<Maybe I’ve had this all wrong, my friends …

Maybe if, instead of wondering if our country will survive the next three-plus years, this question should be asked instead: Will the grotesque and failing Donald Trump survive that long?

Here’s where I dutifully remind everybody, after first reminding myself, that it has been only 147 days since this repellent, racist degenerate placed his right hand in the vicinity of a Bible and was sworn in a second time, to finish off what he started in 2017.

147 DAYS.

My God, entire decades have felt shorter.

Trump has surrounded himself with a cabinet that is right out of the bowels of Rupert Murdoch after an all-you-can-eat offering of chicken-salmonella on the barbie.

Hegseth, Noem, Kennedy, Loeffler, Bondi, McMahon, Gabbard, Duffy …

Every single one of these clowns got their jobs, not because of any stellar qualifications or abiding allegiance to our country, but because of their appalling capacity to bow over and over again to their huffing and puffing ringmaster.

So while they have been bringing back measles, making air travel a literal death-defying high-flying act, texting top-secret information to our enemies, and defending the indefensible in court, their dear leader has been shuffling his fat little feet and backing himself into a corner.

He thought it would be easier to knock Americans into submission, and after watching us collectively punch ourselves in the face for the second time in eight years in November, I almost can’t blame him. It takes a lot of unmitigated gall to vote for a racist, America-attacking convicted felon who hasn’t told the truth since his parents locked him in a military school because they couldn’t stand the sight of him.

No country has done more truly wonderful things — “we must take that beach no matter what!” — and truly horrible things — “there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” — than the United States of America.

Except, having successfully cornered himself, the ignorant fascist is finding out in record time that his options are actually limited.

I’ve repeatedly warned since the first days of this mess of a presidency that it was only a matter of time before Trump used our military for him and against us, but I have to admit I am surprised how quickly he played this toxic card.

Trump was dealt a precarious hand by an unbalanced American electorate that needed to be finessed, but decided to play it like he held a mandate. He got sloppy because we are finding out he’s old and tired, and wants nothing to do with the job.

He knows he’s losing, and now must publicly carry out his four-year sentence.

He’s losing in the court of public opinion where his negative approvals have already shattered records.

He’s losing on the economy, which was somehow a strong point for him. (And this historic misnomer really needs to be addressed because Republican administrations are provably horrible for the economy, yet grade out better than Democrats who restore them.)

He’s losing on immigration, because most Americans don’t like seeing families senselessly ripped apart like some 1930s Nazi Germany redo.

He’s losing independent voters in droves because there is finally an understanding that his “Big Beautiful Bill” will pad billionaires’ pockets while hurting millions in his cult, who might snap out of their trance when they can no longer afford the things that cure what ails them.

He’s losing everywhere, because damn if he isn’t being absolutely annihilated and mocked by anybody who isn’t a full-throated fascist on the world stage.

He harrumphed out of the G7 meetings because he can no longer even pretend to be a valuable contributor. He needs his naps, and a regular diaper change.

He is using a putty knife these days to cake on the brownish-orange mud to his hideous gray-white face in an effort to become a more distinctive person of color....>

<....There’s a real irony there that I’ll point out with both index fingers, while letting my middle ones signal my absolute contempt for this vulgar, America-attacking loser.

Following one of the most consequential weeks in America history, which saw Trump host a MAGA rally on a U.S. Army base and grift off our soldiers; No Kings rallies that were attended by millions of Americans in literally every corner of our country; when two lawmakers and their families were brutally attacked in their homes by a member of Trump’s cult; and a military parade to celebrate his birthday was somehow even more pathetic and sad than most of us thought it would be … Trump is on the losing end of a poorly played hand, and I promise you is looking for an opportunity to cash out.

He’s 79 going on 100, is hated by most of the world, and now must spend what little time he has left on Earth trapped in a tiny, miserable world of his making.

That’s quite a legacy.

I’m not completely counting him out yet, because of his unique capacity to hate. It’s all he has left. Everything he continues to do will be for him first and America second — if it at all.

In that regard, he’s never been more dangerous.

While I’ve admittedly had my doubts about what, if anything, would drive Americans into the streets to rise up against this madman, they have mostly been extinguished following Saturday’s marches.

I am more confident as I type this piece today than I was on Friday night that Americans are capable of meeting this moment. I am more confident than ever that people, not parties, will save our democracy.

We have seen this before in this tumultuous country when truly heroic people sacrificed life and limb on the battlefields, and fought with all their hearts in our streets and in our courts in the never-ending quest for equal rights.

The battle has once again been joined.

We are but 147 days into a hateful regime that is scheduled to go 1,461. We are roughly a tenth of the way towards its bitter end.

There is no way the low-energy, miserable Trump makes it.

NO.

WAY.

I say we pour it on, and finish him off.>

<Kilmar Abrego Garcia – the man mistakenly deported to a Salvadoran prison then brought back to the US only to face a criminal human smuggling indictment – has been held out by the Trump administration as an example of the danger of having undocumented immigrants in the US.

Yet amid the political, diplomatic and court standoff, parts of the Justice Department’s criminal case against Abrego Garcia appears to be so tenuous that a federal magistrate judge in Tennessee strongly questioned whether keeping him locked up pending trial is merited.

Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty to transporting other undocumented people from Texas to Maryland in an SUV in 2022 and taking part in a smuggling conspiracy.

During a six-hour hearing last week, prosecutors road tested their portrait of a crime-ring-connected, cold-blooded man who state troopers stumbled upon in a 2022 traffic stop. They presented evidence and witness testimony from a Homeland Security special agent, but the defense team was able to raise major doubts regarding its accuracy and authenticity with the judge.

Acting US Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Robert McGuire argued that Abrego Garcia may be a danger to the community because a 15-year-old minor allegedly in the SUV might not have been wearing a seatbelt when being driven from Texas to Maryland. The prosecutor also pointed to years old complaints of domestic violence by Abrego Garcia’s wife.

“The federal government wants to make a statement, that it is serious about immigration violations and also wants to overcome the embarrassment associated with shipping (Abrego Garcia) out of the country and having to bring him back,” said Chris Slobogin, a criminal justice law professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Prosecutors have also asserted that Abrego Garcia could flee while awaiting a trial, citing his notoriety, which came about after he was deported in March.

Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes called that an “academic discussion” at the hearing, because Abrego Garcia is likely to remain in immigration custody for the foreseeable future no matter what happens in the criminal case.

The direct questioning and cross-examination in the hearing, however, gave Abrego Garcia’s defense team and the judge plenty of opportunities to raise doubts about how solid the evidence against him may be.

“A grand jury did indict based on evidence, but it seems the defense has identified some potentially productive grounds for cross-examination,” said CNN legal analyst Elie Honig.

The evidence included a video of the traffic stop and police body camera footage from when Abrego Garcia was pulled over in November 2022 for speeding on an interstate in an SUV. Nine other men, without identification or luggage, were in the vehicle.

No charges were brought for years after the traffic stop – not until Abrego Garcia had become a political football in the Trump administration’s use of a prison for terrorists in El Salvador to take undocumented immigrants apprehended in the US. Since then, federal authorities have gathered additional evidence from the state troopers and others, and even now say they continue to investigate.

Information from investigators showed the SUV Abrego Garcia had driven belonged to a person previously convicted of smuggling, and that it was unlikely he was coming from St. Louis when stopped, which is what he told troopers.

Here’s the other key evidence in the case:

List of names and birthdays of people in the SUV

The troopers had asked the passengers in the vehicle to each write down their names, their dates of birth and potentially their residences.

The prosecutor called this “functionally the roster of passengers as they wrote themselves.” One of the passengers self-identified his birthday as being in 2007, making him 15 at the time of the traffic stop.

Both Holmes and the defense questioned the validity of that date, and others. Undocumented immigrants in the US may not be willing to disclose their true names and birth dates when asked by law enforcement in a traffic stop, defense Attorney William Allensworth argued.

Allensworth also told the judge that undocumented adults in the US may be motivated to say they are underage, given the protections given under deferred action policies for children brought to the US illegally. Holmes also noted there was no other evidence in court that signaled the alleged 15-year-old looked young, like a child.

“The defense has suggested maybe (the alleged 15-year old) was lying about his age for reasons known only to God,” McGuire responded. “If the 15-year-old logically was the last person to receive a piece of paper to write his name on it, he would be sitting in the back. Your honor, there would not be seatbelts.”....>

<....But the judge pressed him: “What evidence do I have of that?”

“It’s walking-around sense,” McGuire said.

“I would bet everybody in this courthouse an ice cold beer that there were not seatbelts in that back row,” he added.

Investigators also say one state trooper at the traffic stop said he took photographs of passports some of the men had, with no stamps from US ports of entry in them. But Peter Joseph, the special agent who testified Friday, said the federal investigators could not find and do not have those photographs.

Use of cooperating witnesses

The credentials of the people providing information about Abrego Garcia aren’t unimpeachable – and in this investigation, they’re seizing upon an opportunity to provide information that could help them immensely in their own legal issues, defense attorneys pointed out.

One cooperator, the court proceedings confirmed, is a two-time felon who had been deported from the US five times, only to return illegally, yet is now attempting to stay in the US and get work authorization. That cooperator is currently finishing a criminal sentence in a halfway house.

Another cooperator has admitted to human trafficking and already been deported once, yet now is in custody and criminally charged after reentering the US.

The two male cooperators are close relatives. A female cooperator, also seeking leniency in her own immigration proceedings, was in a relationship with one of those men.

Some of the cooperating witnesses’ risk of deportation and conviction appeared to be much more severe than Abrego Garcia’s, his defense attorneys argued, an insinuation that they may be more motivated to lie to help the DOJ’s case.

Abrego Garcia’s defense also incisively questioned what the cooperators told investigators.

The two male cooperators alleged that Abrego Garcia was making the drive from Texas to Maryland multiple times a week. Sometimes, his wife and children were with him, with the kids potentially sitting on the floorboards.

“You ever been on a road trip with your children?” Allensworth, the public defender, asked Joseph.

“They get a little antsy,” the special agent responded.

“You ever did (24 hours) … and made them sit on the floor when they’re in a packed van with other men?” Allensworth asked. According to the cooperators, in one week, “after 144 hours on the road, he’d finally stop driving with his children sitting on the floorboards.”

Several times during the hearing, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys objected to the use of hearsay – or even multiple tiers of hearsay, they said – as evidence in court. Examples of this during the hearing included when the federal agent, on the witness stand, told the judge he had heard that a cooperator had heard from another person Abrego Garcia may have sexually harassed women.

The allegation of Abrego Garcia being linked to MS-13 had similarly come to federal authorities through a chain of sources, the hearing revealed.

The danger allegation

At one point in the hearing, McGuire tried to point, as validity of the dangerousness of human smuggling, to a wreck in Mexico during an operation that killed many people.

The judge clarified from the bench that Abrego Garcia wasn’t involved in that incident.

“It is of marginal relevance of what may have happened in some other kind of similar organization of which Mr. Abrego Garcia may be a part,” she said.

Some legal experts, such as Honig, say that Abrego Garcia’s smuggling case itself is the type that wouldn’t have gotten much notice at all, let alone a televised press conference from Attorney General Pam Bondi announcing the indictment.

“Bondi stood behind that podium, flanked by her top Justice Department lieutenants, and yelled into the mic for one reason: politics,” Honig wrote in a recent New York Magazine article.

Indeed, both Bondi and McGuire have emphasized how dangerous they believe men like Abrego Garcia may be, and their interest in keeping them off the streets.

“There were children involved in that, you know, human trafficking, not only in our country but in our world is very, very real. It’s very dangerous,” Bondi said at the press conference announcing the indictment.

She then noted how, in unrelated cases, MS-13 may bring children to the US to groom them to become gang members.

“My job is to try to protect this community,” McGuire said at the court hearing. When pressed by the judge repeatedly, though, on whether he had evidence to show in recent months that Abrego Garcia may be dangerous, he responded that he was relying more on his common sense, a lack of evidence showing the opposite, and his belief.>

<Four and one-half years after losing to Joe Biden — and five months into his second presidency — Donald Trump is calling for a special counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), now headed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, to investigate the 2020 election. Some hardcore MAGA conspiracy theorists are applauding the proposal, yet many others on the both the left and the right are lambasting Trump for clinging to a conspiracy theory that was repeatedly debunked during the final months of his first presidency.

One of those critics is Steve Benen, an MSNBC columnist known for producing "The Rachel Maddow Show." In his June 20 column, Benen lays out some reasons why Trump himself could be hurt by his push for a 2020 election probe at DOJ in 2025.

In a June 20 post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote, "Zero Border crossings for the month for TRUMP, verses 60,000 for Sleepy, Crooked Joe Biden, a man who lost the 2020 Presidential Election by a 'LANDSLIDE!' Biden was grossly incompetent, and the 2020 election was a total FRAUD! The evidence is MASSIVE and OVERWHELMING. A Special Prosecutor must be appointed. This cannot be allowed to happen again in the United States of America! Let the work begin! What this Crooked man, and his CORRUPT CRONIES, have done to our Country in 4 years, is grossly indescribable! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

But according to Benen, Trump won't be doing himself any favor if Bondi-era DOJ moves forward with Trump's proposal.

"Look, there's little value in me writing a few hundred words to explain that Trump lost fair square and the 'overwhelming' evidence doesn’t exist," Benen argues. "Let's just stipulate that all fair-minded observers already know this. Instead, I'm going to note that Trump should be careful what he wishes for…. I mention this because Trump has already initiated investigations into his 2020 defeat."

Benen continues, "These investigators were motivated to tell their client exactly what he wanted to hear, but they simply couldn't provide Trump with proof that didn't exist. The same is true of state-based audits, which confirmed that the actual election results from that race were accurate. Now, the president is effectively saying that yet another investigation is necessary, since the original investigations, including the ones he paid for, were apparently too reality-based for him. What's more, the Justice Department is in the hands of shameless Trump loyalists who might very well find some far-right partisan willing to take on the duties of a special counsel."

Benen's column and Trump's special counsel proposal are receiving a lot of reactions on X, formerly Twitter.

Ohio-based Democrat Rick Taylor tweeted, "Now Trump is calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the 2020 election Watch as they make false allegations and rewrite history right in front of our faces AND NOT ONE PERSON IN POWER WILL DO A DAMNED THING ABOUT IT Just like he changed the narratives for 2016 and 1/6."

X User Pete Masalsky lamented, "The sad thing is that he has his idiot flunkies everywhere and you know they're going to appoint a MAGA special prosecutor."

Attorney Paul Feinstein posted, "Didn't he claim in his criminal cases that special prosecutors weren't legal?"

X user Stefan Bethlenfalvay posted, "As Trump floats special prosecutor on 2020, he should be careful what he wishes for. 'The president has already initiated investigations into his failed 2020 candidacy. Now he wants a special counsel to tell him what he wants to hear.'"

Another X user, Charlotte Curtis, wrote, "He can lie all he wants but he can't change what we saw on January 6th, a traitorous act that he should have been imprisoned for immediately.">

<With respect to the GOP’s budget bill – the one they habitually call big and beautiful – there are a few things worth bearing in mind, because they are always true when it comes to the Republicans and money.

・They always say tax cuts pay for themselves. They don’t.

・They always say they care about debt and deficits. They don’t.

・They always say they care about budgets in general. They don’t.

・They always say they are cutting taxes for everyone. Not really.

Again these are always true. These are the baseline of all discussion of budgets and taxation under Republican administrations. And because these are always true, the real story is how the Republicans are going to rationalize doing what they want to do without revealing the truth.

But there’s more going on than merely lying in order for the very obscenely rich to get away without paying their fair share.

The Republicans are going to steal.

This is not an exaggeration. The Republicans are going to take money from you – in the form of cash and benefits – and give it to someone who did not truly earn that money, and who is not truly deserving of it, since they already have as much as any human being will ever need.

If the Democrats were in charge, and they wanted to take some money from the rich and give it to people for groceries (SNAP, otherwise known as food stamps), we know what the Republicans would call it.

Welfare.

But that word is missing this time, because “welfare” is never applied to the very obscenely rich. It’s is only applied to the “undeserving,” which is to say, nonwhite people, who are the subject of bigotry by white people, which is why those same white people never believe they are on welfare even when they are on welfare, and why they never believe the Republicans would ever take their welfare away. That “wouldn’t make sense,” because they are deserving, after all.

When put like this, it should be clear that so much of the discussion about the Republican budget bill is not about money at all, which is why they can get away with this dog-and-pony show. And that’s why it’s so important to bear the above truths in mind. They don’t have any higher-order principles, unless they include greed and power-lust, so the real story is what the Republicans will say to cover all that up.

When the Democrats help people, the Republicans call it welfare.

When the Republicans help the rich, they call it a tax cut.

In reality, it’s theft, up and down.

If either the Senate version or the House version of the GOP’s budget bill becomes law, it will be “the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in US history,” according to Bobby Kogan. “Either bill would be the largest Medicaid cuts in history. Either bill would be the largest SNAP cuts in history. Either bill would do so while pushing huge tax cuts that disproportionately go to the richest.”

Bobby is the senior director of Federal Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress. “Theft” isn’t his word. It’s mine. But that’s what I think he’s describing. The Republicans are trying to reshape our society so that those with the least get the least and those with the most get the most. And they are going to do that by doing what they accuse the Democrats of doing: giving welfare to the undeserving.

The CBO released its assessment of the Republicans' budget bill. If passed, it would add trillions to the debt through tax cuts mostly to the very obscenely rich. Can we just say for everyone that they don't really care about the debt or even the concept of budgeting?

What must be true is that Congressional Republicans supporting this bill care more about tax cuts than they do about deficits. They might care about deficits in the abstract, but when push comes to shove, and they’re faced with a choice between enacting tax cuts or having lower deficits, they choose tax cuts time and again.

Regarding your question about the concept of budgeting, what the Senate is looking at doing is so extreme it would be the end of what little was left of budget enforcement. They’re asserting they have the power to invent their own cost estimates on the spot via section 312 of the Congressional Budget Act. If you just get to make up your own numbers, we may as well repeal the entire Congressional Budget Act.

That would be in keeping with their long history of makebelieve. They have been asserting for decades that tax cuts drive revenues when they don't. The rich keep their money. Yet this lie never dies....>

<....Even George HW Bush called it "voodoo economics". The truth is that every single even remotely credible group that looked at it said the tax cuts don’t pay for themselves. Even the House Republicans’ insane growth estimates still don’t think it’ll pay for itself. They gave themselves a dynamic score of $2.6 trillion, a total joke. But even that doesn’t get you close to paying for itself. They’re such debt warrior cosplayers they’re stuck pretending their stuff pays for itself. It would be more honest to just say “hey, I lowered taxes because we wanted to.” That’s what George W. Bush did. He said he was giving a tax cut to get rid of the surplus. But these folks just lie. They lie about what their tax cuts are doing. They lie about what their Medicaid cuts are doing.

As I was reading the AP report on the CBO’s analysis, I thought to myself: I have been paying about the same amount of taxes on my income for years. Despite all the tax cuts over that time, my tax bill hasn't budged much. What does this one do for normal people, which is to say, households that earn less than, I dunno, 150 grand a year?

If you give me a few minutes and you’d like, I can crunch the numbers.

Take your time.

OK, it’s about $1325 on average for households making under 200,000, and about $725 on average for households making under $100,000

So the Republican use of the word "massive" doesn't apply.

Massive tax cuts for typical Americans? No. These are massive tax cuts if you’re rich. These are $14 a week if you’re making under $100,000.. And once you take into account tariffs, many, many people are worse off. And when you take into account Medicaid and SNAP cuts, the poorest Americans are significantly worse off, while the richest Americans are significantly better off.

Hold on a sec: The very richest are going to save on average $300,000? I'm sorry but that doesn't seem like a lot when you're bringing home tens of millions, hundreds of millions. I guess my question is about psychology. What's the point of this exercise?

The largest cuts to the richest American came in the first round of the Trump tax cuts – and those were made permanent. The large corporate tax cuts were made permanent, while the provisions that affect individuals were made temporary. And it was those corporate tax cuts that really benefited the very, very richest Americans.

So this is $300,000 on top of that.

But I would also say that, even adjusting for income size, the richest Americans still get the largest boost to their after-tax income than regular Americans.

It used to be seen as responsible statecraft to raise revenues in order to balance budgets. The last president to achieve that was Clinton. The last Republican president to raise taxes was GHW Bush. Today, no one talks about responsible budgeting, not even the Democrats. This can't go on, right?

I think we have a problem of Republican presidents beginning temporary tax cuts and Democratic presidents being unwilling to let most of them expire. And that leads us to a significant revenue hole.

But I would say that both Obama and Biden raised taxes, on net, for the richest Americans. But yes, our fiscal trajectory is not good, and it’s a product of expensive tax cuts that disproportionately went to the rich.

In the House-passed bill, on average, the bottom 30 percent of the country end up poorer. When you take into account the effect of Trump’s tariffs, the bottom 80 percent end up poorer.

Their proposal would quite literally make those struggling to get by worse off while making the richest Americans richer. It isn’t some shared sacrifice where everyone has to tighten their belts to work on the deficit. Instead, it’s making working-class people tighten their belts so the richest can loosen theirs.

One other thing: now that we’ve seen both the Senate and House versions, we can safely say that either, if enacted, would be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in US history. Either would be the largest Medicaid cuts in history. Either would be the largest SNAP cuts in history. Either would do so while pushing huge tax cuts that disproportionately go to the richest.

Either would dramatically harm the poor while helping the rich.>

<Then-Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman was 32 when, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, she voted in 1974 for three articles of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon. She spent the next few years as part of a Congress that passed wave after wave of laws to rein in future presidents.

A half-century later, Holtzman, a New York Democrat, is watching as President Donald Trump takes aim at post-Watergate reforms on transparency, spending, conflicts of interest and more. By challenging and disregarding, in letter or in spirit, this slew of 1970s laws, Trump is essentially closing the 50-year post-Watergate chapter of American history — and ushering in a new era of shaky guardrails and blurred separation of powers.

“We didn’t envision this,” Holtzman said. “We saw Nixon doing it, but he hadn’t done it on this vast a scale. Trump is saying, ‘Congress cannot tell me what to do about anything.’”

In 1976, for example, Congress created a 10-year term for FBI directors; Trump has forced out two FBI directors. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 aimed to prevent presidents from dismantling agencies; Trump has essentially done just that. Lawmakers in 1978 installed independent inspectors general in government offices; Trump has fired many of them and is seeking to replace them with loyalists.

Trump has also disregarded post-Watergate safeguards intended to prevent the unjustified firings of federal workers. His U.S. DOGE Service has skirted rules on government secrecy and personal data. He has declared numerous emergencies despite Congress’s efforts to rein them in.

This broad rejection of the post-Watergate laws underlines the country’s shift from an era focused on clean government and strict ethics to the rise of a president whose appeal stems in part from his willingness to violate such rules and constraints.

“There has been a collapse, at least temporarily, of the kind of outrage and ethical standards that were prevalent during the days of Watergate,” said Richard Ben-Veniste, who headed the special counsel’s Watergate Task Force. “The excesses of Watergate now seem naive. They have been overtaken by a system that is based on quid pro quo.”

Many of Trump’s moves face legal challenges, and they may be reversed by the courts — or the Supreme Court could enshrine them. Some scholars welcome Trump’s effort to claw back presidential power, saying the post-Watergate Congresses, caught up in an anti-Nixon fervor, improperly sought to rewrite the Constitution in the legislative branch’s favor.

“Congress should not be able to fundamentally change the constitutional balance between the two branches,” said John Yoo, a senior Justice Department official under President George W. Bush, referring to the legislative and executive. “Several of the Watergate reforms went too far. The presidency functioned better, and the separation of powers functioned better, before.”

White House spokesman Harrison Fields said Trump is not dismantling ethics but reviving them in a system that had become corrupted.

“President Trump is restoring the integrity of the Executive Branch following four years of relentless abuse through weaponization, lawfare, and unelected bureaucrats running the nation via autopen,” Harrison said in a statement. “The President and his administration are the most transparent in American history, seamlessly executing the will of the American people in accordance with their constitutional authority.”

Nixon’s resignation on Aug. 9, 1974, was a seismic political event, as Americans at the time were far less hardened to scandal and more willing to denounce wrongdoing by their party’s leaders. In November of that year, Democrats swept to historic majorities in Congress, carried on a wave of pro-reform sentiment.

They crafted restraints on presidential authority that had not occurred to anyone before Nixon’s startling use of government power against his adversaries. Nixon’s team had broken into Democratic headquarters, spied on domestic targets, secretly taped White House visitors, misused campaign funds and even developed an “enemies list” with a plan to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies,” as White House counsel John Dean put it.

Presidents of both parties have chafed at those restrictions but largely followed them. Until now.

Some Democrats say Trump, by disregarding many of the statutes, is going further than Nixon, who at least paid lip service to his obligation to follow the law.

“Nixon was essentially a criminal, but an ordinary criminal who accepted the fact that the laws applied to him and that if he tried to violate them he would be subject to punishment,” said David Dorsen, an assistant chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee. “Trump considers himself above the law, so that the system is to be rejected by him when he feels like it should be.”...>

Save one:

<....It is far from clear that Trump is seeking to eviscerate the Watergate laws specifically. He has always taken an expansive view of his own power, and that has set up a natural collision with the rules written by lawmakers trying to rein in what they saw as rogue presidents.

That collision is unfolding on numerous fronts. Watergate-era lawmakers, furious at Nixon for refusing to spend money they had authorized, passed a law forbidding “impoundment.” Trump ignored that when he temporarily froze government grants, and he has all but dismantled an agency created by Congress, the U.S. Agency for International Development.

In response to Nixon’s push to replace civil servants with political loyalists, Congress created the Merit Systems Protection Board in 1978 to hear cases of federal employees claiming unjust termination. Trump, who wants to force out thousands of workers, has dismissed a key member of the board and sought to neutralize it.

Among the most notable post-Watergate reforms was the creation in 1978 of inspector general offices to pursue wrongdoing throughout the government. The law has been bolstered repeatedly since then and number of IGs has expanded to more than 70, with some Republican lawmakers among their strongest supporters.

Trump fired 16 inspectors general shortly after taking office, in apparent violation of the law that requires 30 days’ notice and a detailed rationale for such dismissals. Previous presidents, including Ronald Reagan, have also sought to fire IGs, but not in such a sweeping, peremptory manner.

For many of Trump’s critics, his rejection of the post-Watergate worldview goes beyond individual laws to a broader disregard of the principle that a president should not use the federal government to advance his personal interests.

When Trump dines with people who enriched his family by buying his meme coin, or rewards his top campaign donor with a powerful federal job, they say, he is obliterating the red line drawn after Watergate.

“The background was a president who, on every front that you looked, was engaged in an abuse of power,” Holtzman said of the Watergate reforms. But now, she added, “You have Elon Musk, who can spend almost $300 million to elect a president — when we passed a law specifically to limit expenditures because of the abuses we saw in Watergate.”

The courts are weighing almost all of Trump’s moves; he has won some victories, and legal experts say it is likely the Supreme Court will approve at least some of what he is doing. The judiciary has become far more supportive of presidential power in the years since Watergate.

Yoo said it is notable that Trump is insisting on his right to fire any executive branch employee, including those Congress sought to shield with specified terms. “If he succeeds in that, it would end the Watergate experiment in creating these independent bureaucracies,” said Yoo, who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley.

“On issue after issue, he has either taken these Watergate laws and interpreted them way beyond what the Congress originally wanted or just directly challenged their constitutionality, and you’re seeing them go up to the Supreme Court right now,” Yoo said.

Still, it was clear long before Trump that some of the most far-reaching Watergate reforms were floundering. The courts struck down several campaign finance rules, for example, saying they violated the First Amendment....>

<....In 1999, Congress chose not to renew its independent counsel law, which was a response to Nixon’s notorious “Saturday Night Massacre.” After Nixon fired Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox — along with Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy — Congress decreed that a three-judge panel would appoint such prosecutors in the future.

But the system proved unwieldy. The Clinton administration alone faced seven independent counsel probes, many lasting for years or focused on minor allegations. By 1999, lawmakers of both parties were happy to let the statute expire and return to a system of special counsels appointed by the attorney general.

The political culture has clearly shifted in dramatic ways since the late 1970s. Holtzman said her colleagues had hoped the threat of impeachment, which ultimately forced Nixon to resign, would deter future presidents if the new laws did not.

Since then, President Bill Clinton was impeached once and Trump twice. But all three Senate trials resulted in acquittal largely along party lines. And Trump’s impeachment did not prevent him from retaking the White House in decisive fashion last year.

“Naively, we thought the impeachment itself would stand as a warning to future presidents, and it hasn’t,” Holtzman said.

Rufus Edmisten, who was a deputy chief counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee, said Congress’s willingness to assert itself in a bipartisan way has all but evaporated since the hot day in the summer of 1973 when he delivered a congressional subpoena to a sitting president.

“We’re right back to another Watergate, except worse,” Edmisten said. “Having been in the middle of all kinds of things for 10 years, especially Watergate, I cringe when I think how Congress has become a lapdog. It’s taken a back seat in the separation of powers order of things. It’s almost an afterthought.”>

<The last thing I thought before I fell asleep last night was, “We are at war.” The first thing I thought when I woke up this morning was, “We are at war.” I didn’t distance myself from it because there are some acts nations take for which we all will bear the burden of collective responsibility no matter how vehemently individual citizens might disagree with them.

As a country, we are at war and the man who led us into this war is a corrupt, degraded, ignorant know-nothing who acted illegally to plunge us into a potentially catastrophic situation without the consent of Congress because, despite the fact that he is president of the United States of America and arguably the most recognized figure on the planet, he wasn’t getting enough attention.

It is long past time that we stop imputing some deeper or reasonable motives to Donald Trump. Despite being depraved and cruel, much like his cohort Benjamin Netanyahu, he is driven by the most primitive impulses that center almost solely around protecting his fragile ego from humiliation (about which he has a pathological terror) and himself from the reality that he is a complete fraud.

Donald is still no doubt stinging from the acronym recently coined to mock his inability to follow through on anything—TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out. In the wake of Israeli strikes against Iran, Donald spent a few days saber-rattling only to back off (chicken out, if you will) in the wake of searing criticism by some of the most reliably sycophantic members of his cult—e.g. Rep. Marjorie Green (R-GA), Alex Jones, and Steve Bannon). He announced at a bizarre press conference that his decision to address the ostensibly urgent crisis regarding Iran would be put off for two weeks.

Only two days later, he ordered the attack on Iran. His allies would have us believe that Donald, a brilliant strategist, was faking us out. Sure. An infinitely more plausible explanation is that, on the one hand, he hates being challenged or contradicted, especially from those who almost always fall in line; therefore, he felt the need to double-down on his threats by carrying them out. On the other hand, Donald is a desperate black hole of need—by changing the narrative, he could make sure the spotlight turned back on him.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Donald wrote this on his failing social media site:

We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

“Thank you for your attention to this matter?” It’s worth reminding ourselves that the United States is currently in thrall to an insane person. Also, you do not engage in unilateral, unprovoked bombings of another country, declare victory, and then just walk away. J.D. Vance can claim as much as he wants that the United States is “at war with Iran’s nuclear program,” but I’m fairly certain Iranians won’t see it that way.....>

<....In another post, Donald wrote:

This is an HISTORIC MOMENT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ISRAEL, AND THE WORLD. IRAN MUST NOW AGREE TO END THIS WAR.” That’s not how it works. Israel and America are the aggressors here. In his remarks, Abbas Araghchi, foreign minister of Iran, remarked that Donald has “betrayed Iran” and “betrayed diplomacy” while the two countries were in the midst of negotiations as well as deceiving “his own voters” after promising to stay out of foreign wars. He also said that Iran would respond in the name of “self-defense.

This does not bode well for the thousands of American troops in the Middle East who are in close proximity to Iran, many of whom are within minutes of a potential missile strike.

By defying very clear international law in order to bomb Iran, Donald has put this country on the wrong side of this issue. I am not at all an expert in these matters, but I doubt Iran will choose to engage in an all-out war with the United States. At the moment, it is a considerably weakened nation and its allies, the other so-called “axis of resistance states” which include Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, and Yemen, are much weaker now than they were eighteen months ago. But there are other potential dangers to our having engaged in this conflict—again, without our having faced an immediate threat from the country we attacked: for example, our vulnerability to terrorist attacks has increased exponentially.

In a press conference announcing the strikes, Donald claimed that Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities were “completely and totally obliterated” by American strikes, but that is far from clear. During a joint press conference this morning, neither Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth nor Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, could make that determination. In other words, Iran may continue to have the ability to produce nuclear weapons.

When you consider that Fordow, one of the three nuclear sites targeted, was built inside a mountain and that, according to The New York Times, experts have determined “the enrichment facilities were impervious to all but a repeated assault from American ‘bunker buster’ bombs,” it is highly unlikely Iran’s program has been “obliterated.”

As to the degree to which Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons was imminent, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) wrote on social media, “Iran was not close to building a deliverable nuclear weapon. The negotiations Israel scuttled with their strikes held the potential for success.” Murphy says he was briefed last week by our own intelligence agencies and, according to them, “Iran posed no imminent threat of attack to the United States.” Donald disagreed, claiming that our intelligence is “wrong.” After Tulsi Gabbard, his own Director of National Intelligence, testified to Congress that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, Donald’s response was, “I don’t care what she said.”...>

<....As for Iran’s nuclear capabilities, it’s worth remembering that during Barack Obama’s second term, the United States—along with the United Kingdom, the European Union, Russia, and China—came up with and implemented a solution. Known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or Iran Nuclear Deal, this “blocked every possible pathway Iran could use to build a nuclear bomb while ensuring . . . through a comprehensive, intrusive, and unprecedented verification and transparency regime -- that Iran’s nuclear program remains exclusively peaceful moving forward.” By signing on to this agreement, Iran "significantly reduced its nuclear program and accepted strict monitoring and verification safeguards to ensure its program is solely for peaceful purposes.”

Despite his professed concerns about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Donald unilaterally pulled the United States out of the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2018. Despite his professed concerns about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Netanyahu objected to the deal from the start in large part because it removed one of his clearest excuses to attack Iran. Keep in mind, Netanyahu has been saying for years that Iran’s having nuclear capability was imminent.

At last night’s press conference, Donald made yet more threats:

There will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left…if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed and skill.

This isn’t over—not by a long-shot. The president of the United State authorized an unprovoked military strike without Congressional authorization in an egregious violation of the Constitution and Congressional War Powers.

There are four potential outcomes here that are not mutually exclusive: the political rehabilitation of war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu; attacks on American soldiers in close proximity to Iran; terrorist attacks on American soil; and increased executive power as the Republican Congress cedes yet more of its Constitutional authority to Donald f***ing Trump.>

<A provision in the Senate budget bill would allow for millions of dollars to go directly toward President Donald Trump and the administration's ability to lay off federal workers without the consent of Congress.

It is a move that Ben Olinsky, senior vice president of Structural Reform and Governance at the Center for American Progress, called "deeply, deeply concerning."

The provision, written by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, would give $100 million to the Office of Budget Management (OMB), according to Government Executive. The office is run by Project 2025 author Russ Vought, a proponent of mass government layoffs, which are a central tenet of Project 2025.

Olinsky referenced the lawsuits by federal employees fired by Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts, telling Newsweek: "[This bill is] exactly the kind of thing that the president has been trying to do, I would say, illegally, as he seeks to shut down departments or agencies, or limit [agencies] to a handful of staff down from 1000s and do large mass layoffs and other kinds of cuts to entire functions or programs."

Those in favor of the bill have said: "Any president should have the ability to clear the waste he or she has identified without obstruction."

Newsweek contacted Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican and chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, via email for comment.

Many of the people affected by mass federal layoffs initiated by DOGE at the start of Trump's second term are now in court as they were made without congressional approval. The provision would allow for federal employees to be fired with little to no legal recourse.

Olinsky told Newsweek that it would lead to current and future distrust in the government by federal workers. Federal work used to be a lesser paid but significantly more stable line of work. If the provision passes, federal work will be seen as a much less realistic plan for long-term employment and will result in bright and capable Americans choosing to work in the private sector.

The provision of the bill, which is the Senate's version of Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" passed by the House, appears in a section about government spending and reorganization by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

It would revitalize a provision last used in 1984 that allows the president to reorganize the federal government. However, Olinsky explained to Newsweek that it differs from the 1984 provision in one significant way.

"Those previous reorganization authorities that were granted to the president still had a role for Congress," he said.

Congress then had a certain amount of time to either approve or disapprove of the plan, and that determined whether the president's plan could go into effect.

"In the current reorganization language, it says that most of the statute that's currently on the books, or that was on the books through 1984, will not apply," Olinsky said. "And it basically says the president can put together a reorganization plan, and as long as it's making government smaller, it is deemed approved.

"So, there would be no further review by Congress, no further action. It would simply be automatic. It is approved by this language without [Congress] having seen it first. That is dramatically concerning to me."

Olinsky added: "The executive actions that the Trump administration has been taking are absolutely taking Project 2025, the most extreme parts of it, and putting them into effect. And, actually going much further in many cases."....>

<....Project 2025 says that the president should be able to "discharge...nonperforming employees." It speaks in broad terms about federal employees, whom its authors see as part of the "federal bureaucracy."

"Federal employees are often ideologically aligned—not with the majority of the American people, but with one another, posing a profound problem for republican government, a government "of, by, and for" the people," Project 2025 says.

Olinsky said that people fired as a result of DOGE cuts could continue their suits in court, but anyone fired under the new provision would not have a case against the government. He said the only means of legal recourse for fired employees would be if mass firings reduced the government's ability to monitor enforcement functions.

For example, if the White House fired every member of an agency that oversaw labor standards, someone could potentially sue and say their firing undermined government enforcement work.

Other critics of this move say it directly undermines Congress' ability to govern, as government spending is one of Congress' primary responsibilities.

Olinsky said there is a chance the Senate parliamentarian rules that the provision defies the Byrd Rule, which says that all reconciliation packages have to focus on budget issues and cannot stray into other parts of government. Olinsky believes the provision violates the Byrd Rule, but whether enough members of the Senate and/or the parliamentarian believe the same is "an open question," he said.

Ben Olinsky, senior vice president of Structural Reform and Governance at the Center for American Progress, told Newsweek: "This [bill] would basically give [Trump] carte blanche to refashion the entire federal government in ways that he likes.

"Now, even under this language, it basically means you have to make the government smaller, not larger. But there's a lot of playing you could do to assist with [Trump's] priorities and stifle functions of government that he just doesn't like.

"This should be deeply, deeply concerning to anyone."

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs: "This provision would reestablish the authority for a president to reorganize government as long as these plans do not result in an increase in federal agencies and the plan does not result in an increase in federal spending."

The House does not have a similar rule, so if the provision remains in the Senate version of the bill, it cannot be removed through a parliamentarian complaint to the Bird Rule by the House.>

<<Fusilli: I just wonder... what is this page about?>

(Mostly perverted thoughts, and...) An outlet for "The Rokers," a cyberbully and a troll master to run up their trash posting totals. One has posted 64,842 times from the same account, making a ridiculous run at becoming the top lame CGs poster as part of his "chess" legacy. Perv was not in the top 10 list of most CGs posts in 2021, but he's piled it on thick in recent years since no moderator bothers to muzzle him. The other endless tongue wagger has easily tripled or quadrupled that number from a multitude of free accounts over decades, often using those accounts to appear to be different members in a quorum of public opinion (the majority of a targeted disagreement), when in fact it is just one person stirring up trouble, attempting to deceive the public.

"Al" nor "Roxie" (that's one helluva coincidental play on namez if I do say so myself) Roker Chessgames - Guys and Dolls (kibitz #4115) are unlikely to give the weather report on these pages, so I wouldn't wait around for something useful, tastefully done.

This mostly harmless page of weeds is a good example of misapplied values, a lost sense of purpose. Chessgames should have eliminated this entirely unnecessary page of junk instead of expanding it to include Guys. The overall focus continues branching out away from chess, and the standards of expression continue to sink much lower than that of other chess-first websites....>

The 'lost sense of purpose' here, <fredzhopnik>, is your playing <stalker> to <zed> and myself.

Assuming that what you say is true of my not being in the top ten posters as of four years ago, you are very clearly obsessed with me for some reason. In bygone days, you could never get the better of me, and all these years on, nothing has changed. You remain the worthless twat and <zhopnik> that you always were.

<In a scathing letter from Democratic lawmakers, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was chastised for unlawfully obstructing members of Congress from visiting detention centers used to house undocumented immigrants, and was reminded of one of her more controversial moments in recent years.

Signed off by Reps. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Lou Correa (D-CA) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the letter condemns Noem for new policies enacted by Immigration and Customs Enforcements, an agency under DHS, that unlawfully restrict members of Congress from visiting ICE facilities, a violation, they say, of Congress’ constitutional oversight duties over the executive branch.

In the letter, the lawmakers went on to compare ICE’s policies under Noem’s leadership, which they dubbed a “blatant violation of federal law,” with her treatment of Cricket, a female German wirehaired pointer. Once Noem’s pet, Noem admitted to killing the dog last year when it was 14 months old due to its “aggressive personality” that didn’t bode well for its intended purpose of hunting pheasant.

“The Constitution and laws of the United States are not unruly dogs that you can take out back, kick, and shoot when they no longer serve your purpose,” the letter reads.

“ICE has no valid reason to deny members of Congress access to its facilities, including the ICE field offices that hold people for multiple days. If your Department is doing no wrong, then you should welcome the representatives of the American people into ICE facilities.”

The lawmakers go on to condemn Noem for what they call a “string of increasingly flagrant abuses of power,” including ICE arrests and deportations without due process, the dismantling of oversight offices such as the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and the arrest of New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander at a federal immigration court last week.

“We will continue to show up on behalf of the American people and our Constitution, and we will not be turned away,” the letter reads. “The American people are watching. Follow the law.”>

Choke on it, worthless cow!

<I’m told that the following message, which I received earlier today, purporting to be from Liz Cheney, is a hoax. She didn’t send it. It’s an excellent and important message nonetheless. (Several of you say it originated with Dr. Pru Lee.)

***

From Liz Cheney

Dear Democratic Party,

I need more from you.

You keep sending emails begging for $15,

while we’re watching fascism consolidate power in real time.

This administration is not simply “a different ideology.”

It is a coordinated, authoritarian machine — with the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, and the executive pen all under its control.

And you?

You’re still asking for decorum and donations. WT!.

That won’t save us.

I don’t want to hear another polite floor speech.

I want strategy.

I want fire.

I want action so bold it shifts the damn news cycle — not fits inside one.

Every time I see something from the DNC, it’s asking me for funds.

Surprise.

Those of us who donate don’t want to keep sending money just to watch you stand frozen as the Constitution goes up in flames — shaking your heads and saying,

“Well, there’s not much we can do. He has the majority.”

I call bulls***.

If you don’t know how to think outside the box…

If you don’t know how to strategize…

If you don’t know how to fight fire with fire…

what the hell are we giving you money for?

Some of us have two or three advanced degrees.

Some of us have military training.

Some of us know what coordinated resistance looks like — and this ain’t it.

Yes, the tours around the country? Nice.

The speeches? Nice.

The clever congressional clapbacks? Nice.

That was great for giving hope.

Now we need action.

You have to stop acting like this is a normal presidency that will just time out in four years.

We’re not even at Day 90, and look at the chaos.

Look at the disappearances.

Look at the erosion of the judiciary, the press, and our rights.

If you do not stop this, we will not make it 1,460 days.

So here’s what I need from you — right now:

⸻

1. Form an independent, civilian-powered investigative coalition.

I’m talking experts. Veterans. Whistleblowers. Journalists. Watchdog orgs.

Deputize the resistance. Build a real-time archive of corruption, overreach, and executive abuse.

Make it public. Make it unshakable.

Let the people drag the rot into the light.

If you can’t hold formal hearings, hold public ones.

If Congress won’t act, let the country act.

This isn’t about optics — it’s about receipts.

Because at some point, these people will be held accountable.

And when that day comes, we’ll need every name, every signature, every illegal order, every act of silence — documented.

You’re not just preserving truth — you’re preparing evidence for prosecution.

The more they vanish people and weaponize data, the more we need truth in the sunlight.

⸻

2. Join the International Criminal Court.

Yes, I said it. Call their bluff.

You cannot control what the other side does.

But you can control your own integrity.

So prove it. Prove that your party is still grounded in law, human rights, and ethical leadership.

Join.

If you’ve got nothing to hide — join.

Show the world who’s hiding bodies, bribes, and buried bank accounts.

Force the GOP to explain why they’d rather protect a war criminal than sign a treaty.

And while you’re at it, publicly invite ICC observers into U.S. borders.

Make this administration explain — on camera — why they’re terrified of international oversight....>

<....3. Fund state-level resistance infrastructure.

Don’t just send postcards. Send resources.

Channel DNC funds into rapid-response teams, legal defense coalitions, sanctuary networks, and digital security training.

If the federal government is hijacked, build power underneath it.

If the laws become tools of oppression, help people resist them legally, locally, and boldly.

This is not campaign season — this is an authoritarian purge.

Stop campaigning.

Act like this is the end of democracy, because it is.

We WILL REMEMBER the warriors come primaries.

Fighting this regime should be your marketing strategy.

And let’s be clear:

The reason the other side always seems three steps ahead is because they ARE.

They prepared for this.

They infiltrated school boards, courts, local legislatures, and police unions.

They built a machine while you wrote press releases.

We’re reacting — they’ve been executing a plan for years.

It’s time to shift from panic to blueprint.

You should already be working with strategists and military minds on PROJECT 2029,

a coordinated, long-term plan to rebuild this country when the smoke clears.

You should be publicly laying out:

• The laws and amendments you’ll pass to ensure this never happens again

• The systems you’ll tear down and the safeguards you’ll enshrine

• The plan to hold perpetrators of human atrocities accountable

• The urgent commitment to immediately bring home those sold into slavery in El Salvador

You say you’re the party of the people?

Then show the people the plan.

⸻

4. Use your platform to educate the public on rights and resistance tactics.

If they’re going to strip us of rights and lie about it — arm the people with truth.

Text campaigns. Mass trainings. Downloadable “Know Your Rights” kits. Multilingual legal guides. Encrypted phone trees.

Give people tools, not soundbites.

We don’t need more slogans.

We need survival manuals.

⸻

5. Leverage international media and watchdogs.

Stop hoping U.S. cable news will wake up.

They’re too busy playing both sides of fascism.

Feed the real stories to BBC, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Reuters, Der Spiegel — hell, leak them to anonymous dropboxes if you have to.

Make what’s happening in America a global scandal.

And stop relying on platforms that are actively suppressing truth.

Start leveraging Substack. Use Bluesky.

That’s where the resistance is migrating. That’s where censorship hasn’t caught up.

If the mainstream won’t carry the truth — outflank them.

Get creative. Go underground. Go global.

If our democracy is being dismantled in broad daylight, make sure the whole world sees it — and make sure we’re still able to say it....>

<....6. Create a digital safe haven for whistleblowers and defectors.

Not everyone inside this regime is loyal.

Some are scared. Some want out.

Build the channels.

Encrypted. Anonymous. Protected.

Make it easy for the cracks in the system to become gaping holes.

And while you’re at it?

Stop ostracizing MAGA defectors.

Everyone makes mistakes — even glaring, critical ones.

We are not the bullies.

We are not the ones filled with hate.

And it is not your job to shame people who finally saw the fire and chose to step out of it.

They will have to deal with that internal struggle — the guilt of putting a very dangerous and callous regime in power.

But they’re already outnumbered. Don’t push them back into the crowd.

We don’t need purity.

We need numbers.

We need people willing to burn their red hats and testify against the machine they helped build.

⸻

7. Study the collapse — and the comeback.

You should be learning from South Korea and how they managed their brief rule under dictatorship.

They didn’t waste time chasing the one man with absolute immunity.

They went after the structure.

The aides. The enforcers. The loyalists. The architects.

They knocked out the foundation one pillar at a time —

until the “strongman” had no one left to stand on.

And his power crumbled beneath him.

You should be independently investigating every author of Project 2025,

every aide who defies court orders,

every communications director repeating lies,

every policy writer enabling cruelty,

every water boy who keeps this engine running.

You can’t stop a regime by asking the king to sit down.

You dismantle the throne he’s standing on — one coward at a time.

⸻

Stop being scared to fight dirty when the other side is fighting to erase the damn Constitution.

They are threatening to disappear AMERICANS.

A M E R I C A N S.

And your biggest move can’t be another strongly worded email.

We don’t want your urgently fundraising subject lines.

We want backbone.

We want action.

We want to know you’ll stand up before we’re all ordered to sit down — permanently.

We are watching.

And I don’t just mean your base.

I mean millions of us who see exactly what’s happening.

I’ve only got 6,000 followers — but the groups I’m in? The networks I touch? Over a quarter million.

Often when I speak, it echoes.

But when we ALL

speak, it ROARS with pressure that will cause change.

We need to be deafening.

You still have a chance to do something historic.

To be remembered for courage, not caution.

To go down as the party that didn’t just watch the fall — but fought the hell back with everything they had.

But the clock is ticking.

And the deportation buses are idling.>

Like this, <fredfradiavolo>, <vermin> that you are?

<A federal jury on Monday awarded $500,000 to the widow and estate of a police officer who killed himself nine days after he helped defend the U.S. Capitol from a mob of rioters, including a man who scuffled with the officer during the attack.

The eight-member jury ordered that man, 69-year-old chiropractor David Walls-Kaufman, to pay $380,000 in punitive damages and $60,000 in compensatory damages to Erin Smith for assaulting her husband, Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith, inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They awarded an additional $60,000 to compensate Jeffrey Smith’s estate for his pain and suffering.

The judge presiding over the civil trial dismissed Erin Smith’s wrongful-death claim against Walls-Kaufman before jurors began deliberating last week. U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said no reasonable juror could conclude that Walls-Kaufman’s actions were capable of causing a traumatic brain injury leading to Smith’s death.

On Friday, the jury sided with Erin Smith and held Walls-Kaufman liable for assaulting her 35-year-old husband — an encounter captured on the officer’s body camera.

“Erin is grateful to receive some measure of justice,” said David P. Weber, one of her attorneys.

Walls-Kaufman said the outcome of the trial is “absolutely ridiculous.”

“No crime happened. I never struck the officer. I never intended to strike the officer,” he said. “I’m just stunned.”

After the jury left the courtroom, Reyes encouraged the parties to confer and discuss a possible settlement to avoid the time and expense of an appeal and for the sake of “finality.”

“You guys settle, you can move on with your lives,” the judge said.

Walls-Kaufman’s attorney, Hughie Hunt, described the jury’s award as “shocking.”

“We’re talking about a three-second event,” he told the judge.

“It’s not shocking, Mr. Hunt. A lot of things can happen in three seconds,” Reyes replied.

Jeffrey Smith was driving to work for the first time after the Capitol riot when he shot and killed himself with his service weapon. His family said he had no history of mental health problems before the Jan. 6 riot. Erin Smith claims Walls-Kaufman struck her husband in the head with his own police baton, giving him a concussion and causing psychological and physical trauma that led to his suicide.

Walls-Kaufman, who lived a few blocks from the Capitol, denied assaulting Smith. He says any injuries that the officer suffered on Jan. 6 occurred later in the day, when another rioter threw a pole that struck Smith around his head.

The police department medically evaluated Smith and cleared him to return to full duty before he killed himself. In 2022, the District of Columbia Police and Firefighters’ Retirement and Relief Board determined that Smith was injured in the line of duty and the injury was the “sole and direct cause of his death,” according to the lawsuit.

Walls-Kaufman served a 60-day prison sentence after pleading guilty to a Capitol riot-related misdemeanor in January 2023, but he was pardoned in January. On his first day back in the White House, President Donald Trump pardoned, commuted prison sentences or ordered the dismissal of cases for all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in the attack.

More than 100 law-enforcement officers were injured during the riot. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick collapsed and died a day after engaging with the rioters. A medical examiner later determined he suffered a stroke and died of natural causes. Howard Liebengood, a Capitol police officer who responded to the riot, also died by suicide after the attack.>

Still playing the <stalker>, <fredvermin>? Go somewhere else, <zhopnik>.

<The American public’s trust in the Supreme Court has fallen precipitously over the past decade. Many across the political spectrum see the court as too political.

This view is only strengthened when Americans see most of the justices of the court dividing along ideological lines on decisions related to some of the most hot-button issues the court handles. Those include reproductive rights, voting rights, corporate power, environmental protection, student loan policy, worker rights and LGBTQ+ rights.

But there is one recent decision where the court was unanimous in its ruling, perhaps because its holding should not be controversial: National Rifle Association v. Vullo. In that 2024 case, the court said that it’s a clear violation of the First Amendment’s free speech provisions for government to force people to speak and act in ways that are aligned with its policies.

The second Trump administration has tried to wield executive branch power in ways that appear to punish or suppress speech and opposition to administration policy priorities. Many of those attempts have been legally challenged and will likely make their way to the Supreme Court.

The somewhat under-the-radar – yet incredibly important – decision in National Rifle Association v. Vullo is likely to figure prominently in Supreme Court rulings in a slew of those cases in the coming months and years, including those involving law firms, universities and the Public Broadcasting Service.

That’s because, in my view as a legal scholar, they are all First Amendment cases.

In May 2024, in an opinion written by reliably liberal Sonia Sotomayor, a unanimous court ruled that the efforts of New York state government officials to punish companies doing business with the NRA constituted clear violations of the First Amendment.

Following its own precedent from the 1960s, Bantam Books v. Sullivan, the court found that government officials “cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.”

Many of the current targets of the Trump administration’s actions have claimed similar suppression of their First Amendment rights by the government. They have fought back, filing lawsuits that often cite the National Rifle Association v. Vullo decision in their efforts.

To date, the most egregious examples of actions that violate the principles announced by the court – the executive orders against law firms – have largely been halted in the lower courts, with those decisions often citing what’s now known as the Vullo decision.

While these cases may still be working their way through the lower courts, it is likely that the Supreme Court will ultimately consider legal challenges to the Trump administration’s efforts in a range of areas.

These would include the executive orders against law firms, attempts to cut government grants and research funding from universities, potential moves to strip nonprofits of their tax-exempt status, and regulatory actions punishing media companies for what the White House believes to be unfavorable coverage.

The court could also hear disputes over the government terminating contracts with a family of companies that provides satellite and communications support to the U.S. government generally and the military in particular.

Despite the variety of organizations and government actions involved in these lawsuits, they all can be seen as struggles over free speech and expression, like Vullo.

Whether it is private law firms, multinational corporations, universities or members of the media, all have one thing in common: They have all been targeted by the Trump administration for the same reason – they are engaged in actions or speech that is disfavored by President Donald Trump....>

<....Protecting speech, regardless of politics

A meeting with many people seated at long tables that are covered with papers. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, front, took leave to help prosecute war criminals at the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War II. Bettman/Getty Images The NRA, an often-controversial gun-rights advocacy organization, was the plaintiff in the Vullo decision.

But just because the groups that have been targeted by the Trump administration are across the political divide from the NRA does not mean the outcome in decisions relying on the court’s opinion will be different. In fact, these groups can rely on the same arguments advanced by the NRA, and are, I believe, likely to win.

Vullo isn’t the only decision on which the court can rely when considering challenges to the Trump administration’s efforts targeting these groups.

In 1943, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote the majority opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, where the court found that students who refused to salute the American flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance at school could not be expelled.

Jackson’s opinion is a forceful rejection of government attempts to control what people say: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

In the wake of World War II, Jackson took a leave from the court and served as a prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders. Prosecuting them for their atrocities, Jackson saw how the Nuremberg defendants wielded government authority to punish enemies who resisted their rise and later opposed their rule.

If some of the cases testing the state’s power to force fidelity to the executive branch reach the Supreme Court, the cases could offer the justices the opportunity to, once again, speak with one voice as they did in NRA v. Vullo, to demonstrate it can be evenhanded and will not play politics with the First Amendment.>

<The day before Brittany Watts miscarried at home in Warren, Ohio, medical staff at Mercy Health-St. Joseph Warren Hospital told Watts that her nearly 21-week-old fetus had no chance of survival. And without treatment, neither would she.

On that, Watts’ attorneys and those representing the hospital she is now suing agree.

But Watts still ended up in jail two years ago, after leaving the hospital due to care delays and then returning in need of medical care but without a fetus.

While St. Joseph medical staff were treating Watts, a nurse was on the phone with police, speculating that Watts had birthed and then killed a live baby, according to a federal lawsuit filed earlier this year. The suit claims the hospital and individual staff were negligent and lied to police, and that police allegedly violated her civil rights.

Rachel Brady, an attorney and partner at Chicago law firm Loevy & Loevy, said that though the charges in Watts’ case — “abuse of a corpse,” after she had flushed the remains — were ultimately dropped, she has suffered lasting harms. After inadvertently becoming the public face of pregnancy criminalization in the post-Roe v. Wade era, she is among the first since the Dobbs decision to seek legal recourse for alleged civil rights violations.

“She found herself the unwilling face of this movement, and she has been traumatized by the entire event,” Brady said of Watts, who declined an interview. “This is every expectant mother’s worst nightmare. And rather than being able to grieve her loss, she was taken away in handcuffs. She was interrogated in her hospital bed while she was still tethered to IVs, and so she wants compensation for her own trauma, but most importantly, wants to make sure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”

In the three years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision struck down the federal right to abortion granted by Roe, women around the country have faced criminal charges after their pregnancies ended in miscarriage or stillbirth. Experts believe these cases have risen since states began banning abortion, though most often women are charged not under abortion bans but existing statutes including homicide, abandonment of a body and abuse of a corpse. And they believe these cases will continue to climb, as more prosecutors feel emboldened by state abortion bans; as more states consider laws that would give full legal rights to fetuses and embryos; and as more police investigate miscarriages as potential abortions.

“We are seeing more cases of pregnancy loss resulting in charges, certainly in the four-plus years that I’ve been at the organization,” said Dana Sussman, senior vice president of the legal nonprofit Pregnancy Justice, which researches pregnancy criminalization in the U.S. and helps defend people who have been charged with crimes related to their pregnancies. “Increasingly we are seeing law enforcement view pregnancy loss as a suspicious event — as a potentially criminal event — as opposed to a health concern, a health crisis.”

Women have faced pregnancy criminalization for decades, especially under drug laws and at a higher rate for those who are poor or people of color like Watts, who is Black. Pregnancy Justice has tracked more than 1,800 pregnancy-related arrests and detentions between 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided, and 2022, when the decision was overturned. But in the first year after Dobbs, Pregnancy Justice documented 210 pregnancy-related prosecutions, the most they’d found in a single year since they started this research. And 22 cases involved pregnancy losses similar to Watts.

“It still remains a very, very, very tiny percentage of all people who experience pregnancy loss or who are pregnant, so I don’t want to create unwarranted fear,” Sussman said. “But one is too many, and 22 is certainly too many. And the more we normalize the idea that abortion is criminalized and your behavior during pregnancy is something that law enforcement can investigate, can make judgments about, can use as evidence against you, we will see more of these cases.”

Reproductive rights legal advocates say police have become increasingly suspicious of miscarriages, in states with bans, like Idaho, but also in states with more liberal abortion policies. The majority of states that allow abortion cut off access at between 22 and 24 weeks of pregnancy, which is an approximate estimate of when fetuses could survive outside of the uterus with medical intervention. An estimated 10% to 20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says it is difficult to determine the cause of a miscarriage or stillbirth....>

<....According to Pregnancy Justice’s most recent numbers, Alabama prosecutes more pregnant people than any other state — 104 of 210 prosecutions in 2023. Many are concentrated in Etowah County, which in recent years has cracked down on drug use while pregnant, using a 2006 chemical endangerment law intended to protect children from meth labs, according to a 2023 AL.com analysis. The Etowah County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.

Sussman said evidence of direct harm caused by women in pregnancy-related prosecutions is often thin, and that these cases are often more about emotion than science. Some women who delivered stillbirths have been convicted of murder or manslaughter based on the hydrostatic lung test, also known as the lung float test, a widely discredited idea dating back centuries that involves putting fetal lungs in a container of water: If they float, the baby must have born alive, goes the theory. But medical examiners say these tests are deeply flawed and that air can enter the lungs of a stillbirth in many ways. After being sentenced to 30 years in prison on the basis of the lung float test, Moira Akers, of Columbia, Maryland, was this year ordered a new trial.

Sussman said serious charges are often dropped or reduced in the pregnancy loss cases, upon investigation and with autopsies, but by then, many of the harms of incarceration have already taken hold. She said charges can result in reputationally damaging news headlines, as well as loss of custody of their other children, housing and employment.

Rafa Kidvai is the director of If/When/How’s Repro Legal Defense Fund, which provides financial support for people investigated for pregnancy outcomes, including bail, bond, court fees, transportation and other expenses. They said the fund’s caseload has been rising since they began offering these services in 2022, with about 30 clients and more than $2.7 million paid in bail and bond. Kidvai said steep charges following a pregnancy loss — including manslaughter and murder — allow for high bails many cannot afford.

“The trends that I’ve seen are more cases in volume, higher bails, more intense prosecutions across the board, and the use of pregnancy as a factor, regardless of outcome, being used against someone,” Kidvai said, noting that newer laws around bail in states like Texas have made the Repro Legal Defense Fund’s work more challenging.

When Watts miscarried in September 2023, an Ohio abortion ban had already been blocked and abortion was legal until around 22 weeks’ gestation, right around the time Watts was losing her pregnancy. She was not charged under the abortion law but under a statute typically applied as an enhancement to murder.

“A lot of the cases in Ohio are, you kill somebody and dismember them in order to hide the body, or you kill somebody and set the body on fire in order to conceal it,” Brady said. “When you talk about abuse of a corpse, that’s what we’re talking about. We’re absolutely not, under any circumstances, talking about having the miscarriage and then disposing of the products of conception. That is very clearly not what this law is for or how it has historically been used.”

The city prosecutor who advanced Watts’ case took issue with how Watts disposed of the fetal remains, and how she “went on (with) her day,” though county prosecutors sided with the grand jury’s decision not to indict. But Watts’ personal situation continued in the public eye. She told the Tribune Chronicle she was “swatted” that first Christmas after her pregnancy loss.

Brady said that through discovery, Watts’ legal team is hoping to understand why there were alleged delays in Watts’ care within Mercy Health, which is a Catholic hospital system. Miscarriage care delays and denials have cropped up all over the country in the wake of state abortion bans, but also before Dobbs, especially at Catholic hospitals.

Attorneys representing the hospital and named medical staff, in its response brief, argue that Watts forfeited care when she signed a waiver and left against doctors’ advice. Watts claims she waited for several hours without miscarriage treatment before leaving the hospital two separate times, even after she’d agreed to doctors’ proposed treatment, which was to induce labor rather than give her a common second-trimester abortion procedure. Last year CBS News, after reviewing hundreds of medical records, reported that Watts waited for nearly 20 hours at the hospital over two days, begging to be induced while doctors waited for approval from an ethics team.

“There has to be a shift in the risk analysis here of what is more risky,” Sussman said. “Is it more risky to turn over your patient to law enforcement, or is it more risky to give the patient the care that she needs in the moment and not turn her over to law enforcement?”>