by Tony Wikrent
[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 02-07-2025]
Trump not violating any law
‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law’
Joe DePaolo, May 4th, 2025 [mediaite.com]
Fintan O’Toole, February 26, 2026 issue [The New York Review]
Renee Good and Alex Pretti were murdered for daring to interfere with the Trump administration’s efforts to normalize abductions and state violence….
Watchfulness is the most dangerous form of resistance because it obstructs the Trump regime’s project of habituation. Fascism works by making the extreme normal. Habit, as Samuel Beckett has it, is a great deadener. It has been obvious since the start of Trump’s second term that he is trying to make the sight of armed and masked men with virtually unlimited powers one to which Americans are accustomed.
First by dispatching National Guard troops to Los Angeles and other cities, then by sending ICE contingents to Washington, Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte, New Orleans, Brownsville, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Newark, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis, the regime is redefining not just legal and political norms but normalcy itself. It is making the threat of arbitrary state violence routine, stitching it into the fabric of daily urban life. The hope is that most Americans can be schooled to go about their mundane preoccupations even while they are being visibly occupied….
This procedure of habituation is also a process of escalation. Authoritarian takeover in a long-established democracy must be gradual. And the gradations are primarily moral. The populace must be desensitized. People must get used to images of little children being kidnapped by unidentified masked agents. They must become acclimated to young women being grabbed and hustled into unmarked vans by faceless men; they must learn not to acknowledge abduction.
They must become familiar with official disappearances—an idea once confined to the outer darkness beyond the southern border but now fully domesticated. They must get used to killing—first to the out-of-the-way obscure deaths of migrants: thirty-two people died in ICE custody in 2025, often because of the authorities’ refusal to treat acute medical conditions. And then they must get used to the public, open, and flagrant killings of American citizens. In this logic of escalation, a cold-blooded summary execution is not an accident. It is a climax….
How Germany Went from Street Protest to Silence
Sharon Kyle, Jan 30, 2026 [LA Progressive]
The Step‑by‑Step Collapse of Moral Resistance. In 1930, Germans still filled the streets. By 1938, open opposition had vanished.
Classified Whistleblower Complaint About Tulsi Gabbard Stalls Within Her Agency
Dustin Volz and C. Ryan Barber, Feb. 2, 2026 [Wall Street Journal, via Letters from an American]
…A U.S. intelligence official has alleged wrongdoing by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard in a whistleblower complaint that is so highly classified it has sparked months of wrangling over how to share it with Congress, according to U.S. officials and others familiar with the matter.
The filing of the complaint has prompted a continuing, behind-the-scenes struggle about how to assess and handle it, with the whistleblower’s lawyer accusing Gabbard of stonewalling the complaint…..A cloak-and-dagger mystery reminiscent of a John le Carré novel is swirling around the complaint, which is said to be locked in a safe. Disclosure of its contents could cause “grave damage to national security,” one official said. It also implicates another federal agency beyond Gabbard’s, and raises potential claims of executive privilege that may involve the White House, officials said.The complaint was filed last May with the intelligence community’s inspector general, according to a November letter that the whistleblower’s lawyer addressed to Gabbard. The letter, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, accused Gabbard’s office of hindering the dissemination of the complaint to lawmakers by failing to provide necessary security guidance on how to do so….
…Wyden is a longstanding member of the Senate intelligence committee. He takes seriously its responsibilities to stop the intelligence agencies from using their operational secrecy to break the law, violate peoples’ privacy – or worse – and enmesh the country in dangerous misadventures both foreign and domestic….Interviewing Wyden is a maddening mixture of candor and obstinacy. He has a security clearance to lawfully access classified information. The reporter interviewing him does not. He wants to tell you what he found, but that would break the law and get him, at a minimum, thrown off the committee. You as the reporter are trying to absorb what little Wyden is telling you. You are primarily attentive to the vastness of what he leaves unsaid. You try to improvise clever ways to ask, and reask, questions that might clarify what he means, and/or yield leads for other ways to investigate it. Usually Wyden says he can’t answer those, either….All I can tell you is that Wyden’s record of warning that there is deep and constitutionally-serious dirt being done by the intelligence agencies in secret is unblemished. Never once in the many years I have been reporting on Wyden have I ever encountered a warning of his to be hyperbolic, let alone baseless….
A team working for President Donald Trump’s spy chief, Tulsi Gabbard, last spring led an investigation into Puerto Rico’s voting machines, said Gabbard’s office and three sources familiar with the previously unreported events.The sources said the goal was to work with the FBI to investigate claims that Venezuela had hacked voting machines in Puerto Rico, but added the probe did not produce any clear evidence of Venezuelan interference in the U.S. territory’s elections.
On Jan. 6, 2026, a group of election conspiracy theorists released a report detailing allegations that the 2020 presidential results in Georgia’s Fulton County were “falsely padded” with questionable ballots. A little over three weeks later, FBI agents raided the county’s offices and seized 700 boxes of voting records….The “Fulton County Report of Investigation of the 2020 General Election” was billed as coming from the “Election Oversight Group” and dated Jan. 6, 2026. EOG is a supposed watchdog group that has repeatedly filed complaints against election officials in Georgia and produced research documents based on thoroughly debunked allegations. Some of the group’s past work was cited by Trump and his attorneys in 2024 as he defended himself against Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation and pressed his ultimately successful case for presidential immunity. There are indications this more recent EOG report also made its way to Trump’s team and even that it may have influenced the mysterious investigation that led to the Fulton County raid.
Homeland Security is targeting Americans with this secretive legal weapon
[WaPo, via Naked Capitalism 02-05-2025]
BREAKING: DOJ Empowers Board of Immigration Appeals to Strip Due Process From Migrants
[Migrant Insider, via Naked Capitalism 02-06-2025]
The Paramilitary ICE and CBP Units at the Center of Minnesota’s Killings
[Wired, via Naked Capitalism 02-06-2025]
Ken Klippenstein, Feb 04, 2026 [via Naked Capitalism 02-06-2025]
Gregory Bovino reported to Corey Lewandowski, not CBP chief
[X-Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 02-06-2025]
Wait! The public face of nationwide immigration enforcement, Gregory Bovino, said in a newly discovered email that his boss wasn’t the head of CBP. He reported to Corey Lewandowski instead.
Emails reveal possible command structure for immigration Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago
Mark Rivera and Barb Markoff, Christine Tressel and Tom Jones, February 4, 2026 [abc7chicago.com WLS]
Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino said his boss was not the head of CBP, emails newly obtained by ABC News show.
Accountability for ICE and CBP
Garrett Graff, February 01, 2026 [Doomsday Scenario]
On Friday, I testified in front of Governor J.B. Pritzker’s “Illinois Accountability Commission,” the state government body he set up after the Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” attack on Chicago last summer and the precursor of the even larger federal occupation of Minneapolis that we’re experiencing now. The body’s goal is to both document what happened to Chicago, with an eye on future prosecutions, understand the role of various Trump officials in this federal occupation, and offer recommendations about how to fix immigration enforcement going forward.
I was called as the commission’s expert witness on the history of problems, corruption, and training within CBP and ICE — a story I’ve covered for more than a dozen years, as regular readers of this newsletter know. To prepare, I spent the last week re-reading and re-familiarizing myself with DHS scandals and waves of corruption and mismanagement — and found myself horrified anew.
It was the first time I’ve ever sat down and tried to organize and explain all of the last twenty-five years of DHS and immigration enforcement since 9/11 and painted a complete picture of what’s gone wrong with ICE and CBP. Overall, the totality of the criminality inside CBP in particular is so much worse than I even realized….
ICE’s Private Prison Contractors Spent Millions Lobbying to Force Banks to Give Them Loans
Biplob Kumar Das, February 5 2026 [The Intercept]
Some of the largest banks in the nation for years have eschewed the business of private prison giants like GEO Group and CoreCivic, the two firms that operate more than half the private carceral facilities in the country, including many U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers.
The moves to “debank” the companies, which have been dogged by reports of rights abuses, came after the banks’ reviews of their environmental, social, and governance policies, which included site visits and meeting with civil rights leaders. According to a nonprofit report, the moves by banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, cost the prison companies billions in potential financing.
This 3-page court opinion releasing Liam Ramos is one of the best ever written!
Dean Obeidallah, Feb 02, 2026
Homeland Security is targeting Americans with this secretive legal weapon
John Woodrow Cox, February 3, 2026 [Washington Post]
In October, a retiree emailed a DHS attorney to urge mercy for an asylum seeker. Then DHS subpoenaed his Google account and sent investigators to his home….
“Unconscionable,” Jon thought as he found an email address online for the lead prosecutor, Joseph Dernbach, who was named in the story. Peering through metal-rimmed glasses, Jon opened Gmail on his computer monitor.“Mr. Dernbach, don’t play Russian roulette with H’s life,” he wrote. “Err on the side of caution. There’s a reason the US government along with many other governments don’t recognise the Taliban. Apply principles of common sense and decency.”That was it. In five minutes, Jon said, he finished the note, signed his first and last name, pressed send and hoped his plea would make a difference.Five hours and one minute later, Jon was watching TV with his wife when an email popped up in his inbox. He noticed it on his phone.“Google,” the message read, “has received legal process from a Law Enforcement authority compelling the release of information related to your Google Account.”Listed below was the type of legal process: “subpoena.” And below that, the authority: “Department of Homeland Security.”That’s how it began. Soon would come a knock at the door by men with badges and, for Jon, the relentless feeling of being surveilled in a country where he never imagined he would be….
Yet Another Sign that the Trump Administration is Laying the Groundwork for Election Intervention?
Bob Bauer, Feb 05, 2026 [Executive Functions]
For many years, in both Democratic and Republican administrations, the Department of Justice has published a manual for its prosecutors entitled the Federal Prosecution of Election Offenses. It is now in an eighth edition, published in December 2017. It is a remarkable document—and it articulates principles of federal prosecution that the president is currently rejecting….
The department has pulled the 2017 manual from the website of its Election Crimes Branch. With the midterm elections only months away, journalists and responsible members of Congress should press the White House and the Department of Justice to explain why….
Stephen Prager, February 06, 2026 [CommonDreams]
Bannon floats big lie to prepare stealing of 2026 elections
Heather Cox Richardson, Feb 05, 2026 [Letters from an American, February 4, 2026]
Last week’s release of some of the Epstein files has shown just how thoroughly Bannon plays his audience for power. Even while he was portraying himself to his audience as a populist defender, he was working closely with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to launder his image and craft political messages.
On Tuesday, Bannon echoed Trump’s lie that undocumented immigrants corrupt the polls, saying that only about 20% of real voters select Democrats. This lie about undocumented immigrants voting has been part of the Republicans’ rhetoric since 1994, the year after Democrats under President Bill Clinton passed the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, the so-called Motor Voter Act, which made it easier to register to vote at certain state offices. In 1994, Republicans accused Democrats of winning elections by turning to “illegal,” usually immigrant, voters.
Republican candidates who lost in the 1994 midterm elections claimed that Democrats had won only through “voter fraud.” In 1996, Republicans in both the House and the Senate launched yearlong investigations into what they insisted were problematic elections, one in Louisiana and one in California. Ultimately, they turned up nothing, but keeping the cases in front of the media for a year helped to convince Americans that Democratic voter fraud was a serious issue.
Judge Incredulous as Trump Lawyer Asks Him to Create New Law for Mark Kelly Retribution Crusade
Kate Riga, 02.03.26 [Talking Points Memo]
“You’re asking me to do something that the Supreme Court has never done — that’s a bit of a stretch, is it not?” the George W. Bush-appointed judge asked DOJ’s John Bailey.
The Trump administration tried during the hearing to argue that the diminished speech rights that apply to the active duty military — meant to preserve obedience and discipline — should apply to Kelly, who is retired, as well.
Strategic Political Economy
Pay No Attention To The Pillaging Behind The Curtain
David Sirota, February 03, 2026 [The Lever]
Have you noticed that the “news” is now almost 100 percent anything other than the unprecedented financial pillaging of the entire country, at every single minute of every single day? Have you noticed how life is becoming unaffordable for almost everyone around you, and yet this is barely a topic of national conversation, buried under the spectacle of violence and political theater being manufactured by the party-media complex?
- This is no accident — it’s part of an ongoing effort by both parties and their media machines to help their donors depoliticize the systematic looting of America. They are trying to make politics, voting, and elections about literally everything but the Great Fleecing. Why?
Blinders on. Because they do not want the public to believe that elections can change the economic superstructure that enriches the oligarchs and corporations. They do not want the political conversation to be about how nobody can financially survive, because if the political conversation is about that, then the general population might develop expectations. Expectations that democracy is an actual system rather than a slogan. Expectations that voting can create actual mandates. Expectations that elections result in politicians getting into power and materially improving people’s lives — or facing the prospect of being quickly thrown out of office….
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism — Macroeconomics is the driver, not median voters.
Thomas Ferguson, February 3, 2026 [Boston Review]
…The Democratic Party’s historic links to working-class Americans had been fraying for a while, but Jimmy Carter’s decision to replace G. William Miller with Paul Volcker—well before the nineties—transformed a slow downward spiral into a catastrophe. Stanley Kelley’s dissection of how Volcker wrecked Carter’s reelection effort in his important 1983 book Interpreting Elections was a fine start. It should have been aggressively followed up by studies of how the Great Volcker Deflation destroyed the Democratic brand as the heartland collapsed over the next few years. The fact that a Democrat appointed him is rarely pondered by political scientists.
Together with colleagues like William Greider and Joel Rogers, I have worked through the dismal details (including opinion polling), so I will simply dismiss the idea that any appeal to the median voter was responsible for any of this. Carter’s decision reflected massive pressure from financiers and financial markets in a panic over what in hindsight was a trivial uptick in the government deficit. Ever since Democratic financiers and business groups lined up behind fiscal austerity, their demands have defined the party’s center of gravity.
This was certainly the case in 1984. Almost everyone agrees that Walter Mondale’s promise to raise taxes doomed his bid for the presidency. But as Rogers and I document in Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics, Mondale made that decision after two key Democratic financiers, Robert Rubin and Roger Altman, flew out to Minnesota and pressed him to drink from the poisoned chalice.
The story four years later was similar, if less melodramatic. Under pressure from the party’s financial bloc, Michael Dukakis resisted calls for stronger fiscal spending that might have helped workers whose jobs were disappearing amid the first great surge of imports and overseas investments by U.S. firms. He lost in a landslide. Two of the most prominent Democratic financiers supporting his campaign were, once again, Rubin and Altman, while Larry Summers, closely connected to Rubin, advised the campaign. Thereafter the Democratic elite’s emphasis on austerity, lower taxes, financial deregulation, and the benefits flowing from free trade, unrestricted overseas investment, and a high dollar has barely shifted. Their indifference to investing much in average Americans, reconstructing heartland communities, or coping with falling rates of unionization reflects a policy fixation rivaling that of an Egyptian dynasty. Its devastating long-run effects on the party’s position in the Midwest and South are only now being widely recognized.
So much, then, for median voters. This is how money-driven politics works….
Right now, Democratic congressional leaders clearly think that Trump is so vulnerable that a repetition of 2025’s across-the-board shift to Democrats is likely in the upcoming midterm elections. They talk far more boldly than they act while reveling in crypto cash and other streams of political money. But they and many others have a long history of underestimating Trump’s economics and its appeals, as well as how swiftly and convincingly he is able to dramatize those doctrines as populist and outflank Democrats on the left. With Trump’s ostentatious overtures first to Zohran Mamdani and now to Elizabeth Warren, so reminiscent of how he used to talk up Sanders, the shape of things to come is obvious. As the administration revs up cascading streams of tax rebates, prescription drug price cuts, and other (short-term) goodies for an electorate that considers the Democrats more corrupt than the Republicans, these calculations on the part of Democratic elites can easily prove as misguided as they were in 2016 and 2024….
