Author: Tony Wikrent Page 1 of 45

Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 23, 2025

by Tony Wikrent

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

“Riots Raging”: The Misleading Story Fox News Told About Portland Before Trump Sent Troops

[ProPublica, via The Big Picture, November 16, 2025]

After reviewing coverage from the network and hours of social media videos that preceded Trump’s decision, ProPublica found that Fox’s portrayal of “Portland rioters” routinely instigating violence was misleading.

The Comey Hearing: This Would Be Hilarious If It Weren’t So Scandalous

Harry Litman, November 20, 2025 [The New Republic]

…I was in the northern Virginia courtroom Wednesday for the argument before Judge Michael Nachmanoff on former FBI Director James Comey’s motion to dismiss the case….

Nachmanoff pressed the government lawyer about how Halligan could have been the decision-maker when she came to the case only a few days before she sought the indictment.

It was in chasing down the implausible timeline that Nachmanoff cornered the government into conceding that the grand jury had not even reviewed the actual indictment in the case.

It was a gobsmacking, Perry Mason moment of the sort that doesn’t happen in actual hearings; except it did. The spectators emitted a kind of silent gasp while Judge Nachmanoff pursed his lips and remained silent for several seconds.

The bizarre and unprecedented chain of events happened because the grand jury declined to return the first of three charges in the government’s proposed indictment (and it approved charges two and three by reportedly very narrow margins). But instead of presenting to the grand jury a new indictment with the two approved counts—not only standard procedure but the only conceivable one—Halligan and her colleagues simply cut and pasted the original indictment, removing the first charge and renumbering the remaining two….

It’s hard to convey how consummately boneheaded it was to try to slip a revised indictment past the court rather than presenting it to the grand jury. Earlier in the week, Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick had referred to the situation as “uncharted territory.”

As this all spilled out, Nachmanoff summoned Halligan to the podium to confirm that when the second indictment was presented, the full grand jury wasn’t in the courtroom. Halligan acknowledged it, and Nachmanoff curtly dismissed her….

…Perhaps more seriously, the [Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick’s] opinion outlined two fundamental misstatements of law that Halligan made to the grand jury, each in response to juror questions. The opinion redacted the statements but described them sufficiently to reveal more breathtaking prosecutorial malpractice.

Halligan mischaracterized Comey’s Fifth Amendment right to remain silent in a way that could have suggested to jurors that the burden of proof lay with him. And she told them that if the government’s evidence appeared thin, they need not worry—additional evidence would come out at trial….

In its filing yesterday, the government did little to dispute the facts, arguing instead that if Halligan misled the jury, dismissal would be inappropriate unless the court found prejudice. That may be true in the abstract, but nothing about these errors feels harmless: The misstatements were grave, fundamental, and, given the grand jury’s already narrow votes, plainly consequential.

And on this score, another malefactor surfaces: Attorney General Pam Bondi. DOJ filings assert that Bondi reviewed the grand jury proceedings and materials and, on that basis, ratified both the indictment and Halligan’s authority. If so, she necessarily signed off on the very misstatements Judge Fitzpatrick highlighted. Her willingness to act as a shill for Halligan implicates her directly in the ethical and constitutional violations….

What Happens When The Government Loses Its Credibility: The Comey Prosecution

Joyce Vance, Nov 18, 2025 [Civil Discourse]

…The Judge called what happened here “a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps, missteps that led an FBI agent and a prosecutor to potentially undermine the integrity of the grand jury proceeding” and granted Comey’s request for access to all of the grand jury proceedings. He ordered the government to turn over those materials by 3 p.m. on Monday. Predictably, the government pushed back….

The Trump Administration’s Favorite Tool for Criminalizing Dissent

Quinta Jurecic, November 18, 2025 [The Atlantic]

Federal prosecutors have charged more than 100 people with Section 111 violations. Was their crime anything more than opposing Trump’s immigration policies?

The videos have become commonplace. Federal officers wearing masks and bulletproof vests subdue a moped driver in the middle of a busy D.C. street. A 70-year-old protester in Chicago is pushed to the ground by an armed Border Patrol agent holding a riot gun. In Los Angeles, an agent shoves away a demonstrator.

These videos capture the aggressive tactics of immigration officers under the second Trump administration. But they share something else, too. In each instance, following documented violence by federal officers toward protesters and immigrants, the Justice Department pressed charges—against the victim of that violence. Those three people, according to the DOJ, had all broken a law prohibiting “assaulting, resisting, or impeding” federal officials….

Michael Steele’s [Malcolm Nance’s] GRAVE WARNING about Trump Will Give You CHILLS

[Your Daily Political Fix, November 18, 2025, YouTube]

1:14
…we are at the point of danger now. Uh, this administration has convinced themselves based on their own fantasies wrapped within their heads watching footage that’s five and 10 years old … they want to kill Americans that other American citizens now need to be designated as equal to a foreign terrorist group or armed vigilante gang or armed gangs in El Salvador in an effort to poison the mind of onethird of the electorate to attack and potentially kill another third of the electorate.

If that sounds familiar, that’s what Adolf Hitler did. He won with 33% of the vote. He got the other 33% to join together to try to wipe out the democratically elected 33%. We are in a very very very dangerous place right now. Well, I don’t know what else you call it when you’re sending red state, you know, troops into blue states without their permission. That feels inciting of a a civil war or whatever you want to call it. when you openly say insurrection act … and even a Trump judge says it has no relation to reality.

2:44
Well, what we’re seeing here is quite simple. It’s military occupation. And he’s sending forces from people who he thought from states that were supposed to be Trump supporting. Let me tell you
something. These guardsmen go where they’re ordered because that’s their their job for the weekend, right? So when they get mobilized and activated, they’ll go there. But with few exceptions, this the force is 40 to 45% African-American, Latino, and women. And they’re not going to go out and start shooting people. We haven’t even seen any evidence of where they actually are other than doing support. It’s ICE, the secret police, the new American Gestapo. And I will call them that professionally because what they are doing is the technical term in my manual that is used throughout the world. The terrorist recognition handbook is state terrorism where all instruments of government and law enforcement the intelligence apparatus carry out acts of terrorism in order to intimidate the entire nation into a state of fear.

White House blew past legal concerns in deadly strikes on drug boats

Ellen Nakashima, Warren P. Strobel and Alex Hortonibe, Nov 22, 2025 [Washington Post]

President Donald Trump and his top White House aides pushed for lethal strikes on Western Hemisphere drug traffickers almost as soon as they took office in January, and in the past 10 months have repeatedly steamrolled or sidestepped government lawyers who questioned whether the provocative policy was legal, according to multiple current and former officials familiar with the debates….

So much for constitutional conservatives — CBP violates federalism, civil rights, and state laws as Republicans cheer.

Thomas Mills, Nov 21, 2025 [PoliticsNC]

Earlier this week, I wrote a piece about the Border Patrol’s invasion of the state, citing their assault and abduction of an American citizen in Charlotte. I concluded the piece asking, “Where are the lawyers?” Well, one attorney replied.

John Runkle sent me a letter he had written in July addressed to Governor Josh Stein and Attorney General Jeff Jackson. In it, he reminded them that Republicans passed a law banning masks in public with few exceptions. The Customs and Border Patrol agents in the state are brazenly defying it.

John writes, “It is clear to me that ICE agents wear a mask solely to hide their identities and operate through threatening tactics. On its face our Mask Law prevents these actions.”

The Republicans who passed that law should be outraged. People from outside of North Carolina are flaunting their disregard for the state’s laws and the GOP’s deeply held conviction that masks should not be worn in public. Republicans were so committed to that belief that they overrode then-Governor Roy Cooper’s veto. Now, they need to either demand that the law be respected and enforced or admit that it was a political stunt to satisfy their base that believed COVID was a hoax.

In addition to the masks, who thought wearing military-style camo gear is a good idea? These guys aren’t in the mountains of Afghanistan or the jungles of Vietnam. They’re in the Home Depot parking lot. They are supposed to be carrying out police actions, not military ones….

The south rises again

Trump, Border Patrol Retreat in Failure from Chicago

Garrett Graff, November 17, 2025 [Doomsday Scenario]

In the last few days, roving Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino decamped from Chicago, where his military-style raids have terrorized that community for weeks, for Charlotte, North Carolina — a somewhat inexplicable new target (more on that below) — and a move that underscores what has to be the growing conclusion of the now six-month-old campaign of “acting president” Stephen Miller to turbocharge immigration enforcement: It’s failing. Bigly.

The Border Patrol retreated from Chicago in defeat, not victory.

Writing about the Border Patrol a decade ago, I referred to it as a “fiercely independent agency—part police force, part occupying army, part frontier cavalry,” and watching Bovino’s tactics, I’ve come to believe the analogy has even more truth in the current moment.

Bovino is basically leading a rebel cavalry, a la Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who raided and terrorized communities in Kentucky and Tennessee in the Civil War. That latter analogy holds up particularly well in one specific respect: Forrest became the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan after the war. In many ways, in fact, Bovino’s shock troops have the most in common with the Klan “night rides” of the Reconstruction and Jim Crow era South, where hooded Klan members on horseback — often “respectable” leaders of the White community like the local sheriff — terrorized Black families and abused their civil rights. Bovino seems focused on becoming the Nathan Bedford Forrest of the Trump immigration era, complete with the blatant racism, illegal tactics, and ignominious losing place in history….

Here are five important conclusions we can better understand now, six months into the increasingly aggressive immigration enforcement efforts nationwide:

1. Trump and Bovino face diminishing half-lives.…

2. The politics aren’t working…. 

3. The data shows Trump’s lies — these aren’t the worst of the worst….

4. Most of the arrests are being rounded up in “Kavanaugh Stops.” ….

5. Operation CHARLOTTE’S WEB is horrid, ahistorical, and anti-American.…

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 16, 2025

by Tony Wikrent

Elite impunity

The Corrupt Roots of America’s Elite Run Deep

David Kurtz, November 13, 2025 [Talking Points Memo]

In reviewing a portion of the 20,000-plus Jeffrey Epstein emails released yesterday, I was left astonished not so much by the chumminess he enjoyed with elites even after he’d served time for soliciting prostitution with a minor but by the messages’ flagrantness, their casual disregard, and their indifference to consequence.

It was perfectly captured by political scientist Ed Burmila: “The crisis of elite impunity that is ruining our society cannot be more clearly or convincingly demonstrated than with the fact that all of these people wrote all this stuff into an email and hit Send.”

Impunity. That’s the word I was looking for.

It is the same impunity that got us Trump. Like Epstein, Trump built a career on a transactional chumminess, mutual self-indulgence, and an alarmingly high tolerance level for misbehavior by the layers of political, business, media, and cultural elites surrounding him.

At it’s most extreme, the misbehavior manifested in both men as abusive sexual misconduct. It’s one of the oddities of this whole spectacle that the question is whether Trump — already an admitted pussy grabber, held liable as a sexual assaulter, and prone to traipsing through his pageant dressing rooms to gawk at young flesh — was also engaged in another kind of sexual misconduct, as if stacking revelations high enough will finally overcome the elite impunity that’s cosseted Trump for more than 40 years….

Liberal Elites Kicked the Door Wide Open for Trump’s Flagrant Corruption 

Dylan Gyauch-Lewis, November 9 2025 [The Intercept]

…While Trumpian corruption is striking in frequency, scale, and just how routine it is starting to feel, this administration was the logical endpoint of the long-standing tradition of elite impunity. The second Trump administration is a striking monument to governmental misconduct, but the ground was broken long ago, with both parties laying the foundation. For the past half century, corporate and white-collar crime have gone largely unenforced. This was the result of both a widespread shift in views of governance (à la the Reagan Revolution) and a coordinated plan orchestrated to enable private wealth to hijack our democracy, as David Sirota and Jared Jacang Maher documented in their new book “Master Plan,” building on a podcast of the same name.

Trump himself is a byproduct of the wealthy being empowered to violate the law. Seemingly his entire pre-government career was predicated on getting away with gaming bankruptcy law, committing widespread financial fraud, and racial discrimination. Now, in government, he is employing the “blitzscaling” model pioneered by firms like Uber to break the law faster than anyone can keep up with….

The Great Recession was a turning point; the extent of corporate lawbreaking in the financial sector was laid bare. And, famously, hardly anyone ever went to jail. Obama-era regulators, in many ways the acme of our last half-century of the hands-off approach to ruling-class misconduct, earned rebuke and scorn as “the chickenshit club,” afraid to square up against the powerful, if not overtly committed to serve elite interests. Since 2008, it has only become more apparent that the wealthy play by an entirely different set of rules.

Trump’s first election was, in part, built on the argument that he knew “how to play the game.” In this telling, his ability to break the rules was actually an asset because he would break them for you rather than just for the powerful. It was always a dubious pitch, but it’s understandable why — faced with the choice between someone trying to convince you the game that’s obviously been fixed is actually not rigged, and someone who tells you how they cheat and promise to help you get ahead a little bit — people would gravitate toward the latter. Part of the early MAGA mythos was built on resignation to the fact that our rule of law is fundamentally perverted to create two parallel tracks of justice: an unforgiving, punitive, carceral system for most people, and a cushy, consequence-free dinner party circuit for the ruling class.

Dethroning Trump will not be enough to restore real rule of law; the Biden administration is proof enough of that. Donald Trump was excised from the White House with historically bad public sentiment in the immediate aftermath of a failed coup. Under Biden, the Garland Justice Department tried to wind the clock back to 2016 and resume operating the way establishment politicians did in the 1990s and 2000s. It failed spectacularly, allowing bad actors like Elon Musk to grow ever more powerful while continuing to flout the law with impunity. The result was an embittered Trump who faced no real repercussions for his corruption — the worst-case scenario….

To dislodge the hold that corruption has on our government and restore the rule of law, Democrats will need to decide who they really are — and who they’ll fight for.

[TW: More accurately, Democrats will need to decide who they’ll fight against.]

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

We now know why Trump’s DOJ prosecuted Epstein in 2019—and why he died in Trump’s custody

Dean Obeidallah, Nov 13, 2025

The new Epstein document dump tell us many things. But my takeaway is this: Jeffrey Epstein in 2018/early 2019 was increasingly telling people he knew how “dirty Donald” was, that Trump “knew about the girls” and that “I am the one able to take him down.” That means Epstein poised a huge problem to Trump’s 2020 re-election—and more.

To protect Trump, his DOJ suddenly charged Epstein in July 2019. They then denied Epstein bail—forcing him to remain in the custody of the Trump regime. And just a few weeks later, Epstein conveniently committed “suicide.” Trump’s Epstein problem—at least for the 2020 campaign—was over.

Now I will concede there is a level of speculation to this theory. That is why I’m not writing it as a statement of fact but rather one of opinion. But if you see the facts and timeline, it’s clear a full investigation needs to be conducted—either now by a Democratic state Attorney General or by House Democrats if they win the 2026 midterm….

 

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by Tony Wikrent

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

Bannon Tells GOP: ‘Seize the Institutions’ of Government Now or We’re ‘Going to Prison’ After 2028

Jon Queally, Nov 07, 2025 [CommonDreams]

It’s Dick Cheney’s World, We’re Just Living In It

[Talking Points Memo 11-08-2025]

Neither side would ever admit it, but MAGA’s ongoing authoritarian takeover is the heir of one man: Dick Cheney, the former Vice President who died this week.

Trump and his movement tried to distinguish themselves by loudly abandoning the Iraq War as a legacy of the Bush administration. During one debate in 2016, Trump pointed out to Jeb Bush that 9/11 wasn’t exactly an example of his brother having kept the country safe. Before the 2024 election, Cheney called Trump the biggest individual “threat to our republic” that the country has ever seen.

Now, now. It’s a shame they couldn’t get along, after all, they had so much in common.

Starting in the late 1980s, Cheney developed and implemented the dictator-like theory of executive power in which we all now live. The roots here lie in the long-held bitterness among many on the right over President Nixon’s resignation in the aftermath of Watergate, but, as NYT reporter Charlie Savage noted, Cheney expressed the idea fully as the Iran-Contra scandal wound to a close. That was a critique of what Cheney described as a “more assertive Congress that no longer honors the traditions” of executive power, but really a vision of a president who, when invoking national security concerns, could do whatever he or she wanted with backing by the full federal government.

At one point, in 2002, Cheney told Cokie Roberts that there had been an “erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job,” citing both the War Powers Act and the Anti-Impoundment Act…..

The Trump Doctrine: If We Don’t Like Ya We’ll Kill Ya 

Mark Wauck [via Naked Capitalism11-02-2025],

‘At What Point Does This Cross a Line Into International Criminality?’ 

[Politico, via Naked Capitalism 11-02-2025]

Media Pontificating About Trump’s Motives for Attacking Venezuela Keep Ignoring that he Openly Admitted It Was to Take Their Oil 

[The Column, via Naked Capitalism 11-06-2025]

Trump throws himself a Great Gatsby party while people can’t even afford ketchup

Dean Obeidallah, Nov 02, 2025

Are You on Trump’s List of Domestic Terrorists? There’s No Way to Know. 

Nick Turse [via Naked Capitalism 11-06-2025]

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by Tony Wikrent 

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

MAGA’s 9/11 Is an Assassination — “Charlie’s death is like a domestic 9/11,” says Treasury Secretary

Ken Klippenstein, Oct 28, 2025

Within hours of Charlie Kirk’s shooting last month, politicos in the White House and lawyers at the Justice Department and Homeland Security scrambled to draft up back-of-the-envelope plans for a crackdown on their domestic foes, sources tell me. Illegal immigrants, anti-ICE protesters, leftists, trans people, gamers, Hamas supporters, Antifa; the administration had a hard time pinning down who exactly was the new enemy, so they ended up including them all.

But how to do it? How to destroy the “enemy within”? The answer was to frame the Kirk assassination and political violence generally as a national security problem and not merely one of law enforcement….

As one source close to the White House told me, the gruesome spectacle of Kirk’s bloody assassination was traumatic for the many administration officials who knew him personally; especially Donald Trump, who narrowly survived his own assassination attempt last year. Their anxiety about domestic terrorists walking among us, hiding in plain sight, is in large part attributable to this.

Asked if the murder was traumatic event for MAGA, Mike Howell, a former homeland security official and president of the Heritage Foundation-backed Oversight Project, replied simply: “100%.”….

The administration’s frantic planning session precipitated by Kirk’s murder was formalized days later in Trump’s National Security Presidential Memorandum 7. Called “NSPM-7” by insiders, the sweeping directive targets radical left “terrorism” by relying on so-called indicators like “anti-Christian” and “anti-American” speech. (I’ve reported on the significance of NSPM-7 here.)

Banking compliance expert Poorvika Mehra told American Banker that NSPM-7 “is basically asking you to follow the money, but within ideological movements, and compliance teams immediately ask which customers put the banks at risk.” She anticipates that banks will respond to NSPM-7 by simply dropping affected clients rather than deal with the headache….

ICE following orders from far-right activist Laura Loomer

Drop Site Daily, October 27, 2025

British journalist and political commentator Sami Hamdi was detained by U.S. immigration officers at San Francisco International Airport while on a speaking tour, reportedly after criticizing Israel’s actions in Gaza. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said Hamdi appeared to have been taken into custody following pressure from far-right activist Laura Loomer, who publicly claimed credit for the detention. Hamdi had just spoken at CAIR’s Sacramento gala on Friday and was scheduled to appear at the group’s Florida event the following night. Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin posted on X that Hamdi’s visa was revoked and that he was in ICE custody “pending removal,” adding: “Under President Trump, those who support terrorism and undermine American national security will not be allowed to work or visit this country. It’s common sense.”

Top Trump Officials Are Moving Onto Military Bases

Michael Scherer, Missy Ryan, and Ashley Parker, October 30, 2025 [The Atlantic]

How Designating Antifa as a Foreign Terrorist Organization Could Threaten Civil Liberties

Thomas E. Brzozowski, October 27, 2025 [justsecurity.org]

Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designations are one of the most powerful legal instruments in America’s counterterrorism arsenal. Originally conceived to combat international terrorist networks like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS), these designations trigger sweeping financial sanctions, severe criminal penalties, and extensive surveillance authorities. President Donald Trump’s comments at a White House roundtable on “Antifa” earlier this month make it likely that his administration will designate this decentralized anti-fascist movement as an FTO — a move that would create an unprecedented expansion of counterterrorism authorities into the domestic political space….

Once an organization is designated as an FTO, providing “material support” to it becomes a federal crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison, or life if the support results in death. The statutory definition of “material support” is intentionally expansive and includes providing: “currency or monetary instruments, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, personnel, and transportation.” Only medicine and religious materials are explicitly exempted.

The breadth of this definition reflects Congress’s determination to eliminate all forms of assistance to designated organizations. The statute applies to U.S. persons regardless of where the prohibited conduct occurs, creating global reach for American terrorism prosecutions. The Supreme Court’s decision in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project clarified that even speech intended to promote peaceful conflict resolution may constitute material support if provided to a designated organization….

Trump DOJ Charges House Candidate Kat Abughazaleh With Conspiracy for Protesting ICE

Jessica Washington, October 29 2025 [The Intercept]

The Department of Justice has brought federal charges against Illinois House candidate Kat Abughazaleh and five other activists for protesting outside of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in Broadview, a suburb of Chicago.

The 11-page indictment, which was filed on October 23 and unsealed Wednesday, accuses Abughazaleh and the other protesters of using “force, intimidation and threat” as part of a conspiracy to prevent an unnamed ICE agent from “discharging his duties” and to “injure him in his person or property.”

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 26, 2025

by Tony Wikrent

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

ICE Agents Can Now Be Arrested in Chicago 

[Migrant Insider, via Naked Capitalism 10-21-2025]

A FEDERAL JUDGE IN CHICAGO RULED last Wednesday that starting this week ICE agents can now face arrest and contempt proceedings if they conduct unlawful, warrantless arrests, marking a dramatic shift in immigration enforcement oversight in the city.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings found that ICE agents violated the terms of a consent decree by detaining people without proper warrants, following a surge in such arrests amid increased enforcement activity. According to the judge’s order, ICE agents must now wear body cameras and have them turned on. They also cannot arrest anyone complying with their appointment dates at immigration courthouses.

Letters from an American, October 23, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson, Oct 24, 2025

Julia Ainsley and Didi Martinez of NBC News reported today that Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s rush to get new recruits onto the street has meant they have pushed into their training program more than 200 people who have disqualifying criminal backgrounds, fail drug testing, or don’t meet the academic or physical requirements.

The budget reconciliation measure the Republicans passed in July—the one they call the “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act”—included more than $170 billion over four years for immigration and border security. The law tripled ICE’s annual budget, giving it “more than the annual expenditures on police by state and local governments in all 50 states and the District of Columbia combined,” according to Margy O’Herron of the Brennan Center, a nonpartisan pro-democracy law and policy institute.

Part of that money was to hire about 10,000 deportation officers. As O’Herron notes, a 2017 report by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General found that to hire 10,000 officers would require vetting 500,000 applicants….

In August, ICE began to offer a $50,000 signing bonus and got rid of its age limits. To fill the ranks, Ainsley and Martinez note, ICE has already shortened its training program from 13 weeks to 6. They report that nearly half of those dismissed from ICE over the past three months could not pass an open-book exam. Others could not run 1.5 miles in less than 14 minutes, 25 seconds, or do 15 push-ups and 32 sit-ups.

Sociologist Ian Carillo called attention to a 2020 article by political scientists Adam Scharpf and Christian Glässel looking into why secret police agents are often “surprisingly mediocre in skill and intellect.” By examining the 4,287 officers who served in autocratic Argentina from 1975 to 1983, they discovered that the ranks of secret police are filled by those who perform poorly in merit-based systems. Facing firing for their poor performance, they turn to more burdensome secret police work.

Today Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker established the “Illinois Accountability Commission” to compile evidence against federal agents who have harassed, intimidated, brutalized, and detained American citizens and legal residents in Illinois. “None of this is about crime or safety,” Pritzker said. “If it were, there would be coordination with local law enforcement and judicial warrants…. Under normal circumstances,” he said, “federal agency supervisors and inspectors general would enforce proper legal procedures and protocols and hold accountable those who violate them.” But Trump has fired 17 inspectors general and installed cronies at the Department of Justice, while MAGA congress members refuse to hold hearings or conduct oversight. Administration officials are acting as if they are “immune from investigation or accountability,” Pritzker said “They are not.”

‘Evil, Fascist, Wannabe Authoritarian’ Stephen Miller Threatens IL Gov. Pritzker With Arrest

Jessica Corbett, October 25, 2025 [CommonDreams]

…Trump himself has called for jailing Pritzker and Democratic Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson “for failing to protect” ICE officers. Priztker, a billionaire and potential 2028 presidential candidate, has suggested Trump should be removed from office via the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution.

Miles Taylor, who served as Department of Homeland Security chief of staff during the first Trump administration and authored an infamous, anonymous 2018 New York Times editorial, said Friday, “Feels like we’re going down the rabbit hole pretty fast here, folks.”

California state Sen. Scott Weiner (D-11), one of the Democrats running for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s seat in the next cycle, said: “They’re now explicitly taking the position that state and local elected officials are committing crimes when they attempt to protect their communities from the ICE secret police.”….

ICE boosts weapons spending 700% 

[Popular Information, via Naked Capitalism 10-21-2025]

“…there have also been significant purchases of chemical weapons and “guided missile warheads and explosive components.”

[TW: What does ICE want guided missile warheads for?]

Did Donald Trump Nearly Get Hakeem Jeffries Killed?

Peter Rothpletz, Oct 22, 2025 [Zeteo]

Yesterday, one of the men Trump freed from accountability was arrested for allegedly plotting to murder the House minority leader.

A story in three parts.

“I will kill him for the future,” 34-year-old Christopher Moynihan stated via text, according to New York court records. “Hakeem Jeffries makes a speech in a few days in NYC I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” he went on.

“Even if I am hated he must be eliminated.”

Mike Johnson Says No Kings Protest Is Worse Than Threats on Jeffries

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, October 21, 2025 [The New Republic]

House Speaker Mike Johnson brushed off assassination threats against Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Tuesday, claiming that—despite the wannabe assassin’s conservative politics—the left is still at fault….

…Johnson chose to throw the responsibility back at America’s ideological left.

“I will tell you this, the violence on the left is far more prevalent than the violence on the right,” Johnson said Tuesday. “The assassination culture that’s been advanced now—this is the left, in almost every case that is advancing this, and not the right. Let’s not make this a partisan issue, you don’t want me to go there.

“The rhetoric that you saw on display Saturday, we highlighted yesterday, it plays into this. There are people that get triggered—there are deranged people in society when they hear elected officials participating in a rally that was paid for by [George] Soros and sponsored by Communists, with signs and placards and mantras that were repeated that, ‘We should bring death to fascist politicians.’ They call every Republican a fascist now,” Johnson said, referring to the peaceful No Kings protests that took place across the country this past weekend….

Trump “National Police Force” Built on ICE Partnerships With Local Agencies Like… Wildlife Commissions?

Akela Lacy, October 20 2025 [The Intercept]

In addition to deploying tens of thousands of federal agents from across the federal government to carry out his deportation agenda, President Donald Trump is rapidly expanding the network of state and local police going after immigrants through partnerships with U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

The aggressive, nationwide law enforcement regime, all taking place under orders from the White House, amounts to what scholars, attorneys, and now a federal judge say are steps toward the creation of a national police force. And the ranks of ICE partners won’t be filled with just local cops: In at least three states, the administration is joining forces with agencies typically tasked with environmental and marine protection, lottery control, and gaming to target immigrants….

“No Kings” Protest (and Arrests) Have Begun

Ken Klippenstein. “NSPM-7 is already being used to detain protesters over speech.”

Trump Said to Demand Justice Dept. Pay Him $230 Million for Past Cases 

[New York Times, via Naked Capitalism 10-22-2025]

Rubio promised to betray U.S. informants to get Trump’s El Salvador prison deal 

[WaPo, via Naked Capitalism 10-20-2025]

The Man Who Wants You Dead — Trump’s Golem Stephen Miller Wants to See Your Blood in the Streets.

Malcolm Nance, Oct 21, 2025 [Black Man Spy]

Every Thursday afternoon I do a Substack live with Michael Cohen (@therealmichaelcohen) and Lev Parnas (@levparnas) we call “Unleashed”. I amusingly refer to it as “Two Felons and a Spy.”

These two men have a decade and a half of experience working directly for Donald Trump on a day-to-day basis: Cohen as Trump’s personal lawyer and Parnas as his Russia-Ukraine fixer on the project that got Trump impeached. They both suddenly found themselves and their integrity by turning against Trump when investigated for charges of fraud.

But no good deed goes unpunished, and Trump’s Department of Justice quickly prosecuted both of them….

Of all the people who are on the never-Trump train, these two have special insight that no other people in the never-Trump world have. They know what is in Trump’s mind, and they also know all of his cabinet members personally. So when Parnas and Cohen speak, I listen very, very carefully.

In the continued discussions about the rising levels of rhetoric equating the Democratic Party to violent extremism. I had to pose one question:

Will Trump order violence against Americans?

Cohen was unequivocal, “No. He won’t. That’s not the way he operates. He does nothing directly.” Lev Parnas agreed that Trump himself is a coward and won’t order violence with the words coming out of his mouth, “Go kill people.”

But … they added a caveat.

They both agree that Trump will let someone else order the killing for him.

A few weeks ago, I asked them, “Who in the administration will get Trump to issue the order that will result in killing Americans?”

Almost simultaneously, they both said, “Stephen Miller.”

The role of Stephen Miller is now to shape the political environment to get Trump to allow him and his secret Police, ICE, to characterize the opposing party as a terrorist organization. In a further step towards single-party rule and dictatorship, on August 26, Miller stated, “the Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.” ….

Officials Plot to Have Trump Declare National Emergency in 2026, Raising Fears He May ‘Hijack’ the Next Election

Stephen Prager. Oct 23, 2025 [CommonDreams]

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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 19, 2025

by Tony Wikrent

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

Are We the Nazis Now? How do we meet this moment?

Joyce Vance, Oct 13, 2025 [Civil Discourse]

It’s hard to watch. People being treated like they are less than human because of their perceived immigration status….

In early October, federal agents with Border Patrol, the FBI, and ATF arrested 37 people in a raid on a Chicago apartment building at 7500 S. South Shore Drive. They banged on residents’ doors overnight, according to a report in the Chicago Sun Times, “pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked, residents and witnesses said.”….

Earlier this month, at West Loop Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois, ICE was forced to release two sisters it pulled out of their car at a school pick up, because they have legal status under DACA. But that didn’t stop the masked agents, captured on video by a quick-thinking teacher, from surrounding the car and smashing its windows before dragging the two out. One of the sisters cried out her name and where she lived to bystanders, an apparent effort to prevent being “disappeared” into ICE custody….

In Portland, Oregon, on October 5, ICE agents threatened to arrest and kill an ambulance driver. The incident is documented by witness reports filed with the ambulance crew’s employer and its union by different individuals, as well as 911 calls, dispatch reports, and emergency communications. The ambulance was called to the ICE office to treat an injured protester, but agents refused to let the ambulance leave once the patient was loaded….

A video filmed in September that recently went viral shows ICE firing on protestors and hitting Presbyterian minister David Black in the head with a pepper ball. The minister, who was injured, is now suing. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin tweeted that the shooting was justified because….

There are now so many of these stories flooding the country, and they come with such rapidity, that it’s impossible to keep up with all of them. In other words, these incidents aren’t the exceptions. They aren’t unusual. And there’s every indication that they are tolerated, even encouraged, by Trump’s machine.

Trump promised he’d deport violent criminals. Instead, ICE is going after legal residents and terrorizing children. The message: if you’re an American citizen, don’t exercise your First Amendment rights unless you want to become a target too….

Leak: Feds Think Protests Hide Terrorism 

Ken Klippenstein [via Naked Capitalism 10-15-2025]

WHY ARE US TROOPS OCCUPYING AMERICAN CITIES? 

Seymour Hersh [via Naked Capitalism 10-16-2025]

…The Trump administration is playing another long game, or trying to, in the streets of US cities under Democratic Party governance, using existing presidential emergency powers to send National Guard, Army troops and ICE agents to hunt down and arrest suspected undocumented immigrants and detain and deport them, without the due process demanded by the Constitution. What’s happening now may be a trial run for the use of those forces to interfere on the behalf of the president and the Republican Party in states where the Democratic Party has a chance to win crucial seats in next fall’s Congressional elections. I’ve been told by someone with inside knowledge that planning for such action is now under way in the White House….

Inside the War on Antifa 

Ken Klippenstein [via Naked Capitalism 10-16-2025]

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by Tony Wikrent

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

What is Stephen Miller trying to accomplish in Portland and Chicago?

Dan Froomkin, October 7, 2025 [presswatchers.org]

…as we have all learned over the last several months, Stephen Milller is Trump’s operational lead – if not his puppeteer. Miller, the white nationalist who is Trump’s deputy chief of staff in charge of increasingly everything, is the one who makes things happen in Trump’s White House.

Unlike Trump, Miller is not stupid, nor does he suffer from dementia. He knows full well that what Trump is saying is not true. (He may well be the one encouraging Trump’s demented fantasies.)

So we know the answer for him is No. 3: He’s knowingly, intentionally lying.

And given what we know about him, from his own words, it’s not hard to figure out why: He wants a national cleansing.

He wants MAGA and the state to wipe out the opposition. He wants, in short, a civil war. And he thinks he can start one in Portland and Chicago.

“The issue before [u]s now is very simple and clear,” he tweeted on Saturday. “There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.” ….

New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall (with whom I have had my differences) asked several experts about Trump and Miller’s intentions. The answers, published this morning, were revelatory.

“If Trump, Miller & Co. are not hoping to provoke violence, they sure act as if they are,” Sean Wilentz, a professor of history at Princeton, wrote in an email to Edsall. “It’s not simply about provoking violence, though, but inflicting it, as ICE has been doing all along. The spiral of violence usually begins with official violence.”

Barbara Walter, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego and the author of “How Civil Wars Start, explained:

”The quickest way to piss people off is to send soldiers into their neighborhoods especially when there’s no reason for them to be there. It’s inherently provocative, and Trump and his team understand this. Research by the political scientist Robert Pape shows that the single most powerful predictor of suicide terrorism is the presence of foreign troops on local soil. People hate, hate, hate that. They hate the humiliation, the powerlessness, the feeling of being occupied.

“Once citizens begin to view their own government’s security forces as an occupying army, violence becomes inevitable. Trump’s team knows this. In fact, that’s the point. They are not trying to restore order; they’re trying to trigger the very unrest that would justify further crackdowns. In the end, violence serves their ultimate end: They want to create the illusion of disorder so they can tighten control and stay in power indefinitely.” ….

Sinister, Malevolent, Venomous: Stephen Miller Is Like No Other White House Aide in Modern US History

John Harwood, Oct 09, 2025 [Zeteo]

Over four decades as a journalist, I’ve covered seven presidents, 20 Congresses, and thousands of staffers. I’ve never encountered one as sinister as Stephen Miller.

I see it in the darkness of his eyes, the venom of his words, the malevolence of his affect. And also by the deliberate brutality of his campaign from the White House to deport immigrants and crush dissenters….

The Dilemma: Do or Do Not — In the mind of our Stephen Millers, the time may be now

Thomas Neuburger, Oct 08, 2025 [God’s Spies]

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by Tony Wikrent

Trump not violating any law

‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’

Trump Stuns By Saying ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked Directly NBC’s Kristen Welker ‘Don’t You Need to Uphold the Constitution?’

Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]

Trump’s War on America

Chris Hedges, Sep 28, 2025

Trump’s newest presidential memoranda criminalizes critics of empire, capitalism, Christian nationalism, abuses by the state and those who fight racism and gender discrimination.

Fascists, historically, are surprisingly candid about the world they intend to create. Those they target, despite this transparency, are surprisingly obtuse about what is coming.

The most ominous warning to date from our homegrown fascists is the latest Presidential memo, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” It accuses any critic of law enforcement, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the American empire, capitalism, the Christian right, the persecution of immigrants and those that decry discrimination based on race and gender, as well as those who question white, male patriarchy, described as “traditional American views on family, religion, and morality,” of fomenting “violent revolution.”

It is a declaration of war on the so-called “radical left,” those the Trump administration blames for “heinous assassinations and other acts of political violence” from the murder of the right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk to “the 2024 assassination of a senior healthcare executive and the 2022 assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.” ….

The memo brazenly inverts the rule of law. It turns the law into an instrument of injustice. It uses the decorum of federal agencies, the courts and trials to legalize state crimes. It is grounded in magical thinking, bizarre conspiracy theories and a paranoia that sees the most tepid acts of dissent or criticism as treason….

I spent two years with the architects of our emergent fascism when I wrote my book, “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” They do not hide their vision for America. They plan to make the legal system subservient to dogma. They hate the “secular humanist” society based on science and reason. They dream of making the Ten Commandments the basis of the legal system. They plan to teach Creationism or “Intelligent Design” in public schools and make education overtly “Christian.” They brand the LGBTQ community, immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims, criminals, and those dismissed as “nominal Christians” — meaning Christians who do not embrace the fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible — as deviants. These deviants are worthy only of being silenced, imprisoned or killed. They condemn government assistance programs, especially for the poor. The climate crisis is a hoax. They call for the federal government to be reduced to protecting property rights, “homeland” security and waging war. They want church organizations to run social-welfare agencies and schools. They demand the expansion of the death penalty to include “moral crimes,” including apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy, and witchcraft, as well as abortion, which will be treated as murder. They call for a return to white, male patriarchy by mythologizing the past. They demand women be denied contraception, access to abortion and equality under the law. The only legitimate voices in public discourse and the media, to them, are “Christian.” America is sacralized as an agent of God. Those who defy the “Christian” authorities, at home and abroad, are agents of Satan.

These Christian fascists are incapable of dealing in the world of ideas, nuance and complexity. Stunted by emotional numbness and an inchoate rage, they are unable to communicate in any language other than threats and coercion. Diplomacy, scholarship, culture and journalism are an anathema. One’s duty is to obey.

Trump’s NSPM-7 Labels Common Beliefs As Terrorism “Indicators” — New directive targets “anti-Christian,” “anti-American,” and “anti-capitalism” opinions

Ken Klippenstein, Sep 27, 2025

…“This is the first time in American history that there is an all-of-government effort to dismantle left wing terrorism,” Trump’s homeland security advisor Stephen Miller said, referring to the issuance….

The Trump administration isn’t only targeting organizations or groups but even individuals and “entities” whom NSPM-7 says can be identified by any of the following “indicia” (indicators) of violence:

• anti-Americanism,
• anti-capitalism,
• anti-Christianity,
• support for the overthrow of the United States Government,
• extremism on migration,
• extremism on race,
• extremism on gender
• hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,
• hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and
• hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.

“The United States requires a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts,” the directive states ….

Trump’s NSPM-7 Alarms Law Firms While Congress Is Silent 

Ken Klippenstein [, via Naked Capitalism 10-01-2025]

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