We have a president who, on a day he was not playing golf, threatened to invade and seize the territory of an American ally, deposited a check for $500 million from selling Venezuelan oil into an account in Qatar that only he controls, threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to put down demonstrations against ICE in Minneapolis, and suggested cancelling the midterm elections in November.

Four outrages in a matter of a few hours. In horse racing, they call that a superfecta. Karoline Leavitt told the members of the press at the regular White House briefing that Trump was “joking” when he told Reuters, “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election” in November, because “when you win the presidency, you don’t win the midterms.”

This is a deadly combination for democracy. Trump is stealing public funds in plain sight. If Trump has received funds from Venezuela for any reason, that money belongs in the U.S. Treasury, not in a bank we don’t even know the name of in Qatar, the same corrupt Gulf monarchy that “gave” him the gold-plated 747 he is using public funds to refurbish and plans to rebrand as Air Force One and take with him when he leaves office.

Invoking the insurrection act is a last-option decision that has been made only a few times in recent years by Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and George H.W. Bush. Kennedy and Johnson used the Insurrection Act to federalize troops in southern states when their governors would not use their own law enforcement officers to execute the Civil Rights laws that mandated the integration of public schools in Alabama and Arkansas. George H.W. Bush invoked the Insurrection Act at the request of the Governor of California to help put down the riots that consumed Los Angeles after cops were let off for beating Rodney King in 1992. The L.A. riots went on for six days, with 63 people killed, more than 2,000 seriously injured, 12,000 arrested, and more than a billion dollars damage done to public and private property. I was there during the riots. We could see fires burning around the city from our street in the Hollywood Hills. It was a conflagration that threatened to consume much of the city.

The Insurrection Act allows a president to federalize command of U.S. soldiers and deploy them in a law enforcement role. The president can invoke the Act at the request of the governor of a state, or the president can invoke the Act against the wishes of the governor if local law enforcement cannot enforce the laws of the state or federal government because they are overwhelmed or refuse to enforce the laws. The Act also allows troops to be used in a law enforcement capacity if the civil rights of citizens are being violated and local law enforcement refuses to protect those constitutional rights.

Invoking the Insurrection Act suspends the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law which forbids using federally controlled soldiers to enforce the law.

What the Insurrection Act does not do is establish martial law, which is typically defined as the federal government taking over control of a state’s civilian government in an emergency. The Act does not permit soldiers to violate the constitutional rights of citizens. For example, under the Insurrection Act, soldiers cannot search private homes or businesses without a warrant. The Act does not permit soldiers to use violence, such as beatings and attacks using police dogs, to subdue people who are exercising their right to free speech. President Johnson invoked the Insurrection Act to protect the civil rights of marchers on their way from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, when they were being attacked and beaten by local and state police.

According to Supreme Court precedents, the Insurrection Act cannot be used in bad faith by a president or to “act in a way manifestly unauthorized by law,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice. The Act authorizes troops to be federalized and deployed in case of an “insurrection,” “rebellion” or “domestic violence,” but the Act does not define those terms. One Supreme Court decision from the 1930’s established the precedent that courts may review the use of the Insurrection Act by presidents in cases where federal troops have violated citizens’ constitutional rights or federal laws.

So even though a president can invoke the Insurrection Act at his own discretion, that right is not absolute.

The problem with this president is that “bad faith” is his way of governing. How can anyone, or any court, see using the U.S. military to attack a NATO ally as anything other than “bad faith?” How could theft of public funds be defined as executing the laws of the United States faithfully?

They can’t. But Donald Trump, protected by a corrupt decision of the Supreme Court making him immune from prosecution for any “official act,” acts every day with impunity. He tore down an entire wing of the White House without consultation with Washington D.C. agencies that control the modification or destruction of landmark buildings. Destroying the East Wing of the White House was an illegal act on its face. But with Trump himself in absolute control of the Department of Justice, who is going to stop him? According to the Supreme Court, the DOJ could not prosecute him, even if they wanted to. Similarly, the DOJ cannot prosecute him for theft of public funds, when his decision to deposit Venezuela’s oil money in Qatar would be defined as an official act.

The big question on the table, however, isn’t Trump’s theft or defiance of landmark preservation laws in Washington D.C. The question is Trump’s bad faith execution of the powers of the presidency across the board every day.

Can Trump invoke the Insurrection Act to use the National Guard in a law enforcement capacity to put down the demonstrations in Minneapolis? Probably. He would invoke the Insurrection Act on the basis that demonstrators in Minneapolis are on the streets with the express purpose of stopping ICE from enforcing the law by rounding up undocumented immigrants, which the law gives them the power to do.

Next fall, could Trump invoke the Insurrection Act to put soldiers on the streets to stop the midterm elections for Congress and state elections for representatives, judges, sheriffs, and other offices? Not by any fair reading of the Insurrection Act, he couldn’t.

But would he?

That is another question. His interview with Reuters was not the first time he has talked about cancelling the midterm elections. At a House Republican retreat last week, Trump raised the possibility of Democrats impeaching him if they win the midterms. He told House Republicans, however, that he would not cancel the elections because “the fake news will say, ‘He wants the elections canceled. He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator.”

That’s what we used to call a non-denial denial. Every breath Donald Trump takes is in bad faith. If he tells you he’s not lying, he’s lying. If he tells you he won’t do something, he’ll do it. If he tells you he was never on Jeffrey Epstein’s private jet, he was on it.

If he tells you he won’t try to cancel the midterm elections, he’ll try it. It’s up to us to be ready to use everything in our power, from the courts to the streets, to stop him.

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All the usual suspects are in the news this evening, plus Greenland and Iran. In Minneapolis, more ICE Nazis are on the streets, some of them going door to door looking for people to deport. A new and disturbing element came to light: ICE agents showed up at one house asking something like, Is this 456 Such and Such Street? The person who answered said, No, that’s next door. So, it turns out that “door to door” means that ICE is starting out with a list of addresses to look at. How they have come up with that list is what’s disturbing. How did they know the 456 address might be a place to look? I would guess by using some sort of intelligence that might be as simple as a list taken from utility bills with names that sound Latino or, in the case of Minneapolis, likely Somali.

There are other outrages, of course – a woman was stopped by ICE agents on her way to a medical appointment. When she didn’t get out of her car fast enough for their satisfaction, they broke her window and hauled her out by her arms. As she had already told the ICE agents, she was disabled and going to a scheduled appointment about her disability.

Senior White House Aide For All Things Grim Nasty and Deadly Stephen Miller went on the Will Cain Show on Fox News today and delivered what commentators are calling a chilling message. “To all ICE officers: You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties, and anybody who lays a hand on you, or tries to stop you, or tries to obstruct you, is committing a felony. You have immunity to perform your duties and no one—no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist—can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties.”

“Leftist agitator” and “domestic insurrectionist” is Trump-speak for persons exercising their First Amendment right to speak out and protest against government wrongdoing. Every day something happens that makes me want to write a sentence that begins, “This is where we are now,” but I have given up, because the lines defining our current gloomy location keep moving in the exact wrong direction.

Now, we move on to equally dark matters on distant shores. Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, and Greenland’s foreign minister, Vivian Motzfeldt, met with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the White House today. They answered Trump’s threats to take over Greenland “whether they like it or not” by making it clear that neither Greenland nor Denmark is interested in selling the territory to the United States. “We have shown where our limits are,” Greenland’s foreign minister told the press after the meeting was over.

Donald Trump had taken to his page on Truth Social before the meeting took place to announce, once again, that “anything less” than the U.S. “owning” Greenland is “unacceptable.” We already have treaties with both Denmark and Greenland allowing the U.S. to establish new military bases occupied by as many soldiers, sailors, or airmen as we want. The U.S. has had an Air Force base called Thule on the Northwest coast of Greenland for decades. Recently, the base was transformed to Trump’s “Space Force” and renamed Pituffik Space Base. It is staffed by what Pentagon sources call a “tiny” number of troops and is part of U.S. anti-missile early warning and space surveillance systems.

Trump disparaged Greenland’s defense forces as “two snowmobiles.” If we wanted to send an infantry division there and station a naval carrier group of warships in one of the deep water ports we maintain there, we could. It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to establish the kind of U.S. presence on Greenland that Trump has said is “vital” for defense of the U.S. mainland. He could spend those dollars and establish a greater U.S. military presence on Greenland if he wanted without alienating our allies and endangering the NATO alliance. So far, all Trump has done is thunder to the press in the Oval Office and on Air Force One and post absurd but frightening threats on Truth Social. Denmark today announced that it will increase its “military presence in and around Greenland in the coming period.” Sweden announced that it has moved soldiers to Greenland for military exercises. As part of Denmark, Greenland is, of course, already under NATO protection.

The big news out of today’s meeting is that the U.S., Denmark and Greenland will convene a “high level working group” to turn down the diplomatic temperature and discuss the future of Denmark’s island territory. The New York Times reported late today that the Russian and Chinese warships that Trump has said are “circling Greenland” are 7,000 nautical miles from where Trump says they are in the Bering Strait, the body of water between Russia and Alaska that connects the North Pacific Ocean to the Arctic Sea. Either Trump can’t read a map, or he’s lying, knowing his MAGA followers don’t know where Greenland and the Bering Strait are or care. The red hats do enjoy listening to the sound of Trump’s sabers rattling, however.

In other looned-out international news, the Pentagon announced today that it will begin moving “non-essential personnel” out of the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar because of “rising tension” between the U.S. and Iran. Trump has been threatening to bomb Iran unless its regime stops killing protesters. Reports out of Iran say that at least 2,000 Iranians have been killed in more than two weeks of protests. Associated Press reported yesterday that more than 600 protests have taken place around the country’s 31 provinces. Trump put up a post on Truth Social yesterday telling Iranian protesters that “help is on the way.” What kind of help that would be is currently unknown, although Trump is fond of attacks using U.S. ballistic missiles and B-2 stealth bombers, which are based in the Midwest and must fly thousands of miles and be refueled multiple times to reach Iran.

As yet another day of madness and idiocy comes to a close, we have learned that protests against the Islamic regime of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are fine with Donald Trump and Stephen Miller, but protests against armed and masked ICE mobsters arresting and killing people in Minneapolis are part of an “insurrection,” and ICE agents who put down those protests are protected from prosecution by federal immunity.

He hasn’t threatened to bomb Minneapolis yet, but it’s only the middle of the month of January, giving him about three years to think it over.

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It feels like things in the US have finally tipped over an invisible edge. ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot an unarmed woman in the face, muttering “fucking bitch” as he walked away. The Trump regime has not only defended him, it has leveraged the full weight of the US government to support its false narrative. The Department of Justice is investigating the victim, Renee Good, and her wife — not the officer who killed her. Various officials, including Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, have told the public demonstrable, flat-out lies about the incident, things that flatly contradict widely-available videos.

Americans are living under an authoritarian regime.

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And it’s growing clearer that we are living under an unabashedly white supremacist regime. And I don’t mean that in the amorphous sociocultural way, as in, systemic racism has been a part of America’s story since its beginning, white supremacy is everywhere and it’s our job to see it and resist it, everyone’s a little bit racist, etc etc. I mean it in a very stark and literal way, as in: There are Nazis in positions of power. There are people in power for whom “white people are the superior race and should therefore dominate” is a foundational belief. “White MAGA conservatives and those who share our politics will violently subjugate those who are not us” is a message being broadcast by the US government.

After ICE killed Renee Good, Noem stood behind a platform reading, “One of Ours, All of Yours” — a chilling threat of collective punishment, but also a clear statement that this administration sees some Americans as worthy of their protection, and others as outsiders and worthy targets of state violence.

It’s hard to overstate just how obscene this is. Whether one voted for Trump or not, his administration works for all Americans, and this country is all of ours; there is no “ours” and “yours.” Every president in my lifetime, and for decades before my lifetime, has been clear that there is only one America, that they preside over the whole of it, and that they work for all of us. They may not have always acted accordingly, but this — the statement that there are in-group Americans and out-group Americans, and that all of the out group will be liquidated if even one of the in group gets a paper cut — is truly unprecedented in modern times. It is the language not just of authoritarianism, but of collective punishment and crimes against humanity.

In case that wasn’t clear enough, the Department of Homeland Security and the president himself directly threatened Minnesota residents: “FEAR NOT, GREAT PEOPLE OF MINNESOTA, THE DAY OF RECKONING & RETRIBUTION IS COMING!”

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I don’t know how many ways to say that presidents should not threaten their own citizens with “reckoning and retribution.” But it’s clear, especially to ICE agents, that they have this regime’s permission to behave with total impunity — to abuse citizens, and to break the law. When Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner tweeted that ICE agents who commit crimes in his district would face prosecution, DHS responded with a meme: A listless “oh no” and then “anyway…”

That isn’t DHS saying “our officers have the right to defend themselves.” That is DHS saying: Our officers can break the law, and we don’t care.

ICE is also recruiting agents using white supremacist advertising, and Trump administration agencies are ripping off Nazi slogans. The US Department of Labor posted on social media: “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage. Remember who you are, American.” Grammatical errors aside, the phrasing was awfully reminiscent of the Nazi slogan Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer (One People, One Realm, One Leader).

The Department of Homeland Security tweeted lyrics to a white supremacist anthem, “we’ll have our home again.” The same department asked, “Which Way, American Man?” — nearly word-for-word the title of a well-known white nationalist book. They posted a painting glorifying Manifest Destiny (and the genocide of Native Americans) with the caption, “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth defending.” The Department of Homeland Security shared a propaganda poster of Uncle Sam telling Americans to “report all foreign invaders” — an image they seem to have pulled from a white nationalist account (“Wake Up White Man” reads the account’s bio). The White House shared that one, too.

Unsurprisingly, many ICE agents and employees have turned out to be racists and neo-Nazis varying degrees. A captain at an ICE facility was an active member of a white supremacist internet group. ICE prosecutor James Rodden ran an X account in which he praised Hitler and wrote that “America is a White nation,” “All blacks are foreign to my people,” and “‘Migrants’ are all criminals.” He still has his job, and is appearing in Texas immigration court.

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Having intentionally recruited agents who respond positively to racist propaganda, ICE is now being dispatched en masse to Minnesota, a state that has angered Trump by not voting for him, and by being home to a large Somali population. ICE agents, like the rest of us, have been told by this regime that Somalis in Minnesota are subhuman “garbage” people who should not be in the country. Even Somali-Americans who have worked their way to positions of power in the American political system are not immune: Rep. Ilhan Omar may be a member of Congress and an American citizen, but her racist colleagues still call to deport her — so does Donald Trump, and the richest man in the world.

Speaking of that man — the one who has more resources than any human being in the history of human civilization, who had the president’s ear, who owns a popular social media platform — he has recently been tweeting about his nostalgia for apartheid-era South Africa, his affection for Rhodesia (a white supremacist state in which the white minority had near-total control over the Black population), and his belief in the need for white solidarity against the non-white hordes. White-run Rhodesia was “where the primordial darkness of the Stone Age was vanquished,” claims the tweet Elon Musk quote-tweeted to share. White rule across much of Africa was “a century of civilization;” now, it has turned back into a “Dark Continent.” Musk also gave a signal of approval — “100!” he wrote — to a tweet from a white supremacist who goes by Jerr. Musk shared it to his 232 million followers, and it reads: “If White men become a minority, we will be slaughtered. Remember, if non-Whites openly hate White men while White men hold a collective majority, then they will be 1000x times more hostile and cruel when they are a majority over Whites. White solidarity is the only way to survive.” Jerr followed that tweet up with one advertising his book, which “explains why racism is moral and why White men were sentenced to emasculation after WW2.”

This is not a drill. These are not dog whistles or insinuations. This is a coordinated federal strategy to attract racists and to fold white supremacist ideology into the governing of the nation. This is the world’s richest man, and one of its most powerful, promoting white minority rule.

We have tipped into autocracy. There wasn’t a single moment; it was more like weights slowly added to one side of a scale. And this autocracy is an explicitly racial one. That isn’t new for America — the Southern US has had long periods of being a racist authoritarian sub-state — but it is different this time around, with different tools and pressure points, and with a federal government united in the imposition of tyranny. I don’t know how we navigate it, let alone come back from it. But the moment is here. It is, of course, our duty to defy despair and resist this regime however we can. And the absolute least we can do is call it what it is.

xx Jill

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The Boone Community School District of Boone Iowa has a robust orchestra program that has existed for a century, an extraordinary achievement in any district. And now the school board has elected to end that program.

Boone is located north of Des Moines about a 45 minute drive. According to the 2020 census, there are a little over 12,000 people there, a median income of around $62K. The Lincoln Highway used to run through town until new four lanes bypassed the town in the 1960s. They got their start from coal mining in the post-Civil War days. 

Iowa is a state with a rich musical heritage. It's no coincidence that Music Man's Professor Harold Hill ends up trying to start a boys band in River City, Iowa; Meredith Wilson, creator of The Music Man was born in Mason City, Iowa in 1902 and came of age when town bands were becoming all the rage. Iowa became famous in music circles for passing the Iowa Band Law, a state law that allowed cities to levy a tax to help fund a town band. 

That law was passed in 1921, a few years before Boone launched its orchestra program. 

The program is remarkably robust for a smallish town district. There have been multiple ensembles at the high school, and a middle school orchestra, which is... brave. My rough estimate is that at maybe 20% of the middle and high school population takes part. I found some clips of the orchestra on Youtube (attached below) and the group plays a heartening assortment, from Verdi through Lady Gaga. It's a perfect assortment for a school music program--they get both the education of learning about the classics as well as the joy of making music that they know. 

And they sound good. Video clips can't capture the rich, luxurious sound of live strings (if you have never heard strings live, you just don't know, and I say that as a member of the brass instrument club, a group not known for our love of string players). But video clips can capture the painful noise of a bunch of string players scratching away in an out of tune clump-- and that sound is not in evidence here. 

As someone at last week's board meeting noted, Boone has been justly proud of having one of the last remaining orchestra programs in the state. Double points for a program that is actually good.

But as a handout at the meeting noted, orchestra is not required by the state, and the district was looking to make some budget cuts. 

Several hundred folks showed up to talk about the proposed cuts, and Ames Tribune reporter Celia Brocker didn't hear much in the extended comment period that favored cutting orchestra:

“The Boone school administration has supported the orchestra program through the Great Depression in the 1930s, the 2008 Great Recession and most recently the pandemic,” [Boone alumna Cara] Stone said. “I know the landscape has changed a lot, but don’t make cuts to the orchestra or choir program. These are programs that make students want to come to school.”

The board was looking to cut enough to cover $665,000. One member noted that cutting coaches would require cuts of 8 to 10 sports positions to get the cost of a full-time orchestra teacher (as with many districts, Boone pays its coaches a small stipend rather than a full salary). 

Why is the district scrambling for that much money? The district points to a couple of factors. One is Iowa's anemic state support for school districts. Boone's business director Paula Newbold points out that districts used to get a 4% raise in state funding every year, but for the past decade the annual increase is more like 2%. Unless Iowa lives in some special zone of the nation, that means state support, a major source of revenue for Iowa districts, has been steadily losing ground to inflation. 

Boone also has some declining enrollment numbers, though the cited decline of 630 students over the last 25 years is not exactly falling-off-a-cliff dramatic. Iowa has universal taxpayer-funded school vouchers, which are no help for either enrollment or funding; ironically, that has meant an influx of money for private schools, including those who have raised tuition to take advantage of the new taxpayer subsidy. 

Iowa Senator Jesse Green, who is from Boone, says on Facebook that Boone's troubles are totally not the legislatures fault and Boone's "poor budgeting and spending habits." He points to a graph that shows Boone raising property taxes while conveniently ignoring that rate of state subsidy support (pro tip: when your state support isn't keeping up with inflation, your alternative is to raise property taxes). 

Boone will, at least for now, keep other pieces of its instrumental music and arts programs, but it's losing health, PE, and some other positions. And it's losing a program that made it something special among other Iowan and American schools. I'm not going to make the old argument that music programs raise test scores, because I think music is more important than that (get the whole argument here) and is a critical piece of learning about humaning. Boone schools are going to be less than they were with the loss of this program.

We are going to have lots of these conversations in the years ahead. The young human population is dipping. Education privatization programs will spread already-inadequate funding over multiple school systems, like trying to cover six beds with one threadbare blanket. Districts are going to lose programs, staff, buildings, and I'm not sure we're really prepared for the difficult discussions about real causes and true solutions. The last time we had a chance to really talk about what education is for and what priorities would be was the days of Covid onslaught, and as a nation we pretty much punted that one, so I'm not optimistic about what comes next.

But in the meantime, Boone schools, city, and students are losing something that is distinctive, unique and special, which means we all are. Here's hoping things get better there soon.

Within a few hours of the killing of Renee Nicole Good, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem accused her of refusing to obey commands of ICE agents to get out of her car and then she said Good had “weaponized her vehicle and attempted to run a law enforcement officer over.” Noem defined Good’s actions as “an act of domestic terrorism.”

If you look up the U.S. Federal Code, you won’t find a law forbidding domestic terrorism. This is because when Democrats in Congress wrote and passed a bill called the “Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2023,” Republicans in the Senate got together and refused to vote for it on the unfounded theory that the proposed law targeted right wing groups and the organizations that funded them.

Last year, Donald Trump realized that had been an error, because such a law could be used against “left wing lunatics” and Antifa. So, he issued an executive order declaring Antifa a terrorist organization, and he followed that up with “National Security Presidential Memorandum NSPM-7” and titled it “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.”

If you think Trump’s order targeted groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, which have been convicted of organized political violence and terrorism for their acts on January 6, 2021, you would be dreaming. Nope, the only group he mentions is Antifa, but his target is much, much wider – pretty much any liberal or lefty group that has ever protested anything. Trump’s memo goes after “radicalism…to include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

Yep, that’s us all right.

Trump’s order calls for the formation of so-called “Joint Terrorism Task Forces” to go after “all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies—including the organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, funding sources, and predicate actions behind them.” It directs the Treasury Department to investigate and disrupt left-wing organizations and deny their tax-exempt status. The Attorney General is authorized to identify any group “engaged in activities meeting the definition of ‘domestic terrorism’” and designate them as a “domestic terrorist organization.”

The FBI did something unnervingly close to this back in the 1960’s and 1970’s when they went after Civil Rights and anti-war groups in a wholesale way. The FBI came up with a “Rabble Rouser Index” and a “Security Index” that listed “key activists” and left-wing organizations as “national security threats.” They used the indexes to target individuals and groups for surveillance under COINTELPRO, a program that targeted everyone from Martin Luther King, the United Farm Workers, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Moratorium Committee, the Black Panthers, and the American Indian Movement (AIM). I know for a fact that I have subscribers who were associated with some of those groups. Nobody was breaking any laws, but that wasn’t the reason for the FBI’s lists. The point was to harass and intimidate individuals and groups that the government saw as subversive.

Isn’t it amazing how quaint the word “subversive” sounds from the perspective of today? The Department of Justice has launched an investigation into Good’s wife, Becca, for her connections to “activist groups” that oppose his immigration policies. On Sunday, Trump called Renee and Becca “professional agitators” who were part of a campaign of “paid protestors” without a shred of evidence that anyone is paying a single person to turn out on the streets of Minneapolis or anywhere else to protest against ICE and its campaign of rounding up immigrants and citizens alike.

In December, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued an “implementing memo” for Trump’s NSPM-7, including Trump’s definition of radical targets to include groups and individuals who advocate “adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity.”

We aren’t anti-American, or anti-capitalist, or anti-Christian. Trump is trying to define anyone who doesn’t support him as anti-American, and anyone holding beliefs he doesn’t approve of are domestic terrorists. Apparently, calling Trump a fascist has really gotten under his skin. He is mobilizing his government to go after “terroristic activities under the umbrella of self-described ‘anti-fascism.’” Trump claims that “this ‘anti-fascist’ lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties.”

You are part of the anti-fascist “lie” if you believe in your right to be secure in your own home against unreasonable searches, if you believe in your right to love the person you want to love whatever his or her gender, if you believe you have a right to demand redress of grievances against laws passed by a corrupt Congress and signed by a corrupt president, if you believe in the right to protest – if you believe, essentially, in freedom.

This is what it has come down to. The president of our country sees being anti-fascist as illegal. There may not be law against protesting yet, but if you attend the next No Kings rally, if you show up to protest ICE roundups, if you march in the street against Trump’s newly-hatched militarism, they will be watching.

There are more of us than there are of them. Every poll today supports this, including recent polls that show 57 percent of the public is against ICE roundups of immigrants. Keep marching but watch your step.

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The attack by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth against Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., is far from over, in part because of the untested legal workaround Hegseth is using as intimidation.

The case remains an unexploded, irksome explosive that could seek to destroy free speech to keep Hegseth from having to answer questions from the public he is supposed to serve.

Like most of the Trump administration assaults on perceived political enemies, Hegseth is nasty, under-evidenced,  overly personal, and seeks a punishment most easily achievable rather than focusing on proving a declared violation.

As with threatened but failed prosecution attempts against James B. Comey Jr., former FBI director, New York State Attorney General Letitia James and others, they are meant as retribution and protection of Trump and his circle, not resolution of crimes or civil law violations. As in those cases, the threat of reconstituting cases continues.

In November, Kelly was among six lawmakers to make and distribute a video citing the military’s own warnings for officers and enlisted personnel to consider whether they are being given illegal orders to carry out, and that they have the right to say no. Yesterday, Kelly filed suit in federal court, saying that Hegseth had unlawfully punished the senator for his speech and violated his due process.

Though Kelley and company, all veterans or former intelligence officials, did not reference specific military orders that should be questioned, we’ve seen several instances recently in which the orders to strike anew at stricken crew members on a suspected drug boat, the deployment of National Guardsmen to city streets, or now, by extension, the shooting of an unarmed Minneapolis citizen protesting against the spreading ICE raids in residential neighborhoods all raise legal questions.

In what has become pattern in this administration, Kelly’s “crime” here was to point out the law that is taught to every officer and enlisted soldier, sailor, airman, Marine and Guardian. Only in the cockeyed view of this administration is a dissenting word from existing law seen as a cause for punishment. Kelly has promised to fight any punishment as unwarranted.

Hegseth Took Easiest Route

Though Hegseth had threatened to re-active Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut, to stick him before a court martial board, Hegseth settled on a censure letter to Kelly’s file that says that the senator’s actions were prejudicial to good order and discipline.

That letter – something he could do without process or consultation – opens the way to possible reduction in retirement grade and pay.

That judgment remains pending before Secretary of the Navy John Phelan, who must recommend an action to Hegseth – who already has made up his mind. Regardless, the censure letter cannot be changed, but Kelly remains within time to file an opposing letter to answer its claims. (As an aside, Phelan contributed more than $800,000 to the then-candidate Trump’s joint fundraising committee.)

The possibility of a court martial still hangs in the air, though a board of military peers sitting as jury would have to overlook the statements that Kelly quotes as having come directly from the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) to which they all swore an oath. Hegseth has referred the others in the video to the FBI for investigation as having committed “acts of sedition.”

According to USNI News, which covers the military as an independent voice, Hegseth has a variety of punishments available, though most of them are intended for application towards serving military troops, not retirees, and not U.S. senators whose job includes oversight of the military. There are some limitations on what retirees can say freely, but there must be a direct link between objectionable speech and actual military operations. It also must involve something contemptuous against a politician or member of the chain of command.

Kelly’s remarks telling service members to refuse unlawful orders don’t fall under restriction from good order and discipline, and don’t advise specific military orders to refuse. Any broad contempt for Hegseth is shared far more widely than Kelly alone.

Legally Dubious

Meanwhile, the very same Hegseth has declined to cooperate with Congress about releasing videos of the September “double-tap” strikes against a suspected drug-smuggling boat crew and generally has withheld information about National Guard deployments or details about current orders and plans for the military in Venezuela.

Donald Trump himself told The New York Times in a recorded interview that he sees adherence to domestic and international law as relatively optional, that that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality.”

Obviously, ordering military strikes in Venezuela without a specific aim other than capturing leader Nicolás Maduro to face drug charges, does not violate Trump’s morality. Nor do attacks on shipping, or on small, suspected drug boats, deployment of troops on our own city streets or extending paramilitary status to undertrained Homeland Security agents.

Given the number of court actions that have found legal problems with Trump administration enforcement actions, the possibility of “illegal” orders seems endless.

For a host of reasons, the warnings from Kelly and company seem well founded. Hegseth’s one-man prosecution campaign seems unfair and reflective of an administration that finds legal boundaries mere guidelines.

Opening Fraud Charges for Fed Chair

In like fashion, the Justice Department’s announced investigation of criminal fraud charges against Fed chair Jerome Powell begs many of the same questions, though the prosecutor is U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and the circumstances involve construction costs for a replacement complex on the National Mall and lying to Congress.

As a result, the probe comes across as a political swipe against Powell over disagreement with Trump about the nation’s basic interest rates, not a fix for high building costs. It’s another move towards intimidation rather than for justice, all because Trump wants lowered borrowing rates from an independent Fed panel. On top of all else, Powell’s term will expire this year and Trump can name his replacement (Trump did name Powell, of course.)

Two aspects stand out: The investigation has become public before it has collected necessary evidence, and it is shaped around a criminal charge as a first alternative, rather than one of multiple routes towards controlling the money spent or planned to finish construction. Criminal fraud will necessitate proving intent, among other things, and at this point, the prosecution does not even have the basic construction documents in hand.

Once again, the Trump administration is bending law enforcement around its desire for political results, not sifting evidence first to even determine if there is a crime here.

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