retired military live in the area. “It’s a very friendly neighborhood,” one person said. “People look out for each other.” Of Vought, she said: “I don’t think he’s interacted with the neighbors at all.”

“Everyone still remembers when he said he wanted to cause maximum trauma to federal workers,” the neighbor said. “And that’s hard to forget.”

Most of Vought’s neighbors I talked to for this article declined to speak on the record or asked to remain anonymous. Some said they didn’t want to create a rift in an otherwise cordial neighborhood, while others worried about retribution or negative repercussions from their employers.

“I just wish he would have gotten to know us,” Hunter said. “We consider ourselves good Americans, we have good values. And I don’t think he’s been interested in getting to know any of us, in hearing if we might have a difference of opinion.”...>

<....Last week, Vought sent around a memo blaming Democrats’ “insane demands” for the imminent lapse in funding and instructing agency heads to start making plans to cut non-mandatory programs “not consistent with the President’s priorities” and “use this opportunity to consider Reduction in Force.” Appearing on Fox Business, Vought claimed an “authority to make permanent change to the bureaucracy here in government” during the shutdown.

He has since announced pauses to funding for infrastructure projects in New York—home state of House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York), who called Vought a “malignant political hack”—and slowdowns in clean energy projects in several blue states.

Vought, Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said on Fox News, “has been dreaming about and preparing for his moment since puberty.”

As I wrote in a profile of Vought from 2024, the bespectacled official spent years as a Washington insider and government bureaucrat before becoming the architect of a supersized second Trump presidency.

An avowed Christian nationalist and dedicated America First warrior, he once described the job of OMB director as the “keeper of ‘commander’s intent” and criticized the federal bureaucracy for standing in the way of the president’s agenda. During Trump’s first term, Vought tried to implement an executive order that would have made it easier for political appointees to fire career civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists. Now, he’s getting to realize his vision while earning points with the president.

For some of his neighbors, it is personal. “You stare it in the face when he’s there,” one person said. “This is the guy, you know.”

Another neighbor I talked to, who also asked not to be named, said many in the neighborhood find Vought’s policies and actions “abhorrent.”

“He takes food and health care from the neediest and tries to, in his words, traumatize people—then he calls himself a Christian,” the neighbor said. “Pretty despicable. You asked what it is like living near such a man. Frankly, I’d rather not, but this is a wonderful neighborhood and, unlike Mr. Vought himself, we do not want our neighbors (even Mr. Vought) to be traumatized. So we just live with it.”>

<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 s***.”

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:

・Hegseth plans to disregard the rules of engagement to deliver maximum “lethality,” regardless of domestic and international law; and

・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.>

<Here in the year 2025, under a cloud of Trumpian threats to free speech on university campuses, we have this: Organizers of a Weber State University censorship conference canceled their event because a Utah anti-diversity law led university officials to put restrictions on what they could say.

So a censorship conference was axed due to censorship. After years of hearing conservatives cry wolf about cancel culture and claiming campuses were “silencing conservative voices,” and on the heels of educators across the country getting fired for anodyne comments that followed the killing of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, this is the cherry on the hypocrisy sundae.

The primary culprit in the Weber State case is an anti-DEI bill – HB 261 – signed into law by Utah’s Republican governor. That law prompted the university’s vice president for student access and success, Jessica Oyler, to send an email Sept. 30 to the censorship conference organizers saying, in part: “Presentations should not describe legislation or policies in ways that take a side, such as labeling them ‘harmful’ or attributing them to a partisan ‘strategy.’ Even if the intent is to provide context, that language is difficult to reconcile with HB 261 when used in non-academic programming.”

Republican laws and Trump's threats mean you can't call censorship harmful?

It’s a bit tricky to not label censorship “harmful,” and it’s even trickier to not attribute censorship to a partisan strategy. For ages, conservatives have loudly and incessantly claimed the left is trying to silence them. (If that was the case, it sure didn’t work worth a hoot.) But now, thanks to GOP legislation, students and professors can’t talk openly about censorship during Weber State’s 27th Annual Unity Conference, a name that seems hilarious in the wake of these developments.

Richard Price, a Weber State political science professor and expert on censorship who was slated to speak on a panel at the event, responded to the cancellation on their blog, writing: “You see, administrators decided that no one could present information at this conference that suggested that censorship was the result of one side or the other or that partisan strategy is important to censorship. I, a political scientist, was told not to talk about politics. Or, I guess, I could talk about politics so long as I pretended that both sides were equally involved in censorship (or censorship just emerged from the ether). In other words, I was ordered to lie to my colleagues, students, and the general public.”

Oyler explained to me that Weber State faculty are covered by academic protections outlined in the state law, but because this event was organized through her office of Student Access & Success, it involved university staff who don't have the same protection.

Though the conference was canceled because too many speakers backed out after learning about the restrictions, she said an ad-hoc event discussing academic freedom was held outdoors on campus on Oct. 3.

"What I tried to do is say that we can still have space on campus, same time, same place, just not under the conference itself," Oyler told me.

'One small piece of the broader war on higher education'

Personally, I understand the bind the university was in, and I get – particularly in this political climate – the desire to protect staff members. What I don't like is the simple fact that there was a bind in the first place, and responsibility for that falls in the laps of Republicans pushing fear-inducing legislation in service of culture-war gripes.

I spoke with Price about this bizarre turn of events and they said: “This is just one small piece of the broader war on higher education driven by Republicans and conservative elite groups. For the last at least five years, we have seen the development of this very aggressive system of explicit censorship that is now coming to fruition.”

Price noted recent developments in Texas, where a Texas A&M professor was fired for mentioning “gender and sexuality” in a class, and Angelo State University officials told professors not to discuss transgender identities....>

<....“Within the national politics around education in particular, the fear is dramatic,” Price said. “Right now, I'm told repeatedly by the administration that my academic freedom is protected, I'm allowed to teach my courses, I'm allowed to talk about trans people. But what we are seeing in other states is the quick erosion of that line. And that erosion is leading to a point at which university education, at a minimum, is being driven towards conservative indoctrination.”

Republicans' weird issues with DEI and gender are stifling free speech

A Texas professor recently told The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Everyone’s so scared right now. Everyone’s just trying to not get fired. People don’t go to campus as much, because why would you? They shut their doors. They don’t want to meet.”

This is, to use an academic term, bonkers. It’s also bad. And sad.

The idea that you can’t assign political responsibility to censorship when one political party is clearly and vividly dictating what can and can’t be said in a college classroom or on a campus is as cowardly as it is preposterous.

And it’s a frightening sign of what might come for those of us outside college campuses.

When censorship conferences are being censored, we should all worry

I asked Price how concerned Americans should be about their free speech rights. They answered: “I would say extremely. It's a deeply concerning development when the government defines holders of certain political views as the equivalent of domestic terrorists. And, you know, we've had that history before, right? The 20th century is full of stories of especially left-wing actors, supporters of civil rights, workers' rights, being surveilled, harassed, arrested, deported for their political views.”

The answer, I’d posit, is to push back relentlessly. President Donald Trump’s recent attempt to do away with late-night comedian’s Jimmy Kimmel’s show prompted massive cancellations of Disney+ and widespread public outcry. Kimmel’s show is back.

Clearly, it’s different when you’re talking about a major celebrity vs. a canceled student event at a university. But it’s incumbent on those who believe in free speech – including conservatives whose beliefs aren’t anchored to partisanship – to stiffen their spines and resist these pathetically transparent attempts to stifle campus and classroom discussions.

We shouldn’t live in a country where we see headlines like this: “Weber State censorship event canceled, after organizers said school wanted to censor speakers.”

That sounds like satire. But here in the year 2025, it’s very much real life.>

<They didn't waste a day.

In the aftermath of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk's assassination, Donald Trump's government immediately got to work crafting its road map for cracking down on liberal groups and the president's domestic foes. According to sources with direct knowledge of the matter, within 24 hours of the Kirk shooting, top Trump officials and administration lawyers - at the White House, Justice Department, and so forth - had already put pen to pad, drafting legal memos, writing blueprints for any number of possible executive actions, and prioritizing which liberal organizations and strongholds of the left needed targeting.

At the top of these frantic intradepartmental efforts sat Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, who personally supplied several names for key targets, as he worked the phones with other government officials to stress to them that the administration was now "at war."

Even for a government run by Trump, Miller, and all of the Project 2025 architects, the pace at which the administration got to work escalating its agenda for domestic political and legal warfare was intense. Two Trump administration officials describe pulling all-nighters following Kirk's assassination, examining how to use existing anti-terrorism laws for the next fronts in Trump's campaign of aggression on the American left. "For Charlie," the officials would say to one another, as they worked after-hours, plotting the coming blitz, and gaming out scenarios, including likely court challenges to their actions.

Speaking with Vice President J.D. Vance on Kirk's podcast on Sept. 15, days after his death, Miller intoned, "The last message that Charlie sent me … was that we needed to have an organized strategy to go after the left-wing organizations that are promoting violence in this country." He continued, "With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks."

The memos and legal justifications leaned heavily on the infrastructure and the statutes left behind from George W. Bush's Global War on Terror. Trump administration aides and attorneys talked among themselves about how the Kirk slaying made it clear they needed a new "war on terror," in their words, but one launched and branded by Donald J. Trump, and aimed straight at the homegrown domestic enemies of MAGA world. It came at a moment when the administration was already throwing around the "terrorism" label widely as it tried to accomplish its most extreme goals, from blowing up boats of alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean to revving up its militarized deportation operations.

In the earliest moments of Team Trump's rapid-fire drafting process in mid-September 2025, administration officials say, names that kept coming up in the revenge-minded deliberations included: antifa, America's disparate anti-fascist movement; the liberal-donation processor ActBlue; megadonor George Soros; the anti-Trump organizing group Indivisible; a variety of pro-immigration and Know Your Rights organizations; and the anti-war group CodePink, whose activists recently protested Trump at a restaurant. And, of course, administration officials couldn't help themselves from brainstorming new ways to try to target the American trans community.

And yet, several of the president's advisers tell Rolling Stone, something felt off, even to a few of the longtime, hardened denizens of Trump land. There were barely, if any, senior law enforcement personnel who believed that the suspect in the Kirk shooting had acted as part of a terror network or had conspired with any organization of the left. "That was never really on anyone's radar to any serious degree," says one senior administration official. But the rosters that emerged out of the administration of whom, or what, to destroy were little more than a laundry list of nonprofits, liberal institutions, donors, and nonviolent groups that Trump apparatchiks like Miller had wanted to obliterate for years.

"The horrific murder of Charlie Kirk gave someone like Mr. Trump, with all his vindictive pettiness and disregard for the law, the very opening he needed to kick a campaign of legal retribution into high gear," says Bradley Moss, a longtime national-security lawyer whose firm represents people who've been targeted by the second Trump administration. "There arguably is no comparable point in the history of this country - not even when Americans fought each other during the Civil War - when the very constitutional framework has been so close to succumbing to the authoritarian whims of a single official."....>

<....Within a few weeks, the Trump White House had issued an executive order, guidance, and a presidential memorandum targeting antifa and "domestic terrorism" supposedly linked to anti-fascism - or, in reality, activities relating to a variety of left-leaning causes. In Trump's second term, it is now the default position of the federal government that any speech he and his minions do not appreciate can be classified as "pro-terrorism," or material support for it.

The loud crackdown that Trump and his lieutenants began carrying out in the wake of Kirk's death didn't have all that much to do with, well, the death of the founder of the conservative activist group Turning Point USA. The Trump administration wasn't writing new plans so much as ramping up its ongoing blitz to consolidate power, and to silence any and all dissent and scrutiny - from late-night comedians to liberal groups and activists to news outlets. Simply put, Trump and the GOP want scalps piled up - figuratively speaking, they insist - as quickly as possible.

"We need to use our anti-terrorism laws, our RICO statutes, our conspiracy statutes - we need to use every tool in our law enforcement arsenal to crush these left-wing terrorists legally, financially, and politically, and to cut off their funding sources, and throw them in prison," Mike Davis, a conservative attorney close to Trump, tells Rolling Stone. "George Soros, and the octopus of his left-wing organizations, must be investigated. NGOs importing and harboring illegal aliens must be investigated. Nobody is above the law. I'm very excited for these Democrats to face criminal probes for their real crimes.… Justice is coming - and justice is best served cold."

‘The Rule of Law Is Crumbling'

Since retaking power, Trump has worked every day to turn the presidency into a weapon against his enemies. He has tried to censor and silence journalists, activists, comedians, aging rock stars, and law firms. He has sought to jail and deport foreign students for their pro-Palestine speech. He has issued executive orders directing the Justice Department to investigate his political enemies, including one former Trump official who opposed Trump's lies about the 2020 election. He's issued an order calling for people to be prosecuted for burning the flag. He has led an all-out assault on the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the very existence of transgender people.

As part of his mass-deportation campaign, Trump has turned Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents into a masked, unaccountable secret police that kidnaps people off the streets, arrests them at court hearings, and seeks their deportation, including to dangerous countries to which they have no ties. The president has routinely deployed the military to Democratic-led cities to intimidate liberals and support his immigrant roundups. America's democratically elected leader has shaken down Big Tech firms and news outlets to secure donations for his future presidential library. He used the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to install a "bias monitor" at CBS News as a condition of its parent company's merger.

Despite pretending as if he's the anti-"cancel culture" leader of the party of "free speech," Trump very much wants to shut down speech that annoys him. Multiple current and former aides to Trump recount being forced to watch live TV while sitting with him at the White House, on a plane, or elsewhere, and the president melting down in real time at something he heard about himself and declaring that those remarks were "illegal."

It is against this backdrop that Trump, in the wake of Kirk's murder, used the FCC to temporarily force comedian Jimmy Kimmel's ABC late-night show off the air, as part of a wide-ranging, far-right clampdown.

Trump also publicly demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi charge his political enemies with little basis; reportedly urged the Justice Department to investigate the foundations run by Soros, the liberal donor; signed an executive order designating antifa as a domestic terrorist organization; and issued a presidential memorandum directing the federal government to target "domestic terrorism," which has become the president's preferred description for liberal activism.

Speaking at Kirk's memorial, Trump labored to connect his crackdown to Kirk's death. The president claimed that "antifa terrorists," "paid agitators," and protesters had tried to obstruct the murdered podcaster's work. He indicated the Justice Department would investigate the "bad people."

"But law enforcement can only be the beginning of our response to Charlie's murder," Trump said, pointing to "stories of commentators, influencers, and others in our society who greeted his assassination with sick approval, excuses, or even jubilation."....>

<....MAGA activists had been furiously compiling social media posts from liberals and leftists who criticized Kirk after his death - doxing them, contacting their employers, demanding they lose their jobs and livelihoods. Vice President Vance endorsed this campaign while hosting Kirk's podcast. "When you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out, and, hell, call their employer," he said.

When he spoke at Kirk's memorial, Trump was confident he'd secured one of his most coveted scalps - Jimmy Kimmel's - and bragged to the crowd about how liberals were "screaming fascism" over it.

Kimmel's late-night show had been knocked off the air, after conservatives freaked out over comments he made in the wake of Kirk's killing. Amid the right-wing outrage campaign, Trump's FCC chair, Brendan Carr, threatened to revoke broadcasters' licenses if they continued airing Kimmel's show, telling the companies, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way."

In the hours after those words left the Trump's FCC henchman's lips, there was a frantic spree of senior-level emergency meetings held at ABC, parent company Disney, and the broadcasting companies to determine how to handle the situation, contain the level of damage, and avoid Trump's wrath, according to sources close to the situation.

According to network and Disney insiders and other sources with knowledge of the matter, several executives involved with the decision-making admitted behind closed doors that they didn't think Kimmel said anything offensive or wrong. But the people in charge were "pissing themselves all day" about what the Trump administration could do to them and their bottom line, as one ABC insider put it - even though ABC agreed late last year to donate $15 million to Trump's library fund to settle a lawsuit no one expected the president to actually win.

ABC and broadcast giants Sinclair and Nexstar, which are all regulated by Trump's FCC, quickly folded. Kimmel was bumped off the air. Trump's long-desired war on late night was working.

Reflecting on how these companies and others so quickly caved to Trump, Tufts University political science professor Matthew Segal says that "very sophisticated people" appear to be betting that "the rule of law is crumbling," calling it "extremely worrying."

In Kimmel's case, the story didn't end there. Consumers moved to boycott Disney and 1.7 million users reportedly canceled their paid subscriptions to Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN within a week. Celebrities, actors, and filmmakers spoke out against ABC, and Disney's decision to succumb to Trump's war on speech. Within days, ABC restarted Kimmel's show - and Sinclair and Nexstar soon relented, too.

Within the upper ranks of the Trump administration, aides drafted face-saving talking points, according to people involved with writing them, taking the posture that Trump's FCC hadn't actually threatened broadcasters' licenses to get Kimmel off the air - despite this happening on camera. Administration officials knew the companies had received intense pushback, and preferred to minimize the public perception that Trump was trying to impose a far-reaching censorship regime. Vance and Carr towed this line, arguing that the Kimmel show's suspension was nothing more than an independent business decision by ABC, Nexstar, and Sinclair.

Trump, however, couldn't help himself - and quickly lashed out over the news about Kimmel's return. "I can't believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his Show was canceled!" he wrote, issuing vague, new threats. "We're going to test ABC out on this. Let's see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars."

‘They Need to Suffer'

The president may have taken Disney's Kimmel reversal hard - but he's continued to use Kirk's murder to ramp up his attacks on his political enemies and the vulnerable.

Trump recently signed a "national security presidential memorandum" that claimed various liberal viewpoints were "animating … violent conduct." The memo issues a sweeping call for federal prosecutions, while teeing up further attacks on trans people.

"There are common recurrent motivations … uniting this pattern of violent and terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-­described ‘anti-fascism,'" reads the memo. "This ‘anti-fascist' lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties." It continues: "Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-­capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality."...>

<....Trump's directive commands the government to "investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and individuals engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation designed to suppress lawful political activity or obstruct the rule of law."

"At the president's direction, the Trump administration will get to the bottom of this vast network inciting violence in American communities, and the president's executive actions to address left-wing violence will put an end to any illegal activities," White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson tells Rolling Stone.

The proclamations about "domestic terrorism" came amid reports that Trump's administration is seeking to investigate George Soros' donor network.

According to The New York Times, a top Trump official at the Justice Department wants to base the investigation off of a sensationalist report from the conservative Capital Research Center, which claims that Soros' network has "poured over $80 million into groups tied to terrorism or extremist violence." The document uses variations of the word "terror" 405 times; like the Trump administration, it throws this word around as if that makes matters open and shut.

Soros' network, in response, called out Trump's "politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment."

One progressive nonprofit leader tells Rolling Stone they hope organizations ignore Trump's attacks: "Unless there's a legal request, a lawful request, to do something or produce anything, why should we respond?"

Trump and his ilk would like to see criminal charges, trials, and convictions. While some of his advisers concede that these cases may well fail, one benefit to their multi-pronged "war on terror"-style crusade is that the approach could force their enemies to lawyer up, bleed money or lose funding, and crouch in a defensive posture. "Regardless, they need to suffer," says a senior Trump official involved with the planning of the blitz.

The hope, Trump advisers say, is that the pervasive drumbeat of propaganda and fear has a vast, chilling effect - on their political enemies, on major institutions of American liberalism, on left-leaning speech - even if judges end up tossing out many of their cases.

Trump appears to just be getting started with his attacks on his political opponents. He recently demanded on social media that Attorney General Bondi move to quickly charge his enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led the state civil fraud trial against Trump's business empire. Trump specifically demanded the firing of Erik Siebert, Trump's handpicked U.S. attorney in Virginia who declined to charge the New York AG.

When President Trump wrote his directive to "Pam" on Truth Social, demanding the prosecutions, numerous officials in the Justice Department and White House were blindsided, and confused about whether or not the president meant to put that directive on the internet for the whole country to see. The way it was written led several senior Trump administration officials to quickly conclude that he had meant to send Bondi a private message, but had accidentally posted it online, sources with direct knowledge of the situation tell Rolling Stone. Nevertheless, everyone went with it: Trump and his team decided to play it off like the post was meant for public consumption the whole time.

Yet, in an administration stacked to the brim with MAGA sycophants, Trump's decision to axe Siebert and swap in one of his former personal attorneys, Lindsey Halligan, was met not with enthusiasm but with resignation. Bondi, as well as her deputy (another recent Trump lawyer) Todd Blanche, had privately urged Trump and the White House to keep Siebert in place. It didn't matter that he had a solid reputation in conservative legal circles. He wasn't prosecuting or jailing people who pissed off Trump. So, he had to go.

Still, there's something else bothering Team Trump about all of this. In early 2017, legal writer Ben Wittes used the phrase "malevolence tempered by incompetence" to describe the opening salvo of Trump's first administration. Despite the severe damage being inflicted, it is possible that a similar fate will befall Trump's smash-and-grab-style operation to jail his opponents in 2025.

In the days after Trump's post to "Pam" that Saturday, several senior Trump administration officials independently told Rolling Stone that they were worried the president was making it harder for them to succeed. With his likely accidental social media post, Trump had announced to the world his rendition of "show me the man, and I'll show you the crime."...>

<....Multiple Trump appointees privately concede that if they were a defense attorney for any of Trump's targets mentioned in that Truth Social post, the president's own words would be the first thing they'd bring up in court. It is extremely difficult to win a motion to dismiss based on claims of selective or vindictive prosecution by the state. However, as one senior Trump official notes, "It's like the president is holding up a sign saying, ‘This is selective prosecution,' and then asking a judge to read the sign."

Days after her appointment, Halligan got a grand jury to indict Comey, one of Trump's desired targets.

For those who want to fight back against this onslaught, there are tactics that work. "There is a recognized playbook for confronting authoritarianism," says progressive political strategist Anat Shenker-Osorio. "I boil it down to three R's. It's resistance, refusal, and ridicule," she says. Resistance means stuff like marches, protests, social media posts. "Refusal is a higher bar. Refusal is when people just won't do it," Shenker-Osorio says, noting that the Disney boycott qualifies to some extent. "Ridicule is self-explanatory, right?" she continues. "And it's part of the reason why comedians are always in the line of fire - because for the strongman to retain his image, he can't conscience ridicule."

‘Weaponization of the System'

Donald Trump's revanchist approach was always the plan - not because Charlie Kirk was shot, but simply because Trump won reelection late last year.

In early January, not long before Trump was sworn into office for a second time, celebrity lawyer and self-described liberal Alan Dershowitz traveled to Florida to speak at a documentary screening held at the president-elect's luxury resort and home of Mar-a-Lago. Since Trump's first term, the Harvard Law figure and longtime Democrat has been one of Trump's most ardent defenders from what he dubbed "lawfare."

As Dershowitz delivered his remarks to the audience, the attorney noticed that Trump was in attendance, listening to his speech. In that moment, Dershowitz - who broadly agreed with Trump's conspiratorial claims that the Justice Department had been "weaponized" against him and his advisers during the Biden years - felt compelled to directly address Trump, as if to appeal to whatever sense of mercy remained in his heart.

"I said I was opposed to any kind of weaponization of the legal system … and I was hoping the new administration would end any kind of lawfare," Dershowitz tells Rolling Stone. "The proper response to what happened to you, I said, was not to do it to Democrats, it is to not do it to anybody.… Both parties should eschew weaponization."

He says he saw Trump - just days away from reclaiming the powers of the presidency - seeming "to nod in agreement."

Less than a year later, it's clear that Donald Trump did not agree. And the entire country is now paying for it.>

<It is a great challenge to pay sustained attention to any one of the onslaught of moral or legal indignities unfolding in this moment. The failure, however, to continue to talk and think broadly about the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and those who participated in them—a story that has dipped in recent weeks—would be a spectacular national oversight. There is still an opportunity to see this story for what it really is: a decadeslong abdication of institutional and personal responsibility, brought to light by a handful of dedicated journalists and the breathtaking bravery of once isolated, ignored vulnerable women. To think about this solely in terms of which powerful man could be tomorrow’s headline if carefully hidden information and evidence comes to light would be to fail these women altogether. Again.

So far there has been a specific and appalling omission at the heart of the continuing, and at one time relentless, Epstein coverage. It often is wielded as a kind of roving “gotcha” narrative, in which we the public are encouraged to wait with bated breath for the drip-drip-drip revelation of the next big name to be outed as having been connected to Epstein and the one after that—Elon Musk! Peter Thiel! Prince Andrew! Bill Gates! Steve Bannon! Bill Clinton! Peter Mandelson! Alan Dershowitz! It then devolves into a sordid game of whether the man in question visited the island, got the massage, flew on the jet, as if the primary goal here is to pick off offenders until [holds breath] something finally implicates Donald Trump himself.

Everything about this framing is wrong. It disserves the only people who actually matter—the survivors—who have come together to decry the wholesale repeated failures of law enforcement, government, media, and public attention. These survivors expressly do not believe that this whole tragedy was the sole responsibility of a single villain, Jeffrey Epstein. Or even that of only Epstein and his convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who lured hundreds of them in and has been participating in an outrageous dance with the Trump administration in which she gets a platform to spew her self-serving justifications and lies, on top of an immeasurably improved lifestyle—in exchange for what, we do not know. No, the survivors correctly understand that the Epstein-Maxwell ordeal must be viewed through a massive reframing of our legal system’s devastating collective failures when it comes to them: This is not a whodunit so much as a What kind of society are we?>

Et cetera.

<Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was on a brief tour in Portland, Oregon, where she witnessed a small protest outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility on Tuesday. Kristi Noem was stationed atop the roof of the ICE facility, where she saw one of the protestors dressed in a, wait for it…chicken costume. Noem’s visit to Portland was timed after President Donald Trump described the situation as a “war zone.”

MAGA influencer Benny Johnson shared a video from Kristi Noem’s Portland visit on his official X handle. He captioned the video, “BREAKING: DHS Secretary Kristi Noem stares down army of Antifa and a guy in a chicken suit from the rooftop of the ICE facility here in Portland.”

In a segment of the clip, Johnson is seen asking Kristi Noem what she thinks of the man in the chicken suit. To which her response was, “Man in the chicken outfit? I just see him now. Goodness sakes. You can do better.” She called the protesters “uneducated and ill-informed.” Johnson signed off the post with a chicken emoji and wrote, “Noem isn’t chicken.”

The Internet was quick to slam the video. Users on X were having a field day over Benny Johnson’s “Army of Antifa” comment, dropping remarks in the thread like, “Army of Antifa? Where? There’s like 10 people in that video.” The Portland protests have been largely peaceful with people showing up in over-the top costumes.

With a hint of sarcasm, another user added, “They should probably send in the full active-duty marines, right? I see about 10 people down there. Serious threat! Those 10 people might take over the whole building! It will be anarchy.”

Netizens weren’t willing to move past the “Army of Antifa” comment. “Calm down drama queen, that’s like a dozen people, one of them in a chicken suit,” a user wrote, explaining how there were just 10 people in the premises.

The video quickly turned into a meme goldmine of sorts. “An army?!?! Bahahhahahaha! It is like 20 people and a chicken! Lmaooooo! I love MAGA getting raged baited and trolled… And they don’t even know it,” commented a fan. More chicken memes followed.

The chicken suit guy eclipsed the entire thread. Case in point, “The guy in the chicken suit looks threatening. I think we need all our people on this right away. I think more camera crews are needed as well.” Another one added, “Notice the city in flames… a war zone. Threatened by a guy in a chicken suit.”

Memes and trolling notwithstanding, MAGA influencer Benny Johnson went on to post even more clippings from Kristi Noem’s Portland visit and the said “army.” In a separate X post, Johnson wrote, “Thank you Jesse Watters and Fox News for featuring our reporting with Sec. Kristi Noem on the rooftop of Portland’s ICE facility today. She stood at the edge and stared down Antifa and a dude in a chicken suit. Straight savage.”

Amid the ongoing ICE protests in Portland, Donald Trump announced that he would be deploying the National Guard to the area to minimize “domestic terrorists.” The protests in Portland gained momentum post the arrest of conservative influencer Nick Sortor, allegedly for disorderly conduct.

Kristi Noem, in a recent interview with Fox News, debriefed her meeting with the Mayor of Portland and said, “What I told him is that if he did not follow through on some of these security measures for our officers… we’re going to send 4x the amount of federal officers here so that the people of Portland could have some safety.”

According to the Portland Police, over the weekend, two protestors were arrested for blocking traffic. “Most people moved to the sidewalk, but two individuals refused to move despite repeated requests. They were also observed engaging in aggressive behavior toward each other in the street, both using sound amplification devices. Officers on RRT moved in and arrested two men,” read the statement from the Portland Police.>

<animal killer> is so brave. (rolls eyes)

<Democratic voting rights groups are preparing for a nightmare scenario if the Supreme Court guts a key part of the landmark civil rights-era legislation, the Voting Rights Act — a very real possibility this term.

Ahead of the court’s Oct. 15 rehearing of Louisiana v. Callais — a case that has major implications for the VRA — two voting rights groups are sounding the alarm, warning that eliminating Section 2, a provision that prohibits racial gerrymandering when it dilutes minority voting power, would let Republicans redraw up to 19 House seats to favor the party and crush minority representation in Congress.

That calculation, made in a new report from Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter Fund shared exclusively with POLITICO, would all but guarantee Republican control of Congress.

While a ruling in time for next year’s midterms is unlikely, the organizations behind the report said that it’s not out of the question. Taken together, the groups identified 27 total seats that Republicans could redistrict in their favor ahead of the midterms — 19 of which stem from Section 2 being overturned.

Doing so would “clear the path for a one-party system where power serves the powerful and silences the people,” Black Voters Matter Fund co-founder LaTosha Brown said in a statement.

Without Section 2, up to 30 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus and 11 percent of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus could be drawn out of their seats, according to the report.

Republicans have long sought to dismantle this portion of the VRA, which generally prohibits race-based discrimination in voting laws and practices, arguing that it gives Democrats a partisan advantage. The Supreme Court has previously rebuffed these arguments, but voting rights advocates are worried the Louisiana case will change that.

Democrats could also find ways to use any changes to the VRA to their benefit. The party could redraw maps in heavily-blue areas with VRA protections to try and expand their margins, but there will be fewer opportunities.

In redistricting, the law is used to protect against racial gerrymandering that would dilute the voting power of racial and ethnic minority voters. States across the country routinely seek to comply with the law by drawing congressional districts where minority voters can elect their chosen candidates.

Many election lawyers expect a narrowing of the VRA, which could lead to sweeping changes to congressional delegations in the south. Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi could have all of their Democratic members ousted. Louisiana, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas and Florida would likely each retain at least one Democratic member, but their delegations would get smaller, according to the report.

The report comes as Republicans have embarked on a nationwide map shuffle ahead of the midterms, a move that’s being pushed aggressively by the White House and could help the GOP cling to its narrow majority. The mid-cycle redraws — which are unusual but not unprecedented — have already led to six more GOP-favored seats across two states.

Other Republican-controlled states are poised to jump into the redistricting race, a number that would surely swell if the VRA’s protections are eliminated.

That prospect has left the groups who put out the report calling for Democrats to have an “aggressive and immediate” response to Republican redistricting efforts that are already underway.

Fair Fight Action CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo said in a statement that further tattering the VRA will do “permanent” damage. “The only way to stop it is to play offense — aggressively redraw maps wherever possible, focus relentlessly on taking back Congress, and be ready to use that power to pass real pro-democracy legislation and hold this corrupted Court accountable,” she said.>

<At one point during the White House’s “antifa roundtable,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made comments she treated as important. “One of the individuals we arrested recently in Portland was the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa,” the secretary boasted, “and we’re hoping as we go after her and prosecute her, we’ll get more and more information about the network.”

For those who watch crime shows on television, the strategy probably sounds familiar: Law enforcement arrests one low-level person, who’s pressured to identify others, as prosecutors work their way up the hierarchy of a larger criminal enterprise.

But while Noem talked about the arrest of an unnamed woman and the administration’s desire to “get more and more information” about the antifa network, the secretary failed to acknowledge one nagging detail: There is no network.

Antifa (to the extent that it exists) is made up of loosely affiliated anti-fascist activists. There is no budget. There is no membership list. There are no offices or headquarters. There are no staffers, leaders or board members. There is no hierarchy for prosecutors to pursue.

And yet, just two weeks after Donald Trump signed a ridiculous executive order designating antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization” (notwithstanding its lack of organization), the president held a roundtable discussion at the White House, which included several Cabinet members, devoted to a far-left entity that hardly exists in any meaningful way.

As the event unfolded, Noem also equated antifa with ISIS, Hezbollah and Hamas, which was every bit as odd as it sounded, given that those radical groups are actually in operation abroad.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the administration intended to “take the same approach” to antifa as it did with foreign drug cartels — an unsettling vow in light of a series of deadly military strikes against civilian boats in international waters that Trump has ordered as part of a formal “armed conflict.”

But to fully appreciate just how weird this White House conversation was, consider that Noem also took the opportunity to accuse four Democratic officials — Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson — of “covering up” terrorism. NBC News reported:

‘I was in Portland yesterday and had the chance to visit with the governor of Oregon and also the mayor there in town, and they are absolutely covering up the terrorism that is hitting their streets,’ Noem said during a roundtable about antifa that Trump held at the White House this afternoon. ‘These leaders in these local cities, along with Pritzker and Johnson, ignore what’s going on, or, sir, they’re helping antifa cover it up,’ she added.

Ah, I see. So antifa is committing acts of terrorism, but people don’t know that, because Democratic governors and mayors are somehow in league with the criminals, “covering up” the anti-fascist activists’ violent misdeeds.

Ordinarily, when politicians orchestrate a cover-up, they do so to keep private misconduct hidden. But in this case, according to the former congresswoman and former governor who’s currently leading the Department of Homeland Security, governors and mayors are covering up terrorism.

Why would they do this? How would they do this? Noem didn’t say, and Trump didn’t ask.>