<....Then came 2013 and the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder. Chief Justice John Roberts declared that “times have changed” and gutted preclearance. Within months, states began closing polling places, purging voter rolls and redrawing maps in ways that never would have survived federal review. These days, those actions are the new normal. States now rewrite the rules of democracy at will, with no supervision and little shame.

That is how it became “legal” to gerrymander so aggressively that outcomes are fixed before the first vote is cast. In North Carolina, new maps all but guarantee Republican dominance no matter how people vote. And it’s not just congressional maps, but also the state legislative ones, too. In Wisconsin, one party can lose the popular vote and still control the Legislature. The law has not evolved toward fairness; it has been hollowed out.

But the story runs deeper. After Reconstruction, white supremacist legislatures learned that redistricting could achieve by pen what violence had once enforced by law: the silencing of Black political power. The Voting Rights Act was meant to end that. It did for half a century. Then Shelby County stripped away the guardrails, and Brnovich v. DNC in 2021 narrowed what even counts as discrimination. Once again, we are watching power police itself, with predictable results.

Yet history teaches that the people always find a way to be heard. James Madison wrote that a republic survives only when “the public voice” reflects “the public good.” Gerrymandering severs that connection. It lets representatives choose their voters instead of earning their trust.

There is still hope. Every time democracy has been threatened, after Reconstruction, in the suffrage movement and in the Civil Rights era, Americans have forced it open again. The same spirit that marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge and filled the National Mall is now rising in state capitols and courthouse steps.

Indiana’s hesitation this week shows that resistance matters. Even in a ruby red state, Republican state lawmakers fear a backlash if they give in to Trump’s demands.

That is why those signs outside the North Carolina Capitol matter. “We the People, Not the Maps” is not just a slogan. It is a statement of civic faith. It reminds us that democracy still belongs to the governed, not the governors. The machinery of elections may still turn, but those in power are working to narrow who that machinery serves. The representative ideal is under siege, but not defeated. The people still hold the power. They always have. And the fight now is to make sure they can still exercise it freely.

As Republicans attempt to redraw the lines of power, we should listen for the echoes of our ancestors. Times have changed, but the struggle has not. The same impulse that once wrote Black citizens out of democracy is now trying to write millions of Americans out of meaningful representation. Whether self-government survives will depend on whether the people still insist on governing themselves.

The maps cannot decide that. We can.>

<[Event "21st World Open"] [Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1993.06.30"]
[EventDate "1993"]
[Round "2"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Gelman, Charles"]
[Black "Dunne, Alex"]
[ECO "B00"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "21st World Open"] [Site "Philadelphia PA"]
[Date "1993.07.02"]
[EventDate "1993"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Gentes, Kevin"]
[Black "Spanton, Timothy"]
[ECO "D65"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.Nc3 Be7 5.Bg5 O-O 6.e3 Nbd7 7.Rc1 a6 8.cxd5 exd5 9.Bd3 c6 10.Qc2 Re8 11.O-O Nf8 12.Rce1 Ne4 13.Bxe7 Qxe7 14.Bxe4 dxe4 15.Nd2 f5 16.d5 c5 17.Na4 Nd7 18.Rc1 b6 19.Rfe1 Rb8 20.b3 Bb7 1/2-1/2>

<Republicans are barreling toward the upcoming Obamacare enrollment period without a unified plan to address the sticker shock that millions of Americans are likely to experience due to the expiration of key federal subsidies.

The lack of direction comes from the top, with President Donald Trump not providing clear guidance to his party on how he wants to deal with the expiring subsidies that could result in dramatic out-of-pocket price hikes for enrollees.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) said he spoke to the president on the phone about a week ago to talk about a yearlong extension of the enhanced subsidies. He said Trump asked him: “Can’t we do something better?” But Van Drew said he replied, “Mr. President, we don't have the time.”

Trump’s lack of urgency in extending the subsidies and his interest in a major health care overhaul — as he has now mentioned in a private meeting with Democratic leaders as well as with Republicans — is complicating GOP leaders’ efforts to address expiring health insurance subsidies that affect 20 million Americans without fully repealing Obamacare, according to four Republicans granted anonymity to disclose private deliberations. Hill Republicans will need Trump’s signoff to do anything with the Affordable Care Act subsidies, and they’re starting to run short on time.

On Nov. 1, most consumers can start shopping for next year’s ACA plans. But without legislation to extend the enhanced subsidies beyond this calendar year, those plans will appear on enrollment websites as substantially more expensive than this year’s out-of-pocket costs.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt was noncommittal Thursday about what the president would do to address the potential spike and demanded Democrats first vote to reopen the government.

“I’ll just point out the irony in Democrats holding the government and the American public hostage over a health care system that they created,” Leavitt said. “Republicans have always said it's a broken system, yes, but [Democrats] caused it, and now they want to shut down the government to fix it.”

Hers is a view shared by some in the president’s orbit. Many don’t believe Trump needs to embark on a rescue mission to save former President Barack Obama’s health law.

“I don’t think the president cares to save Obama’s legacy legislation that has proved to be a failure and an ongoing headache for everyone involved,” said a person familiar with the administration’s thinking, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive issues. “I do see a scenario where the president sees a pathway for a health care policy bill that could receive some bipartisan support.”

The expiration is largely not a swing state issue, but more of an issue in lower-income, deep-red districts where Trump has a loyal base of supporters, the person said.

“This isn’t a [Rep.] Mike Lawler problem, funny enough, it’s a [Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene issue. They have room to weather the storm,” the person said, adding a note of caution: “But if constituents are being hurt because they are less fortunate on health care, there needs to be an answer to that.”

Republicans in the White House and Capitol Hill have no plans to change that strategy, confident that Democrats will blink and face blame for the funding lapse. Republicans also feel they’re making headway with the message that Obamacare is in need of rescue, because, as they argue, it’s grown too expensive and is failing Americans.

A person close to the White House, granted anonymity to describe administration officials’ thinking, said the GOP message will be focused on exposing Obamacare’s expense — and placing blame on Democrats for sunsetting the subsidies in a 2022 law they passed on party lines, the Inflation Reduction Act.

“Democrats have to be really careful, because they're going to get exposed on one, how expensive Obamacare is,” the person said. “And two, they were the ones that put that in the Inflation Reduction Act, where the subsidies sunset.”

GOP leaders are trying to keep in pace with the White House and ensure Trump doesn’t give in to Democrats’ demands to negotiate a way out of the shutdown. The president this week, after a call with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Mike Johnson, reinforced their message that he would meet with Democratic leaders but only after they reopen the government.

Still, Republican leaders and White House officials are ramping up behind-the-scenes talks on a potential subsidies extension with conservative reforms paired with other health care policies, which would need bipartisan support to pass in Congress....>

<....While congressional Republicans aren’t feeling pressure from Trump, some argue they also aren’t feeling pressure from constituents at home yet about the expiring subsidies.

“Right now my sense is that the vast majority of Republicans feel very little political pressure on the enhanced subsidy issue,” said a senior GOP staffer who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Our phones are mostly quiet, which is a clear sign Democrats’ claims aren’t convincing.”

But a swath of Republicans are getting an earful from constituents — and are getting antsy about an ACA extension deal, albeit with new restrictions on the subsidies.

“If it's not too late, it's damn close,” Van Drew said about finding a solution without disruptions during ACA open enrollment, which begins Nov. 1. Van Drew said that he argued to the president to extend the tax credits for a year to buy time for a better solution.

“For one year, let's really work hard on this and come up with something innovative,” he said. The president told him he understood and that he would look into it, Van Drew said.

Some Republicans are also privately discussing the need for Congress, or Trump, to act to extend the window for open enrollment — especially to protect some of their most vulnerable Republicans up for reelection.

Johnson didn’t rule out that possibility in a brief interview Wednesday, simply saying he would not forecast any outcome at this point.

He indicated, though, it was on Republicans' radar.

"If we can get the government reopened, we have lots of thoughtful discussion to have on that and other issues," Johnson added.

Other Republicans who are in touch with health insurance companies suggest insurers could recalibrate premiums based on a deal that happens after Nov. 1.

“I don't think it's too late. I mean, I think the beautiful thing about modern technology is you can make adjustments,” Rep. Mike Haridopolos (R-Fla.) told reporters this week. “And these insurance companies are very sophisticated, and they'll be able to run these numbers off the bill very quickly.”>

<When law professor Seth Chandler asked artificial intelligence to predict how the Supreme Court would rule in Trump v. CASA this summer, he won a $1 bet with a colleague. The AI-generated draft opinion proved “exactly right” about the 6-3 conservative majority ruling that limited universal injunctions in response to President Donald Trump's executive order curtailing birthright citizenship.

That might not seem too surprising — the court to which Trump appointed three justices has generally proved favorable to the president’s draconian policies, after all. Nonetheless, when the court heard oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais last week, Chandler, who specializes in constitutional law and computer science at the University of Houston, turned to AI again.

He asked Google Gemini to draft an opinion for the redistricting case. Once again, the AI assistant predicted a 6-3 ruling, the conservatives sticking together.

The 20-page fake draft opinion anticipates the Court will affirm a district court’s ruling that a Louisiana congressional map redrawn in 2024 to create a second Black-majority district is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

The map was redrawn because a federal court determined in 2022 that a new congressional map based on the 2020 census was likely in violation of Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination against voters.

The 2020 map only had one of six Louisiana districts representing a majority of Black voters, despite one-third of the state’s population being Black.

In other words, the plaintiff in Louisiana v. Callais claims that drawing maps to combat racism and ensure Black representation is itself a racist act.

The actual Supreme Court opinion might not come for months, but based on oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, experts predict further weakening of the Voting Rights Act.

“I'm not sure they'll say the whole thing's unconstitutional, but they will render it a less powerful force,” Chandler said.

“If I were the NAACP, I would not be happy with the way that argument went.”

‘Fist on the scale’

Chief Justice John Roberts “launched his legal career in attacking Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act Congress,” said Lisa Graves, chief counsel for nominations with the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2002 to 2005, who also predicted a weakening of the landmark civil rights law.

Graves said it was “extraordinary to see … the Roberts Court putting its fist on the scale of justice in this way and also taking up this assault on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act as Donald Trump, for months now, has been demanding that state legislatures rig their maps to protect him from having a Democratic majority in Congress that could begin to hold him accountable for his transgressions of the Constitution.”

In her new book, “Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights,” Graves details how Roberts spent “hundreds of hours trying to block” Section 2 while working for the Reagan administration.

Graves writes that Roberts was intensely questioned about his writings on the Voting Rights Act during his 2005 confirmation hearing. The late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) said he was “deeply troubled” by Roberts’ “mean-spirited view” of Section 2.

Now, through Louisiana v. Callais, Roberts and his court are finally “poised to constrict the ability of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to limit disparate racial impact,” Graves writes.

She told Raw Story: “It does feel like the zeitgeist has caught up because more and more people are going ‘Whoa,’ so I guess it is an ‘I told you so,’ regretfully.”

‘Supremely arrogant’

Louisiana v. Callais stands to be highly influential, as states engage in off-cycle redistricting efforts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. Typically, redistricting happens once a decade.

Trump told Texas Republicans to redraw congressional maps this summer, in an attempt to give Republicans five more House seats and solidify control. He’s since encouraged other red states such as Missouri, North Carolina and Indiana to gerrymander to boost the GOP....>

<....If the Supreme Court does limit Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, it will most likely “give the green light to yet further partisan gerrymandering, which in many cases will hurt minorities,” Chandler said.

With Roberts leading the way, Graves said the court was “determined to mow down those limitations on Donald Trump” as seen in Trump v. United States, the 2024 case that granted him "unprecedented immunity from criminal prosecution.”

“I think this court is fully a MAGA court now,” Graves said.

“This Roberts court is supremely arrogant in its determination to roll back the clock on not just recent 21st-century precedents, but to roll back the clock to before the New Deal, to the Robber Baron era.”

Lindsey Cormack, associate professor of political science at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, said partisanship was “undeniable” in the judicial branch, despite a traditional expectation of impartiality.

“It's sort of the most political branch in the sense that the only way you can be on the courts is if you're appointed by an elected official, and the only way you're confirmed is if the rest of the elected officials at the federal level say, ‘Yeah, you can play here,” Cormack said.

“It's kind of a nice fiction that we tell ourselves to be like they're not partisan, but we do know that judges have political opinions. Someone put them in office, and someone voted for them, and someone voted against them.”

‘Opportunity to change’

Passed under Lyndon B. Johnson in the civil rights era, the Voting Rights Act is “one of the most important pieces of legislation that was ever written and enacted,” Graves said.

Weakening the law “would be a disaster for America,” she added.

“It would also pave the way for white-dominated, Republican-controlled legislatures in the South to further dilute Black votes in America in ways that would aid Trump's quest to secure an illegitimate majority in the House.”

Cormack said the court was considering the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais in “a very different way than how we've ever seen it in the past.”

She argued that the ruling could give an opportunity to “see things differently.”

“We know that Louisiana has a history of problematic discrimination — and that's not really controversial to say in the sense that they had poll taxes and literacy tests and white primaries and grandfather clauses until the very last time that they could, which was in 1965 — but we can't make it impossible for a state to outrun this sort of history,” Cormack said.

“We have to give states the opportunity to change … it's not fair to always hold the Confederate South to ‘They're always going to be problematic.’”

But Cormack acknowledged a ruling affirming the district court’s decision in the case “probably means that it's going to be very hard to bring a racially motivated claim” in the future.

Congress could pass new legislation reaffirming racial discrimination protections in the Voting Rights Act, Cormack said, but that’s unlikely given GOP control.

“It seems like the tolerance for … race-based anything is going by the wayside, at least by the majority party that controls the House and Senate right now, so it'll be really hard to see anything that happens in the next year to sort of change this.

“You get a different Congress, you maybe get a different outcome, but we're a ways off from that.”>

<I thought there was little President Donald Trump could do to surprise me. I was wrong.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that “President Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him.” The two claims were filed in 2023 and 2024 under the Federal Tort Claims Act. Even for this president, demanding money from the Justice Department is pretty brazen conduct, especially when you consider that the two people who would typically sign off on this payment were defense lawyers for the president or his aides.

This looks a lot like an inside deal that comes perilously close to offending the moral maxim that no one should be a judge in their own case.

Trump himself, for once, seems to recognize how this looks: “It’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself,” he told reporters Tuesday after the Times published its story. While Trump did not confirm that his lawyers are seeking reimbursement or how much they were seeking, he said that the Justice Department “probably [owes] me a lot of money” and claimed that “any money I would get, I would give to charity.” But this is not just about money. It is another one of Trump’s frequent efforts to rewrite the past into a narrative of his victimization and ultimate victory.

The Federal Torts Claims Act allows monetary damages for “personal injury, property damage, or death” arising from the alleged negligence of federal employees acting within the scope of his or her official duties. The first step in the FTCA process involves a claimant seeking redress directly from the offending agency, in this case the Justice Department. If that fails, the claimant could bring a suit in federal court.

The first of Trump’s two claims asks for compensation for legal expenses he incurred during the investigation of collusion between his 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. Trump has long been obsessed with that investigation, which he regularly calls a “hoax.” That obsession has not dissipated, even after his return to the Oval Office. In August, for instance, Trump told Attorney General Pam Bondi to direct prosecutors to investigate the “Russia hoax” and bring charges against anyone who could be found culpable.

In the second claim, Trump demanded damages related to the government’s search of Mar-a-Lago in 2022 and the subsequent charges related to the classified documents he took from the White House at the end of his term. The filing from Trump’s lawyers claims he spent “tens of millions of dollars defending the case and his reputation,” and asked for $15 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages. (The first claim is not public, but reportedly asks for a similar amount of damages.) As MSNBC’s Jordan Rubin pointed out last year, “courts have noted that punitive damages aren’t available in FTCA cases,” which would seem to undercut most of Trump’s claimed damages. But precedent has rarely deterred the president before.

Trump’s second claim accuses the government of a “malicious political prosecution” — which, given the recent charges against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, seems like a case of the pot calling the kettle black. A malicious prosecution only arises when an official brings criminal charges against someone without probable cause, with an intent to harm the person being prosecuted. As the Supreme Court held in 2022, a plaintiff has to show that “his prosecution ended without a conviction.” The Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School notes that proving malicious prosecution also requires a showing that an official “acted primarily for a purpose other than succeeding on the merits of the claim; the plaintiff was harmed; and the defendant’s conduct was a substantial factor in causing the plaintiff’s harm.”

Given the current personnel in the Justice Department, it seems highly unlikely that Trump will have to resort to a lawsuit. The department’s procedure says that any substantial payments pursuant to the FTCA must be approved by the deputy attorney general or the head of the Justice Department’s civil division. The former, Todd Blanche, served as the president’s lead criminal defense lawyer prior to his current position. The latter, Stanley Woodward, represented one of the president’s co-defendants in the classified documents case. Woodward also represented several other Trump aides, including FBI Director Kash Patel....>

<....The way things are playing out, this looks a lot like an inside deal that comes perilously close to offending the moral maxim that no one should be a judge in their own case. Federal law already says that “no employee shall participate in a criminal investigation or prosecution if he has a personal or political relationship with any person or organization substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation or prosecution.” The Justice Department’s definition of personal conflicts includes “an organization which an employee now serves or has served, as an employee or in another capacity, within the past year.”

In short, as Pace University law professor Bennett L. Gershman told the Times, “The ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it.”

The drafters of the Federal Torts Claims Act could never, in their wildest dreams, have contemplated the head of the executive branch seeking money from an agency that reports to him, with the key decision-makers being so dependent on his favor and previously so involved in matters giving rise to the complaint the president has filed. But it seems nothing is too improbable for the Trump presidency.

With millions of Americans on the cusp of losing their health insurance, and millions more struggling to make ends meet, it seems grotesque that a billionaire president would make taxpayers pay for his legal expenses in cases that by no stretch of the imagination can rightly be characterized as malicious.

Hopefully, the offensiveness of that effort will awaken more Americans to the self-serving commitments of the president and his administration.>

<New York Attorney General Letitia James pleaded “not guilty” at her arraignment Friday in Norfolk, Virginia, marking the second time this month a Justice Department lawyer admitted in court they were still figuring out what evidence exists to support criminal charges in a case brought at the behest of President Donald Trump.

“I am going through the discovery right now,” said assistant U.S. attorney Roger Keller Jr., who was until Tuesday a DOJ lawyer in Missouri defending the government from lawsuits about civil disputes.

Normally, prosecutors fully investigate a case before pursuing an indictment and know well exactly what evidence exists to support criminal charges. However, this case is anything but normal. White House aide-turned-prosecutor Lindsey Halligan replaced a U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia who resisted presidential pressure to have the Justice Department exact vengeance on Trump foes including James — who, as New York attorney general, won a civil suit against Trump, his sons and the Trump organization (that was later overturned).

Halligan has taken the same approach in this case as she did with former FBI Director James Comey, who was indicted last month: presenting the case herself before a grand jury, then recruiting a prosecutor from outside her newly assumed office to take on the case with little-to-no preparation. Earlier this month, two prosecutors from North Carolina appeared in Comey’s case the day before his arraignment — and stunned the Alexandria federal judge in court when one of them, Tyler Lemons, claimed that “we’re just getting our hands around discovery.”

But that situation has already caused some tension in U.S. District Judge Jamar Walker’s courtroom in Norfolk.

Walker quickly shot down Keller’s request to have until Nov. 14 to turn over all the evidence the government claims to have against James, with the judge chiding prosecutors that waiting nearly a month after an indictment “is not consistent with how we operate here.” Walker noted that it’s “certainly customary” for prosecutors to show up to an arraignment ready to turn over their first batch of evidence to defense lawyers.

When Keller suggested a trial could take two weeks, the judge rejected it outright. When Keller said the case could involve eight to 10 witnesses, James’ lawyer Abbe Lowell said he’d “be shocked” if there actually were that many. And when the judge asked whether the government was prepared to let James get back to her government office in New York rather than seek to keep her behind bars pending trial, he seemed annoyed when the prosecutor couldn’t even accurately answer whether the DOJ had received the standard pretrial services report.

“We have not, your honor,” Keller said, suddenly turning to Halligan to his right. “Oh, we have?”

“Do you need a moment?” the judge inquired.

Halligan remained quiet throughout the hearing. She was surrounded by a four-man team of agents from the U.S. Marshals Service.

The court hearing Friday lasted less than an hour, but previewed what is shaping up to be a fast-moving case that’s barreling toward a possible one-week trial starting Jan. 26 next year. There will be a fight over Halligan’s credentials, a court battle within a court battle that will be exported out of the district to the same South Carolina federal judge who’s now considering an identical challenge in Comey’s case.

“I want to keep this moving,” Walker told lawyers on both sides, stressing that newcomers to this part of Virginia should quickly familiarize themselves with the local rules.

What comes next is a flurry of court filings and a pair of hearings in November, when the judge is slated to consider the defense team’s claims that James is the victim of a vindictive and selective prosecution — a charge that will likely point to Trump’s public comments stating in no uncertain terms that he appointed Halligan to the role with the expectation that she would pursue cases against Comey and James.

Speaking to a supportive crowd outside the courthouse late Friday morning, James decried “this justice system, which has been used as a tool of revenge.” The scene was a distorted echo of the very same scenes that would play out at a Manhattan state courthouse in the fall of 2023, when Trump would make speeches claiming that James — who had promised to pursue a case against Trump during her election campaign — had “weaponized” the very same justice system against him and his company.

Except that in that other case, the judge concluded after a lengthy trial that Trump committed bank fraud, a finding that was later countered on appeal.

<The United States is now executing people on the high seas whom Trump calls “enemy combatants.” He’s doing so without a declaration of war, without input from Congress, and without any findings that they pose a threat to the United States.

At this moment, Secretary of Defense (or Secretary of War, as Trump prefers) Pete Hegseth is positioning warships, including an aircraft carrier, and planes in waters off Latin America.

Hegseth has already bombed 10 boats, eight of them in the Caribbean and two others this week in the eastern Pacific.

So far, the death toll is 43.

Neither Trump nor Hegseth has offered any evidence to support their claims that the vessels have been smuggling drugs to the United States or were “operated by” Tren de Aragua, a group that Trump has designated as a terrorist organization.

It is illegal, under domestic and international law, to deliberately target civilians who are not directly participating in hostilities — even if they are suspected criminals.

Before Trump, the United States dealt with suspected maritime drug smuggling by using the Coast Guard, sometimes assisted by the Navy. If the suspicions proved accurate, the boat’s crews were arrested. They might then stand trial. The penalty for being convicted of drug trafficking was prison time.

Now, Trump is summarily executing people suspected of being drug dealers, without any proof.

Trump claims that the attacks are not murder because he has “determined” that the boats are smuggling drugs, that they are being run by drug cartels, that drug trafficking by cartels constitutes an armed attack on the United States, and that the United States is now engaged in a formal armed conflict with the cartels.

As a result, he reasons, the boat crews are “enemy combatants” and can be executed.

Every step in this so-called logic is questionable.

It’s also dangerous. What if Trump “determines” that anyone he dislikes — immigrants, Democrats, student protesters — is an “enemy combatant?”

He has already referred to the “enemy within” the United States — in characterizing domestic political opponents, including government officials, critics, activists, and protesters.

In his September 30 speech to the U.S. military’s top brass, Trump discussed using the military against this so-called “enemy from within.”

Who’s the “enemy within?” He told members of the Navy and Marines to “take care of this little gnat on our shoulder called the Democrats.” He has called Democrats “vermin,” “scum,” and, yes, “the enemy within.”

Trump has sent troops into Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Chicago — whose inhabitants overwhelmingly vote for Democrats — and he’s done so over the objections of mayors and governors. He plans to send more troops into more cities. He claims he’s doing it to deal with crime or to protect ICE agents or to protect ICE facilities. Again, the evidence is flimsy or nonexistent.

ICE now holds 59,762 people in detention. Some of those detained have been American citizens. ICE made a mass arrest of 15 New York state elected officials. It has arrested members of Congress, active-duty firefighters, a child it accused of being a convicted adult in the MS-13 gang, a disabled military veteran, and a United States marshal — all of whom were shown to be U.S. citizens wrongfully held by ICE.

Trump’s Justice Department is now prosecuting people Trump has ordered it to prosecute — people who have tried to hold him legally accountable, such as New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI director James Comey.

Put it all together. Let me ask you, honestly: How close are we to Trump ordering the execution of Americans he considers his political opponents?>

<In a series of actions on Friday, the Trump administration significantly ratcheted up tensions with Latin America — and signaled that it was set to dramatically expand its nascent military offensive against so-called “Transnational Criminal Organizations” in the region.

The escalation began overnight, when the military targeted another boat in the Caribbean that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a Friday morning social media post, claimed was involved in drug smuggling and was carrying members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal enterprise. The strike, which killed six people, was the 10th known operation since Sept. 2, and the third this week, following two others in the eastern Pacific off the coast of South America.

So far, at least 43 people that President Donald Trump labeled “narco-terrorists” have perished in these attacks. “We take them out,” Trump said on Fox News, and later joked about how people, most of them desperately poor, are now afraid to fish along certain coastlines.

Without releasing credible evidence to back it up, Trump has claimed that the victims’ vessels were “stacked up with bags of white powder that’s mostly fentanyl and other drugs, too.” He said they were “smuggling a deadly weapon poisoning Americans” on behalf of various “terrorist organizations.”

The president’s use of “terrorist” is telling. The designation allows him to treat the victims as enemy combatants in a war that does not exist but that he increasingly seems to want to incite.

“The land is next,” Trump said this week, and on Friday it appeared he could be correct. As news of the latest boat strike sunk in, the Pentagon announced that it was moving the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford and other warships to Latin America as part of an effort to “degrade and dismantle” drug and criminal enterprises. The Ford, the Washington Post reported, is “the world’s largest aircraft carrier, typically carrying dozens of fighter jets, numerous helicopters and more than 4,000 sailors.”

The prospect of U.S. warships in the Caribbean is chilling, particularly when weighed against reports that the administration is considering intensifying efforts for regime change in Venezuela. (The country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, was indicted in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges in 2020.)

But Trump also has his eyes set elsewhere. On Friday afternoon, as the Ford prepared to set sail from Croatia, where it has been stationed, the administration also announced sanctions on Colombian President Gustavo Petro, as well as his family and associates. Petro recently criticized the Trump administration’s action in the region, and on Oct. 19 credibly accused Trump of murder for a mid-September strike against a boat that the administration claimed was carrying drugs. Alejandro Carranza, said Petro, was a “lifelong fisherman” and was allegedly in Colombian waters at the time of the attack.

After Petro’s initial accusation, instead of offering legal justification for the strike, Trump announced he was cutting off foreign aid to Colombia. Bragging about the killings, the president falsely claimed that every exploded shipping vessel “saves 25,000 American lives.” In the factual world, about 100,000 Americans die each year from drug overdoses, mostly by fentanyl, which does not come from Venezuela, Colombia or any South American country, but from China and Mexico. Most of the lethal fentanyl, according to the American Immigration Council, is smuggled into the country by U.S. citizens, over land.

Still, the White House persists in arguing the strikes against vessels in the Caribbean are a matter of self-defense. To make that claim, Trump “determined” that drug cartels like Tren de Aragua are “terrorists.” But officials say Tren de Aragua is not operating in the shipping routes under attack, and that the route Trump and Hegseth are targeting carries cocaine and marijuana to Europe and Africa — not the U.S.

Despite the administration’s contentions, Trump’s military actions are clearly illegal. The White House has argued that the attacks fall under the law of armed conflict (LOAC), which limits methods of warfare and sets out legally required protections for noncombatants and civilians — but only during conflict. The U.S., however, is in no such conflict; the country is not under attack, and Congress has not declared war.

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

<....According to the New York Times, legal experts on the use of armed force say Trump’s campaign is illegal, pointing to the convention that the military is banned from targeting civilians who are not directly involved in hostilities. Key legal instruments prohibiting extrajudicial killings and murder include the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Statute of the International Criminal Court and customary international humanitarian law. The Trump administration has not publicly offered a legal theory that comports with any of these laws.

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

In February, Hegseth fired the Judge Advocates General whose job was to assess the legality of military actions. Even if it emerged he deliberately did so to engage in illegal conduct and later claim a “mistake of law” defense, such a maneuver won’t save him. In its article “U.S. Servicemembers’ Exposure to Criminal Liability for Lethal Strikes on Narcoterrorists,” Just Security lays out the case under the Manual for Courts-Martial and Article 118 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, concluding of the Venezuela strikes that:

Despite the clear absence of an “imminent threat of death or serious injury” or “grave threat to life,” the U.S. Coast Guard did not interdict the alleged criminal narcotrafficking in the way this conduct has been historically (and recently) approached. These suspected criminals were not arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced through a regular course of criminal procedure and neutral adjudication in a court. They were killed extrajudicially for conduct that could not be plausibly labeled a military attack, use of force, or even threat of imminent harm to anyone in the United States or any other nation, and despite the opportunity and ability to use less-than-lethal force to stop the boats.

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

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

Even if a corrupt Supreme Court gave Trump criminal immunity for murder — which, despite its ruling in Trump v. United States, remains an unsettled question — someone should let Hegseth know that immunity does not extend to him, or to other service members piloting the drones or firing the missiles. These orders are obviously illegal, and they trigger service members’ obligations to refuse them.

When this period of insanity ends, those who follow such orders could expect to follow Hegseth to court martial. In the meantime, the air strikes and killings will doubtless continue — with even more escalations likely.>

<“Previously a voice for the canceled, they’re now the ones canceling,” intoned NBC News last month in a story, headlined “Trump and Republicans find themselves on the other side of the cancel culture wars,” on the right-wing blitzkrieg against anyone who dared criticize Charlie Kirk in the weeks after his assassination. The New York Times reported that in seeking to punish offensive speech, Republicans were “trying to rebrand a practice they once maligned.” Former President Barack Obama made a similar comparison after Jimmy Kimmel was suspended amid the Trump administration’s threats to retaliate against media outlets. “After years of complaining about cancel culture,” Obama wrote on X, “the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level.”

Obama is right that the Trump administration’s attacks are “new and dangerous,” but where he’s wrong—perhaps in a clumsy attempt to be evenhanded—is that they don’t even belong in the same conversation as “cancel culture.” This is organized state repression, veering crassly and thuggishly into a reign of terror.

To use one of Obama’s favorite phrases, let’s be clear: “Cancel culture” refers to the prosecutorial and puritanical style of liberalism that became popular on the internet during the second half of the Obama administration and intensified during Trump’s first term, when the algorithms rewarded outrage but we were all still relatively new to the power and incentives of social media. It was a bad vibe. Discursive mistakes—insensitive jokes, ill-conceived tweets—could attract a mob of internet denunciation. The term could be overused, at times seeming to imply that people were out of line in criticizing celebrities and other powerful people for abusive behavior. But at its worst, cancel culture undermined solidarities, encouraged the bullying of some vulnerable people, and drove others to the right. Even worse, some of its targets lost their livelihoods.

This last aspect of cancel culture was its most pernicious, and at the time I called it “‘You’re Fired!’ liberalism.” (Yes, I was invoking The Apprentice.) I argued that while trying to get opponents dismissed from their jobs was an appropriate tactic for the right, given their apparent comfort with the cruelly precarious conditions for employees under neoliberal capitalism, it was unworthy of the left and would only expand the “anxious, resentful electorate that put Trump into power.” Unfortunately, I was right about that.

As misguided as “cancel culture” was, though, that’s not what Trump and his minions are up to today. Yes, the right’s leading influencers, from Vice President JD Vance to Laura Loomer, have whipped up the MAGA mob to get people—not only public figures like Jimmy Kimmel but public school teachers and crossing guards—fired from their jobs for opinions on Kirk that it deems unacceptable.

But the Trump administration’s approach to unwelcome speech is far worse than that. “Cancel culture” never involved the machinery of the federal government, yet Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is banning journalists from the Pentagon who won’t agree to government-imposed restrictions on their reporting, and has deemed these new rules—rejected by every legitimate news outlet—necessary to regulate a “very disruptive” press. Speaking of the Pentagon, Hegseth is also presiding over McCarthyite investigations within the agency to root out employees who aren’t fans of Charlie Kirk....>

<....Then there is the misuse of law enforcement powers to punish anti-Trump public figures. Last month, in a Truth Social post, Trump told Attorney General Pam Bondi that failure to prosecute his political adversaries was “killing our reputation and credibility.” Soon afterward, federal prosecutors brought weak and clearly contrived cases against James Comey and New York Attorney General Tish James. While the charges against John Bolton aren’t considered to be quite as flimsy, the prosecution of Trump’s own former national security adviser is obviously nakedly political in the same way.

“Cancel culture” just isn’t an adequate description for moves like that, nor for the blatant witch hunts Trump’s government is conducting against countless regular people who have never held significant positions of power but have participated in peaceful protest, written an op-ed, or posted on social media. Trump is using the federal government’s powers to try to deport such people when he doesn’t agree with their politics, including student activists like Columbia University’s Mahmoud Khalil, Tufts University’s Rümeysa Öztürk, and many others. At least six people have had their visas canceled because of remarks made about Charlie Kirk on social media, a move that Trump’s State Department is not trying to hide but has celebrated in an X thread.

Then there are the threats of violence. As juvenile as it was for Trump to post an AI-generated video of himself as a king dumping poop on the “No Kings” demonstrations, it’s also quite scary, especially from a president who has already demonstrated his willingness to send in the military against protesters and who, during his first administration, asked his staff if it would be possible to shoot Black Lives Matter demonstrators.

And for all the talk of liberal “cancel culture” within the academy (where indeed, some students and professors did sometimes face blowback for views offensive to the left), that’s no analogue to Trump’s assault on academic freedom, which is easily the worst by the federal government since the McCarthy era. Trump is using federal funding as a cudgel to punish or prevent speech he does not like, whether at a protest on the green or in the curriculum itself.

It’s not outlandish to suggest that aspects of left “cancel culture” contributed to what we’re seeing today. Cancel culture may have softened us up to accept an illiberal logic, undermining values like free speech and academic freedom. On campus, for example, notions that speech shouldn’t be allowed if it makes people feel “unsafe”—an argument sometimes used against allowing certain conservative speakers on campus—have been deployed effectively by the right to argue that pro-Palestinian protest, or criticism of Kirk, is violent or hateful. And conservatives are now using the liberal term “consequence culture” to argue that irresponsible speech should have dire consequences for offenders’ lives.

But to equate Trump’s current repression with “cancel culture” is to trivialize it. While cancel culture was intolerant and unpleasant, Trump’s policies are making complaints about it seem quaint. Indeed, some of cancel culture’s most prominent targets emerged from their ordeals richer and better known than they were before. There is no better example than Bari Weiss, who made her name by departing from The New York Times in a huff over that institution’s liberal groupthink; earlier this month, she was put in charge of CBS News. Running a news organization in 2025 is no cakewalk, but it’s fair to say that a much grimmer fate awaits those whom Trump and his minions want to immiserate, put behind bars, or even eject from the country for daring to criticize MAGA darlings—or the Mad King himself.>

<Twenty-six days into the shutdown, US Sen. Chris Murphy argued on CNN‘s “State of the Union” Sunday that President Donald Trump “is refusing to negotiate... because he likes the fact that the government is closed, because he thinks he can exercise king-like powers, he can open up the parts of the government that he wants, he can pay the employees who are loyal to him.”

The second-longest government shutdown in US history began early this month because congressional Republicans want to maintain their funding plans, while Democrats want to help the millions of Americans facing healthcare coverage losses and surging insurance premiums by reversing the GOP’s recent Medicaid cuts and extending Affordable Care Act subsidies.

“Let’s be clear. We’re shut down right now because Republicans are refusing to even talk to Democrats about a bipartisan budget bill,” Murphy (D-Conn.) told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “Yes, we have priorities, just like they do. One of our priorities is pretty simple, making sure that premiums don’t go up by 75% on 22 million families this fall.”

“Now, the reality is, if they sat down to try to negotiate, we could probably come up with something pretty quickly,” the senator suggested, pointing to Trump’s $20-40 billion bailout for Argentina. “That’s enough money to relieve a lot of pressure of these premium increases. So, we could get this deal done in a day if the president was in DC, rather than being overseas. We could open up the government on Tuesday or Wednesday, and there wouldn’t be any crisis in the food stamp program.”

“I just don’t want to live in a world in which Donald Trump and a handful of billionaires decide which part of government works and which don’t.”

Trump arrived in Malaysia on Sunday and is set to spend the week traveling in Asia. His administration refuses to use a contingency fund to deliver food stamps—officially called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits—during the shutdown, imperiling relief for about 42 million low-income people and drawing intense criticism from Democrats in Congress.

Federal workers, contractors, and service members are also at risk of not being able to buy groceries due to missed paychecks. However, one of the president’s rich friends—billionaire banking heir and railroad magnate Timothy Mellon, according to the New York Times—donated $130 million toward paying more than 1.3 million troops, which potentially violates federal law.

Asked about the donation, Murphy accused Trump of wanting to behave like a king, adding: “This is a leader who is trying to transition our government from a democracy to something much closer to a totalitarian state. And so this is part of what happens in totalitarian states: The leader, the regime only, decides what things get funded and what don’t, often in coordination with their oligarch friends.”

“So, I just don’t want to live in a world in which Donald Trump and a handful of billionaires decide which part of government works and which don’t, which is why I would rather have him at the negotiating table tomorrow, so that we can reopen the government and it can be a democratically elected Congress that decides what things get funded, not a handful of superrich dudes,” said the senator, who spoke at the second “No Kings” protest in the nation’s capital earlier this month.

Trump has used the shutdown to try to advance his purge of the federal workforce. He’s also continued his escalating push for regime change in Venezuela, blowing up boats he claims are running drugs and on Friday deploying an aircraft carrier—all without approval from Congress, which has the sole power to declare war, according to the US Constitution. Murphy has previously condemned the boat bombings as “another sign of Trump’s growing lawlessness.”...>

<....The president has also continued pushing his sweeping tariffs, which Murphy has called “a political weapon designed to collapse our democracy.” Just days before the US Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the legality of the administration’s global trade policy, Trump on Saturday announced a new 10% tariff on goods from Canada—which will raise prices for American consumers—in response to the Ontario government’s advertisement featuring former President Ronald Reagan’s critique of import taxes.

Asked about the announcement, Murphy told Tapper: “I think it’s just further confirmation that these tariffs have nothing to do with us. Prices are going up on everything in this country. Manufacturing jobs are leaving... These tariffs really are just a political tool that the president uses to help himself, sometimes to enrich himself.”

Murphy also connected the tariffs to the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on dissent, from recent his designation of antifa as a domestic terrorist organization and a related National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 targeting a wide range of critics, to the US Department of Justice prosecuting the president’s political enemies and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr temporarily forcing late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air.

“Whether he likes it or not, even the government of Canada or the government of Ontario has the right to criticize him,” Murphy said, “but he’s now going to use the tariffs to try to punish people overseas from speaking out against him, just like he’s using the Department of Justice or the FCC to try to punish and control people who are speaking out against him here in America.”

“So these tariffs aren’t about rebuilding our economy,” he added. “They aren’t about helping regular consumers. They’re just about giving Trump additional power to try to benefit himself politically and financially.”>