The White House published an executive order on Wednesday vowing to defend Qatar in the event of an attack from another country, a remarkable security guarantee for a single country akin to NATO’s Article V.
The order, which President Donald Trump signed Monday, states that the White House will now consider “any armed attack” on Qatar “as a threat to the peace and security of the United States.”
And, in the event of any attack, the U.S. would take “all lawful and appropriate measures — including diplomatic, economic and, if necessary, military — to defend the interests of the United States and the State of Qatar.”
Trump signed the executive order on the same day that he hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House and orchestrated a phone call with the Qatari prime minister during which Israel’s leader apologized for missile strikes last month targeting Hamas officials while they were in Doha for ceasefire talks. The attack killed a Qatari security officer. The president, shortly after the attack, promised the Qataris it would not happen again.
The unilateral creation of any Article V-like security guarantees by a president — under the Constitution, treaties must be ratified by the Senate— is highly unusual, especially for a president who espouses an “America First” foreign policy and has questioned longstanding U.S. commitments to NATO and the central pillar of its charter that similarly deems an attack on any member country as an attack on the entire alliance.
Well, at least Qatar isn’t in a volatile region where someone could make a mistake or decide to up the ante. I’m sure it won’t be a problem.
Meanwhile, NATO is left hanging in the wind wondering if Trump will whine about “dues” and refuse to honor Article 5. You just never know with him.
I wonder if anyone will challenge the idea that the president is now unilaterally declaring such security guarantees without even getting input from Congress much less getting ratification. Eh… why bother? This will only become an issue if a Democratic president decides to try it.
It’s happened. We’re shut down. Old addled Trump thinks he’s cancelling transgender surgeries for everyone and Russ Vought is in so much ecstasy he’s speaking in tongues. Here we go.
Dan Pfeiffer says Democrats have a good chance of “winning” this stand-off, at least in the minds of the voters. His reasons:
Shutdowns matter. Thousands of federal employees lose their paychecks with no guarantee of back pay. Government services are curtailed. People’s lives are disrupted. But shutdowns are also political exercises, one of the few points of leverage available to the minority party. For Democrats, this is about drawing a line. Trump has been running roughshod over the government for nine straight months — firing people, closing agencies, and shutting down programs authorized and funded by Congress. At some point, Democrats have to say “enough is enough” and use the tools they have to fight back.
[…]
It’s possible Schumer and Senate Democrats won’t have the spine for this fight. There are already reports they’re looking for an exit. It’s also possible congressional Democrats lack the messaging discipline to win the political argument. But I think Democrats enter this fight on firmer ground than most assume.
1. Polls Show Voters Blame Trump and the GOP
More importantly, 49% of voters in battleground districts blame Trump and Republicans, while just 44% blame Democrats.
The new Morning Consult poll, shared exclusively with Playbook, reports that 45 percent of voters are more likely to blame Republicans if there’s a shutdown, compared to 32 percent blaming Democrats — a 13-point margin. That split gets wider among independent voters, who are more likely to blame Republicans by a 17-point margin. The poll surveyed 2,202 voters last week.
2. Trump Is Much Weaker Than People Think
There’s a paradox at the heart of Trump: substantively, he’s powerful. Politically, he’s very weak. Trump has weaponized the government in countless ways. With the unanimous support of his party and the avarice and cowardice of business and media elites, he does what he wants, when he wants.
But Trump himself is historically unpopular, pushing an unpopular agenda, and widely seen as failing on the top issue for voters — the cost of living.
He is less popular now than Biden was at the same point in his presidency. His disapproval on inflation and affordability is as bad as Biden’s was in 2024. The only modern president more unpopular at this stage was Donald Trump in 2017.
And Trump’s weakness matters. He is not a persuasive messenger to anyone outside his base. That makes him and his party more vulnerable to being blamed for the shutdown than they may realize.
3. Voters Want the Obamacare Subsidies Continued
Pfeiffer thinks that the focus on the Obamacare subsidies was a weaker hand than if they’d have pushed more on affordability but recognizes that they had a whole bunch of people they needed to bring onboard to have unity on this. I think it also has to do with the fact that there are vulnerable Republicans who are terrified of what their constituents are going to think when they get their health insurance bills and see massive hikes. It’s also going to show up when they do their taxes next spring, just as the election is kicking in. It’s one of the most immediately damaging things they did in the Big Beautiful Bill. So it makes sense to squeeze them on this.
Also:
Still, the Obamacare tax credits are wildly popular. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll in June found that 77% of Americans think Congress should extend the tax credits, while just 22% say they should expire.
The Republicans are leaning heavily on the lie that the Democrats want to extend health care to “illegal aliens.” I’m sure that will work with a good portion of their base. But everyone else isn’t as easily duped.
I think the Republicans would actually be relieved to get rid of this hot potato. But addled old Trump doesn’t really know what’s happening and Vought and some of the zealots want a shutdown for their own reasons. But if there was ever a chance that the Democrats might achieve something for the people and look fairly strong in the process this might be it.
Or not. Pfeiffer says he’s heard rumblings that they’re already looking for a way out so … I’m not putting any money on their willingness to hang tough. But they should.
Marcy Wheeler argues that the more Donald Trump authoritarians, the worse it goes for him. Meaning the more the American public will see through him, supporters included. The shutdown may have the same effect.
Trump ran last year on an immigration crackdown. It’s just that the more of Stephen Miller’s heavy hand we see in ICE video after CBP video, the less Americans like it. In event after staged event, like the violent abductions by masked agents and the horse march through MacArthur Park, Americans have grown more squeamish about getting what Trump promised. Seeing people thrown to the pavement and gang-beaten is not what they bargained for. For Trump it’s a bad look, and we know how attentive he is to appearances:
As noted, several of these efforts have largely failed. The ICE spectacle, often featuring Kristi Noem as the figurehead, often look ridiculous and have repeatedly led to blowback (such as her staged visit to CECOT or a recent Chicago raid that resulted in the detention of two American citizens, along with some others). The attempt to eroticize ICE raids often looks pathetic.
Meanwhile, while Miller attempts to create spectacle to eroticize ICE goons, bystanders continue to capture his goons rolling around on the ground violently abusing people, and in this particular case, desperately losing his gun. They capture people shaming ICE agents. A latest video shows a food delivery guy riding away after 8 heavily armed men chased him for saying something. And those — not Miller’s fancy new trucks — are what go viral on social media.
As Rachel Maddow noted about the comical bicycle chase, insert “Benny Hill” music here. The videos make Miller’s “goons look fat, incompetent, and pathetic” with their “[b]utt cracks and beer bellies.” Whiskey Pete Hegseth certainly would not approve, despite that fact that “[m]odern nations … don’t win wars by having big biceps.”
Wheeler speculates that this is why Trump and Miller have shifted their focus to blue cities allegedly awash in violent crime. Immigration has jumped the shark.
The shutown has the potential to further erode Trump’s support for the same reason. The more people see of Trump 2.0, the less they like it. The shutdown will raise the visibility of matters that Trumps has tried to distract from with tweets and stunts.
For one, Trump’s usurpation of powers assigned to Congress. Wheeler writes:
Start with Russ Vought. To my mind, too few Democrats have framed their primary message — that this is a fight to actually return to existing funding levels before the Big Ugly Bill stripped healthcare from millions of Americans and from rural hospitals — to include the power of the purse. That is, almost no one is being told that the issue, and one of two main differences in the competing continuing resolutions, pertains to protecting Congress’ power of the purse.
The battle to rein in Trump and White House budget director Russ Vought through a piece of must-pass legislation has been eclipsed by Democrats’ larger push to extend expanded Affordable Care Act tax credits that are due to expire at the end of the year.
But Democrats are seething about the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket” opinion, arguing that Trump and the high court are ignoring the intent of the 1974 law designed to prevent presidents from withholding federal cash. And they see themselves as the last line of defense.
“He is unchecked at this point,” Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), another senior appropriator, said of Trump in an interview. “We have to check him. No one should have that kind of power.”
Trump, of course, threatens to retaliate against Democrats for not kissing his ring. His retaliation will also harm his base. The problem, Wheeler suggests, is that to use his leverage, “Trump has to claim credit,” thus making “visible all the damage he’s doing to the services government offers.”
Whatever limited wisdom there was in Democrats trying to make the shutdown about saving health care, now that people will lose it, flog the hell out of it.
Wheeler:
The longer this shutdown goes, the more obvious the initial effects of the Big Ugly bill in terms of rural hospital shutdowns and expiring subsidies for ACA premiums will become.
It makes it easy to demonstrate — as Tammy Duckworth did here — how badly Republican members of Congress are screwing over their own constituents.
Trump is already vulnerable on the economy and on the Epstein files. He’s souring farmers on his tariff policies. So work the eye. There’s more at the link.
But I want to add to the “butt cracks and beer bellies” angle. It’s clear from the behaviors of Miller’s ICE recruits that they must either have received their shoddy law enforcement training over Zoom or over the weekend. Their brutishness reveals many not only as incompetent but as sadistic testosterone junkies. So angry confrontation by protesters may simply give the ICEmen exactly what they want: a chance to bust heads under color of law.
Jimmy Kimmel won his bout with Donald Trump not only with public support for the First Amendment but with satire. A friend reminded me of how protesters in Charlotte once faced down the KKK and Nazis by coming to protest as clowns and mocking them mercilessly.
I’m not suggesting clowns, exactly. But geared-up, amped-up men who put such stock by their macho strike me as more vulneable to relentless mockery of their manhood than to their acting like Nazis. More cell phone videos set to the “Benny Hill” theme, please. Just a thought.
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Our friend Susie Madrak is experiencing a cash crunch. She’s looking for whatever help you might lend this week. Making things worse is an insurance settlement delayed on account of paperwork. Plus:
In the meantime, my neurologist suspects I have an obscure lupus-like autoimmune disorder that’s causing all kinds of weird symptoms (for one thing, she says the signals my brain are sending to my feet aren’t making it through and I’m off balance) but first she has to rule out blood cancers, etc. There’s also a lesion on my lung and they want an MRI.
Reagan-appointed U.S. District Court Judge William Young on Tuesday issued “a scathing rebuke of President Trump” in a First Amendment case in Boston. At issue was the Trump administration’s targeting for deportation foreign students who expressed support for Palestinians in Gaza and/or criticized Israeli government actions there.
Young found that the Trump administration’s goal was to stifle the students’ free speech rights, writing:
Having carefully considered the entirety of the record, this Court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, together with the subordinate officials and agents of each of them, deliberately and with purposeful aforethought, did so concert their actions and those of their two departments intentionally to chill the rights to freedom of speech and peacefully to assemble of the non-citizen plaintiff members of the plaintiff associations.
While Trump’s Executive Order 14149, entitled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship,” purports to bar federal officials from “any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen,” his view of the First Amendment’s freedom of speech protections is that it applies “to American citizens alone, and to an unconstitutionally narrow view of citizenship at that.” Ergo, foreign students had best watch what they say while guests on U.S. soil. Young spends 161 pages schooling the Trump administration that that is not how our First Amendment works.
Young couched his opinion in part as a reply to an anonymous critic’s postcard (at top). It read: “Trump has pardons and tanks. … What do you have?”
Young’s sense of duty and “our magnificent Constitution.”
The New York Times reports that Young “assailed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for wearing masks, which he argued was a tactic ‘to terrorize Americans into quiescence’ and evoked ‘cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan.’”
It is amusing that in commenting on what the Trump administration’s actions mean for free speech that Young launched his commentary based on a comment about Trump from his wife: “He seems to be winning. He ignores everything and keeps bullying ahead.”
Judges rarely write angry, but Judge Young seems to have here. The decision ends with a remarkable section entitled “JUSTICE IN THE TRUMP ERA.” Having established that there were First Amendment violations, the Judge notes that he is uncertain about the remedy for the violations. That, he writes, is because of “the rapidly changing nature of the Executive Branch under Article II of our Constitution and, while he is properly not now a defendant in these proceedings, the nature of our President himself.”
He concludes that Trump’s speech is frequently “triumphal, transactional, imperative, bellicose, and coarse. It seeks to persuade –- not through marshaling data driven evidence, science, or moral suasion, but through power.” But presidents have First Amendment rights and “there can be no constraint of any sort on the speech of the President of the United States, be that speech statesmanlike, magnanimous, and unifying or ‘foolish’ and ‘knavish.’ As President, he has the absolute and undoubted right to speak.”
But, Judge Young explains, “Where things run off the rails for him is his fixation with ‘retribution.’ ‘I am your retribution,’ he thundered famously while on the campaign trail. Yet government retribution for speech (precisely what has happened here) is directly forbidden by the First Amendment.” He refers to a line of cases that have taken place during the second Trump administration that reject “The President’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech.” Those cases include ones disallowing Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms, colleges and universities, and the media.
That case law, the Judge writes, is “the major bulwark of our right to free speech” in this era. We will learn what steps he intends to take next in this case when he holds his hearing on the remedy.
Young has for now not enjoined the government from further deportations.
After signing his opinion, Young once again addresses his post card critic:
“While the president naturally seeks warm cheering and gladsome, welcoming acceptance of his views, in the real world he’ll settle for sullen silence and obedience,” Young wrote. “What he will not countenance is dissent or disagreement.”
Therefore, let the countdown begin for Trump’s call for Judge Young’s impeachment in 3-2-1.
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Our friend Susie Madrak is experiencing a cash crunch. She’s looking for whatever help you might lend this week. Making things worse is an insurance settlement delayed on account of paperwork. Plus:
In the meantime, my neurologist suspects I have an obscure lupus-like autoimmune disorder that’s causing all kinds of weird symptoms (for one thing, she says the signals my brain are sending to my feet aren’t making it through and I’m off balance) but first she has to rule out blood cancers, etc. There’s also a lesion on my lung and they want an MRI.
🚨🇺🇸 VP JD Vance claims Democrats are pushing for a $1.5 trillion spending package to fund “free health care for illegal aliens” as leverage to avoid a government shutdown pic.twitter.com/6lZVDD8Dm5
The contrast could not be more clear: Republicans are trying to keep the government open and put the interest of Americans first.
Meanwhile, Democrats want to take from the American people in order to give taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal immigrants. pic.twitter.com/cGlqrF1Cip
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY’S CLOSING ARGUMENT heading into the government shutdown is a big, brazen lie.
The lie is so big and so brazen that it’s almost not worth addressing, because doing so gives the claim far more credibility than it deserves.
But it’s become ubiquitous in Republican talking points, from the president on down. There’s also a chance some people will believe it, because it feeds into some common misconceptions about health care and immigration policy, as well as preconceptions of how the parties operate. And in a standoff that has been all about political leverage and public opinion, setting the record straight matters.
So let’s get to it.
The claim is about what Democrats are demanding in exchange for their support on a spending bill that would keep the government open past midnight tonight, when funding runs out. Remember, Republicans control both the White House and Congress, but need Democratic votes in the Senate to approve a new spending measure.
The central Democratic demand is about health care: They want Republicans to extend a temporary Biden-era program that has lowered health insurance costs for more than 20 million Americans buying coverage through the Affordable Care Act. And they want Republicans to undo at least some of the dramatic Medicaid cuts that the GOP enacted over the summer, as part of Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
Trump and Republican leaders have refused to negotiate. And after flailing about with a few different arguments—including a preposterous claim that Democrats just want to pad the profits of insurance companies—they have settled on a new line: that Democrats want to fund health care for “illegal aliens.”
In other words, what Trump, Vance and the other Republicans are saying is just not true.
The Republicans are relying on some bogus study by a fringe think tank that points to something in Obamacare that allows non-citizens who are here on protected status to buy into the system. They are not here illegally. But the GOP has decided that any non-citizen is in this country illegally.
And they say that some immigrants have somehow managed to game the system despite being ineligible which is utter nonsense. All immigrants are terrified of walking down the street right now for fear some hulking thug cos-playing Call of Duty will throw them to ground and kidnap them. It’s ridiculous to think they have put themselves in jeopardy by openly signing up for government benefits.
It seems weird that with a looming government shutdown Mike Johnson has adjourned the House. But they have reasons:
Democratic congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva has arrived on Capitol Hill…Speaker Mike Johnson hasn’t sworn her into the House yet, though she was elected on Sept. 23 to succeed her father, the late Rep. Raúl Grijalva, in Arizona’s 7th District. And the looming possibility that the government shuts down at midnight would almost certainly make her entry into Congress even more complicated.
[…]
“The Speaker’s Office intends to schedule a swearing in for the Representative-elect when the House returns to session,” the spokesperson said.
That could be weeks or months. You’d think the Republicans would at least stay in town even if just to whine to the press about how the Democrats are creating havoc. But that’s not the only thing on Johnson’s agenda:
House Democrats are already speculating that there are ulterior motives behind the delays in Grijalva’s swearing in.
Her election puts the spotlight back on Republican Rep. Thomas Massie’s discharge petition to compel the Justice Department to release documents pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein. Massie told reporters last week that Grijalva has promised to sign the petition.
I don’t think any speaker has just refused to swear in a new member of the opposite party before because … things. Maybe they have. But I think we can safely assume that it isn’t common.
They’ll do anything to avoid releasing those Epstein files.
Jfc. After Schumer and Jeffries meeting with Trump today, he posted this AI video of them calling them “woke pieces of shit.”
MAGA has no interest in governing, no interest in working with us, they DO NOT give a shit about the American people. WE CANNOT GIVE THEM AN INCH. pic.twitter.com/0s8oyfjThw
I would say that’s shocking but this is the guy who put up a picture of the autopen in the gallery of presidential portraits so he has the mind of a 12 year old bully and he’s rapidly deteriorating.
Jeffries: "The next time you have something to say about me, don't cop out through a racist and fake AI video. When I'm back in the Oval Office, say it to my face." pic.twitter.com/4z2CUygsT0
Trump is showing growing signs of dementia. He’s increasingly unhinged. He’s 79 years old with a family history of dementia. He could well be going nuts.
You might think this would be covered in the news, but he isn’t facing anything like the scrutiny for dementia that Joe Biden did.
Perhaps the most telling evidence of Trump’s growing dementia is his paranoid thirst for revenge, on which he is centering much of his presidency.
The paranoia was becoming evident in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. On November 11, 2023, he pledged to a crowd of supporters in Claremont, New Hampshire, that:
“We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible — they’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”
Most media commentators chalked this up to overheated campaign rhetoric.
But since occupying the Oval Office, Trump has demanded that his attorney general target political opponents, urged the head of his FCC to threaten a major network for allowing a late-night comedian to say things Trump disliked, suggested that the government revoke TV licenses of network broadcasters that allow criticism of him, and pulled government security clearances from former officials whom he deems his enemies.
Less than two weeks ago, he demanded that the Justice Department prosecute a handful of named political opponents “now!” — including James Comey, whom Trump fired from his post in 2017 after Comey oversaw the FBI’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election; Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, who indicted Trump; and Adam Schiff, U.S. senator from California, who played an active role in the House hearings on January 6, 2021.
On September 19, Erik Siebert, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (initially selected for the position by Trump) resigned after Trump told reporters “I want him out.” Siebert had concerns about the strength of the evidence against both Comey and James.
The following day, Trump posted a message to his attorney general, Pam Bondi. “Pam,” it began, “Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’”
He said he was promoting Lindsey Halligan, one of his former personal attorneys, to take Siebert’s place, and fumed: “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
On September 22, three days after Halligan assumed office, she secured a simple, two-count indictment against Comey for allegedly lying to Congress and for allegedly obstructing justice.
“JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey,” Trump exalted on social media following the indictment. “He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation.”
The Comey indictment was a blip in the weekly news cycle. The media appeared to shrug: Yes, of course Trump is vindictive, so what else is new?
But wait. Are his acts those of a sane person? Or of an aging paranoid megalomaniac?
Even if it’s unclear to which category Trump belongs, shouldn’t this question be central to the coverage of his presidency? At the very least, shouldn’t the media be actively investigating?
As James Fallows quipped on BlueSky:
And we know just the best-selling authors who could dig into this!
Reich notes just the tip of the iceberg. Just in the last couple of weeks we’ve had the following and more: that post addressed to Pam was clearly a mistake that was meant to be private but once it got out to the public they just doubled down and pretended that he meant to say it. There was his wild Tylenol press conference, his inappropriate comments at the Charlie Kirk memorial and the craziness at the UN, the obsession with redecorating the White House like a cheap Pahrump whorehouse, these looney comments to the generals about declaring war on the cities, murder on the high seas, “enduring peace for all time” in the middle east, it goes on and on. He’s lost all inhibitions and is just saying and doing whatever passes through his mind. That is a symptom of dementia.
And according to Schumer and Jeffries yesterday, he doesn’t seem to know any of the details about the shutdown or his own domestic policies. “His people” are feeding him garbage, which he believes, so that he can concentrate on more gaudy, gilt trinkets in the oval office. He’s not all there.
Trump: I never walked into a room so silent before…If you want to applaud you applaud. You can do anything you want. If you don't like what I'm saying, you can leave the room. There goes your rank and there goes your future. pic.twitter.com/DUXBazdijy
Trump: San Francisco and Chicago, New York, Los Angeles… We'll straighten them out one-by-one. It will be a major part for some of the people in this room. It’s a war too. It’s a war from within pic.twitter.com/xt7By0lX6v
Trump: We have the strongest military in the world. We have great leadership… We got many of them out of here, too. We got many of you out of here. We weren't satisfied. We know everything about everybody. pic.twitter.com/EFwpcUY5fp
Trump: We're under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy but more difficult in many ways because they don't wear uniforms. pic.twitter.com/qxxRVm38I1
Trump: I think we should start thinking about battleships… It is something we're considering, the concept of battleship. Six inch side solid steel. Not aluminum that melts if it looks at a missile coming at it. Starts melting. Bullets are a lot less expensive than missiles. pic.twitter.com/IUEkHpgPgx
Hegseth: We are preparing everyday, we have to be prepared for war, not defense, training warriors, not defenders we fight wars to win not defend. It is reactionary. pic.twitter.com/QRXRN77PmG
Hegseth: We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement, untie hands of war fighters… No more politically correct rules of engagement pic.twitter.com/rJyhMQlVId
Hegseth: But if the words I'm speaking today are making your heart sink then you should do the honorable thing and resign. I suspect, I know the overwhelming majority of you feel the opposite. pic.twitter.com/4YFoQ4b1NE
He also pretty much said that women are not welcome in the military. If I was in I’d get out as quickly as possible. He just created a field day for rape and abuse.
I don’t know how many of the top brass thinks this is just great and love them some Trump lunacy. I’d guess quite a few, sadly. But I have to wonder if any of them can stomach that performing seal Pete Hegseth lecturing them on “warrior ethos.” Almost all of these people have serious combat experience. And I would guess that most of them understand that he’s unleashed the beast within the military and the lack of discipline and order that will ensure is going to wreak havoc on readiness. He’s turning the U.S. military into a street gang.
It will be interesting to see if there’s any reaction to this lunacy. Will there be an exodus? Maybe. But if there is resistance within the military to this insanity I would guess that many of the seasoned bureaucrats in the Pentagon will have some ideas. That’s not a good thing constitutionally speaking but the whole idea of separation of powers and the civilian control of the military seem like quaint ideas these days. I never thought I’d say this but after listening to the president declare war on me, I think I might be rooting for a military coup.
Donald Trump signs an executive order on June 4, 2020. (White House)
The Trump administration is “trying to use fear and threat to coerce your silence,” warns Adam Cochran on Twitter. He is responding to a presidential memorandum issued over the weekend. Essentially:
-They are creating grounds to use warrantless surveillance on anyone who dissents.
-And then use their financial and phone records to charge them as terrorists via RICO. It’s the largest expansion of the Patriot Act ever.
1/29
It is *SHOCKING* how little the mainstream news is talking about this memoranda right now.
They've glossed over just how bad it is!
It expands on the "Antifa" EO, but if allowed to stand then it is the *SINGLE* biggest power grab against rights since the Patriot Act! pic.twitter.com/HPXJfaoCLb
Ben Wittes at Lawfare calls last week’s “Antifa” Executive Order and the memorandum, NSPM-7, “a weird mix of nonsense and menace.” While technically not excluding federal investigative action against groups like the Proud Boys, the real menace is to the left:
The purpose here is naked: It is to turn federal enforcement away from political violence of the right and the Trumpist movement and to spark investigations instead of major grant-making organizations of the left and center on the basis of the lie that they are actually behind political violence in the United States.
The factual premise is, as I say, nonsense. Focusing investigative attention on grant-making, which is presumptively First Amendment-protected activity, without any real basis for suspicion that people are knowing or intentionally funding violence is a grotesque abuse of law enforcement power.
Some of this abuse will affect institutions with the money and power to defend their rights. But as with the law firms and the universities, it will tie up resources and time and energy, and it will have a chilling effect on smaller organizations that don’t have the clout to defend themselves. And some activist organizations will be destroyed merely by the pressure of investigation.
Cochran’s is a long thread with highlighted passages from the memorandum. Catch it unrolled here.
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Our friend Susie Madrak is experiencing a cash crunch. She’s looking for whatever help you might lend this week. Making things worse is an insurance settlement delayed on account of paperwork. Plus:
In the meantime, my neurologist suspects I have an obscure lupus-like autoimmune disorder that’s causing all kinds of weird symptoms (for one thing, she says the signals my brain are sending to my feet aren’t making it through and I’m off balance) but first she has to rule out blood cancers, etc. There’s also a lesion on my lung and they want an MRI.
