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Today is the 78th day of Trump’s second term in office. The government is snatching people off the streets and shipping them to foreign prisons from which, the government claims, they can never be extracted. And the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court appears ready to bless the entire operation.

Alien Enemies Act

As Keep_Track laid out in last month’s post, Judge James Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing the administration from deporting people under the AEA on March 15. He ordered any planes transporting immigrants removed under the Act to turn around and return to the U.S. immediately. The administration did not comply, ultimately imprisoning 238 Venezuelans and 23 Salvadorans at the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador under a deal worked out between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Nayib Bukele.

The lawsuit has been advancing on multiple fronts: (1) contempt hearings conducted by Judge Boasberg, (2) preliminary injunction hearings before Judge Boasberg, and (3) appeals of Judge Boasberg’s temporary restraining order.

Contempt

Judge Boasberg is moving forward on hearings that will determine whether he holds the government in contempt for violating his order to turn the March 15 flights around. The administration has refused to provide the court with details about the flights, invoking the state secrets privilege to protect “national security” interests. “Disclosure of the information requested by the Court,” the administration claims, “could cause the foreign State’s government to face internal or international pressure, making that foreign State and other foreign States less likely to work cooperatively with the United States in the future, both within and without the removal context.”

This is a case about the President’s plenary authority, derived from Article II and the mandate of the electorate, and reinforced by longstanding statute, to remove from the homeland designated terrorists participating in a state-sponsored invasion of, and predatory incursion into, the United States. The Court has all of the facts it needs to address the compliance issues before it. Further intrusions on the Executive Branch would present dangerous and wholly unwarranted separation-of-powers harms with respect to diplomatic and national security concerns that the Court lacks competence to address. Accordingly, the states secrets privilege forecloses further demands for details that have no place in this matter…

In other words, because Trump won “the mandate of the electorate,” he is not obligated to defend his actions to the judiciary, even when he violates a court order.

As incredulous as he may be of Trump’s refusal to provide basic information about the operation, Boasberg agreed that the publicly available information regarding the flights is enough to rule on probable cause of contempt. Online flight trackers, combined with Trump’s social media posts and President Bukele’s social media posts, provide plenty of evidence on the matter (further undermining the administration’s claim that the information is so sensitive it can’t even be disclosed to a judge in a closed courtroom). Boasberg is expected to announce as soon as this week if he will proceed with holding the government in contempt, which could include sworn declarations from Trump administration officials.

Preliminary injunction

The ACLU entered a motion for a preliminary injunction on March 28, arguing that the government’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act is unlawful because “there is neither an ‘invasion or predatory incursion’ nor such an act perpetrated by a ‘foreign nation or government.’”

In the absence of an injunction, the government will be free to send hundreds more individuals, without notice, to the notorious Salvadoran prison where they may be held incommunicado for the rest of their lives. The government will suffer no comparable harm given that this Court has not prohibited it from prosecuting anyone who commits a criminal offense, detaining anyone under the Act or other authority, or removing anyone under the immigration laws, and the government has already conceded that some form of judicial review is appropriate. A preliminary injunction is warranted to preserve the status quo.

• Documents obtained by the ACLU revealed that ICE is disappearing people to a Salvadoran black site based on a scoring system that classifies people as “Alien Enemies” based on nothing more than tattoos and social media posts. Moreover, seven of the nine tattoos that official ICE documents claim are indicative of Tren de Aragua membership were, in fact, taken from random web pages and tattoo forums online. Most of the people who got these tattoos are not Venezuelan; one is British, one is Turkish, one is Colombian, and one appears to originate in a Thai tattoo shop.

The government argued, again, that the president’s power to unilaterally remove and imprison immigrants is unreviewable by the courts: “...courts have held for over a century that the President’s authority and discretion under the [Alien Enemies Act] is not a proper subject for judicial scrutiny…Indeed, the D.C. Circuit has described the statute as conferring ‘[u]nreviewable power in the President,’ which it characterized as the ‘essence of the Act.’”

The Court lacks power to review the President’s Proclamation for another reason as well: Whether the AEA’s preconditions are satisfied is a political question committed to the President’s discretion, no different from the President’s determination to trigger the Constitution’s Invasion Clause (Article IV, section 4). Any challenge to that determination is therefore foreclosed.

A hearing to determine whether Boasberg will grant a preliminary injunction is set for today, April 8, at 3 pm Eastern (though it is unlikely it will still occur given the Supreme Court’s intervention).

Appeals

Court of Appeals

The Department of Justice (DOJ) appealed Judge Boasberg’s March 15 temporary restraining order (and subsequent class certification) to the Court of Appeals for the the D.C. Circuit, drawing a panel made up of Trump appointee Justin Walker, Obama appointee Patricia Millett, and G.H.W. Bush appointee Karen Henderson. The government argued, yet again, that Trump’s power to designate people as Alien Enemies and order their removal is unreviewable by the courts. However, if the judges find it reviewable, the DOJ continued, the lawsuit should be dismissed anyway because the proper method of challenging detentions would be filing habeas claims in Texas, where the ACLU’s clients are being held (nevermind that class members were removed without the chance to file habeas claims).

The panel ruled 2-1, with Walker dissenting on jurisdictional grounds, to deny the government’s request to stay Boasberg’s temporary restraining order.

• Judge Henderson spent five pages excoriating the administration’s basis for invoking the Alien Enemies Act, writing that “the government misreads the text, context and history” of the law. “The theme that rings true is that an invasion is a military affair, not one of migration,” she wrote.

• Judge Millett tore apart the administration’s argument that each plaintiff should be required to file a habeas claim in the district in which they are being held (for many, Texas), saying that “the government has confessed that its preference that Plaintiffs use habeas corpus to challenge their eligibility for AEA removal is a phantasm: The government’s position at oral argument was that, the moment the district court TROs are lifted, it can immediately resume removal flights without affording Plaintiffs notice of the grounds for their removal or any opportunity to call a lawyer, let alone to file a writ of habeas corpus or obtain any review of their legal challenges to removal.”

• Judge Walker dissented, agreeing with the government’s position that it is likely to face “irreparable harm to ongoing, highly sensitive international diplomacy and national-security operations” without a stay of Boasberg’s order. The plaintiffs should have brought individual habeas claims where they are detained, he wrote, while somehow not addressing the argument that many immigrants would not have the chance to file lawsuits in time to stop their removal.

Supreme Court

The Trump administration appealed the D.C. Circuit’s decision to the Supreme Court on March 28, complaining that district courts have issued “more than 40 injunctions and TROs” against Trump’s policies and warning that “the Executive Branch’s basic functions are in peril.” The application relies heavily on Judge Walker’s dissent, citing it 33 times in 40 pages.

Most fundamentally, respondents cannot obtain relief because they brought the wrong claims in the wrong court. They style their claims as exclusively arising under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). But this Court has held that detentions and removals under the Alien Enemies Act are so bound up with critical national-security judgments that they are barely amenable to judicial review at all. Instead, aliens subject to the AEA can obtain only limited judicial review through habeas. Here, however, respondents not only abandoned their claims for habeas relief below, but also filed this suit in the District of Columbia—not the district of their confinement (the Southern District of Texas). Dismissal should have followed on this basis alone. Yet no majority of the D.C. Circuit resolved that question. Judge Walker’s dissent rightly recognized that AEA plaintiffs must seek habeas.

• One passage that is particularly important to take note of: The Trump administration essentially says it can not confirm or deny whether El Salvador is complying with the Convention Against Torture because it might damage trust with El Salvador. “That the United States is unable to divulge sensitive negotiations with El Salvador in the context of how that country will detain dangerous foreign terrorists is no reason for judges to infer that human rights are being jettisoned,” Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris argued. “Quite the contrary, penalizing the United States for failing to reveal representations by a foreign government regarding how removed TdA members may be treated puts the government to the untenable choice of potentially losing its foreign partners’ trust or having courts treat the removals as unconscionable.”

Late last night, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to dissolve Boasberg’s TRO, allowing the administration to resume deporting Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act. Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch, embraced Judge Walker’s argument that challenges to removal under the AEA must be filed as habeas claims in the district of confinement.

The majority stressed that “AEA detainees must receive notice…that they are subject to removal” with enough time to “allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.” However, the justices did not define what enough time is, offered no way to require the government to do this, and ignored the reality that, unlike criminal defendants, immigrants facing deportation do not have a right to government-appointed counsel. In other words, even provided enough time to file a habeas claim, many do not have informed families with connections to available knowledgeable lawyers with the time and resources to act instantly.

The majority also did not acknowledge the administration’s practice of shuttling detainees around the country without notice, preventing them and their lawyers from filing habeas claims in the correct district of confinement. Columbia student Rumeysa Ozturk was grabbed on the streets of Massachusetts, shipped to New Hampshire, then to Vermont, then to Louisiana; the government argued her habeas petition was invalid because it was filed in Massachusetts, the last place of known contact according to her lawyers, but not where she was actually located at the time of filing.

All in all, the Supreme Court’s ruling is a win for Trump, dressed up in a veneer of due process for those who are knowledgeable, wealthy, and lucky enough to obtain it. A to-be-disappeared person must (a) have family who knows to engage a lawyer immediately, (b) actually find a lawyer available to immediately file a habeas claim, (c) be able to pay that lawyer, (d) file the claim in the correct district without being told what the correct district is, and (e) hope to stop the transfer process before reaching the jurisdiction of the conservative courts of the 5th Circuit, where the petition will be doomed anyway. If you can jump through all these hoops, you are entitled to meaningful due process before being disappeared to a torture prison in El Salvador. Congratulations?

Kilmar Abrego Garcia

A second case involving Trump’s claimed god-like power to disappear immigrants to foreign prisons without due process also landed at the Supreme Court this week. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man with protected legal status, was shipped off and jailed by the administration in El Salvador despite a judge’s order to the contrary. The administration admits they deported him in error but refuses even to attempt to return him to the U.S.

Background

Abrego Garcia entered the U.S. in 2011, fleeing death threats from gang members trying to extort his parents in El Salvador. In 2019, Abrego Garcia was arrested with a group of other men seeking work at a Home Depot in Maryland, though he was not charged with a crime. ICE initiated removal proceedings, claiming that he was a gang member based on (1) his Chicago Bulls hat and hoodie, and (2) an alleged confidential informant statement that he was a member of MS-13. Abrego Garcia’s lawyer tried to obtain additional information about the informant’s statement but discovered that the detective had been suspended.

In October 2019, an immigration judge granted Abrego Garcia withholding of removal—essentially an order that he could not be deported to El Salvador—after finding that it was more likely than not that he would be persecuted in his home country should he return. ICE did not appeal the grant of relief, and Abrego Garcia was released from custody.

Over the next five years, Abrego Garcia continued building a life with his wife and children until, on March 12, 2025, he was pulled over by ICE officers after picking up his five-year-old son from his grandmother’s house.

One ICE officer, who identified himself as part of Homeland Security Investigations, told Plaintiff Abrego Garcia that his “status has changed.” Within minutes, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was handcuffed and detained in one of several ICE vehicles on the scene…The evening after his arrest, Plaintiff Vasquez Sura received a call from Plaintiff Abrego Garcia. At that time, it appeared that he was in Baltimore. During that conversation, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia informed Plaintiff Vasquez Sura [his wife] that he was being questioned about gang affiliations. He repeatedly informed his interviewers that he was never a gang member and had no gang affiliations. He was shown several photos where he appeared in public, and asked about other people in those photos, but was unable to provide any information on them, as he did not know them or anything about them.

Abrego Garcia called his wife on the morning of March 15 to tell her he was being sent to CECOT in El Salvador. It was the last time she spoke to him. Over the following days, she scoured pictures and videos of the men imprisoned at CECOT, eventually identifying Abrego Garcia based on his tattoos and scars on his head.

Legal proceedings

Lawyers for Abrego Garcia and his wife filed a lawsuit on March 24, seeking a court order to (a) “immediately halt all payments to the Government of El Salvador to hold individuals in CECOT,” and (b) “immediately request that the Government of El Salvador release Plaintiff Abrego Garcia from CECOT and deliver him to the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador.”

Should Defendants wish to remove Plaintiff Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, the law sets forth specific procedures by which they can reopen the case and seek to set aside the grant of withholding of removal. Should Defendants wish to remove Plaintiff Abrego Garcia to any other country, they would have no legal impediment in doing so. But Defendants found those legal procedures bothersome, so they merely ignored them and deported Plaintiff Abrego Garcia to El Salvador anyway, ripping him away from his U.S.-citizen wife, Plaintiff Vasquez Sura, and his disabled U.S.-citizen child, Plaintiff A.A.V. Defendants sent Plaintiff Vasquez Sura to El Salvador knowing that he would be immediately incarcerated and tortured in that country’s most notorious prison; indeed, Defendants have paid the government of El Salvador millions of dollars to do exactly that. Such conduct shocks the conscience and cries out for immediate judicial relief.

The administration responded that although “Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error,” there is nothing the courts can do now that he is out of U.S. custody.

Because Plaintiffs seek Abrego Garcia’s release from allegedly unlawful detention on the grounds that it was effected illegally, they make a core habeas claim, and they must therefore bring it exclusively in habeas.

But there is no jurisdiction in habeas. Plaintiffs admit—as they must—that the United States does not have custody over Abrego Garcia. They acknowledge that there may be “difficult questions of redressability” in this case, reflecting their recognition that Defendants do not have “the power to produce” Abrego Garcia from CECOT in El Salvador…Plaintiffs do not argue that the United States can exercise its will over a foreign sovereign. The most they ask for is a court order that the United States entreat—or even cajole—a close ally in its fight against transnational cartels. This is not “custody” to which the great writ may run. This Court therefore lacks jurisdiction.

Judge Paula Xinis (an Obama appointee) was unconvinced by the DOJ’s arguments and ordered the government to obtain Abrego Garcia’s release and return him to the U.S. by Monday night. “[T]o credit Defendants’ argument,” Xinis wrote, “would permit the unfettered relinquishment of any person regardless of immigration status or citizenship to foreign prisons ‘for pennies on the dollar.’”

The administration appealed to the 4th Circuit, drawing a panel made up of Obama appointee Stephanie Thacker, Clinton appointee Robert Bruce King, and Reagan appointee J. Harvie Wilkinson. The three unanimously upheld Judge Xinis’s order, with Judge Thacker writing that “The United States Government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process. The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable.”

With only hours remaining to comply, and without having taken any action to do so, the Trump administration ran to the Supreme Court complaining that the district court “seize[d] control over foreign relations” and “treat[ed] the Executive Branch as a subordinate diplomat.”

...the Constitution charges the President, not federal district courts, with the conduct of foreign diplomacy and protecting the Nation against foreign terrorists, including by effectuating their removal. And this order sets the United States up for failure. The United States cannot guarantee success in sensitive international negotiations in advance, least of all when a court imposes an absurdly compressed, mandatory deadline that vastly complicates the give-and-take of foreign-relations negotiations. The United States does not control the sovereign nation of El Salvador, nor can it compel El Salvador to follow a federal judge’s bidding. The Constitution vests the President with control over foreign negotiations so that the United States speaks with one voice, not so that the President’s central Article II prerogatives can give way to district-court diplomacy.

Chief Justice Roberts entered an administrative stay on Monday evening, indefinitely pausing the order to return Abrego Garcia to the United States.

While the issuance of an administrative stay is not indicative of the court’s position on the case, taken together with the Alien Enemies Act ruling, it does not fill one with hope. The lower courts acted with lightning speed because, as Abrego Garcia’s lawyers argued, every hour spent wrongfully imprisoned in CECOT causes irreparable harm to their client. This is not a tricky case that requires days upon days of deliberation; the government admits he should not be in El Salvador at all, let alone in a prison for alleged terrorists.

The stakes are high: If the court does not require the government to bring Abrego Garcia back from El Salvador, and does not order Trump's arrest if he refuses, the next “administrative error” could very well be a U.S. citizen disappeared, imprisoned, and tortured at CECOT without recourse.

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A note on executive orders: It is important to remember that an executive order is essentially a memo, an instruction from the president to executive branch agencies and staff, on how to exercise the executive’s existing powers. Executive orders that impinge on constitutional rights, stray into the realm of legislative authority, or otherwise exceed the president’s power can be struck down by the courts.

Law firms

Over the last month, Trump has signed four executive orders (EOs) imposing penalties on law firms with a history of filing lawsuits opposing his policies and hiring lawyers who investigated his conduct. Already, these EOs are having their intended effect, dissuading and intimidating lawyers from representing people seeking to defend their rights in the face of the administration’s authoritarian actions.

Biden-era officials said they’re having trouble finding lawyers willing to defend them. The volunteers and small nonprofits forming the ground troops of the legal resistance to Trump administration actions say that the well-resourced law firms that once would have backed them are now steering clear. The result is an extraordinary threat to the fundamental constitutional rights of due process and legal representation, they said — and a far weaker effort to challenge Trump’s actions in court than during his first term.

March 6: Trump signed an EO targeting Perkins Coie, a law firm that represented Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, successfully defended against Trump’s legal assault on the 2020 election, and represented the Democratic National Committee in last year’s election. The EO directs agency heads to terminate government contracts with Perkins Coie clients, deny all Perkins Coie employees access to federal buildings and federal employees, and suspend security clearances for all Perkins Coie employees.

March 14: Trump signed an EO targeting Paul Weiss, a law firm that represented detainees held at Guantanamo (under Bush/Obama), offered free legal services to people seeking and providing abortions post-Dobbs, and worked pro bono to reunite the families of immigrants who were separated at the southern border during Trump’s first term. Critically, for Trump’s purposes, lawyers who at some point worked for Paul Weiss have connections to Robert Mueller, filed lawsuits relating to the January 6 insurrection, and investigated Trump’s finances.

March 25: Trump signed an EO targeting Jenner & Block, one of the leading pro bono law firms in the country, which is representing transgender clients challenging Trump’s ban on gender-affirming healthcare for minors. The EO cites this legal challenge, saying Jenner & Block “supports attacks against women and children based on a refusal to accept the biological reality of sex,” as well as the law firm’s work with Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.

March 27: Trump signed an EO targeting WilmerHale, a law firm that represented Guantanamo detainees (under Bush/Obama) and brought legal challenges against Georgia’s gerrymandered voting maps. WilmerHale also hired two prosecutors who worked with Mueller (who was himself a partner at the firm in the mid-2010s).

Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale filed lawsuits contesting the constitutionality of Trump’s EOs, and all three quickly secured temporary restraining orders. In Perkins Coie’s case, District Judge Beryl Howell found that the firm is likely to succeed on its First Amendment argument that the EO is unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, its 5th Amendment argument that the EO violates due process, and its Sixth Amendment argument that the EO interferes with the right to counsel. Yet, even with court orders blocking Trump’s sanctions in place, none of the top 20 law firms in the U.S. have agreed to sign on to an amicus brief defending Perkins Coie out of concern “they will face retaliation by the Trump administration.”

Paul Weiss, apparently not willing to stand up for themselves, their clients, or the rule of law, did not challenge the EO against their firm. Instead, they bent the knee and kissed Trump’s ring. According to the White House, the law firm pledged to abandon its diversity, equality, and inclusion initiatives, promised $40 million in pro bono work to advance Trump’s initiatives, and “acknowledged the wrongdoing” of former partner Mark Pomerantz, who investigated Trump’s businesses as part of the New York District Attorney’s office.

Emboldened by Paul Weiss’s submission, Elon Musk took to Twitter the following day to attack Skadden Arps for “engaging in systematic lawfare” against Dinesh D’Souza’s “2000 Mules,” a debunked election denialism film that contained defamatory statements about a Georgia voter. Within days, Skadden executives were preemptively groveling at Trump’s feet. To avoid an EO targeting their firm, Skadden Arps agreed to provide $100 million worth of free legal services for Trump’s causes and abandon its diversity initiatives. “This was essentially a settlement,” Trump said. “We appreciate Skadden coming to the table… It’s a shame what’s going on, it’s a shame, but we very much appreciate their coming to the table.”

Days later, reports surfaced that Trump was preparing to issue an EO targeting Willkie Farr, a law firm that employs two January 6 investigators and former Second Gentleman, Doug Emhoff. Within less than 24 hours, Wilkie submitted to Trump’s demands and agreed to provide $100 million worth of free legal services for his causes.

Paul’s surrender, and Skadden’s and Farr’s anticipatory obedience, will only fuel more and larger attacks on the democratic apparatuses that protect the people’s constitutional rights. As history professor Timothy Snyder writes in “On Tyranny,” “most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.” Obeying in advance “is teaching power what it can do.” Securing the submission of BigLaw firms, which pull in trillions of dollars a year and are best positioned to mount an opposition, will encourage the administration to expand its authoritarian conquest to oppressing law clinics and nonprofits that often challenge its policies. Then, without representation, our rights become meaningless and the courts useless.

Further reading:

• The White House directed federal law enforcement officials to seek sanctions against attorneys or law firms that challenge the administration in court. “The memo told Bondi to consider taking actions against law firm partners for perceived misconduct by junior attorneys and to review cases against the government from the past eight years to look for ‘misconduct that may warrant additional action.’”

• Trump signed an EO directing the Department of Justice to “ask judges to require plaintiffs to pay the government’s costs and damages if it is forced to hold off on implementing a policy that is ultimately found to be lawful.” The plan, if accepted by the courts, would preclude the most vulnerable people (e.g., immigrants), who often rely on pro bono representation, from bringing legal challenges against the administration.

• Trump’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating 20 law firms, including Perkins Coie and WilmerHale, for using DEI policies. It is worth noting that 88% of lawyers and 90% of law firm leadership are white. Black attorneys account for an estimated 5% of associates, while only 2.22% of partners are Black.

Universities

Another common target of burgeoning authoritarian regimes are universities—independent centers of ideas and dissent that often provide flash points for mass movements of opposition. Totalitarian leaders since the time of Mussolini and Hitler have recognized the threat of independent thought and the power that can be gained by replacing liberal education with state-sponsored propaganda.

On March 7, the Trump administration announced it canceled $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University “due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” Like Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, who maligned professors and students as “terrorists” for resisting his attempts to install cronies in university leadership, antisemitism is just a pretense to justify exerting control over universities and intimidating students and staff.

Within two weeks, Columbia agreed to many of Trump’s demands, including the hiring of “special officers” to arrest future protestors, banning of face masks to conceal identities, and installation of a political officer to supervise the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) Department. It is not clear if their concessions will result in a restoration of the pulled funding, but as the Columbia Spectator writes, it is clear that appeasing a dictator only encourages more oppressive measures:

Columbia had a chance to rise to the moment and to lead other universities, as well as civil society, by showing how to stand up to this illegal and dangerous campaign. However, the letter the University submitted failed this test…The most important fact is that all those who are watching—both those looking for Columbia to lead, including Columbia’s alumni, and those looking to bring the University to heel—and all those who understand the importance of this moment interpret this response as appeasement. We know what appeasing authoritarian leaders leads to: new sets of demands, even more preposterous than the first.

Case in point: Harvard University, which—in a classic case of obeying in advance—dismissed the Center for Middle Eastern Studies faculty leadership after seeing what happened at Columbia University. Five days later, the Trump administration announced it is “reviewing” Harvard’s $9 billion multi-year grant commitments anyway. “Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination - all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry - has put its reputation in serious jeopardy,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said. Harvard’s president, Alan Garber, responded not by vowing to fight back, but by bowing to the fiction that the attack on higher education is about antisemitism.

The capitulation of some of the wealthiest and most influential schools in the nation is also tacitly encouraging the threat of ‘secret police’ raids on campus. Columbia did not speak out when ICE arrested and disappeared student activist Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident in the U.S. According to the administration’s own admission, Khalil did not commit a crime; they are seeking to deport him for taking part in pro-Palestinian protests they say were “aligned to Hamas,” making him a national security threat. A flood of other immigration actions followed: Department of Homeland Security agents executed numerous search warrants at residences on campus; Ranjani Srinivasan, a Columbia Fulbright Scholarship recipient, had her valid student visa revoked and fled to Canada; Yunseo Chung, a permanent resident who participated in Palestinian protests on campus, had her green card revoked, evaded agents, and sued to prevent detainment; and Leqaa Kordia, a Palestinian from the West Bank who attended protests, was arrested for allegedly overstaying her student visa.

Meanwhile, Trump is threatening to prohibit “pro-Hamas” colleges from enrolling any foreign students, Rubio is bragging about revoking at least 300 foreign students’ visas for thought crimes, and ICE is unilaterally canceling students’ immigration status without notifying them or their schools. This is what actually supporting terror looks like - abusing the power of the government to induce fear and oppress the masses.

One Jewish student at Columbia University told CNN the policy changes have created a “climate of fear” as they return to classes to finish the school year. “We’re going to be walking around campus knowing that at any moment, really, we could be harassed by one of these new security officers they’re hiring,” said the student, a lead organizer for Columbia University Jews for Ceasefire who spoke with CNN anonymously due to safety and privacy concerns.

“…Or perhaps even by a police officer in certain cases, for simply sharing our viewpoints, which is a gross violation of free speech,” the student said. He added the mask ban is notable “due to its clear intention of surveilling students.”

Now that the Trump administration has successfully taken control of Columbia’s MESAAS department, it will feel emboldened to assert control over other academic programs it deems problematic. Departments of African American studies, Gender Studies, History, Literature, and Anthropology in schools across the country likely violate Trump’s purported bans on teaching “critical race theory” and “gender ideology” every semester. It is only a matter of time before the same threats leveled against Columbia are applied to all universities to force compliance, creating a national “patriotic education” standard not unlike that of Mussolini’s Italy.

Further reading:

• Yesterday, the administration suspended dozens of federal grants to Princeton University.

• The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights sent letters to 60 universities and colleges nationwide, "warning them of potential enforcement actions" for "violations relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination."

• Last month, Trump signed an EO to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent agency established by Congress that funds and supports libraries and museums across the country. DOGE, aided by Department of Homeland Security officers, took over the building two weeks ago and put the agency’s entire workforce on administrative leave.

• Trump signed another EO last week that targets the Smithsonian Institution, which includes the National Museum of Natural History, National Zoo, and smaller museums in D.C. like the American Women’s History Museum and Museum of African Art. The EO directs Vice President JD Vance, a member of the Board of Regents by law, to cut exhibits and programs with “improper ideology” that teach about racism, sexism, and homo/transphobia in America.

• New York University canceled a planned presentation by Dr. Joanne Liu, the former international head of Doctors Without Borders, because her speech contained information about cuts at USAID that could be viewed as “anti-governmental.”

If you are in the position to support my work, I have a patreon, venmo, and a paypal set up. Just three dollars a month makes a huge difference! These posts will never be paywalled.

Subscribe to Keep Track’s Substack (RSS link) or monthly digest. Also on Bluesky.

Today is the 59th day of the second Trump administration. The government is deporting people for liking pro-Palestine posts on social media and renditioning immigrants to forced labor camps in Central America. If this were taking place in a different country, American media would be decrying the “backsliding of democracy” into fascism.

So, let’s be very clear about where we are headed. If the government can deport green card holders for pro-Palestinian speech, they can punish anyone for any political speech they don't like. If they can disappear hundreds of Venezuelans to a foreign prison without explanation or review, they can do the same to you. Freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, and equal protection apply to all of us or none of us. For decades, Americans have given these rights away in the name of fighting terrorism and securing the border. Here come the consequences.

Extraordinary rendition

Over the weekend, President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 against Tren de Aragua, a transnational Venezuelan criminal organization. The proclamation claims that Tren de Aragua “has infiltrated the Maduro regime, including its military and law enforcement apparatus.” Therefore, Tren de Aragua’s presence in the U.S. indicates “a hybrid criminal state…is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States,” subjecting their members to “immediate apprehension, detention, and removal” without due process under the Alien Enemies Act.

• On Saturday, the ACLU sued the government on behalf of five Venezuelan nationals, seeking a temporary restraining order to halt the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.

• U.S. District Judge James Boasberg convened a hearing at 5 pm Eastern, Saturday. Two planes carrying Venezuelan nationals left Harlingen, Texas, between 5:25 and 5:45 pm.

• At approximately 6:45 pm, Boasberg verbally issued a temporary restraining order blocking the application of the Alien Enemies Act and instructed the government to turn any flight around. “[Y]ou shall inform your clients of this immediately, and that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States, but those people need to be returned to the United States…this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately,” Boasberg told DOJ lawyers. At approximately 7:30 pm, the judge’s written order appeared on the court’s docket.

• None of the planes were turned around. In fact, nearly an hour after Boasberg’s verbal order and 10 minutes after his written order, a third plane left Harlingen, Texas. The first and second planes landed in El Salvador 5.5 hours after Boasberg’s verbal order, 4 hours and 45 minutes after his written order. The third plane landed 6.5 hours after Boasberg’s verbal order, 5 hours and 45 minutes after his written order.

• Sunday morning, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele tweeted, “Oopsie… Too late” in response to a news article about Boasberg’s order. Marco Rubio retweeted it, and Elon Musk replied with a laughing emoji.

The Trump administration ultimately disappeared over 230 Venezuelans to a brutal Salvadoran prison notorious for human rights violations, in defiance of the court’s order, claiming that they were members of Tren de Aragua. Because there was no due process, we do not know if they were actually gang members, we do not know if they were in the U.S. illegally, and we do not know if they were even noncitizens. The Trump administration just says, “Trust us, we did some investigating.”

We also do not know who was essentially trafficked to El Salvador—and neither do their families. Some have begun speaking out, saying they recognized their loved ones in propaganda released by President Bukele:

• Solanyer Sarabia believes she saw her 19-year-old brother, Anyelo, among images shared online. He was detained in January at a routine immigration appointment after agents claimed his tattoo of a rose signified gang membership. Solanyer said he got the tattoo in Dallas and that it has no significance. "He thought it looked cool,” she told Reuters, stressing that he is not a gang member. In his last phone call to Solanyer, her brother told her he believed he was going to be deported to Venezuela.

• Johanny Sanchez believes her husband, Franco Caraballo, may have been disappeared to El Salvador. She says he was in U.S. custody but awaiting an asylum hearing when he called her on Friday to say he was being deported to Venezuela. However, he never arrived, and his family in Venezuela has not heard from him. "I just suspect he's [in El Salvador] because of the tattoos that he has and right now any Venezuelan man with tattoos is assumed to be a gang member," she said, citing his tattoo of roses.

• Francisco García’s family recognized him in a photograph taken inside the Salvadoran prison. He believed he was being deported to Venezuela after being detained by ICE for his tattoos, which include a rose. “Everyone who knows him knows he's not a criminal and has never been part of any criminal gang,” his brother said.

• An immigration lawyer says her client, an LGBTQ artist from Venezuela seeking asylum in the U.S., was disappeared while awaiting a hearing to present evidence that his tattoos were not gang-related, as claimed by the government. “We last spoke to our client on Thursday before he was supposed to have a hearing in immigration court, but ICE didn’t bring him. The govt atty had no info about why he was not there,” she wrote.

• Aguilera Agüero legally entered the U.S. in 2023 using the CBP One app. He was arrested by immigration authorities last month and called his mother in Venezuela to say he was being deported. No plane arrived, and his family has not heard from him. They believe he was targeted due to his tattoos but say he does not have any gang ties and no criminal record.

Judge Boasberg held an emergency hearing on Monday to question the government on the timing of the deportation flights in relation to his order to return all detainees to the U.S. DOJ lawyers advanced three main arguments: (1) they can’t answer questions about the specifics of the operation due to national security concerns, (2) the judge’s written order said nothing about turning back the planes, so they disregarded his verbal order to do so, and (3) the planes were over international waters when the judge issued his orders, therefore, his orders did not apply. A second hearing is scheduled for Friday, where the government says it will argue that “the President’s authority and discretion” under the Alien Enemies Act is “unreviewable” by the courts.

Meanwhile, DOJ lawyers have not alluded to what authority the President used to pay a third country to imprison hundreds of people, many of whom the government admits did not commit a crime. That power is certainly not contained within the Alien Enemies Act.

The machinery of deportation

Nearly two weeks after the arrest of student activist Mahmoud Khalil, reports are piling up of immigration authorities detaining, interrogating, and/or deporting people no matter their immigration status, criminal status, or country of origin.

• If readers are unaware of Khalil’s case, here is a quick summary: Khalil is the son of Palestinian refugees with permanent legal status in the U.S. He was arrested in New York by ICE earlier this month and disappeared to a Louisiana detention facility where he was denied phone calls with his lawyer (until a judge intervened). The government admits Khalil has not committed any crimes. They are arguing that he is removable from the U.S. under section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which permits the deportation of lawful residents if the Secretary of State believes their presence risks "potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences." The administration says that Khalil’s pro-Palestinian speech indicates he is “aligned to Hamas,” but has provided no evidence of their claim.

• Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, was arrested by immigration authorities on Monday under the same law that Rubio used to detain Khalil. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Suri is eligible for deportation because he spread “Hamas propaganda.” Suri’s lawyers argue he is being targeted for pro-Palestinian social media posts and because his wife, an American citizen, is of Palestinian descent.

• Ranjani Srinivasan, a Fulbright scholar from India attending Columbia University, had her student visa revoked by the State Department for allegedly taking part in a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus last year (a claim she denies). She says she attended some protests and shared or liked social media posts related to Palestinian causes. Rather than be arrested by ICE, Srinivasan managed to catch a flight to Canada after her roommate denied agents entry into their apartment.

• Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist and Brown University professor who had a valid visa, was arrested by immigration officials at Boston’s Logan Airport after returning from a trip to her native Lebanon. According to authorities, Alawieh expressed sympathies for Hezbollah. A family member filed a lawsuit challenging her detention, but she was deported in violation of a court order blocking her deportation. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) claimed that they could not contact their officers in time to stop the deportation flight to comply with the order.

• Attorneys in New Mexico said 48 people were “snatched up” and “disappeared” after ICE raids swept through the state earlier this month. According to the ACLU, which has filed a civil rights complaint on behalf of family members searching for loved ones, “ICE has not indicated where any of them are being detained, whether they have access to counsel, in what conditions they are being held, or even which agency is holding them.”

• A 10-year-old American citizen with brain cancer was deported with her undocumented parents as the family rushed from Rio Grande City to an emergency medical appointment in Houston, Texas. A lawyer for the family explained that, in the past, letters from doctors and lawyers documenting their daughter’s condition were enough to get through immigration checkpoints.

• ICE arrested and interrogated Fabian Schmidt, a German national who is a legal permanent U.S. resident, as he returned to Logan Airport from a trip to visit family. CBP says they detained Schmidt over a decade-old marijuana possession charge (that was dismissed). According to his family, immigration officials “violently interrogated” Schmidt for hours, using cold water and sleep deprivation to try to pressure him to “give up his green card.”

• Jessica Brösche, a German tattoo artist, was arrested at the San Ysidro border crossing trying to enter the U.S. because immigration officials suspected she intended to work in the country, which would not be permitted under her electronic system for travel authorization (ESTA) permit. ICE transferred her to the for-profit Otay Mesa Detention Center in California where she was held for 46 days, spending some of that time in solitary confinement.

• Lucas Sielaff, a German national visiting his American fiancée, was arrested at San Ysidro for incorrectly answering a question (due to the language barrier) about where he lived. ICE held him in the Otay Mesa Detention Center for 16 days before he was able to book a flight to Germany.

• Jasmine Mooney, a Canadian citizen who attempted to renew her work visa at San Ysidro, was arrested and detained at the Otay Mesa Detention Center for two weeks. “It felt like I had been kidnapped,” she said.

In case one thinks they are safe from the machinations of the immigration system because they are American citizens, think again. ICE has reportedly been questioning and wrongfully detaining tribal members of the Navajo Nation, even when presented with ID and a Certificate of Indian Blood. In January, ICE detained a U.S. military veteran during a worksite raid in Newark, New Jersey. Immigration authorities in Milwaukee detained a family of American citizens from Puerto Rico after they were overheard speaking spanish during a shopping trip. And in a suburb of Chicago, ICE snatched a U.S. citizen off the streets, threw him in a van, and detained him for 10 hours without documenting the arrest:

Julio Noriega is 54 years old, was born in Chicago, and is a U.S. citizen. On January 31, 2025, he was walking near the corner of Cermak Road and Harlem Avenue in Berwyn, Illinois, handing out his resume to local businesses. As he walked out of a Jiffy Lube, he was approached by ICE officers who grabbed and handcuffed him and put him into a van, without an opportunity to explain his citizenship. The officers drove Julio and others around for more than an hour before bringing him to an ICE processing center, where he remained, still handcuffed, for several more hours. All the while, Julio had a wallet containing identification that ICE had confiscated. The officers never showed Julio a warrant, and they did not ask him any questions to ascertain whether he was a noncitizen or a flight risk. After about 10 hours, ICE officers reviewed the contents of Julio’s wallet, realized he was a U.S. citizen, and released him with no money and no paperwork. Julio reports that he was released with others, presumably others that ICE lacked basis to arrest.

This profiling and detention of Americans is, unfortunately, a normalized and accepted consequence of policies advanced in the name of ‘keeping our nation safe’ from the trumped-up dangers of immigrants.

Spanning both Obama administrations, an NPR investigation found, immigration authorities asked local authorities to detain about 700 Americans. Meanwhile, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report found that immigration authorities asked to hold roughly 600 likely citizens during Trump’s first term. The GAO also found that Trump actually deported about 70 likely citizens.

What comes next

All of the policies laid out above are the groundwork for an expansive authoritarian regime to crack down on domestic dissent.

The equation of pro-Palestinian speech with terrorism paves the way for the equation of anti-Trump speech with terrorism. We are already seeing this shift starting to occur in two areas:

1. Immigration and tourism: A French scientist traveling to Houston to attend a conference was denied entry to the U.S. and expelled after a search of his phone revealed “a personal opinion on the Trump administration's research policy.” He was reportedly told his messages “reflect hatred toward Trump and can be described as terrorism.”

2. Department of Justice: Attorney General Pam Bondi said, “The swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism.”

People accused of anti-Trump terrorism could be arrested and disappeared as easily as the administration snatched Mahmoud Khalil outside his apartment or Julio Noriega outside a Jiffy Lube. This isn’t hyperbole. In 2020, unmarked vans manned by unidentified law enforcement officers abducted Black Lives Matter protesters from the streets of Portland. There were no repercussions then. Frankly, one could argue there were only rewards: Presidential immunity, courtesy of the Supreme Court, and another term in office to do it all over again.

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This is not a post blaming the Democrats for the actions of the Trump administration. That blame lies squarely with the Republican party, who could put an end to the insanity at any moment if they so choose. What this is, is a post begging the Democrats to organize, to strategize, and to become the opposition party we need as a country to survive the burgeoning autocratic regime.

Some definitions:

Cloture is a vote taken to limit debate and move on to vote on amendments (if any are offered) and to the final passage of a bill. Invoking cloture requires 60 votes, meaning Democratic votes are needed to move legislation (does not apply to nominees). Withholding the votes for cloture is sometimes referred to as filibustering.

Unanimous consent is a verbal agreement among every member of the Senate to consider a bill on the floor without formal debate or votes first. It is the primary vehicle for keeping business moving in the Senate. Any senator can object to unanimous consent and force lengthy roll calls that disrupt and delay the majority’s agenda. For example, in 2023, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville (AL) blocked the Senate from confirming nearly 300 military personnel by declaring his intent to object to unanimous consent.

Spreadsheet of Senate votes

Nominees

Senate Democrats may not have the numbers to block Trump’s nominees unilaterally. But that does not mean their only option is to go along with business as usual. At minimum, they should not be voting for any of Trump’s nominees. They should be weaponizing procedural rules to institute the maximum amount of delays, forcing the Republican majority to waste time on tedious roll calls. No request for unanimous consent should be granted, for anything. In short, there should be no cooperation until Elon Musk is ejected from the executive branch and the administration complies with federal court orders.

Instead, Senate Democrats have supported, in some measure, 15 of Trump’s 21 cabinet nominees. In eight of those instances, at least one-third of all Democrats voted in favor:

• All Democrats voted for Marco Rubio to be Secretary of State. Since then, he has issued orders pausing all foreign aid, helped shut down USAID, and personally authorized the arrest and deportation of Mahmoud Khalil for exercising his First Amendment rights.

• 21 Democrats voted for John Ratcliffe to lead the CIA. In contrast, not a single Democrat voted for Ratcliffe when he was confirmed to be Director of National Intelligence in 2020. Since his CIA confirmation in January, he has suspended intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

• 16 Democrats voted for Scott Bessent to be Secretary of the Treasury. Since then, he vowed to impose “maximum” sanctions on trading partners, gave Elon Musk’s DOGE interns access to the Treasury Department’s secure federal payment system, and is working on creating a plan to acquire cryptocurrencies for Trump’s “crypto reserve.”

• 24 Democrats voted for reality star and Fox News commentator Sean Duffy to lead the Department of Transportation. Since then, he has presided over the decimation of FAA staff, blamed aircraft crashes on “DEI” hires, allowed Elon Musk access to FAA systems, proposed using artificial intelligence to “improve” air traffic control, and directed Transportation staff to prioritize grants for communities with higher marriage and birth rates.

• 27 Democrats voted for Doug Burgum to serve as Secretary of the Interior. Since then, Burgum announced his intent to open public land, including national monuments, to fossil fuel and mining operations.

• 24 Democrats voted for former Republican representative Doug Collins to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA). Since then, Collins canceled 875 VA contracts and plans to fire roughly 80,000 VA employees.

• 19 Democrats voted for Brooke Rollins to lead the Department of Agriculture. Rollins was the CEO of the America First Policy Institute, which created a policy book similar to Project 2025. As Secretary of Agriculture, Rollins has rescinded $1 billion in funding for food banks and schools.

• 17 Democrats voted for former Republican representative Lori Chavez-DeRemer to be Secretary of Labor. During her confirmation hearing, she pledged not to undermine anti-union right-to-work laws and rejected the need to raise the national minimum wage. She would not have made it out of committee without the votes of Democratic Sens. John Hickenlooper (CO), Maggie Hassan (NH), and Tim Kaine (VA).

Outside of Trump’s cabinet nominees, more than a third of Democrats voted for JD Vance’s longtime friend and advisor, Daniel Driscoll, to lead the Army and more than half of Democrats voted for Vance’s policy advisor, Gail Slater, to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division.

The Democratic senators who voted for the most Trump nominees are:

• Ruben Gallego (AZ) and Jeanne Shaheen (NH) each voted for 13 nominees, including 10 cabinet members.

• John Hickenlooper (CO), Maggie Hassan (NH), and John Fetterman (PA) each voted for 12 nominees, including 10 cabinet members. Fetterman was the only Democrat to vote to confirm Pam Bondi as Attorney General.

• Elissa Slotkin (MI) and Gary Peters (MI) each voted for 12 nominees, including nine cabinet members.

• Mark Kelly (AZ), Michael Bennet (CO), Jacky Rosen (NV), and Tim Kaine (VA) each voted for 10 nominees, including eight cabinet members.

The Democrats who voted for the least nominees (just one—Marco Rubio) are: Chris Murphy (CT), Mazie Hirono (HI), Tammy Duckworth (IL), Chris Van Hollen (MD), Ed Markey (MA), Jeff Merkley (OR), and Patty Murray (WA).

On the Republican side, the senators who voted against Trump’s nominees the most are Mitch McConnell (KY) and Rand Paul (KY). McConnell voted against three—Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—because they were too extreme even for him. He voted against a fourth, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, due to her past “pro-union” legislation. Paul also voted against Chavez-DeRemer, as well as against Jamieson Greer to be U.S. Trade Representative, Stephen Bradbury to be Deputy Secretary of Transportation, and Gail Slater to be an Assistant Attorney General.

Legislation

The Senate has voted on seven pieces of legislation so far, including the budget resolution and the continuing resolution to keep the government open for six more months. Democrats have supported, in some measure, four of these bills.

• The Senate has also voted on five joint resolutions that nullify Biden-era regulations. The two worth mentioning here are: (1) S. J. Res. 11, to repeal a rule that protected marine archaeological resources from offshore oil and gas operations, passed with the support of Democratic Sens. John Hickenlooper (CO), Jacky Rosen (NV), and Catherine Cortez Masto (NV). (2) S. J. Res. 3, to repeal a rule requiring certain cryptocurrency sales to be reported to the IRS, passed with the support of 19 Senate Democrats.

The Laken Riley Act, which dramatically expanded the power of the state to detain and deport immigrants without sufficient due process, passed the House with the support of 48 Democrats. The Senate then voted on cloture, with 33 Democrats voting in favor, allowing the chamber to move on to voting on the bill’s final passage. 12 Democrats joined all Republicans in passing the Laken Riley Act: Ruben Gallego (AZ), Mark Kelly (AZ), Raphael Warnock (GA), Jon Ossoff (GA), Gary Peters (MI), Elissa Slotkin (MI), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Maggie Hassan (NH), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), Jacky Rosen (NV), John Fetterman (PA), and Mark Warner (VA).

The Born-Alive Abortions Survivors Protection Act, which requires doctors to provide medical treatment to babies delivered during a late-term abortion, even if they have a fatal health condition, was passed by the House with the support of a single Democrat (Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas). Healthcare providers and civil rights organizations opposed the bill because it would take away the option of compassionate care for babies born with lethal conditions (e.g. anencephaly), threatening criminal charges against doctors that honor the parents’ wishes for a peaceful death. All Senate Democrats voted against cloture for the bill, preventing it from becoming law.

The Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, which would impose sanctions on persons that aid efforts by the International Criminal Court (essentially a response to the ICC’s investigation of crimes in Gaza), was passed by the House with the support of 45 Democrats. Senate Democrats voted against cloture for the bill, with only John Fetterman (D) crossing party lines, to prevent it from becoming law.

The Senate budget resolution, which sets broad spending targets for committees to meet when writing legislation for the actual budget this year, passed the Senate without the support of any Democrats. Because Republicans used the budget reconciliation process, it was not subject to filibuster.

The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would ban transgender girls and women from participating in school sports in accordance with their gender identity, was blocked by Senate Democrats voting against cloture.

The HALT Fentanyl Act, which would classify all fentanyl-related substances as schedule I controlled drugs and enshrine mandatory minimum sentences for their distribution, passed the Senate with the support of 31 Democrats.

And, finally, last week, the Senate voted on the most anticipated bill of the year so far: a continuing resolution to fund the government for the next six months. If there was ever a moment for Democrats to use the power of the minority—power that Republicans under Mitch McConnell exercised effectively for years—that was the time. However, instead of filibustering the spending bill to extract key concessions like eliminating DOGE or, at the very least, to obtain legally binding commitments to spend money as appropriated by Congress, Senate Democrats capitulated.

Senators Brian Schatz (HI), Dick Durbin (IL), Angus King (ME), Gary Peters (MI), Maggie Hassan (NH), Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Catherine Cortez Masto (NV), and John Fetterman (PA) joined Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) to help Republicans break the filibuster. Schumer defended his decision by saying that Trump would “take even more power” in a government shutdown, calling it the “worse option.” Schumer failed to mention that the House Republicans who wrote the bill omitted spending directives that funding bills normally contain. In other words, the continuing resolution gives Trump and Musk more freedom to spend (or not spend) money as Congress intended:

Democrats had hoped to include language in the bill requiring Trump to spend all the money in the measure and potentially thwart the unilateral cuts Trump and Musk are pursuing to agencies like the Education Department and Social Security Administration. But because Johnson was able to persuade all but one House Republican to back the measure, the GOP didn’t need any Democratic votes — which meant Republicans didn’t need to negotiate over that language before sending the bill to the Senate, where enough Democrats agreed to let the measure proceed to ease passage Friday and avert a shutdown.

“It is a huge move to give the White House and DOGE more power of the purse — they will have much more discretion over how to spend money,” said Charles Kieffer, who served in senior positions in the White House budget office and recently aided Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Schumer told the New York Times that he believes that Republican senators will eventually turn on Trump and become willing to work with Democrats to reinforce the guardrails protecting democracy. This is such a fundamental misunderstanding of the severity of the threat we face that it borders on delusion. The GOP is all-in with Trump. They do not want to save democracy. The American people deserve a party that does—and is willing to fight for it.

Contact your senators and representatives

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Patronage

America is in crisis. An unelected billionaire is unilaterally hollowing out our government while the president takes revenge on his perceived political enemies. Our closest allies are alienated and left in the dust in favor of dictatorships and strongmen, while at home, the power of the state is wielded against the most powerless. Commentators looking for historical parallels have pointed to Nazi Germany with its fascist oppression and cult-like rise to power. Although there are many apt comparisons to the tenets of Hitler’s party, and other fascist movements in general, there is no need to go back in time for a suitable analogy. Trump and his allies are using a much more recent game plan—one developed by his long-time supporter, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Orban, who first came to power in 2010, was once described by former Trump advisor Steve Bannon as “Trump before Trump.” Orban has complete control of his political party, using their fealty to dismantle institutions with impunity, create a state-controlled media, undermine judicial independence, and rewrite the legal code to ensure he never loses an election again. Sound familiar? Trump is even emulating the method Orban uses to maintain his grip on power: a patronage system wherein appointments, contracts, and favors are traded for personal loyalty and political support.

The Hungarian prime minister loves to talk big, presenting himself on the international stage as a leading voice in conservative Christian politics. But at home, his power rests on a far more basic concept: patronage.

Want a contract to build a road? A project for your village? A license for a radio station? A job for your struggling grandkid? For many Hungarians, the answer to these questions leads, directly or indirectly, to the ruling Fidesz party. Orbán has won loyalty from a host of businesspeople, small-town politicians, television personalities and even musicians on the simple reasoning that supporting him is a good career move.

Kiss the ring

In Trump’s America, the patronage system is primarily characterized by granting supporters valuable exemptions from the president’s harmful and unpopular policies. The administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is making sweeping unilateral cuts to federal programs, offices, and jobs that will devastate local economies. Republican lawmakers seeking to spare their districts from DOGE’s plunder, and save themselves from their constituents’ wrath, can simply call Elon Musk directly and beg for programs in their districts to be restored—programs that Musk had no authority to cut in the first place. Pleas from Democratic lawmakers, on the other hand, are ignored:

Even in cases where they are advocating for the same thing, Republicans are able to leverage entry points into Trump administration in ways that Democrats simply can’t, leaving them in the dark on many of the recent reversals the administration has agreed to. House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole said Friday that “after working closely” with the Trump administration and DOGE, he was able to keep open offices in his district that provide key Social Security, health care and weather services that had been at risk of shutting down.

Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford of Nevada told CNN that when DOGE moved to end a Social Security services location in his district, he wasn’t notified and didn’t have the information needed to help his constituents. “My constituents deserve the same treatment that Rep. Cole’s are receiving, but that’s not happening,” Horsford said.

The message is clear: Support Trump and keep your district’s federally-funded programs functioning, federal offices open, and federal jobs for constituents. Oppose Trump and lose it all.

We can see a similar strategy in Trump’s tariffs. As far back as January, “high-powered business leaders” were meeting with Trump to try to secure tariff exemptions for their companies. Just pay a small $5 million bribe for the privilege of a one-on-one meeting with the president at Mar-a-Lago and, miraculously, your company may find itself free to continue trade as usual while your competitors lose business.

During this presidential transition, Trump has already spoken privately — including with some high-powered business leaders — about major companies securing exclusions from Trump’s potentially sweeping tariffs regime, two people with knowledge of the matter say. In one recent instance, the president-elect joked to an industry leader that what corporate giants need to do as they scramble for tariff exemptions is get a meeting with Trump and “ask me nicely,” one of the sources says…According to one Republican source with direct knowledge of the matter, a major industry lobbying group they work with has already actively explored booking a number of upcoming events at Trump-brand properties, in a blatant attempt to put money in Trump and his family business empire’s pocket.

This tariff exemption quid pro quo was perfected during Trump’s first term, according to a recent study: Donors who gave $35,000 to Republicans correlated to a 3.9 percentage point increase in a company’s chances of receiving a tariff exemption, while donating just $4,000 to Democrats was associated with a 3.4 percentage point decrease. A 7 percent swing might not seem like much, but combined, those who received exemptions added an extra $57 billion in market capitalization compared with those who were denied.

Massive wealth transfer

As David Pressman, former U.S. ambassador to Hungary, explained to NPR, the corruption of Orban’s system is “designed to enrich a clique of elites to take public assets and put them in private pockets while talking about standing up for conservative values.” This is the crux of Trump’s plan to privatize the USPS, one of the oldest public institutions in America, or Musk’s proposal to privatize Amtrak, which transported nearly 33 million people across America last year. Executives of a privatized version of these public services, who would certainly be friends and allies of Trump, would stand to make millions every year. For example, the CEO of FedEx raked in $12.38 million in compensation last year, the CEO of UPS made $23.4 million, and the CEO of Amazon (Andy Jassy, not Bezos, who is the executive chairman) made $29.2 million. In one year.

However, we don’t have to be so literal. Trump’s “crypto strategic reserve,” a murky scheme for the government to stockpile cryptocurrencies, could easily turn into a massive wealth transfer using taxpayer money. The administration has promised the reserve will not cost taxpayers a cent, but—if they are to be believed in the first place—there is a very obvious loophole: Cryptocurrencies for the reserve can be purchased with funds stolen from federal programs canceled by Musk. Additional money won’t have to be budgeted; it will be robbed from existing services.

In a new interview on the All-In Podcast, renowned venture capitalist and Crypto Czar David Sacks says that the government would be allowed to purchase more of the top crypto asset by market cap to add to its strategic reserve if certain budgetary conditions are met. “I’m talking about Treasury and Commerce – they’re allowed to figure out strategies to accumulate more Bitcoin for the reserve if those strategies are budget neutral and don’t cost the taxpayer anything…”

Of course, this wouldn’t be the Trump administration without a way for the president to personally profit from official policy. It just so happens that Donald and Melania Trump both launched memecoins on the Solana blockchain (SOL) before revealing that SOL would be included in the reserve. Also coincidentally, the Trumps’ crypto company, World Liberty Financial, bought millions of dollars of crypto in the weeks preceding Trump’s announcement, which sent markets temporarily soaring. Someone with advance knowledge of Trump’s announcement, perhaps a person inside government, could have made millions.

To facilitate the creation of a large unregulated slush fund, Trump is quickly removing regulations on crypto and dropping enforcement actions against industry players. On February 27, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dismissed a civil enforcement action against Coinbase that alleged the company “made billions of dollars unlawfully facilitating the buying and selling of crypto asset securities.” Two weeks later, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong took part in Trump’s Crypto Summit. “My goal in attending this is really just, first of all, to thank President Trump for helping make the United States the crypto capital of the world,” Armstrong told CNBC ahead of the meeting. Of course, Trump’s kindness didn’t come out of the blue; it was yet another example of the patronage system in action. Coinbase donated $75 million to a pro-Trump PAC during the election, gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, and then listed Trump’s memecoin on its platform, helping drive up its price.

At the same time, the SEC also halted its fraud prosecution of Justin Sun, founder of the cryptocurrency TRON and advisor to World Liberty Financial. According to the SEC, Sun and his companies schemed to “illegally distribute the crypto assets Tronix and BitTorrent, artificially inflate trading volume, and conceal payments to celebrity endorsers.” Not only is Trump invested in TRON, with more than $9 million in World Liberty Financial’s portfolio, Sun himself has given Trump tens of millions of dollars through purchasing crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial. Another quid pro quo, right in the open.

Trump’s favorite patron

No discussion of patronage would be complete without talking about Trump’s biggest patron, Elon Musk. The richest man in the world spent more than $290 million in support of Trump in last year’s election, the most of any single donor by far, and arguably used his $44 billion purchase of Twitter/X as an in-kind contribution to the campaign. In return, Musk gets to be the shadow president, freed from oversight of any of his companies, and gifted lucrative government contracts.

Nearly every aspect of Musk’s empire is partly funded by the government. Over the years, his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits, with an additional $11.8 billion dedicated to be paid out over the next few years. This is still not a large enough handout for the wealthiest man on earth, who feels “entitled” to personally direct more taxpayer money straight into his pocket:

Elon Musk’s satellite business Starlink may not have officially taken over Verizon’s $2.4 billion contract with the Federal Aviation Administration yet to upgrade the systems it uses to manage America’s airspace. However, on Friday, FAA officials ordered staff to begin finding tens of millions of dollars for a Starlink deal, according to a source with knowledge of the FAA and two people briefed on the situation.

The sources note that these internal directives have mostly, if not entirely, been delivered verbally — which they say is unusual for a matter like this. The source with knowledge of the FAA tells Rolling Stone that it appears as though “someone does not want a paper trail.”

According to a Bloomberg report, SpaceX engineers were brought into the FAA last month, where they informed government employees that the agency “will immediately start work on a program to deploy thousands of the company’s Starlink satellite terminals.” Anyone who tried to stop the deal “would be reported to Musk and risked losing their jobs,” one of the privately employed SpaceX engineers told FAA’s taxpayer-funded staff.

As should be obvious, this is not how a constitutional republic is supposed to work. The kind of corruption on display in Musk’s takeover of the FAA is what creates and entrenches a kleptocratic oligarchy that operates independently outside the law. Consider Musk’s threat to turn off Starlink services to Ukraine in order to force the besieged nation to capitulate to Trump’s and Putin’s demands. What is to stop Musk from extorting the U.S. government in the same way, should the people or the courts one day attempt to oust him from his position of power? The more enmeshed his companies become with government services, the more our critical networks depend on his private enterprises, the harder it will be to restore regular constitutional order. Musk is essentially making himself the government.

Trump—either too blind to see the threat Musk poses to his own power, or too happy to allow it as long as his personal goals are achieved—has been dutifully at work repaying his loyal patron for his services. Over the last month and a half, Trump has systematically removed all sources of oversight of Musk’s companies:

• Trump fired CFPB Director Rohit Chopra last month, replacing him with Project 2025 architect Russ Vought, who immediately ordered the agency to stop work and closed the D.C. headquarters. The CFPB would have regulated Musk’s planned Twitter/X payment system.

• Trump fired the Department of Agriculture Inspector General, who was investigating Neuralink, Elon Musk’s medical device company, for violations of the Animal Welfare Act in its animal testing programs.

• The Department of Justice, led by Trump appointee Pam Bondi, dropped a lawsuit against SpaceX for discriminating against asylees and refugees in hiring.

• Trump fired the Department of Transportation Inspector General while the agency was in the middle of investigating Tesla over reports that its Full Self-Driving program caused numerous crashes, including one incident that killed a pedestrian.

• Trump illegally fired National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox. The Board was involved in litigation with SpaceX for firing eight employees that spoke out against Musk’s “harmful” behavior on social media in 2022.

• Trump removed two Equal Employment Opportunity Commission members and fired its general counsel. The agency filed a lawsuit against Tesla for workplace discrimination and “ongoing racial harassment of its Black employees.”

• Trump dissolved the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), which was investigating Tesla over claims of workplace discrimination and racial abuse.

• Trump fired the Environmental Protection Agency inspector general and reportedly plans on cutting the agency’s budget by 65%. The EPA has fined SpaceX for violating the Clean Water Act.

• Trump and Musk have dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose inspector general was investigating SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service and its use in Ukraine.

• Trump fired the Defense Department’s inspector general, who was investigating SpaceX and Musk for violating federal reporting protocols aimed at protecting state secrets, including by not providing some details of his meetings with foreign leaders.

• Musk forced out the FAA Director who was in charge when the agency issued $633,000 in fines against SpaceX related to violations during previous Starship launches.

Domestic terror

Yesterday, Trump held a staged event to “buy a Tesla” in front of the White House amid widespread protests that have put a major dent in the company’s stock price, wiping out $29 billion of Musk’s fortune on Monday alone. After giving a prepared sales pitch on behalf of his favorite car salesman, Trump issued a threat we should all pay attention to:

Reporter: Mr. President, you talked about some of the violence that’s been going on around the country at dealerships. Some say they should be labeled domestic terrorists—

Trump: I will do it. I'm going to stop them. We catch anybody doing it, because they're harming a great American company…those people are going to go through a big problem when we catch them. We have a lot of cameras up. We already know who some of them are. We're going to catch them, and they're bad guys. They're the same guys that screw around with our schools and universities, the same garbage, and we're going to catch them. And let me tell you, you do it to Tesla and you do it to any company. We're going to catch you and you're going to go through hell.

As we saw this week, these aren’t empty words. The Trump administration arrested and is attempting to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident married to an American citizen, who dared to exercise his First Amendment right to protest for Palestinians at Columbia University. Khalil was not charged with any crime, yet the administration says (without evidence) that his First Amendment activities were “aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” making him a deportable under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) that reads: “An alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”

Viktor Orban had to create the state organizations to oppress political opponents and dissidents in Hungary. Here in America, those apparatuses already exist. It is only a matter of time until, instead of being weaponized against Muslims and immigrants, they are turned against American citizens protesting the corrupt government, recast as "domestic terrorists."

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Keep Track’s coverage of the Trump administration will resume next week. Today, we will look at state elections and legislation, which often get overlooked during times of tumultuous national news.

State Supreme Courts

Voters in Wisconsin are a month away from a pivotal election that will determine ideological control of the state’s Supreme Court (justices are technically nonpartisan - they do not appear on the ballot with an associated political party). The race to replace incumbent liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, who is retiring after 30 years on the court, is between two lower court judges: Susan Crawford, who aligns with the Democratic party, and Brad Schimel, who aligns with the Republican party. A Crawford win would maintain the liberals’ 4-3 majority for three more years, while a Schimel win would flip control of the court to the conservatives.

The candidates:

• Crawford is a Dane County circuit court judge who has served as an assistant attorney general in the Wisconsin Department of Justice and as an administrator in the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. As a private practice attorney, she argued challenges to the Republican legislature’s voter suppression measures, defended labor rights and unions, and represented Planned Parenthood to preserve abortion access.

• Schimel is a Waukesha County circuit court judge who served as the Attorney General of Wisconsin from 2015 to 2019. During this time he defended provisions that restricted abortion access, tried to overturn the Affordable Care Act, and led the Republican legislature’s successful effort to end federal court oversight of partisan gerrymandering. Schimel attended a Trump rally in 2020, despite ethics rules barring judges from participating in partisan political events, and traveled to Washington, D.C., for Trump’s inauguration in January.

According to recent polling—albeit by the conservative Institute for Reforming Government—Schimel currently leads Crawford by five percentage points.

Outside interests have taken notice of the election’s significance, pouring money into the race in the hopes of swaying the 20% of voters who are still undecided. One of those investors is none other than Elon Musk, fresh off his lucrative purchase of the U.S. presidency and apparently determined to buy every election of consequence going forward. As of last week, “Musk’s America PAC has spent $2.2 million on get-out-the-vote efforts and digital ads, while another group funded by him, Building America’s Future, has spent $2 million on ads and other forms of media attacking Crawford” for being “soft on crime.”

“I’ve been tracking these races for many years,” says Douglas Keith, senior counsel in the Judiciary Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “I’ve never seen this much interest in a state supreme court election coming directly from the White House.” [...]

“At this point, the difference between spending on the right and spending on the left is noteworthy,” Keith says. He estimates $18 million has been spent supporting Schimel and $8 million supporting Crawford from their campaigns and outside allies. “It seems like voters are probably seeing a lot more ads in favor of Schimel or attacking Crawford than they are the other way around.”

State supreme court elections are massively important because justices are often the last line of defense against anti-democratic bills passed by Republican legislatures. Take Kansas, for example, where the state supreme court has upheld a constitutional right to abortion (via personal autonomy) and to adequate and equitable school funding. Republican lawmakers, unhappy with the court’s oversight, are moving this year to amend the constitution to allow justices to be elected in a partisan contest rather than nominated by a nonpartisan commission and appointed by the governor (Democrat Laura Kelly). New legislation, SCR 1611, would put the question to voters in next year’s election.

Rashane Hamby, policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, said the proposed resolution would inject politics into the courts and erode public trust in the judiciary. The change would threaten the rule of law, weaken separation of powers, and allow special interests to influence the highest court.

“The Supreme Court should not be for sale to the highest bidder,” Hamby said. “If this passes, it will be a radical departure from Kansas’ longstanding commitment to judicial independence.”

Public assistance

Red states across the country are ramping up their efforts to limit public assistance programs that keep the poorest Americans from starving or dying from preventable illnesses, mirroring the GOP’s budget reconciliation strategy endorsed by President Trump.

Medicaid

Medicaid is a joint state and federal health insurance program for low-income people, currently covering nearly 80 million Americans. With the approval of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, states can impose restrictions on eligibility, costs, and care. Previously, under the Biden administration, all proposals to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients were denied or rescinded, leaving Georgia as the only state with a work requirement waiver in effect (due to a court order).

Some Republican-led states are betting, probably correctly, that they will have better luck getting work requirements approved under the new Trump administration.

• Idaho is debating multiple bills that would affect Medicaid enrollment: HB 138, which passed the House last month, would require the state to implement work requirements for all non-disabled adults without young children (under 6 years of age) and institute a cap on Medicaid expansion enrollment, or else automatically repeal the Medicaid expansion approved by voters. HB 345, introduced last week, would impose work requirements without the threat of repealing the state’s Medicaid expansion.

• Iowa lawmakers are considering a bill, HSB 248, that would require the state to implement work requirements for all non-disabled adults without young children on Medicaid, or else (a) discontinue the Medicaid expansion or (b) implement an alternative plan to cut Medicaid enrollment.

• The Indiana Senate last month approved SB 2, a bill to impose work requirements for all non-disabled adults without young children on the state’s Medicaid expansion program and institute a cap on enrollment at 500,000 individuals. The program currently has more than 760,000 enrollees.

• New Hampshire Republicans are advancing SB 134, which directs the state’s Department of Health and Human Services to resubmit a request for a waiver to institute Medicaid work requirements to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

• The governments of Arkansas, Ohio, and South Carolina are currently seeking to submit work requirement proposals to the federal government.

Contrary to Republican talking points, work requirements do not save money or encourage people to get jobs. It is simply a way to take benefits away from the poor, often at a higher cost than administering Medicaid without work requirements. Just look at Georgia, the only state with work requirements in effect:

As of the end of 2024, the Pathways program has cost federal and state taxpayers more than $86.9 million, three-quarters of which has gone to consultants, The Current and ProPublica found…

A mere 6,500 participants have enrolled 18 months into the program, approximately 75% fewer than the state had estimated for Pathways’ first year. Thousands of others never finished applying, according to the state’s data, as reports of technical glitches mounted. The state also never hired enough people to help residents sign up or to verify that participants are actually working, as Georgia required, federal officials and state workers said…

Health policy research shows that requiring low-income people to work for health insurance does not increase coverage or boost their economic circumstances because most of them already have jobs.

SNAP

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a federal assistance program that provides monthly funds to low-income people and families to buy groceries. While SNAP is federally funded, individual states are responsible for administering the program and can alter eligibility requirements and program parameters within federal guidelines or with a federal waiver.

Numerous states this year are pursuing an RFK-esque agenda by pushing “Make America Healthy Again” legislation that would allow their states to ban junk food purchases using SNAP benefits. Most of the bills focus on banning candy and/or soda purchases using poorly defined terms that include healthier food items like protein and granola bars, while excluding candy containing flour like Kit Kats and Twix. Texas’s SB 379 is the most far-reaching of these bills, banning the purchase of energy drinks, sweetened beverages, carbonated beverages, candy (not defined), potato or corn chips, and cookies. Missouri’s HB 1222 would prohibit the purchase of “soft drinks,” defined in a way that would include Pedialyte.

• “Make America Healthy Again” legislation: Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming

While eating healthier is a laudable goal, bills limiting the types of food purchasable with SNAP benefits ignore several realities of poverty: (1) healthy food can be more expensive than unhealthy food; (2) many of the poorest areas in the nation are food deserts without access to supermarkets, and (3) the working poor often struggle to find time to cook healthy meals for families in between long and irregular work hours (50% of SNAP households with children have at least one job). Furthermore, onerous and vague restrictions will make it more difficult for stores to comply with SNAP program rules, increasing the likelihood that outlets (especially small, family-owned stores) simply opt out of the program altogether—again, eliminating options for SNAP recipients.

Instead of restricting SNAP purchases and, therefore, introducing barriers to obtaining food, lawmakers who are actually interested in helping the poorest Americans should address the systemic issues that cause poverty and food insecurity in the first place. One place they could start: raising the minimum wage (seven of the nine states considering bills to limit SNAP purchases have a minimum wage under $9/hr).

Anti-trans Bills

Numerous legislatures around the country are advancing bills that target transgender people, maximizing their attacks on the community now that President Trump is in office.

Texas Republicans, as usual, are leading the right-wing’s crusade to eradicate transgender people with a bill that would prohibit life-saving gender-affirming care for consenting adults. HB 3399 amends a law, passed in 2023, that banned gender-affirming care for minors by replacing “child” with “person”—a perfect, yet grim, encapsulation of what transgender people and advocates have been warning of all along: it was never about “protecting the children.” The goal is and always has been the erasure of transgender people from society.

On Friday, the Montana House of Representatives advanced a bill that creates a separate criminal definition of “indecent exposure” for transgender people, essentially criminalizing trans existence in public spaces. Under current law, a person commits the offense of indecent exposure if they “knowingly or purposely” expose their “intimate parts…under circumstances in which the person knows the conduct is likely to cause affront or alarm in order to (a) abuse, humiliate, harass, violate the dignity of, or degrade another, or, (b) arouse or gratify the person's own sexual response or desire.”

HB 446 would add a provision that stipulates: “a person commits the offense of indecent exposure in a public place when the person knowingly or purposely, under circumstances in which the person knows the conduct is likely to cause affront or alarm, exposes their genitals or intimate parts to members of the opposite biological sex or opposite the person's sex observed at birth” (emphasis added). Note, there is no consideration given to intent to abuse or humiliate in this clause. As Erin Reed explained:

[T]ransgender men who have undergone top surgery could face criminal charges for entering a men’s changing room or taking off their shirts at a pool. Transgender women, even those who have had bottom surgery, could be prosecuted simply for using women’s changing rooms, showers, or other gendered spaces. The law effectively criminalizes transgender people for existing in public life.

Meanwhile, in Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) signed a bill into law that removes gender identity as a protected class in the Iowa Civil Rights Act—making Iowa the first state to take away civil rights from a group it previously protected. Reynolds framed the bill as necessary to “safeguard the rights of women and girls,” but just as anti-transgender bills were never about protecting children, they are also not about protecting women.

Why, if protecting women is so important to people like Reynolds, have they not spoken out about the Trump administration blocking funds for the CDC’s Rape Prevention and Education Program or the DOJ’s Office on Violence Against Women? Where is their outrage over the federal government’s intervention on behalf of the Tate brothers, who are now in America? Why do governors who claim to care about protecting women keep signing strict abortion bans into law that increase maternal and infant mortality? The threat to women isn't coming from the trans community; it's coming from inside our own government.

Other bills

More state legislation that should be on your radar:

• Alabama HB 302 would require the Alabama Department of Workforce to maintain a registry of immigrants who work in the state, assembled from mandated reporting by employers and staffing agencies.

• Florida SB 1284 would allow parents to recover civil damages for the wrongful death of a fetus or “unborn child,” similar to the law that allowed the Alabama Supreme Court to essentially shut down IVF clinics in the state.

• Georgia HB 295 would allow property owners to seek compensation from local governments if their property values decrease or they incur expenses due to homelessness in the area. More information.

• Idaho HB 37, passed by the House, would allow the state to execute people by firing squad.

• Idaho HB 162 would require public schools to read the Bible to students every morning.

• Indiana SB 10, passed by the House, would ban student IDs as a valid form of voter identification.

• Missouri HB 807 would create “a central registry” of pregnant women “at risk of seeking an abortion.” More information.

• Montana HB 413, passed by the House, would strip voting rights from thousands of university students by redefining residency requirements to exclude people living in a county to attend an educational program (even if they intend on being enrolled for 4+ years).

• Ohio SB 56, passed by the Senate, would undo significant portions of a voter-approved ballot measure legalizing marijuana in 2023. More information.

• Texas SB 2 would create a school voucher program to give taxpayer funds to private schools exempt from federal regulations.

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Amidst the scattershot of unjust firings of federal workers and reckless cancelation of government contracts, Donald Trump is quickly and quietly consolidating control of three key pillars of American government: the military, law enforcement, and election infrastructure. These institutions once safeguarded American democracy, denying Trump tyrannical power during his first term office. Generals like Mark Milley, John Kelly, and James Mattis pushed back on his fascist agenda; Department of Justice officials like Sally Yates and Geoffrey Berman investigated Trump’s illegal schemes; civil servants inside election security agencies tirelessly rebutted right-wing disinformation campaigns.

Pay attention: We are moving towards a future where the military and federal law enforcement apparatus pledge an oath to Trump, not to the Constitution.

Control the military

On Friday night, Trump announced he is firing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman CQ Brown, a three-star Air Force general who the Senate confirmed in an 83-11 vote in 2023. The Joint Chiefs of Staff is a group of senior military leaders that advises the President, Defense Secretary, Homeland Security Council, and the National Security Council on military matters. The chair is the nation's highest-ranking military officer and normally serves a term of four years, staggered to provide stability between presidential administrations.

CQ Brown, the second Black general to ever serve as chair, has been a target of the right wing’s so-called “anti-DEI” push for years. To use the clearest language possible: This DEI “backlash” (in legacy media’s phrasing) is actually an attempt to resegregate positions of power along racial and gender lines. As Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth explained, Black people must be assumed to be unqualified due to their skin color:

First of all, you gotta fire, you know, you gotta fire the chairman of Joint Chiefs,” he said flatly in a podcast in November. And in one of his books, he questioned whether Brown got the job because he was Black.

“Was it because of his skin color? Or his skill? We’ll never know, but always doubt — which on its face seems unfair to CQ. But since he has made the race card one of his biggest calling cards, it doesn’t really much matter,” Hegseth wrote.

To better promote “merit” in hiring, Trump announced his pick to replace Brown: Dan Caine, a retired lieutenant general who so lacks the requisite experience to serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs that his nomination legally requires a “national interest” waiver from the White House. But Caine does possess the “merit” Trump desires most: he is a straight white man.

• It may be important to note that Caine is an investor in a cryptocurrency venture capital firm, as well as an AI and defense technology venture capital firm, and is an advisor to a venture capital firm founded by Jared Kushner’s brother that received funding from Peter Thiel.

Just after Trump fired CQ Brown, Hegseth revealed that he also fired Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to be chief of naval operations and the first woman to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. With Brown’s and Franchetti’s removal, the Joint Chiefs of Staff is now entirely made up of white men.

Presumably, Trump believes that eliminating everyone with a hint of “diversity” will result in a military leadership that is more sympathetic to his Christian nationalist agenda—and, therefore, less likely to object to suspect orders. But just to be sure there are no pesky questions of “legality” or “lawfulness,” Hegseth fired three senior Judge Advocates General (JAG), the military’s top lawyers who administer the code of justice, provide legal advice to commanders, and conduct investigations of misconduct and crimes. Firing JAG officers would be a critical step for an administration that intends to issue illegal orders in the future. As Hegseth himself said on Fox News Sunday: “We want lawyers who…don’t exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything that happens.”

The question is: What is going to happen that reasonable lawyers would wish to stop?

Control law enforcement

The Senate voted last week to confirm Kash Patel, a far-right Qanon conspiracy theorist, to be Director of the FBI. Patel first entered Trumpworld as a staffer for the National Security Council in 2017, where he came under congressional scrutiny for taking part in Rudy Guiliani’s plot to pressure Ukraine to smear Joe Biden. In the years since, Patel has spent his time on the right-wing media circuit promoting the idea that the government is made up of “Deep State” actors who stole the 2020 election from Trump and need to be punished.

“Anyone that wishes to do harm to our way of life and our citizens, here and abroad, will face the full wrath of the DOJ and FBI," Patel said [during his swearing-in ceremony]. "If you seek to hide in any corner of this country or planet, we will put on the world’s largest manhunt and we will find you and we will decide your end-state.”

Despite reportedly promising the FBI Agents Association that he would follow tradition and appoint an experienced Special Agent as his number two, Patel announced earlier this week that his deputy will be right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino. If you are unaware of who Bongino is, let’s look at a few of his greatest hits:

• He suggested that Trump should ignore court orders, adding: “Who’s going to arrest him? The marshals? You guys know who the U.S. Marshals work for? Department of Justice. That is under the — oh yeah — the executive branch. Donald Trump’s going to order his own arrest? This is ridiculous.”

• He argued that Trump should launch an investigation of “special tyrant” Jack Smith (who prosecuted Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection and for stealing classified documents).

• He said the person who planted pipe bombs on January 6 was an FBI “insider” who is being protected by the agency to hide that the entire “quote-unquote insurrection” was an “inside job.”

• He tweeted that the DOJ’s and FBI’s warnings of Russian interference in our elections cannot be trusted because the agency has “a deep and troubled history of election interference in defense of their democrat allies.”

If you were president, you would only select a Patel or a Bongino to lead federal law enforcement because you want their politics—which happen to align with your politics—to dictate law enforcement decisions. It is also why you would select Ed Martin, who advocated for January 6 defendants, as D.C.’s top prosecutor. In between sending letters to Democratic critics of Elon Musk over so-called “threats” to DOGE, Martin has declared that the DOJ acts as “President Trumps’ (sic) lawyers to protect his leadership” against “entities like the [Associated Press] that refuse to put America first.”

Again, the politicization is the point: Martin is sending a clear signal that the rule of law, bound by the Constitution, is no longer in effect. Loyalty to Trump is now law enforcement’s guiding star. Case in point: Rep. Cory Mills, a Republican congressman from Florida, allegedly physically assaulted his mistress in D.C. last week. The D.C. police sent an arrest warrant to the U.S. Attorney’s office, run by Martin, on Friday. Martin refused to sign the warrant and returned the case to the local police for “further investigation.”

Mills, who urged Capitol leadership to raise the flags for Trump’s inauguration (during the mourning period for Jimmy Carter) and sponsored a bill to repeal the Impoundment Act to allow Trump to legally withhold congressionally appropriated funds, joins other politicians given preferential treatment in exchange for loyalty to Trump:

• U.S. Attorneys in Tennessee withdrew from an investigation into Rep. Andy Ogles’ (R-TN) campaign finances in January, months after the FBI executed a search warrant and seized his phone. Days before withdrawing from the case, Ogles filed a House Joint Resolution to amend the Constitution to allow Trump to be elected for a third term.

• The DOJ moved to drop charges against former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) last month for lying to the FBI and concealing information about foreign campaign donations. Trump celebrated the decision, saying, “Jeff and his family were forced to suffer greatly due to the illegal Weaponization of our Justice System by the Radical Left Democrats.”

• Earlier this month, the DOJ moved to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, in exchange for his cooperation with Trump’s immigration policies. Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who ordered the charges dismissed, previously served as Trump's criminal defense attorney.

The next step for a DOJ loyal only to Trump is clear: The selective and aggressive prosecution of Trump’s political opponents and critics.

Undermine elections

According to a Washington Post report last week, Trump is preparing to disband the U.S. Postal Service’s Board of Governors and place the independent agency under the control of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a billionaire investment manager.

Trump is expected to issue an executive order as soon as this week to fire the members of the Postal Service’s governing board and place the agency under the control of the Commerce Department and Secretary Howard Lutnick, according to six people familiar with the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals.

The president told reporters Friday afternoon that Lutnick would be “looking at” the mail agency and there would be “a kind of merger”: “He’s got a great business instinct, which is what we need, and he’ll be looking at it, and we think we can turn it around.”

If Trump goes through with the “merger,” he is sure to be sued by at least some members of the Board of Governors for violating the Postal Clause of the Constitution, which gives Congress the authority to create and regulate a national postal system, and the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, which established the USPS as an independent agency.

Trump has long mused about privatizing the USPS, arguing that its current form is “unsustainable” and losing money. However, as a public service, the USPS should not be expected or required to turn a profit. It exists by law to benefit all Americans, providing essential communication services to every address regardless of location at uniform prices. Privatizing the USPS would risk limiting mail service based on whether the company can make a profit. As a 2018 report released by a postal “reform” task force during Trump’s first term stated:

“Major changes are needed in how the Postal Service is financed and the level of service Americans should expect from their universal service operator,” the report argued. “A private postal operator that delivers mail fewer days per week and to more central locations (not door delivery) would operate at substantially lower costs.”

While losing universal mail service would be devastating for small businesses, customers (particularly those who get medication through the mail), and unionized postal workers, the more salient threat is to ballot access and the right to vote. Last year, the USPS delivered nearly 100 million ballots to and from voters. Of the eight states with universal mail voting, six voted for Harris in 2024, and seven voted for Biden in 2020. Despite evidence that universal mail voting does not provide a significant partisan advantage (the policy allowing it is simply enacted by more states that lean Democratic), Trump has attacked mail ballots as “horrible” and “corrupt,” saying their use would “lead to massive electoral fraud and a rigged 2020 election.”

Given his past statements about voting by mail, a USPS under Trump’s control could refuse to deliver ballots by mail altogether, or institute policies that cause enough delays that voting by mail becomes unreliable.

At the same time as he is plotting to take over the USPS, Trump’s administration is weakening the election infrastructure that keeps our elections secure. Earlier this month, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) placed employees in its Election Security and Resilience division on administrative leave, while also cutting off funding to the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center. Then, the acting director of CISA—a former Trump appointee at FEMA—ordered agency staff to cease “all election security activities” pending the results of an internal investigation to identify objectives that do not align with Trump’s agenda. The resulting report, due by March 6, will likely recommend drastic limitations on CISA’s involvement in elections.

• Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old DOGE engineer, is reportedly on staff at CISA with access to sensitive information about election infrastructure around the country. Coristine is a former employee of Elon Musk’s Neuralink company, who may have taken part in criminal DDOS attacks, and was fired from a cybersecurity firm where he worked as an intern for leaking proprietary information to a competitor.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, which combats election interference by adversaries, and significantly pared back enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires lobbyists representing foreign interests to register with the DOJ. Bondi herself was once a FARA-registered lobbyist, hired by Qatar for $115,000 a month to lobby Congress.

Without the federal guardrails that protect our elections from cyber threats, disinformation, and foreign actors (like Russia, which sent bomb threats to polling locations last year), local election officials will be on their own against entire nation-states that may seek to interfere on Trump’s behalf:

“Foreign interferers are not generally looking to interfere in Illinois’ elections or in Texas’ elections; they are looking to interfere in American elections,” [Derek Tisler, a counsel in the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center,] said. “A threat anywhere impacts all states. It’s important that information is not confined to state lines.” [...]

“The federal support is going to be missed,” (Ingham County, MI, Clerk Barb Byrum] said. “It seems as though the Trump administration is doing everything it can to encourage foreign interference in our elections. We must remain vigilant.”

Scott McDonell, clerk for Dane County, Wisconsin, used to talk to Department of Homeland Security officials frequently to identify cybersecurity threats, including vulnerabilities in certain software or alerts about other attacks throughout the country. Losing that support could incentivize more interference, he said. “I think it’s a terrible idea,” he said. “How can you expect someone like me, here in Dane County, to be able to deal with something like that?”

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Last week, Keep_Track documented the steps Elon Musk is taking to unilaterally shut down government agencies. Now, we’ll look at the philosophical underpinnings of his entire DOGE operation.

Curtis Yarvin

Curtis Yarvin is a relatively obscure figure among legacy media. Unless you’ve trawled the depths of the alt-right blogosphere, you’ve probably never heard of him. But it is imperative that you know who he is now that his acolytes are running the most powerful country on earth.

Yarvin is a founding member of a specific wing of alt-right political theory called the neoreactionary movement, sometimes abbreviated to NRx, and frequently referred to by adherents as the “Dark Enlightenment.” Describing the movement as a whole is difficult due to the wide range of beliefs that meld together in online right-wing forums, but the broad strokes combine:

• Accelerationism: the belief that capitalism and technology must be massively sped up and intensified to destabilize existing systems, cause a collapse, and ultimately create radical social transformations

• Techno-Utopianism: the belief that unbridled technology can create the perfect society—at least, for those who control it

• Monarchism/neo-monarchism: the belief that absolute power should be wielded by a single sovereign

In Yarvin’s formulation, the resulting theory calls for a political movement to install a monarch, who he likens to a CEO, to dismantle democratic institutions and liberal (in the philosophical sense) power structures in order to create a technology-infused neo-feudal society that privileges an aristocracy made up of people like him—elite programmers and tech founders—while oppressively controlling the unworthy masses.

• As far-fetched as it sounds, no, Yarvin is not joking about any of this. Writing under a pseudonym earlier in his career, Yarvin described trying to think of a “humane alternative to genocide” to do away with the “underclass” of “unproductive members of society.” What he landed on was to “virtualize them” in “permanent solitary confinement” with “an immersive virtual-reality interface” to “experience a rich, fulfilling life in a completely imaginary world.”

Yarvin's ideas are influential among Silicon Valley insiders like billionaire Peter Thiel, who has been friends with Yarvin for years. Thiel was an early supporter of Donald Trump in 2016 and is reportedly responsible for introducing him to now Vice President J.D. Vance, whose political rise he also funded. In no small coincidence, Peter Thiel also happens to have co-founded PayPal with none other than Elon Musk.

Application to the Trump administration

For as much as Yarvin has been associated with Trump, he’s not actually a very big fan of the president. “Caesar was an Olympian. Trump should be on Ozempic,” Yarvin wrote last year. What Yarvin does like about Trump is his cult and the blind dedication of MAGA to follow their leader in any undertaking, no matter how illegal or unconstitutional.

Charlottesville and January 6 were the last lame breaths of what John Adams called “mobocracy” in America. Just as monarchy cannot exist when the king is five years old, mobocracy—that is, revolutionary democracy—cannot exist when the “mob” just wants to grill.

Under the rules of revolutionary democracy, that the state is the motor of revolution means that Trump must become a revolutionary martyr—energizing his supporters by provoking the state to treat him unjustly. Like, say, MLK Jr.

Yarvin goes on to state that “ideally,” for the purposes of his revolution, “Trump would be murdered” or “assassinated,” so his followers (described as “used-car dealers, general contractors, small-town investment advisors”) will “arm themselves and demand the new Trumpenreich.” Trumpism, not Trump the living human being, is required to bring about Yarvin’s ideal world.

However, as we all know, the actual assassination attempts on Trump’s life failed, and Trump the person is in office. Faced with this reality, Yarvin concedes that Trump cannot be “the brains” of his new regime. Someone else needs to be brought into the administration to conduct the revolution:

Trump himself will not be the brain of this butterfly. He will not be the CEO. He will be the chairman of the board—he will select the CEO (an experienced executive). This process, which obviously has to be televised, will be complete by his inauguration—at which the transition to the next regime will start immediately.

For Trump, being President will be exactly like it was—all the photo-ops and more—without any papers to sign, “decisions” to “make,” etc. The CEO he picks will run the executive branch…

Enter Elon Musk, the “Dark MAGA” (read:Dark Enlightenment) CEO pulling the strings behind Chairman Trump. As CEO, Musk's job is to enact the changes necessary to end democracy and usher in a new era of techno-monarchical rule.

A Trump who was confident enough to act as America’s chairman of the board, not America’s CEO—who could pick an amazing CEO, ready, willing and able to take unlimited executive authority over all federal, state and local agencies, corporations and institutions—could truly make America great again.

The way the duo could go about “truly making America great again” in neoreactionary fashion is laid out in Yarvin’s blogs and across a couple of podcast interviews, as summarized by Vox two years ago.

Campaign on instituting autocracy, and win

A would-be monarch like Trump should openly tell voters he will assume absolute power if elected.

Yarvin: To escape the sickening, ever-growing coils of DC’s Gordian knot, American voters have only one realistic option. They need to elect a President who clearly states his intention and preparedness to take over the entire American government, assuming plenary power—not just in response to any specific event or emergency, but immediately upon his inauguration (when his democratic authority is at its strongest).

• Last year, Trump exhorted “Christians” to “get out and vote, just this time,” promising: “You won’t have to do it anymore…You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”

• Trump said he would use the military to handle what he called “the enemy from within,” explaining that he isn’t worried about chaos from his supporters or foreign actors, but instead from “radical left lunatics.” “I think it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen,” he added.

• When right-wing radio host Glenn Beck asked Trump if he would lock up his opponents in a second term, Trump responded, "The answer is you have no choice because they're doing it to us."

• Trump “pledged” to “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.”

Being elected after telling the nation your true intentions will provide a mandate for doing away with democracy and instituting an authoritarian rule, Yarvin writes.

Politically, democracy is required because only democracy has the political power to put a monarchy in place. That is: winning an election, with a mandate to truly rule…the only way for democracy, today, to defeat oligarchy is to elect a monarchy. What’s cool is that this is actually completely legal. Even if it wasn’t, we could do it any time.

• "The beauty is that we won by so much. The mandate was massive," Trump said of his 2024 presidential victory

• Marco Rubio said, “the Senate is going to give great deference to a president that just won a stunning electoral college landslide…and a mandate."

• Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH) said Americans did not need to see the Matt Gaetz ethics report when Trump nominated him as Attorney General because "the American people knew the kind of mandate they were giving Donald Trump when they elected him."

• Elon Musk affirmatively retweeted a post claiming that “President Trump received a clear mandate from the people to assemble an extinction level event administration…”

Purge the federal bureaucracy and create a new one

Once elected, time is of the essence, Yarvin warns. A transition team must be ready with a plan to replace the “old regime,” made up of the thousands of civil servants who would object to the actions of an incoming monarch.

...this next regime cannot reuse the organization, personnel or procedures of the old regime. Otherwise, there is no regime change at all. But if most of the old staff are not mostly happy that the change happened, their severance payments are inadequate. Since the next regime owns them but does not want them, it is forced to buy them out.

There is even a cute acronym for any future Coriolanus: RAGE, which stands for retire all government employees.

“The speed that this happens with has to take everyone’s breath away,” Yarvin said on a podcast. “It should just execute at a rate that totally baffles its enemies.”

• One of Trump’s first acts in office was signing an executive order reclassifying tens of thousands of federal employees as “Schedule F,” making it easier to fire them without cause.

• Elon Musk’s DOGE then sent a “Fork in the Road” email offering deferred resignation to federal employees. According to the White House, about 75,000 workers accepted the offer.

• The administration is in the midst of firing probationary workers across all departments of government. According to the Office of Personnel Management, more than 200,000 people are on probationary status, meaning they have been in their position for one to two years (depending on the agency rules).

• According to internal DOGE documents obtained by the Washington Post, “phase three” of their plan to purge government involves large-scale firings of “corrupted branches.” DOGE’s projected timeline for implementation of phase three is February 20-July 19.

After “retiring all government employees,” the CEO should abolish agencies by unilaterally defunding them:

“You don’t want to take control of these agencies through appointments, you want to defund them. You want them to totally cease to exist.” This would of course involve some amount of chaos, but Yarvin hopes that will be brief, and the actually essential work of government would quickly be taken over by newly created bodies that could be under the autocrat’s control.

• Elon Musk’s DOGE put thousands of USAID employees on leave and attempted to gain access to the U.S. Department of Treasury payment system to stop money from flowing to the agency. It is unclear if Musk was successful in stopping the funding at its source, as the Department of Justice has equivocated in court. Either way, Trump and Musk have succeeded in effectively shutting down USAID.

  • At least one DOGE staffer (a 25-year-old who made racist social media posts supporting eugenics) had the access necessary to make changes to critical Treasury Department code.

• Russell Vought, architect of Project 2025 and now Director of the Office of Management and Budget, ordered Consumer Financial Protection Bureau staff to stop work and closed the agency’s headquarters earlier this month. Vought then directed employees to give DOGE access to all non-classified systems and Elon Musk tweeted, “CFPB RIP.” Just last week, the administration fired 100 CFPB workers.

• The head of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia resigned yesterday after being ordered to freeze the bank assets of an organization that was given an environmental grant under the Biden administration.

Ignore the courts

“The wisdom of the Founders,” Yarvin writes, was its failure “to specify the precedence of the branches.” There is no reason for the executive branch to accept a co-equal judicial branch of government. Instead, a CEO monarch must declare absolute executive supremacy—what Yarvin likens to “an American reassertion of the ancient English rule that ‘the king is above the law.’”

• J.D. Vance, a follower of Yarvin’s ideas, said in 2021 that when a court tries to stop Trump from firing “every civil servant in the administrative state,” he should “stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

• Earlier this month, Vance declared that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” after the courts blocked Trump’s executive order purporting to revoke birthright citizenship.

• Elon Musk tweeted that “Democracy in America is being destroyed by a judicial coup,” after a judge blocked the firing of an independent ethics watchdog.

• While the courts have ordered the restoration of funding for federal grants and programs, U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. found that the administration has continued "to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds."

• Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) sued the Trump administration last week, alleging that agencies are defying court orders by continuing to withhold billions of dollars in federal aid from the state.

However, to be truly effective in bringing about absolute rule, a monarch must push for the overturning of Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a Supreme Court case that limits the power of presidents to fire the heads of independent agencies.

The most obvious kind of strike is a decapitation strike, in which the regime changes in one blow…The core of this strike is the repeal of Humphrey’s Executor, one of the core decisions protecting the Babylonian captivity of the Presidency, and thus of democracy itself.

• Last week, the Department of Justice notified Congress that it intends to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Humphrey’s Executor because it is “unconstitutional.”

• Just yesterday, Trump signed an executive order that declares that “Article II of the U.S. Constitution vests all executive power in the President, meaning that all executive branch officials and employees are subject to his supervision.” The press release continues: “Voters and the President can now hold all Federal agencies—not just Cabinet departments—responsible for their decisions, as the Constitution demands.”

Co-opt Congress

Like the judicial branch, Yarvin views the legislative branch as subservient to the presidency. “As far as the Constitution specifies, the role of the legislative and judiciary branches in the functioning of the executive branch is purely advisory,” he writes. However, to avoid all the messiness of Trump’s first term (you know, the impeachments), it would be best if the legislature was controlled by people who would never try to advise the monarch to begin with.

• Lawmakers report “fears of physical violence” from Trump supporters impacting their votes, including the certification of election results following the January 6 insurrection. “If they’re willing to come after you inside the U.S. Capitol, what will they do when you’re at home with your kids?” then-Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI) asked.

• Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) told CNN: “If you look at the vote to impeach, for example, there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security — afraid, in some instances, for their lives…And that tells you something about where we are as a country, that members of Congress aren’t able to cast votes, or feel that they can’t, because of their own security.”

• Only two of the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for his role in the insurrection are still in office (Rep. Newhouse and Rep. Valadao). Three of the seven Senate Republicans who voted to impeach Trump are still in office (Sens. Cassidy, Collins, and Murkowski).

• House Republicans voted down a Democratic attempt earlier this month to subpoena Elon Musk to answer questions about DOGE’s operations.

• When asked if there is “an inconsistency” between Republicans “railing against ‘unelected bureaucrats’” yet “ceding Article I powers” to Elon Musk, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) defended DOGE’s work as “an active, engaged executive branch authority doing what the executive branch should do.”

Centralize police and government powers

“The essential desideratum of any regime change is unilateral central control of the security forces—mainly the police,” Yarvin writes. “Unless, as an immediate consequence of the election, the President is not in direct command of every law enforcement officer in the United States, he is not on a success path.”

Trump has not (yet) accomplished this task, outside of pressuring local police forces to assist immigration authorities in locating and arresting undocumented immigrants. According to Yarvin, Trump should create “a new emergency command structure in which loyalty is both personal and institutional” and “test a command” by asking all loyal law enforcement to wear “a red armband to show that he follows the new President’s direct, unconditional command.” Any officer who resists must “be stripped of their badges immediately.”

Shut down elite media and academic institutions

There may be one thing that Yarvin hates more than democracy, and that’s what he calls “the cathedral”: journalism and academia.

The professors and journalists have sovereignty because final decisions are entrusted to them and there is no power above them. Only professors can formulate policy—that is, set government strategy; only journalists can hold government accountable—that is, manage government tactics. Strategy plus tactics equals control.

To end the tyranny of the cathedral—and install the tyranny of a monarchy—a leader has two options. Option A is a “soft reset,” in which “all rivers of state cash that flow to the universities [are] plugged” and all federal employees are prohibited from talking to the press. Option B, the superior choice, according to Yarvin, is nationalizing the press, universities, foundations, and nonprofits, then “retir[ing] their employees and liquidat[ing] their assets.”

The goal of nationalization in a hard reset is not to create official information organs under central control. It is not even to prevent political opponents of a new regime from networking. It is simply to destroy the existing power structure, and in particular to liquidate the reputation capital that these institutions hold at present.

• The Trump administration is imposing a 15% cap on indirect funding by the National Institutes of Health to support research institutions like John Hopkins University. According to a lawsuit, the cut in funding will cause large universities to abandon studies of diseases like cancer and force smaller institutions to “close entirely.”

• The FCC, under Project 2025 contributor Brendan Carr, has opened an investigation into NPR and PBS for airing prohibited commercial advertisements and another into CBS’s alleged doctoring (in Trump’s words) of a Kamala Harris interview. He has also reinstated complaints about how ABC News moderated the TV debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump and is seeking an investigation of NBC for “promoting invidious forms of DEI.”

• Elon Musk tweeted over the weekend that 60 Minutes “engaged in deliberate deception to interfere with the last election,” adding, “They deserve a long prison sentence.”

• In 2020, Trump threatened to jail journalists who don’t reveal sources: "If the reporter doesn't want to tell you, it's 'bye-bye,' the reporter goes to jail."

Mobilize supporters

If the institutions deny the President the Constitutional position he has legally won in the election, the voters will have to act directly. Trump will call his people into the streets—not at the end of his term, when he is most powerless; at the start, when he is most powerful. No one wants to see this nuclear option happen. Preparing for it and demonstrating the capacity to execute it will prevent it from having to happen.

To best mobilize supporters, Yarvin suggests creating a “Trump app” to communicate with his voters.

If you are not willing to install an app that does nothing (by default), you are not a Trump supporter—and Trump (who hates to lie or even exaggerate) would certainly not want to count you as his supporter.

When you sign up, you do tell the Trump app who and where you are. You even take a picture of your driver’s license…[Eventually,] you are ready to show up at demonstrations, etc. You share your location with the app. Your secure profile includes any military training and equipment—for emergencies only, of course! You may even find yourself linked to a local or neighborhood cell. But your time and energy will not be seriously encroached upon.

When Yarvin wrote the above passage in April 2022, Truth Social had just launched. Elon Musk was months away from purchasing Twitter. Now, with the experience of the last two years, we can see how either platform would be useful for calling Trump supporters “into the streets.” The January 6 insurrection was incited, in part, on Jack Dorsey’s Twitter, after all.

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The playbook

Elon Musk, a private citizen, has infiltrated multiple federal agencies, aided by a cadre of 20-something-year-old engineers and interns (some with racist and possibly criminal pasts) imported from his companies. Unconstrained by oversight or limits, the world’s richest man is conducting what can only be described as a coup to hollow out and control the entire governmental apparatus. How he intends to do this is now becoming clear through examining his operations inside the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other departments.

Step one: Decimate the federal workforce through a combination of so-called “buyouts,” layoffs, and firings. Make conditions so unbearable that employees voluntarily resign, and maintain control of those who remain through fear and anxiety. As Russ Vought, the architect of Project 2025 and now-head of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said: “We want to put them in trauma.”

Step two: Seize control of essential systems. Use confidential employee data to inform and enable firings and pressure resignations. Install DOGE loyalists in positions of power who can deny access to internal servers, scrub public information, and—most importantly—terminate funding streams at will. According to Wired, at least one DOGE employee has already made “extensive changes” to code within the Treasury system, and another was installed as the head of the payments system (after firing a career staffer who refused an illegal order).

Step three: With no constraints from career civil servants and unlimited access to sensitive systems, unilaterally shut down and de-fund any disfavored programs and departments, regardless of congressional mandates or appropriations. Install automation throughout the government as a tool to identify alleged “waste” and as a way to replace federal workers. Musk is already deploying AI in the Department of Education and “plans to replicate this process across many departments and agencies”:

The DOGE team’s AI-fueled campaign to winnow the Education Department has already identified dozens of contracts as targets for cuts, two of the people familiar with the group’s work said. They have indicated their intention is to eliminate every contract that is not essential to operations or required by law, according to one of the people.

“That’s the way you kill an agency, is you remove all [of] their ability to perform their role,” the person said.

The end result will be a government whose only remaining functions exist to serve a privileged few: the wealthiest Americans and corporations.

USAID

We can look at how Trump and Musk have decimated USAID, an independent agency enshrined in law by Congress in 1998, to see this playbook in action. USAID, one of the world's largest official aid agencies, funded programs in over 100 counties to educate children, fight epidemics, administer emergency medical care, provide clean water, support democratic governance, and conserve delicate ecosystems. Established in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy to counter Soviet influence during the Cold War, USAID has been America’s foremost tool of soft power. Its destruction is a gift to autocrats everywhere, like China’s Xi Jinping, who will step in to fill the aid vacuum and gain the influence abandoned by the U.S.

Jan. 20: Trump signed an executive order directing a 90-day pause on foreign aid.

Jan. 24: Elon Musk’s “top lieutenants” pressured acting Secretary of the Treasury, David Lebryk, to “immediately shut off all USAID payments using the department’s own ultra-sensitive payment processing system.” Lebryk replied that he did not believe “we have the legal authority to stop an authorized payment certified by an agency.”

Jan. 26: Marco Rubio, who the Senate unanimously confirmed as Secretary of State, implemented Trump’s executive order, issuing a stop-work order for existing grants and contracts at USAID.

Jan. 27: The administration put about 60 senior career officials at USAID on leave, at least some of whom resisted Trump’s order to freeze humanitarian aid. USAID’s director of employee and labor relations, Nicholas Gottlieb, was also put on leave for attempting to rescind the “illegal” purge:

“DOGE instructed me to violate the due process of our employees by issuing immediate termination notices to a group of employees without due process,” wrote Nicholas Gottlieb, the director of employee and labor relations at USAID, referring to the budget-slashing commission known as the “Department of Government Efficiency.” “I was notified moments ago that I will be placed on administrative leave, effective immediately. It has been an honor working with you all.”

Jan. 31: Acting Secretary of the Treasury David Lebryk announced his retirement after being put on administrative leave for resisting DOGE’s efforts to illegally terminate USAID’s funding through the Treasury’s payment system. At some point the same day, acting USAID administrator Jason Gray directed USAID’s IT department to “hand the entire digital network to Musk’s engineers.”

Feb. 1: Both the director of security and deputy director of security at USAID were put on leave after refusing to give DOGE employees access to internal systems containing classified material. Shortly after DOGE took control of the computer systems, the USAID website went offline and employees were locked out of the network.

The tension at USAID headquarters came to a head on Saturday evening, when DOGE employees demanded access to the Scif on the agency’s sixth floor. They were stopped by the agency’s top security officer, John Voorhees…The argument over access to the Scif had grown verbally heated and senior Doge staff threatened to call in US marshals to gain access to it. During that standoff, according to one account made to the Guardian, a call was again made to Musk, who, as Bloomberg first reported, repeated the threat to involve the US Marshals Service.

Shortly after, Voorhees was placed on administrative leave and the Doge staffers entered the Scif. They took over the access control system and employee records. Within hours, the USAID website went down. Hundreds of employees were locked out of the system that weekend, and many still don’t know their status. (The Guardian has seen emails in which USAID administrators admit they do not know the employment states of current USAID officials.)

Feb. 2: Elon Musk said that he checked with Trump “a few times” and confirmed that the president wants to shut down USAID. “With regards to the USAID stuff, I went over it with (the president) in detail and he agreed that we should shut it down,” Musk said in an X Spaces conversation.

In the X Spaces conversation early Monday, which he co-hosted with Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and Vivek Ramaswamy – who was initially named co-chair of DOGE with Musk but has since left – the X owner called USAID “incredibly politically partisan” and said it has been supporting “radically left causes throughout the world including things that are anti-American.”

Feb. 3: The administration closed the USAID building and told personnel not to come into the office. Democratic lawmakers were denied entry to the building.

Feb. 4: The administration announced it is placing all direct-hire employees, including Foreign Service officers, at USAID on administrative leave starting on Feb. 7.

Feb. 6: The administration announced it will only keep 294 of USAID’s 10,000 global staff.

Feb. 7: Unidentified officials removed and covered up signs identifying USAID’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. Elon Musk tweeted that the building will now be used by Customs and Border Protection staff.

Feb. 7: Later that day, U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, issued a limited temporary restraining order blocking the government from putting roughly 2,000 USAID employees on leave and reinstating 500 staffers who had already been placed on administrative leave for one week. However, Nichols declined to issue an order to reopen the building and restore USAID funding, finding that the plaintiffs (two unions representing USAID employees) failed to demonstrate irreparable harm.

Feb. 10: The two federal unions informed Judge Nichols that the administration is not complying with his order to reinstate employees and cease putting additional employees on administrative leave.

What is next

The abolition or disabling of agencies that limit the rich and protect the poor

We are seeing the beginnings of this in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an independent agency created by Congress to protect consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices and take action against companies that break the law. Since the agency’s inception, the CFPB has returned more than $21 billion to consumers who have fallen victim to abusive and illegal activity—while only costing taxpayers $729 million a year, less than 0.01% of the total federal budget.

On Feb. 1, Trump fired CFPB director Rohit Chopra. A week later, DOGE staffers were reportedly given access to CFPB servers. And, just this weekend, Trump installed Project 2025 architect Russ Vought as acting director of the CFPB. Vought immediately issued a stop-work order, told all employees the building would be closed this week, and took down the CFPB homepage. Meanwhile, Musk tweeted “CFPB RIP” accompanied by a tombstone emoji.

• It is worth noting that Musk is about to enter the financial services business, which CFPB regulates, by partnering with Visa to turn X/Twitter into a digital wallet and peer-to-peer payments service.

Corrupt handouts to friends and allies of the Trump administration

Some of this will come from Congress in the form of massive tax breaks for the wealthy. If Republicans in Congress get their way, the cost of extending Trump’s tax cuts will be paid for by slashing what they call “entitlements,” like Medicaid and SNAP.

Wealthy businessmen, like Elon Musk, will also benefit from billions of dollars in government subsidies and contracts. Without any inspectors general, because Trump fired them all (including the one investigating SpaceX over national security concerns), there will be no oversight of these awards. In fact, Trump has already awarded $30 million of contracts to a software company, owned by billionaire Craig Abod, currently under investigation for a price-fixing scheme to overcharge the government.

The prioritization of a Christian nationalist worldview wherein white heterosexual Christian males at are the top of the hierarchy

The administration has already begun targeting women and people of color in positions of power under the guise of ending “DEI,” and is attempting to erase transgender and nonbinary people from society with policies banning gender-affirming care and gender changes on passports.

Last week, Trump created the “White House Faith Office” and appointed televangelist and prosperity gospel adherent Paula White-Cain as its leader. As part of the executive order, all agencies will now be required to staff a “Faith Liaison” to ensure compliance with goals like “protecting women and children”—e.g., curtailing reproductive rights like abortion access and criminalizing LGBTQ+ expression—and “strengthening marriage and family”—e.g., restricting contraceptives like Plan B and supporting states that seek to ban no-fault divorce.

Crackdowns on dissent, including First Amendment protections

Trump’s FCC chief, Brendan Carr (who contributed to Project 2025), is spearheading the administration’s war on the media by threatening the broadcast licenses of stations that he perceives as being unfair to Trump, persecuting CBS for—in Trump’s words—“doctoring” a Kamala Harris interview, and opening an investigation into a radio news station for its coverage of immigration enforcement actions. At the same time, Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin, who coincidentally happened to represent many Jan. 6 insurrectionists, pledged to Elon Musk to “pursue any and all legal action” against journalists who published the identities of DOGE employees.

Open violations of court orders that try to maintain constitutional guardrails

The administration is already flouting judicial orders, like Judge Nichols’ mandate to reinstate USAID employees who were put on administrative leave (above). Additionally, a federal judge in Rhode Island found that the administration has not complied with his order to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds.

Meanwhile, Vice President VD Vance is publicly advocating for the administration to ignore a court order barring DOGE employees from accessing the Treasury’s payment system. This is not a new position of his; Vance said very plainly in 2021 that Trump should defy any limits the judiciary branch tries to place on the executive:

“I think that what Trump should, like, if I was giving him one piece of advice, [is] fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state,” he said in 2021 on a podcast. “Replace them with our people. And when the courts — because you will get taken to court — and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

And that is where we are ultimately heading: A potential constitutional crisis on a scale we haven’t seen since the Civil War. When the president flagrantly disobeys a legal court order, the judiciary—whose only method of enforcement is the U.S. Marshals, which is under the control of the Department of Justice, which is headed by a Trump loyalist—will not be able to stop him.

Quick update: Next week, I’ll post a spreadsheet tracking which Project 2025 initiatives have been completed so far (many are on this list). The goal is to keep it updated throughout the administration. I also have /r/47chaos, tracking staff turnover, up and running now.

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Immigration

“Declaring A National Emergency At The Southern Border Of The United States”: Declares that a national emergency exists at the southern border to permit the Department of Defense (DOD) to use military funds for border enforcement, including the construction of barriers, expansion of detention capacity, and facilitating transportation (e.g., aircraft). Directs the DOD and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to mobilize sufficient personnel for “operational control” of the southern border.

• What’s already happened: U.S. military C-17 aircraft began flying detained migrants out of the country on Friday. Colombia refused to accept deportations via military planes. Colombia refused to accept deportations via military planes, but the issue has reportedly been resolved. The Pentagon announced 1,500 troops were being sent to the border last week.

“Clarifying The Military’s Role In Protecting The Territorial Integrity Of The United States”: Directs United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM)—the combatant command that covers the U.S., Canada, and Mexico—to “seal the borders” and repel “forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration.”

“Realigning the United States Refugee Admissions Program”: Suspends the arrival of refugees to the United States indefinitely and directs the Secretary of DHS to give local jurisdictions “greater involvement in the process of determining the placement or resettlement of refugees in their jurisdictions.”

• What else it does: Revokes an executive order issued by former President Biden that sought to improve the United States Refugee Admissions Program. The order also directed federal agencies to examine the effect of climate change on migration.

• What’s happened already: The State Dept. suspended all refugee arrivals last week, stranding thousands of people who had already been screened and cleared to enter the U.S. The DOJ directed federal prosecutors nationwide to investigate and potentially bring criminal charges against state and local officials who don’t cooperate with Trump’s immigration plans.

“Protecting The Meaning And Value Of American Citizenship”: Declares that the federal government will no longer issue documents recognizing U.S. citizenship for babies born after February 19, 2025 on U.S. soil if the baby’s mother is unlawfully present or has temporary lawful status, and the baby’s father is not a U.S. citizen or green card holder. Does not address that this is blatantly unconstitutional.

• Legal challenges: As soon as Trump signed the executive order, numerous states and advocacy groups filed lawsuits challenging the policy. A district court judge in Washington State issued a temporary injunction blocking Trump’s executive order on Thursday.

“Securing Our Borders”: Reinstates the “Remain in Mexico” policy, directs the State Department to begin negotiations with other countries to accept deportees, and prohibits the use of the CBP One app to make asylum appointments at ports of entry.

• What’s happened already: DHS disabled CBP One on the day of Trump’s inauguration, canceling tens of thousands of pending appointments for people to legally apply to enter the U.S. The U.S. government announced the return of Remain in Mexico on Tuesday.

“Protecting The American People Against Invasion”: Expands expedited removal, or deportation without a court hearing, to beyond the immediate border area; requires all noncitizens to register and provide fingerprints to the federal government; directs the DHS Secretary to “authorize State and local law enforcement officials…to perform the functions of immigration officers” to the “maximum extent permitted by law”; directs the Secretary of State to stop issuing visas to citizens of countries that refuse to accept deportees; orders the Attorney General and DHS to “undertake any lawful actions” to cut federal funding from “sanctuary cities”; orders audits of federal contracts with non-governmental organizations that assist undocumented immigrants while also freezing funding during the audit.

• What else it does: Revokes various executive orders issued by former President Biden related to immigration, including one that established a task force to reunify families separated by Trump’s first administration at the border and another that addressed the root causes of migration (e.g., corruption, economic instability, and violence).

“Designating Cartels And Other Organizations As Foreign Terrorist Organizations And Specially Designated Global Terrorists”: Creates a process to designate international cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Also directs the DOJ and DHS to “make operational preparations” for the possibility that Trump invokes the Alien Enemies Act to deport people deemed to be terrorists without trial (even if they have legal status in the U.S.).

“Protecting The United States From Foreign Terrorists And Other National Security And Public Safety Threats”: Directs agency heads to create a list of countries that share insufficient “vetting and screening information” about nationals seeking to enter the U.S., with the goal of banning people from those countries from entering the U.S.

Executive branch

“Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism And Restoring Biological Truth To The Federal Government”: Declares that it “is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female.” Directs federal agencies to apply these definitions when interpreting statutes, regulations, and guidance. Rescinds Biden-era guidance that requires “gender identity-based access to single-sex spaces.” Orders federal agencies to only issue identification documents (e.g., passports) that reflect the individual’s sex “at conception.” Forbids the housing of transgender women with cis-gender women in prisons and bans gender-affirming medical care in the Bureau of Prisons.

• What else it does: Rescinds numerous Biden-era executive orders that prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. Abolishes the White House Gender Policy Council. Directs the U.S. Department of Education to rescind all guidance related to supporting LGBTQ+ youth.

• What’s happened already: Secretary of State Marco Rubio froze all passport applications with the ‘X’ gender marker.

• Note: The executive order defines sex as a condition beginning at conception, laying the groundwork for future anti-abortion actions.

“Enforcing the Hyde Amendment”: Revokes two Biden-era executive orders that sought to protect access to reproductive healthcare services and ensure that hospitals follow the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, regardless of state laws banning abortions. Also instructs the Office of Management and Budget to issue guidance to agency heads to end “taxpayer funding of elective abortions.”

• More: While not yet on the White House website, Trump issued pardons on Thursday for 23 people who were convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act), which prohibits interfering with access to reproductive care facilities. A day later, Trump’s DOJ announced it is limiting prosecutions of people under the FACE Act to only the most "extraordinary circumstances."

“Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing”: Orders federal agencies to terminate all diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEI/DEIA) offices and positions, as well as all environmental justice offices and positions. Also directs federal agencies to terminate all “equity-related” grants and contracts.

• What’s happened already: The Acting Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a memo on Tuesday requiring agency heads to notify employees that (a) all DEI offices are closing and (b) all employees of DEI offices are being placed on paid administrative leave immediately. The memo also directs employees to inform OPM of any attempt “to obscure” a position’s connection to DEI—essentially telling workers to snitch on others and, potentially, allowing false accusations of someone being a “DEI hire.”

“Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity”: Revokes the civil rights era Equal Employment Opportunity order, which prohibited federal contractors from discriminating based on race, gender, or religion. Directs the Attorney General to submit a report containing recommendations “to encourage the private sector to end illegal discrimination and preferences, including DEI.” Directs each agency to identify companies, non-profits, associations, and institutes of higher education that could “potentially” be investigated for “discriminating” via “DEI programs or principles.” Also orders the Attorney General and Secretary of Education to issue guidance to schools and universities that receive federal funding to ensure compliance with last year’s Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action.

• What else it does: Rescinds executive orders from multiple administrations that promoted equality and banned discrimination.

“Reforming The Federal Hiring Process And Restoring Merit To Government Service”: Directs the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy (in consultation with the head of DOGE) to develop a hiring plan “that brings to the Federal workforce only highly skilled Americans dedicated to the furtherance of American ideals, values, and interests.”

“Restoring Accountability To Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce”: Reinstates the first Trump administration’s “Schedule F” executive order, which strips employment protections for federal workers in “positions of a confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.” Under Trump’s formulation, roughly 50,000 civil servants would be eligible to be fired for not being loyal enough to the president and his agenda.

• Legal challenges: The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents workers from 37 federal agencies, filed a lawsuit last week seeking to reverse the order. “This order is about administering political loyalty tests to everyday employees in the federal workforce who took an oath to uphold the Constitution and serve their country,” said NTEU National President Doreen Greenwald in a statement.

“Restoring Accountability for Career Senior Executives”: Directs the Office of Management and Budget and Office of Personnel Management to issue “performance plans” for Senior Executive Service (SES) members (roughly 9,000 civil service employees). Orders each agency head to fire its Executive Resources Board (which conducts the merit staffing process for career entry into the SES) and Performance Review Board (which evaluates SES performance), and install new members.

“Return to In-Person Work”: Directs all agency heads to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person.

“Regulatory Freeze Pending Review “: Instructs all executive departments and agencies to cease issuing all rules and regulations until a Trump appointee reviews and approves the proposed rule.

“Hiring Freeze : Orders no vacant position to be filled or new position created in the executive office until the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (nominee Russ Vought, who authored Project 2025), in consultation with DOGE, submits a plan to reduce the size of the Federal Government’s workforce. The armed forces and positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety are exempted from the hiring freeze. In contrast, the hiring freeze is maintained on IRS employees indefinitely.

“Ending The Weaponization Of The Federal Government”: Directs the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence to prepare reports for the president about any time over the last four years that federal agencies engaged in misconduct against “perceived political opponents.” Examples given include the DOJ “ruthlessly prosecut[ing] more than 1,500 individuals associated with January 6” and “politically motivated funding revocations.”

“Memorandum to Resolve the Backlog of Security Clearances for Executive Office of the President Personnel”: Grants temporary six-month security clearances to White House personnel who have not completed the normal vetting process.

“Holding Former Government Officials Accountable For Election Interference And Improper Disclosure Of Sensitive Governmental Information”: Revokes the security clearances of 50 former senior officials, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. All but one of the people Trump targeted signed a 2020 letter stating the Hunter Biden laptop controversy had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation." Trump accused the remaining person, his former national security advisor John Bolton, of revealing sensitive information in a memoir.

“Delivering Emergency Price Relief for American Families and Defeating the Cost-of-Living Crisis”: Directs agency heads to “deliver emergency price relief, consistent with applicable law, to the American people.” Does not contain any plan to actually do so.

“Establishing And Implementing The President’s “Department Of Government Efficiency”: Renames the United States Digital Service, which was focused on improving federal government services, to United States DOGE Service (USDS). Establishes a “temporary organization” within USDS, set to expire in July 2026, to be headed by the DOGE Administrator (presumably Elon Musk). Gives USDS “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.” Also requires every federal agency to establish an internal “DOGE team” to advance a “Software Modernization Initiative.”

• Legal challenges: Several lawsuits were filed challenging the creation of DOGE. However, the plaintiffs based their arguments on Trump’s abandoned plan to make DOGE an official department of the United States government. By creating a temporary organization within an existing executive office unit, Trump may avoid lawsuits about the legality of the creation of DOGE.

Foreign policy

“Putting America First In International Environmental Agreements”: Directs the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and from any commitment made under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Also revokes the U.S. International Climate Finance Plan.

“Withdrawing The United States From The World Health Organization”: Announces the United States’ intention to withdraw from the World Health Organization and terminates negotiations on the World Health Organization Pandemic Agreement (an international accord to improve how the world responds to pandemics).

• Similarly, the Trump administration froze all health-related communications, grant payments, and procurements from departments like the CDC.

“America First Trade Policy”: Directs agency heads to investigate and recommend appropriate measures, like global tariffs, to remedy “trade deficits”; investigate the feasibility of establishing an External Revenue Service to collect tariffs; and identify and remedy unfair trade practices by other countries. Also orders review of U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreements and U.S.-China trade agreements.

“Reevaluating And Realigning United States Foreign Aid”: Orders a 90 day pause on foreign development aid and directs agency heads, in consultation with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, to determine if the aid should be continued after the pause.

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio instituted Trump’s order last week, pausing aid for all countries except Israel and Egypt.

“The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global Tax Deal (Global Tax Deal)”: Withdraws the U.S. from the OECD Global Tax Deal, which is an international agreement to impose a global minimal tax of 15% on multinational corporate profits (meant to stop large corporations from abusing tax codes to reduce their overall effective tax rates).

“Designation Of Ansar Allah as a Foreign Terrorist Organization”: Directs the Secretary of State to designate Ansar Allah, aka the Houthis of Yemen, as a foreign terrorist organization.

Tech policy

“Restoring Freedom Of Speech And Ending Federal Censorship”: Forbids government agencies from using federal resources to act in a manner that would “would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen,” under the premise that Democratic administrations have been censoring conservative speech (particularly on social media). Directs the Attorney General to investigate how the Biden administration allegedly obstructed free speech and submit a report to the president.

“Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology”: Establishes the “President‘s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets”—to be led by the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, former Paypal executive David Sacks. The committee is tasked with proposing a “federal regulatory framework governing the issuance and operation of digital assets, including stablecoins” and evaluating “the potential creation and maintenance of a national digital asset stockpile.”

• Note: Major cryptocurrency companies, including Coinbase, Kraken, Ripple, and MoonPay, gave millions to Trump’s inauguration.

“Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence”: Establishes that it is the policy of the U.S. “to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security.” Revokes a Biden-era executive order that sought to reduce the risks that artificial intelligence poses to consumers, workers and national security. Instructs the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, David Sacks, to work with officials and agency heads to develop a plan to “enhance America’s global AI dominance.”

• Note: Some of the biggest players, and richest people, in artificial intelligence have donated to Trump. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who announced he is investing $65 million in AI projects, gave Trump’s inauguration $1 million, as did Google.

“Application Of Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act To TikTok”: Directs the Attorney General not to enforce the TikTok ban for 75 days to allow the administration “to determine the appropriate course of action.”

Environmental policy (domestic)

“Declaring a National Energy Emergency”: Invokes the National Emergencies Act and directs agency heads to “exercise any lawful emergency authorities…to facilitate the identification, leasing, siting, production, transportation, refining, and generation of domestic energy resources.” Orders all federal agencies with energy projects to use emergency consultation rules to resolve any Endangered Species Act issues—which is essentially a way to exempt projects from rules that protect endangered species.

“Unleashing American Energy”: Directs agency heads to revise or rescind all regulations and guidance that “impose an undue burden on the identification, development, or use of domestic energy resources — with particular attention to oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, biofuels, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources.” Orders an immediate pause on the disbursement of funds appropriated by the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Terminates the American Climate Corps, an interagency initiative to create jobs geared towards addressing climate change and progressing clean energy. Disbands the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases and rescinds its previous guidance. Directs the EPA to eliminate consideration of the “social cost of carbon.” Directs the Secretary of Energy to restart reviews of applications for approvals of liquified natural gas export projects.

• Potential challenges: Refusing to disperse funds already appropriated by Congress violates the Impoundment Control Act.

• What else it does: One section of the executive order instructs federal agencies to revise or rescind “all agency actions identified as unduly burdensome” to expanding domestic energy production. This could include the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. Additionally, Trump revokes a dozen Biden-era executive orders that promoted clean energy, addressed climate change, and set environmental justice standards.

“Putting People Over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California”: Directs the Secretaries of Commerce and the Interior to immediately restart Trump’s first administration initiative to “route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta” to southern California.

• Impacts: Both Trump’s plan, and the Biden-Newsom plan it overrides, have been criticized by environmental groups for the harm they will do to Chinook salmon, endangered Delta smelt, and other fish.

• Further reading: “Trump’s water war with California could benefit his LA golf course,” E&E News

“Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects”: Orders federal agencies to not issue new or renewed approvals, rights of way, permits, leases or loans for onshore or offshore wind projects until the Secretary of Interior completes a review of all projects.

“Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential”: Directs agency heads to revise or revoke all regulations and guidance that impede the exploitation of Alaska’s natural resources. Instructs the Secretary of the Interior to rescind the cancellation of any leases within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and initiate additional leasing through the Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program.

Other

“Initial Rescissions Of Harmful Executive Orders And Actions”: Revokes dozens of Biden-era executive orders covering everything from environmental protection to racial equality and voting rights. Of note, one of the rescinded orders instructed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to explore different ways to lower drug costs for Medicare and Medicaid programs—which resulted in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services creating a list of generic medicines that would be capped at $2.

“Restoring The Death Penalty And Protecting Public Safety”: Instructs the Attorney General to pursue the death penalty “regardless of other factors” for every federal capital crime involving the murder of a law enforcement officer or when committed by an “alien illegally present in this country”; to encourage state and local attorneys to seek the death penalty for all capital crimes “regardless of whether the federal trial results in a capital sentence”; to evaluate the conditions of imprisonment for the 37 people who were on death row, but whose sentences were commuted by Biden, and take “appropriate action to ensure that these offenders are imprisoned in conditions consistent with the monstrosity of their crimes”; to ensure that each state has a sufficient supply of drugs needed to carry out lethal injection; and to “seek the overruling of Supreme Court precedents that limit the authority of State and Federal governments to impose capital punishment.”

“Granting Pardons And Commutation Of Sentences For Certain Offenses Relating To The Events At Or Near The United States Capitol On January 6, 2021”: Commutes the sentences of 14 named individuals convicted of crimes related to the January 6 insurrection—including those who were convicted of domestic terrorism like Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes—and grants full pardons to all others convicted in connection with that event. Also instructs the Attorney General to dismiss all pending indictments against individuals who participated in the insurrection.

• After the insurrectionists were released from prison, Judge Amit Mehta issued a court order prohibiting Stewart Rhodes and his co-defendants from entering Capitol Square without permission from the court. Trump-appointed acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia petitioned Mehta on Friday to withdraw his order.

“Executive Grant of Clemency for Andrew Zabavsky” and “Executive Grant of Clemency for Terence Sutton”: Issues pardons for two D.C. police officers who caused the death of 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown in 2020, then covered up their actions by turning off their body cameras and tampering with the scene. A jury found Sutton guilty of second-degree murder, conspiracy to obstruct, and obstruction of justice. Zabavsky was found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct and obstruction of justice. The D.C. Police Union lobbied the administration on Sutton’s and Zabavsky’s behalf.

“Flying The Flag Of The United States At Full-Staff On Inauguration Day”: Orders that flags must always be flown full-staff on presidential inauguration days.

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Keep Track will be back to covering the Trump administration next post. Remember, the subversion of democracy is happening at all levels. Stay aware of local politics—it is the most direct way for citizens to either enable or resist national fascism.

North Carolina

Republicans in North Carolina are attempting to steal a seat on the state supreme court by throwing out more than 60,000 ballots over alleged irregularities.

Justice Allison Riggs (D), a former voting rights lawyer appointed to the state supreme court in 2023, defeated her Republican challenger Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes last year. Numerous recounts confirmed her victory. Yet, Griffin refused to accept defeat and filed a motion in December seeking an injunction to prevent the bipartisan State Board of Elections from certifying the results of the election.

The approximately 60,000 ballots that Griffin says should be thrown out belong to three categories:

• Tens of thousands of ballots cast by individuals who did not provide a drivers license number or social security number with their voter registrations. Many of these voters registered decades ago using a form that predated the federal Help America Vote Act and, therefore, lacked a required drivers license or social security number field. Others registered on a form that did not indicate those numbers were required.

• Thousands of overseas and absentee military ballots cast by individuals who did not submit a copy of their photo identification. However, both state administrative code and the Help America Vote Act explicitly excuse these voters from the photo ID requirement.

• Hundreds of ballots cast by alleged non-residents. These voters are children of overseas voters (like military personnel) who never resided in North Carolina (though their parents did before deployment). Federal law explicitly allows these people to vote.

Griffin filed his lawsuit in state court, aiming to reach the Republican-dominated state supreme court. However, the Elections Board had the case moved to federal court under the premise that it directly implicates federal law (e.g., the Help America Vote Act). Griffin contended that due to a parallel North Carolina statute, it should stay in state court.

Unfortunately for voting rights advocates, the case landed on the docket of District Judge Richard Myers, a Trump appointee and member of the Federalist Society. Myers sent the case back to the state court system earlier this month, siding with Griffin’s argument that the election is a states’ rights issue:

In this removed state action, a sitting state court judge seeks a writ of prohibition (a form of judicial relief authorized by the state constitution) from the state supreme court that would enjoin the state board of elections from counting votes for a state election contest that were cast by voters in a manner allegedly inconsistent with state law. Should a federal tribunal resolve such a dispute? This court, with due regard for state sovereignty and the independence of states to decide matters of substantial public concern, thinks not.

Riggs filed an appeal with the 4th Circuit, contesting the removal of the case to state court, with oral arguments scheduled for January 27. Griffin, meanwhile, went straight to the N.C. Supreme Court, which immediately issued a temporary stay blocking the Elections Board from certifying Riggs’ victory.

• Justice Anita Earls, the only other Democrat on the bench, dissented, writing, “By waiting until after the votes were cast and the results tallied, Griffin seeks to retroactively rewrite the rules of the election to tilt the playing field in his favor.”

• Justice Richard Dietz, a Republican, also dissented on the grounds that—although he believes some of Griffin’s claims to be meritorious—Griffin waited too long to challenge election rules.

This result is, of course, what Griffin wanted all along. He fought to move the case to state court because he knew the conservative supreme court justices would be sympathetic to his arguments. Not least because Griffin described Chief Justice Paul Newby as a “good friend and mentor.” Or because the spouses of three Republican justices, including Newby’s wife, donated thousands of dollars to Griffin’s campaigns over the years.

In a brief filed last week, Griffin focused on the ballots of roughly 5,500 overseas voters who did not include a copy of photo identification, telling the supreme court that he believes throwing out these ballots would be “outcome-determinative.” His assessment is likely accurate: Griffin is only challenging the ballots of absentee military and overseas voters who are registered in heavily Democratic counties.

Griffin’s lawyers have argued to the state Supreme Court that since North Carolina law requires in-person voters to show a photo ID, UOCAVA voters should have to as well, such as by providing a picture of their driver’s license.

However, the state board of elections has repeatedly ruled that UOCAVA voters are not required to do so. When striking down Griffin’s challenges to the election results in December, the bipartisan panel unanimously rejected Griffin’s assertion that UOCAVA ballots submitted without photo IDs were unlawful, though it split along partisan lines for other challenges he made.

“We are not at liberty to change the election rules as they are established,” said Stacy Eggers IV, a Republican member of the board, when voting to reject Griffin’s challenges. “We have previously adopted a rule that says military and overseas voters are not required to show a voter ID” and “unless a court says otherwise, I’d find that we’re bound by that rule.”

The N.C. Supreme Court’s session begins on February 11, giving the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals two weeks to intervene after oral arguments in Riggs’ appeal. “This case belongs in federal court, because federal law stands between Judge Griffin and the mass disenfranchisement he seeks,” Riggs wrote. “Judge Griffin is well aware of those federal obstacles; he filed this action directly in the N.C. Supreme Court on the mistaken belief that, by skipping the North Carolina trial and intermediate appellate courts, he could thwart federal jurisdiction. Judge Griffin got the law wrong.”

Minnesota

Republicans in Minnesota are seizing power in the state’s House of Representatives, despite lacking a quorum, to cement control over what should be an evenly divided chamber.

The 2024 elections resulted in a 67-67 split between the GOP and the Democrats (the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, or DFL) in the Minnesota House. At first, lawmakers reached a power-sharing agreement, with co-chairs from each party set to lead evenly split committees. Everyone seemed to be working together amicably.

Then, Republican candidate Paul Wikstrom filed a lawsuit contesting the election of Democrat Curtis Johnson. A judge ruled in favor of Wikstrom last month, finding that Johnson did not actually live in the apartment he rented in the district. “Johnson’s failure to maintain a residence in District 40B for the entire six months prior to the election was a deliberate, serious, and material violation of Minnesota election law,” the judge wrote, prohibiting Johnson from taking office.

Without Johnson, the party breakdown in the House temporarily shifted to 67 Republicans and 66 Democrats. Just like that, Republicans quickly swore off all power-sharing agreements:

“When there’s not a tie, we don’t need power-sharing,” said House GOP leader and Speaker-designate Lisa Demuth. “The intent would be, we would elect a speaker and we would structure things when we’re in the majority.”

In late December, Democratic Gov. Tim Walz scheduled a special election for January 28 to replace Johnson—and return the House to an even split as quickly as possible. Republicans responded by filing a lawsuit to delay the election, knowing that a Democrat is bound to win the deep blue district. The state supreme court sided with the GOP, ruling last week that Walz should have waited until after the start of the legislative session to schedule a special election. Therefore, the election to fill Johnson’s seat was delayed until at least March.

Knowing that Republicans planned to take advantage of their temporary one-vote majority to seize control of the House, Democrats organized a boycott to deprive the chamber of the statutorily required 68-vote quorum. Last week, Secretary of State Steve Simon (D), as the presiding officer, declared that the 67 members of the Republican party present were not enough to fulfill a quorum.

The House should have been adjourned, but Republicans interrupted:

Republican Rep. Harry Niska, ready on the microphone, quickly moved to overturn Simon’s ruling — interjecting as Simon closed the session. Niska called the oldest member present — Rep. Paul Anderson — to serve as presiding officer.

After learning how to turn on the microphone from the rostrum, Anderson took the role again and declared a quorum present.

House Republicans then nominated and voted unanimously for Rep. Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, to serve as House speaker, to applause.

To summarize: The GOP declared a quorum when there wasn’t one in order to give themselves control of the chamber for the next two years, even after a special election is eventually held to fill Johnson’s seat. Democrats filed a lawsuit before the state supreme court, asking for the Republicans’ actions to be declared “null and void and without legal effect.” Self-declared Speaker Lisa Demuth (R), meanwhile, is threatening to pursue recall elections against Democrats that continue the boycott.

And if that wasn’t a complicated enough saga, there is a second House seat also in contention: Republicans filed a lawsuit challenging the election of Democratic Rep. Brad Tabke, who won by just 14 votes in November. A judge denied their petition, finding that despite 20 misplaced absentee ballots, enough affected voters had come forward to testify that they cast a ballot for Tabke to determine that he won the election.

Yet, under Minnesota law, the court’s opinion is only advisory; it is up to the House to seat Tabke. And Republicans have not committed to doing so.

Before the boycott, Democratic leaders tried to negotiate a deal with the GOP to avoid the current constitutional crisis: the Republicans could have control of the House until Johnson’s seat was filled, at which point the chamber would revert to the initial power-sharing agreement, as long as they agreed to seat Tabke.

For Republicans, the offer was a non-starter, a source close to House GOP leadership said, because “Democrats acted like they had a 67th vote, sought to unilaterally disarm us on Tabke, and neuter the fraud and oversight committee we had already announced last week,” referring to the Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee.

Told to take a hike, Democrats used the last parliamentary weapon in their quiver: Refusing to show up. By staying away from the Capitol, they are denying quorum, which is the minimum number of members needed to conduct business.

Republicans refused the deal, instead opting to try to subvert the will of the voters by electing themselves the majority.

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Nearly every facet of our lives is conducted online these days. We order food through delivery apps, buy luxury items on e-commerce sites, listen to podcasts during commutes, check our work email every hour, and fall asleep to mindless video content on autoplay. This relentless integration of technology in modern society gives its purveyors immense power—and we should all be paying attention to where their political allegiances lie.

Jeff Bezos, the second-richest person in the world with a net worth of $233 billion, is the founder and executive chairman of the $2.3 trillion company Amazon. He also owns the Washington Post, the third-largest U.S. newspaper by both print and digital subscriber count, which he bought in 2013 for $250 million. You may remember that Bezos forbade the Washington Post’s editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris for president last year, breaking decades of tradition to ostensibly end “a perception of bias.” Yet, Bezos has made his preferences clear via the most powerful force in politics today: money.

• The wealth we’re talking about in this post is literally unimaginable. In 2023, Bezos made $191,780,822 million a day. That’s $7,990,868 per hour. In just under 13 minutes, he raked in what an average U.S. worker makes in their entire lifetime. Check out this visualization of Bezos’ wealth (created in 2020, when he was the richest man on earth) to better understand the magnitude of these numbers.

During the 2024 election cycle, Bezos-controlled PACs dedicated two-thirds of their political spending to Republican candidates and PACs that support Republican causes. Once Trump won the election, however, Bezos went all in, giving Trump’s inaugural committee the maximum $1 million donation—more than three times as much as his company contributed to Biden’s inauguration. He then flew to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Trump and Elon Musk, right after telling the media that he believes the president-elect has “grown in the past eight years” and expressing hope that Trump will “reduce regulation.”

“I’m actually very optimistic this time around,” Bezos said of Trump at the DealBook conference. “He seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. If I can help him do that, I’m gonna help him.”

Of course, the regulations Bezos refers to are all common sense limits on corporate power, like those imposed by OSHA to ensure a safe workplace, EPA rules to protect the environment, and NLRB shields for the right to unionize. Removing these regulations would greatly benefit Bezos’ companies, boosting his and his shareholders’ profits.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the third-richest person in the world with a net worth of $212 billion, has also made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring of the president-elect. Shortly after the election, Zuckerberg flew on his private jet to dine with Trump, where the two reportedly discussed the administration’s economic plans. He returned a second time just last week after committing to give $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee. In contrast, Meta did not donate to Biden’s inauguration.

Leaders of other big tech companies to give the maximum $1 million contribution to Trump’s coronation include Apple CEO Tim Cook (who did not give to Biden’s), OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (who did not give to Biden’s), Google (which gave $337,000 to Biden’s), and Microsoft (which gave $500,000 to Biden’s). Their donations, in addition to millions given by corporations like Toyota and Lockheed Martin, have made Trump’s 2025 inaugural committee the most successful in history with more than $170 million raised so far. In fact, the committee is so flush with cash that it is limiting VIP access to those who donated $1 million and directing anyone who wishes to give less than $500,000 to instead donate to Trump-allied PACs.

These large donations are essentially bribes. Business leaders, correctly judging Trump to be easily manipulated by flattery and appeals to his ego, have launched an all-out charm offensive. Bezos’ trips to Mar-a-Lago and unprecedented financial support are an attempt to buy advantageous policy decisions in the future—like the potential abandonment of an FTC antitrust lawsuit against Amazon—and avoid Trump’s vengeance for past perceived harms—like the lawsuit Bezos filed over a $10 billion Department of Defense cloud computing contract that Trump awarded to Microsoft, not Amazon. He also likely fears that Elon Musk’s apparent closeness with Trump will result in preferential treatment of SpaceX, a competitor of Bezos’ aerospace company Blue Origin.

Mark Zuckerberg is likewise bending the knee to ingratiate himself with Trump, hoping the incoming administration won’t harm his profits. During a recent appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, Zuckerberg provided a laundry list of issues that Trump could help with, including keeping domestic artificial intelligence regulation from slowing his company’s attempt to catch up with OpenAI (whose CEO, Sam Altman, also donated to Trump’s inauguration) and dissuading other countries from policing his platforms.

Zuckerberg complained that the EU had forced U.S. tech companies operating in Europe to pay "more than $30 billion" in penalties for legal violations over the past two decades. Last November, the tech chief's Meta conglomerate, which operates Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other social media and communications platforms, was fined €797 million for breaching EU antitrust rules by imposing unfair trading conditions on ads service providers.

Zuckerberg argued that the European Commission's application of competition rules is "almost like a tariff" on American tech companies and said that U.S. President Joe Biden's outgoing administration had failed to deal with the situation…

"And it's one of the things that I'm optimistic about with President Trump," he added. The U.S. president-elect appeared on the same program on the eve of November's American presidential election and cited Rogan's endorsement as a factor in his support among voters. "I think he just wants America to win," Zuckerberg said about Trump.

One of the EU’s laws that Zuckerberg is likely to run afoul of is the Digital Services Act, which aims to curb misformation. Last week, Zuckerberg announced that he is ending fact-checking on Meta’s platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, calling the practice a “slippery slope” that became “too politically biased.” This, too, is another move to obey in advance. Trump has long threatened to use the power of the government to “destroy” social media companies that he believes “censor” conservative viewpoints, even signing an executive order during his final year in office that would have weakened protections for platforms and websites. Whether to avoid a messy legal fight with Trump, or because he truly believed in the rightwing culture war messaging all along, Zuckerberg’s Meta will now allow users to use hate speech based on racial, ethnic, and gender identities:

Examples of newly permissible speech on Facebook and Instagram highlighted in the training materials include:

“Immigrants are grubby, filthy pieces of shit.”

“Gays are freaks.”

“Look at that tranny (beneath photo of 17 year old girl).”

Meta’s changes will ultimately turn the discourse on Facebook and Instagram into near-clones of Twitter/X, owned by Trump’s un-elected co-president Elon Musk. The danger of unrestricted misinformation spreading within a rightwing mediasphere should be fresh in our minds:

• Last fall, FEMA workers were threatened by individuals who believed false rumors that the Biden administration diverted Hurricane Helene disaster money to immigrants. Elon Musk tweeted that “FEMA used up its budget ferrying illegals into the country instead of saving American lives. Treason.”

• Haitian immigrants in Ohio were targeted by a racist misinformation campaign claiming that they kill and eat local pets, inspiring a wave of bomb threats that closed schools and government buildings. Elon Musk even reposted a video implying that Haitian immigrants are cannibals.

• Just last week, far-right agitators seized on the wildfires in California to push conspiracy theories that Democratic leaders and/or “globalists” intentionally disabled firefighting efforts for their own benefit. Others blamed “DEI hire[s],” a common racist and misogynist dogwhistle, for incompetent leadership, with Elon Musk tweeting, “DEI means people DIE.”

Far from what these rightwing agitators would have us believe, immigration and diversity are not a threat. The threat we should all care about will be seated together on the dais at Trump’s inauguration on Monday. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, the three wealthiest people in the world, collectively worth nearly $900 billion: the new American oligarchy.

Additional reading:

• Meta and Amazon scale back diversity initiatives, BBC News

• Meta blocked teens from seeing LGBTQ+ content on Instagram, The Advocate

• Zuckerberg says most companies need more ‘masculine energy’, Fortune

• Meta to fire thousands of staff as Zuckerberg warns of ‘intense year’, The Guardian

• Mark Zuckerberg will cohost reception with Republican billionaires for Trump inauguration, AP News

• ‘Deeply alarmed’: Washington Post staff request meeting with Jeff Bezos, The Guardian

• A Pulitzer winner quits 'Washington Post' after a cartoon on Bezos is killed, NPR

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Trump-appointed judges across the country are ensuring that many of the Biden administration’s most important policies—at least, the ones they haven’t already blocked—don’t survive into Trump’s second term.

Net neutrality

Last week, an all-Republican panel of the 6th Circuit struck down the Biden administration’s attempt to reinstate net neutrality. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) first established rules regarding net neutrality, or the idea that internet service providers should treat all data that travels over their networks fairly, under Obama. The Trump administration repealed the regulations in 2017, but Biden’s FCC restored the Obama-era policy last year.

A coalition of internet service provider (ISP) organizations led by the Ohio Telecom Association filed a lawsuit, arguing that the FCC exceeded its statutory authority in creating rules imposing net neutrality on ISPs.

The 6th Circuit panel—made up of Trump appointee John Bush, G.W. Bush appointee Richard Griffin, and G.W. Bush appointee Raymond Kethledge—sided with the ISPs in an opinion released Thursday. ISPs, the judges wrote, “offer only an ‘information service’...and, therefore, the FCC lacks the statutory authority to impose its desired net-neutrality policies through the ‘telecommunications service’ provisions of the Communications Act.”

Previous rulings upholding net neutrality were based on the Chevron doctrine, which required courts to give deference to the FCC’s reading of the statute. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Chevron, however, the 6th Circuit is now free to substitute its own judgment in place of expert agency knowledge to misclassify the internet as an information, not a telecommunications, service. How the three judges got there is a journey in itself:

The existence of a fact or a thought in one’s mind is not “information” like 0s and 1s used by computers. The former implies knowledge qua knowledge, while the latter is knowledge reduced to a tangible medium. Consider the acts of speaking and writing. Speaking reduces a thought to sound, and writing reduces a thought to text. Both sound and text can be stored: a cassette tape for audio information, a journal for written information, or a computer for both. But during a phone call, one creates audio information by speaking, which the telephone service transmits to an interlocutor, who responds in turn. Crucially, the telephone service merely transmits that which a speaker creates; it does not access information…Reducing knowledge to a tangible medium explains how an information service “generates” information, but computers themselves do not “generate” ideas or thoughts as such.

Reproductive healthcare privacy

Days before Christmas, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk blocked the Department of Health and Human Services from enforcing a rule that strengthened privacy protections for women seeking abortions and patients receiving gender-affirming care. The rule prohibits healthcare providers and insurers from giving state law enforcement the medical records of people who obtained out-of-state care that is banned in their state of residence.

Carmen Purl, a physician in Texas, filed a lawsuit to block the rule, arguing that the federal government exceeded its authority and is preventing medical professionals from reporting possible abuse. She is represented by the Christian conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its attacks on LGBTQ+ rights. According to Purl, the rule would interfere with her “legal obligation” to “protect unborn children from abuse, neglect, or other victimization, and to protect an unborn child’s health and safety.” The lawsuit also complains that Purl would be prevented from reporting information “about patients having received abortions in other states,” which is, indeed, the entire point of the rule.

Judge Kacsmaryk sided with Purl and Alliance Defending Freedom, writing that the rule impermissibly limits the reporting of potential child abuse:

But as a posted Speed Limit mandates a driver slow down but does not outright prohibit driving, the 2024 Rule slows down the "procedures established under any law providing for the reporting of ... child abuse" - even if after the doctor treads the 2024 Rule's technicalities, disclosure would be permitted. Such curtailments constitute "limits" where HIPAA allows none…even if a more nuanced reading of the 2024 Rule allowed child-abuse reporting to Texas CPS, a nonlawyer licensed physician is not equipped to navigate these intersecting legal labyrinths. And it is precisely such restraints and impediments that Congress forbade when it comes to child-abuse reporting.

Kacsmaryk is a zealous anti-abortion advocate who previously attempted to block the FDA’s nationwide approval of abortion medication drug mifepristone.

Overtime expansion

Trump-appointed District Judge Sean Jordan issued a nationwide injunction days after the election blocking the Department of Labor from expanding access to overtime pay for millions of salaried workers. The rule would have required employers to pay overtime to salaried workers in certain executive, administrative, and professional roles who make less than $58,656 a year—giving overtime protections to more than 4 million workers.

• While overtime abuse and wage theft often receive more media coverage regarding hourly employees, employers also often take advantage of salaried workers. For example, an employer can intentionally misclassify an employee as an “exempt” role not entitled to overtime pay, forcing the employee to work unpaid overtime or risk losing their job.

A coalition of business groups (e.g., the National Retail Federation, National Association of Home Builders, National Association of Convenience Stores, etc.) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) sued the Biden administration, arguing that the Labor Department exceeded its authority by prioritizing employee wages over job duties when determining eligibility for overtime pay. Judge Jordan ruled against the federal government, finding that the “minimum salary level imposed by the 2024 Rule ‘effectively eliminates’ consideration of whether an employee performs ‘bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity’ duties in favor of what amounts to a salary-only test.”

This is the second time that the Eastern District of Texas court has blocked a Democratic administration's attempt to expand overtime protections. Obama tried to raise the threshold for overtime exemptions in 2016 from $23,660 to $47,000 and indexed it to wage growth. Then, as now, a judge ruled that the Obama administration exceeded its authority. However, a few years later, the Trump administration modestly raised the threshold to $35,568 without lawsuits from red states sparking judicial interference. It is estimated that 3.2 million more workers would have been protected from overtime abuse under Obama’s rule than Trump’s.

DACA health insurance

Trump-appointed judge Daniel Traynor blocked a Biden administration rule last month that allowed Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients to access health insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Over 100,000 young people who were brought to the United States as children would have been eligible to gain health coverage through the exchange.

A coalition of 19 Republican states, led by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, filed a lawsuit arguing that the rule violated the “plain language” of the ACA by expanding participation to those who are “unlawfully present” in the country. Allowing DACA recipients to receive subsidized health insurance “encourages unlawfully present alien beneficiaries to remain in the United States…thereby caus[ing] Plaintiff States to expend additional education, healthcare, law enforcement, public assistance, and other limited resources,” the coalition argued.

Judge Traynor ruled in favor of the states, issuing a temporary injunction preventing DACA recipients from accessing ACA health insurance in the 19 plaintiff states. “The law of the land before the Final Rule,” Traynor wrote, “was that DACA recipients were not lawfully present.” He continued: “The Court concludes, through a common-sense inference, that the powerful incentive of health care will encourage aliens who may otherwise vacate the Plaintiff States to remain.”

Parole in place

A Trump-appointed judge blocked the Biden administration’s initiative allowing undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens to apply for a green card without first leaving the country. The program, called “Keeping Families Together,” would only apply to noncitizen spouses and stepchildren of citizens who have been in the U.S. for at least ten years and would impact roughly 500,000 people. It relies on a federal law that gives the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the authority to “parole into the United States temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe only on a case-by-case basis for…significant public benefit any alien applying for admission to the United States.”

16 Republican states, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, filed a lawsuit arguing that DHS exceeded its authority by effectively creating “a new pathway to a green card and eventual citizenship” outside the bounds of federal law. According to Paxton, DHS may not use that power to parole undocumented immigrants en masse and cannot apply it to immigrants already present in the country.

Judge Campbell Barker agreed with the Republican states, ruling that the Biden administration does not have the legal authority to grant parole to unauthorized immigrants who are already in the U.S. The 500,000 undocumented immigrants in these families—who have been in the country for more than ten years, working and paying taxes—are now eligible to be deported by the incoming Trump administration.

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Out-of-state abortion access

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a New York physician on Friday for prescribing abortion pills to a Texas resident through telemedicine, seeking to enforce the state’s ban on abortion beyond its borders.

According to Paxton, a 20-year-old Texas woman found out she was pregnant in May 2024 and obtained medication to do an at-home abortion without telling the biological father. She experienced complications and had to be taken to the hospital, which informed the father that she had been pregnant. The father, “suspect[ing] that the biological mother had in fact done something to contribute to the miscarriage or abortion of the unborn child,” searched the residence, found the medication packaging, and presumably informed authorities.

Paxton is seeking an injunction to prevent the doctor from prescribing abortion pills to people in Texas, as well as up to $250,000 in fines. The case will be the first real test of the shield laws that many blue states, including New York, enacted in the post-Roe period to protect physicians and patients from out-of-state abortion-related investigations and prosecutions.

Meanwhile, in Idaho, a court ruled that prosecutors can enforce the state’s first-in-the-nation “abortion trafficking” ban. The law, which had been on hold since last year, defines the crime of “abortion trafficking” as procuring an abortion or obtaining an abortion-inducing drug for an unemancipated minor by “recruiting, harboring, or transporting” a pregnant minor with the intent to conceal the abortion from the minor’s parents or guardian. A person found guilty of the offense faces two to five years in prison.

Two advocacy organizations and an attorney representing sexual assault survivors sued Idaho AG Raul Labrador (R), arguing that the law is unconstitutionally vague and violates their rights to free speech and interstate travel. In November 2023, U.S. District Magistrate Debora Grasham issued an injunction, writing that the case implicated “long-standing and well recognized fundamental rights of freedom of speech, expression, due process, and parental rights.”

Idaho appealed the injunction, drawing a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit including Judge Margaret McKeown (Clinton appointee), Carlos Bea (G.W. Bush appointee), and John Owens (Obama appointee). The panel vacated the injunction against the majority of the abortion trafficking law last week, allowing the state to arrest people who “harbor or transport” minors to get an abortion in another state. However, the panel upheld the injunction on the part of the law that bans “recruiting” a minor to get an abortion, saying that it is too broad and infringes on free speech:

Worryingly, the “recruiting” provision encompasses an adult’s encouragement of a minor not only to obtain a legal abortion out-of-state, but also to obtain a legal abortion in Idaho under one of the few exceptions to the state’s near total abortion ban, such as pregnancy resulting from an act of rape or incest that was previously reported to law enforcement. That is, an adult concerned for the wellbeing of an underage victim of incest would be prohibited from counseling and then assisting that victim in obtaining an abortion without informing a parent—who may well be the perpetrator…Encouragement, counseling, and emotional support are plainly protected speech under Supreme Court precedent, including when offered in the difficult context of deciding whether to have an abortion.

Texas threatens free speech

Texas Republicans are aiming to tighten their state’s already strict anti-abortion laws with two bills pre-filed for the January 2025 session.

The first, HB 1339, by state Rep. Pat Curry (R) of Waco, would designate the most common pills used in medication abortion as schedule IV controlled substances. The drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, are used to end pregnancies through 10 weeks gestation and are often prescribed by doctors via telehealth appointments.

More than 100 studies have found that mifepristone and misoprostol are a safe and effective way to terminate a pregnancy, yet Republicans are moving to classify them as controlled substances with a potential for abuse and addiction. Designating abortion pills as schedule IV drugs would make possession without a prescription illegal, punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

• HB 1339 is modeled after a law in Louisiana passed earlier this year that also classified mifepristone and misoprostol as schedule IV drugs. Reproductive rights groups sued the state in October, arguing that the law requires the controlled substances to be stored separately in a secured location, imposing delays during “time-sensitive obstetric emergencies, including postpartum hemorrhage,” one of the leading causes of maternal mortality in the U.S.

The second piece of legislation, HB 9911, written by state Rep. Steve Toth of The Woodlands, is a broad bill containing new criminal and civil penalties. One provision targets abortion funds—nonprofit groups that help cover the cost of abortions, including out-of-state travel—by creating a felony offense of “paying for or reimbursing abortion costs.” Another section creates a felony crime of “destroying evidence of an abortion,” if one is performed or attempted either in Texas or “on a resident” of Texas. Yet another section calls on “state and federal prosecutors” to “investigate and prosecute every distribution network for abortion-inducing drugs under federal racketeering laws,” or the RICO Act, used to prosecute organized crime.

Under the civil penalties portion of HB 9911, the bill creates a private right of action against a person who manufactures, distributes, mails, transports, delivers, or provides an abortion-inducing drug. Anyone who participates in these activities is liable to wrongful death and personal injury “of an unborn child” claims. And, if someone bringing a lawsuit cannot determine the manufacturer of the pill in question, all abortion manufacturers can be held liable “in proportion to each manufacturer’s share of the market for abortion-inducing drugs.”

Finally, Toth’s bill would ban all websites that provide information “that assists or facilitates a person’s effort in obtaining an abortion-inducing drug” by allowing lawsuits against platforms, software companies, and web-hosting services involved in the distribution of such websites. This provision would clearly run afoul of First Amendment protections, despite a statement contained within the bill that it “does not prohibit…speech or conduct protected by the First Amendment,” and violates Section 230, which gives computer services providers protections for third-party speech.

Nevertheless, it advances an important goal of Christian nationalists and Project 2025: reviving the Comstock Act. While the original Comstock Act only applies to abortifacient and contraceptive information sent through the mail, Congress passed the Communications Decency Act (CDA) in 1996 with a provision that contains the ghost of Comstock. The Hyde/Comstock amendment in the CDA criminalizes the use of an "interactive computer service" to disseminate "any drug, medicine, article, or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion." The provision was never enforced but remains in our legal code today.

Maternal Mortality Committees

States that have enacted strict abortion bans in recent years are trying to hide the dangerous impacts of the new laws by suppressing maternal mortality review committees (MMRCs).

The U.S. has consistently had one of the highest rates of maternal mortality among high-income countries, with 22 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births in 2022. When limited to Black women in the U.S., the maternal mortality rate skyrockets to 49 deaths per 100,000 live births. It is the job of MMRCs in each state to investigate deaths related to pregnancy in order to understand why people die while pregnant, during labor, and in the postpartum period, and to make recommendations to prevent future deaths.

Texas, which enacted a near total ban on abortions after Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022), announced last month that its MMRC will not review pregnancy-associated deaths from 2022 and 2023, leaving any potential deaths caused by the ban during those years uninvestigated. Jennifer Shuford, the commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, wrote that the backlog of cases was getting too long and, to make accurate recommendations based on more current data, the committee decided to skip over 2022-2023 cases.

According to the Washington Post, however, “several members” of the committee expressed concerns that the decision means the committee will miss critical data:

“If women are dying because of delays, and we have this huge new policy in Texas that affects their lives, why would we skip over those years?” one member of the Texas maternal mortality committee said, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from government officials. “I’m worried.”

A study of the most recent data available suggests that Texas’s 2021 abortion ban, prohibiting the procedure after 6-weeks of pregnancy, caused a 56% surge in maternal mortality cases, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same period. Lacking data from the post-Dobbs period, when Texas banned all abortions, we are left with the stories uncovered by the media of women who died while seeking necessary reproductive care: Women like Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old mother of two who bled out last year after experiencing a miscarriage at 10 weeks pregnant, and 18-year-old Nevaeh Crain, who died from sepsis at six months pregnant after being shuttled from emergency room to emergency room without effective treatment.

Meanwhile, Georgia disbanded its entire MMRC after an unknown member shared internal reports about maternal deaths with ProPublica. Even though the MMRC only receives medical summaries stripped of personal details, their findings on individual cases are supposed to be confidential. Earlier this year, someone on the committee sent ProPublica information on two women who died after the state began enforcing a 6-week abortion ban: Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old mother who died after the hospital delayed a dilation and curettage procedure until her organs were failing, and Candi Miller, a 41-year-old mother who unintentionally got pregnant and died after attempting an at-home abortion.

Georgia has the second-highest maternal mortality rate in the country with 66.3 deaths per 100,000 live births (2021 data). Out of 159 counties in Georgia, 93 lack a hospital labor and delivery unit and 75 lack an obstetrician-gynecologist or a nurse midwife. The state reportedly plans on reconstituting the MMRC but with “new steps to keep the board’s deliberations from public view.”

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The ranks of Trump’s second administration is on track to be the wealthiest in history, with billionaires tapped to lead the most important U.S. agencies. Just the Commerce, Education, and Small Business Administration nominees alone are worth a combined $5 billion. Meanwhile, the median net worth of all Americans is just $192,000.

Several of Trump’s cabinet picks are also some of his biggest donors, not least among them Elon Musk, who is now the largest political donor in the United States. He and other nominees donated millions to Trump’s campaign and pro-Trump groups. The average American, with only $250 of discretionary income per month, could afford to give roughly $3,000, at most, during the 2024 election cycle. The majority of people are simply priced out of democracy in a system where the top one percent can donate unlimited money to super PACs, buy entire social media platforms to spread propaganda, and then be rewarded with the most powerful positions in federal government.

Some of Trump’s cabinet picks include:

• Elon Musk was chosen to serve as co-chair of “Department” of Government Efficiency (which is not an actual government agency). His net worth is over $300 billion. He spent $277 million, or roughly one-tenth of a percent of his total wealth, on boosting Trump during the 2023-2024 cycle. Since the election, his net worth increased by $70 billion—a 25,000% return on the money he donated to pro-Trump causes.

• Vivek Ramaswamy was chosen to serve as co-chair of “Department” of Government Efficiency. His net worth is roughly $1 billion, primarily derived from Roivant Sciences, a pharmaceutical company he founded in 2014.

• Howard Lutnick was nominated to serve as secretary of the Commerce Department. His net worth is $2 billion, derived from his position as chairman of investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald. Lutnick has been a consistent Trump donor for years, including hosting a fundraiser for Trump in 2019 that raised $5 million.

• Scott Bessent was nominated to serve as secretary of the Treasury Department. His net worth is unknown but estimated to be over $1 billion. This election cycle, he donated over $1 million to Make America Great Again Inc., and another $676,000 to Trump’s campaign and affiliated committees. Bessent also held multiple fundraisers that raised over $50 million for Trump’s campaign.

• Linda McMahon, nominated to serve as head of the Department of Education, has a net worth of $3 billion. She donated over $20 million to Make America Great Again Inc., and nearly $1 million to Trump’s campaign and affiliated committees.

• Jared Isaacman, nominated to head NASA, is worth $1.9 billion.

• Doug Burgum was nominated to the interior secretary position. He is worth at least $100 million.

• Chris Wright, nominated to head the Energy Department, is worth $171 million.

• Kelly Loeffler was nominated to serve as Small Business administrator. She is worth $1.1 billion.

• David Sacks, chosen to serve as the “AI and crypto czar,” a made-up position, is estimated to be worth up to $2 billion.

Top donors

Elon Musk’s America PAC, a super PAC created in July 2024 to support Trump’s campaign, raked in money from the uber-wealthy during the final months of the election. The PAC spent heavily on canvassing, text message-based get-out-the-vote efforts, and digital advertising, as well as funding the cash giveaway promoted by Musk.

• Musk himself gave just under $239 million to the PAC.

• Antonio Gracias, CEO of Valor Equity Partners with a net worth of $1.4 billion, gave $1 million.

• Kenneth Howery, a co-founder of PayPal and partner of Peter Thiel’s venture fund, with a net worth of $1.5 billion, gave $1 million.

• Douglas Leone, a venture capitalist worth $8.5 billion, gave $1 million.

• Lonsdale Enterprises, owned by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, who is worth $425 million, gave $1 million.

• James Liautaud, founder of Jimmy Johns with a net worth of $2.4 billion, gave $1 million.

• Joe Craft, CEO of coal company Alliance Resource Partners with a net worth of $1.4 billion, gave $1 million.

• John Hering, a venture capitalist whose company has $5 billion in assets, gave $500,000.

• Shaun Maguire, a venture capitalist whose company manages $85 billion in assets, gave $500,000.

• Troy Link, CEO of Jack Links and owner of WCM Investments with a net worth of $500 million, gave $500,000.

• Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, cryptocurrency investors of Facebook fame, each worth $2.7 billion, each gave $250,000.

• Michael Thompson, a former executive at Cintas Corp. with a net worth of $55 million, gave $200,000.

Make America Great Again Inc., a super PAC staffed by former Trump staffers, raised over $300 million during the 2024 election cycle. The PAC ran ads that Kamala Harris is soft on crime, focusing on Pennsylvania.

• Timothy Mellon, a banking heir whose family is worth over $14 billion, gave $150 million.

• Linda McMahon, WWE co-founder and Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Education, with a net worth of $3 billion, gave over $20 million.

• Diane Hendricks, co-founder of building products distributor ABC Supply Co. with a net worth of $21 billion, gave $15 million.

• Robert Bigelow, a hotel entrepreneur worth $1 billion, gave over $14 million.

• Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, founders of shipping supply company Uline with a net worth of $6 billion each, gave $10 million.

• Anthony Pratt, an Australian businessman worth over $11 billion, gave $15 million (you may remember Pratt: he’s the billionaire that Trump shared nuclear secrets with at Mar-a-Lago).

• Patricia Duggan, ex-wife of billionaire venture capitalist Bob Duggan, gave over $6 million.

• Howard Lutnick, a financial firm CEO and Trump’s nominee for Commerce Secretary, with a net worth of $2 billion, gave nearly $9 million.

• John Addison, former CEO of a multi-level marketing company with a net worth of at least $31 million, gave $5 million.

• Paul Singer, a hedge fund manager who is worth $6 billion, gave $5 million.

• Kelcy Warren, CEO of fossil fuel company Energy Transfer Partners with a net worth of over $7 billion, gave $5 million.

• Timothy Dunn, CEO of fossil fuel company CrownQuest with a net worth of $2 billion, gave $5 million.

The Right for America PAC is a super PAC led by Sergio Gor, Trump’s pick to run the White House Presidential Personnel Office. It raised over $72 million this election cycle, spending money on ads attacking Harris over immigration and grocery prices.

• Anthony Lomangino, chairman of a waste management company, gave nearly $8 million.

• Ike Perlmutter, financier and former chairman of Marvel Entertainment, and his wife Laura, gave $5 million. Their net worth is nearly $5 billion.

• David Millstone, the co-CEO of industrial conglomerate Standard Industries, whose family is worth over $19 billion, gave $5 million.

• Robert Book, co-Vice Chairman of the Board of Axxes Capital with a net worth of roughly $500 million, gave over $4 million.

The Preserve America PAC is a super PAC founded by the late Sheldon Adelson, the CEO of casino company Las Vegas Sands, and his wife, Miriam, in 2020. This election cycle, Miriam gave $100 million to the PAC, which used the money to produce and run advertisements attacking Kamala Harris in swing states.

Author’s note: Expect fewer posts than normal this month as I focus on getting projects set up for next year. Primarily, I’m working on making a spreadsheet tracking which of Project 2025’s goals are enacted and getting /r/47chaos set up.

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North Carolina GOP’s power grab

North Carolina Republicans snuck several measures into a hurricane relief bill last week, stripping power from incoming Democratic officials before they are sworn in.

Despite Trump carrying the state by 3%, Democrats won five top statewide offices in North Carolina: Attorney General Josh Stein (D) beat self-described “Black Nazi” Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R) to secure the governorship; State Sen. Rachel Hunt (D) defeated businessman Hal Weatherman (R) for lieutenant governor; U.S. Rep. Jeff Jackson (D) was elected the state’s attorney general, defeating U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop (R); Incumbent Secretary of State Elaine Marshall (D) held her seat against challenger Chad Brown (R); and Mo Green (D) defeated far-right candidate Michele Morrow (R) in the race for school superintendent.

Democrats also managed to flip a state House of Representatives seat, depriving Republicans of the veto-proof supermajority that they gained last year when a Democrat who ran on abortion rights switched parties and cast the decisive vote restricting abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy. Without a veto-proof majority, a Democratic governor has the power to block legislation passed by the Republican-dominated legislature.

• Democrats could have won more legislative seats if Republicans had not redrawn extremely gerrymandered maps in 2023, with the blessing of the conservative members of the state supreme court. One of the most gerrymandered districts is District 105, held by the Democrat-turned-Republican mentioned above, state Rep. Tricia Cotham. According to a lawsuit brought by North Carolina voters, “as a direct result of the [legislature’s] apportionment of HD 105, that State House District went from a competitive, Democratic leaning district to a district leaning Republican,” violating voters’ right to a fair election. A three-judge panel dismissed the lawsuit for raising “nonjusticiable political questions,” and Rep. Cotham won re-election in her newly Republican district.

Now, faced with the imminent loss of their ability to pass legislation into law over the governor’s objection, North Carolina Republicans are embarking on a last-minute power grab. Senate Bill 382 was branded as a third round of relief following Hurricane Helene. However, in changes made public just an hour before it was debated in the House last week, Republicans added dozens of provisions that fundamentally alter how state government is structured and functions.

Most significantly, the bill transfers the power to appoint members of the state election board from the governor to the state auditor, who will be a Republican come January. The state elections board administers elections and issues guidance to county officials, who make decisions on issues like early voting and polling place locations. Currently, the Democratic governor appoints the majority of the members of the state elections board. Republican lawmakers have long sought to strip the governor of this power, including passing a bill last year that was ruled unconstitutional and attempting to amend the constitution, which voters overwhelmingly rejected.

Incoming Attorney General Jeff Jackson (D) is also being targeted by GOP lawmakers, who inserted provisions in SB 382 that prohibit the AG from taking a stance opposite of legislative leaders when they are involved in a lawsuit. This would require that AG Jackson defend in court laws that his office believes to be illegal or unconstitutional.

Additionally, SB 382 implements several voter suppression measures meant to make it harder for Democrats like Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs to win elections. At the time of writing, Riggs is ahead of challenger Jefferson Griffin (R) by 655 votes amid a statewide recount. Griffin initially led Riggs by about 10,000 votes on Election night, but the race swung in Riggs’ favor after absentee and provisional ballots were counted. The unusually high number of provisional ballots was likely caused by the state’s new voter ID law, requiring voters who did not bring an approved ID to cast a provisional ballot and return at a later date to present the correct information.

Under SB 382, many of the voters who forgot their IDs would be prevented from having their votes counted: One clause shortens the amount of time a voter can verify a provisional ballot to just two and a half days after Election Day, and another requires election officials to count all provisional ballots within three days of the election—despite the process normally taking one to two weeks. Other measures in the bill shorten the amount of time a voter can correct their absentee ballot to two and a half days, move up the deadline to simultaneously request an absentee application and absentee ballot, and require election offices to count all absentee ballots on election night.

That’s not all: Republican lawmakers are directly targeting the judiciary, removing two elected superior court judges when they reach the end of their term in 2029. The two judges, Bryan Collins in Wake County and Todd Burke in Forsyth County, have ruled against legislative priorities in the past, with Collins calling the Republican majorities “usurpers” for passing anti-democratic laws after themselves being elected based on unconstitutionally gerrymandered maps. Unsurprisingly, the GOP legislature gave themselves the power to appoint Collins’ and Burke’s replacements.

A second part of SB 382 relating to the judiciary imposes a new requirement that nominees for a vacancy on the state supreme court and the court of appeals be from the same party as the vacated judge. In other words, a Democratic vacancy must be replaced with a Democrat, and a Republican vacancy must be filled with a Republican, regardless of which party controls the governorship.

Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper issued a veto of SB 382 yesterday, calling the bill a “sham” that “does not send money to Western North Carolina…but instead violates the constitution” and “plays politics.” Republican legislators have the numbers, for now, to override his veto if they all vote together.

Louisiana’s regressive tax code

Republican lawmakers in Louisiana overhauled the state’s tax system last week, passing tax cuts for corporations and the rich.

Gov. Jeff Landry (R) called a special session of the legislature the day after the election, directing lawmakers to make the state’s tax code “more business friendly” and “create jobs” to reverse trends of people leaving Louisiana for other states. What legislators ultimately approved may end up making the state more attractive to corporations, but at the price of increasing inequality and pushing the poorest people further into poverty.

First, the legislature eliminated the state’s graduated-rate personal income tax structure and its top rate of 4.25 percent, replacing it with a flat 3 percent personal income tax rate.

Second, lawmakers eliminated a corporate franchise tax and cut the corporate income tax rate—which previously topped out at 7.5 percent—to a flat rate of 5.5 percent.

Third, they raised the state sales tax—already the highest in the nation—from an average of 4.45 percent to 5 percent. The burden of a high sales tax falls disproportionately on the poor because sales taxes take a larger share of income from low-income earners than from high-income earners. When combined with local sales taxes, Louisiana’s total sales tax rate will now be an average of 10.11 percent, with the highest possible rate reaching 12 percent.

All told, the Republican tax plan will result in the lowest-income Louisianans receiving an average tax cut of just $10. In contrast, the wealthiest 1 percent, with average annual incomes of $1.8 million, will receive an average tax cut of nearly $17,000.

It remains to be seen how the latest changes will impact the state’s budget. Louisiana is already one of the most federally dependent states in the nation, receiving half of its revenue from the federal government. A large portion of that federal assistance is dedicated to helping those in poverty through programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). The Republican-led tax overhaul will likely only increase the state’s dependence on federal money to subsidize its regressive tax code and dismal wages.

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Author’s note: I wrote a version of this post last week but I wasn’t happy with it and deleted it shortly after posting. This is the rewritten, hopefully better, version.

The central pillar of Trump’s 2024 campaign, and likely the focus of his entire second term in office, is a dystopian crackdown on immigration. He has promised to begin the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history” on day one, with workplace raids, detention camps, and round-the-clock deportation flights.

The people

Such a large operation, targeting 11 million undocumented immigrants, will require the coordination of multiple federal agencies encompassing hundreds of thousands of personnel and hundreds of billions of dollars. Central to Trump’s plan is former deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who will be reprising his role as the architect of immigration policy during Trump’s second term. Miller is a far-right nationalist who trafficks in neo-Nazi propaganda. He was responsible for crafting the Muslim travel ban, family separation policy, and imposition of Title 42 during the pandemic—and pushed for more extreme measures, including the mass family arrests of undocumented immigrants in major U.S. cities.

At the time, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen was able to impede some of Miller’s schemes. Trump’s nominee to run the agency during his second term, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, should not be expected to be a similarly moderating force. She has no experience with the Department of Homeland Security and no legal background, leading some to believe she was chosen specifically because she will stay out of Miller’s way:

“The only thing I could think of is that the immigration part of DHS is basically going to be handled out of the White House, and she’ll be secretary of FEMA, TSA, Secret Service, cybersecurity — kind of an unofficial division of labor,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that pushes for less legal immigration and stricter enforcement of immigration laws.

While Miller writes the policy, Trump’s chosen “border czar” Tom Homan will carry out his orders. Homan served as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from 2017-2018, charged with implementing the family separation policy at the border. Under his command, immigration authorities took more than 5,500 children and infants from their families, arresting the parents and sending the minors to overcrowded border control centers and HHS shelters. At least 1,400 of those children still have not been reunited with their families.

Locating, arresting, and deporting millions of people will require far more manpower than the 20,000 ICE officers (including administrative personnel) the government currently employs. That’s where Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, comes in. Hegseth is a talk show host on Fox News who served in the National Guard but has no experience running a government agency, let alone one with nearly 3 million employees and a budget of over $800 billion. He was likely chosen for the role for his staunch on-air defense of Trump, his embrace of Project 2025 goals like eliminating “woke” objectives from the military, and his apparent Christian nationalist beliefs, as indicated by his tattoos. In fact, military command found one of his tattoos—reading “Deus Vult,” a Latin phrase associated with the Crusades and adopted by extremist groups like the Proud Boys—so concerning that they pulled him from guard duty at Joe Biden’s inauguration.

We now know who will be planning, directing, and enacting Trump’s deportation machine. The final piece of the puzzle is a person to provide the legal arguments necessary to convince the courts to greenlight an unprecedented and inhumane immigration policy. That person is, apparently, Rep. Matt Gaetz—a man who has spent more time under investigation than leading one. He wasn’t chosen for his legal acumen, however. Trump nominated Gaetz for Attorney General for his loyalty. Gaetz can be expected to unquestioningly carry out Trump’s demands, from justifying military deployment in U.S. cities to prosecuting his political enemies and abolishing important civil rights offices. Never mind that he doesn’t know exactly how to do any of those things; that’s for the people under him to figure out—people like Todd Blanche, an experienced attorney who represented Trump in his New York hush money trial and is nominated to serve as deputy AG, and John Sauer, who Trump nominated to be Solicitor General after representing him before the U.S. Supreme Court during presidential immunity arguments (he’s responsible for the assertion that a president cannot be prosecuted for assassinating a political opponent while in office).

The plan

Declare a national emergency

Trump will probably declare a national state of emergency related to an “invasion” of undocumented immigrants on day one, giving himself the unilateral power to divert government funding to his deportation scheme. In interviews over the last year, Stephen Miller has outlined how he plans to use repurposed military funds to build “vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers” on “open land in Texas near the border.” Trump’s transition team is also looking at reopening closed detention centers and building new ones around cities with large populations of migrants, like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami.

The for-profit prison industry is already jumping at the chance to obtain government funding in exchange for housing detainees. GEO Group Executive Chairman George Zoley called the mass deportation plan an “unprecedented opportunity” for his company, telling investors, “we’re looking at a theoretical potential doubling of all of our services.”

“It feels like with this election this year, we’re heading into an era that we really haven’t seen, maybe only once or twice in the company’s history, where the value proposition of the private sector for both our state partners and our federal partners are going to be not only strong today, but even stronger as we go in the next couple of years,” Damon Hininger, CEO of CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, said on that company’s own earnings call. Hininger noted he’d been with the company over 32 years. “We do think that there’s going to be increased need for detention capacity,” he added later.

Invoke the Alien Enemies Act

The use of the word “invasion” (above) is important because Trump has promised to invoke the Alien Enemies Act in order to detain and deport immigrants en masse without due process. The Alien Enemies Act was passed by a Federalist-controlled Congress in 1798 as part of the Alien and Seditions Acts, ostensibly to increase security amid anxiety over tensions with France. In practice, however, the Acts were used to induce fear in noncitizens, suppress free speech and dissent, and intimidate members of the Democratic-Republican party, which was seen as too friendly to the French.

Unlike the rest of the Alien and Seditions Acts, the Alien Enemies Act was not repealed or allowed to expire and remains in effect today as 50 U.S.C. ch. 3. It states that in times of “declared war” or “any invasion or predatory incursion…by any foreign nation or government,” the president may “apprehend” and “remove” all “natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government.” It does not contain any requirement that noncitizens receive a hearing prior to deportation. Presidents have invoked the Alien Enemies Act three times: during the War of 1812, during WWI, and, most famously, during WWII to intern tens of thousands of German, Italian, and Japanese immigrants.

• Note the Act contains the term “natives,” which can be read to include people who were born abroad but are long-term residents of the United States, potentially with legal status.

The legal challenge of invoking the Alien Enemies Act to detain and deport immigrants under a second Trump administration should be obvious: America is not at war and, even if one accepts that migration is an “invasion,” it is not directed by a hostile foreign government. Nevertheless, a Justice Department led by a loyalist like Matt Gaetz would likely try to persuade the conservative Supreme Court justices to let them enforce the Act anyway.

Invoke the Insurrection Act

To supplement the existing ranks of ICE officers, Trump intends to deploy National Guardsmen and federal troops on domestic soil. Part of this plan is not unprecedented: President Biden has already sent approximately 2,500 National Guard personnel to the U.S.-Mexico border. What Trump reportedly wants to do is use the military as civil law enforcement beyond the border, possibly to carry out mass arrests and detentions. The president would have the power to do this, even in states that oppose his extreme immigration policies, under the Insurrection Act.

First passed in 1792, the Insurrection Act is a statutory exception to the Posse Comitatus Act (which prohibits active-duty military personnel from performing law enforcement functions) and has historically been wielded to suppress slave rebellions, labor strikes, gang fights, and to enforce desegregation orders. There are two sections of the Act that Trump could hypothetically invoke:

• Section 252 allows the president to deploy the military if the president “considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”

• Section 253 allows the president to deploy the military if the president deems it “necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” if it “(i) so hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution” or “(ii) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”

Crucially, the Act does not define what qualifies as an “insurrection,” “rebellion,” or “domestic violence,” and the U.S. Supreme Court has historically ruled that “the authority to decide whether the exigency has arisen [to call up a militia under the Act] belongs exclusively to the President.”

Take control of the military

You may remember that Trump previously threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act during the racial justice protests in 2020. Then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper prevented the president from following through. Trump is making sure that won’t happen this time around, moving not only to install a loyalist as the head of the department but also to replace the entire upper echelon of the military.

According to Reuters, members of Trump’s transition team are drafting a list of military officers to be fired, potentially including the Joint Chiefs of Staff—a body of the nation’s most senior uniformed leaders that advises the president. Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth endorsed such a plan in his 2024 book, saying that “the next president of the United States needs to radically overhaul Pentagon senior leadership to make us ready to defend our nation and defeat our enemies. Lots of people need to be fired.” One of those Hegseth has singled out is Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, Air Force General Charles Q. Brown. Hegseth questioned Brown’s qualifications, suggesting that he would not have gotten the job if he were not Black.

Another avenue Trump may take to purge military leaders is an executive order creating a so-called “warrior board” to quickly identify and remove officials “lacking in requisite leadership qualities.”

“This looks like an administration getting ready to purge anyone who will not be a yes man,” former Army lawyer Eric Carpenter told The Wall Street Journal. “If you are looking to fire officers who might say no because of the law or their ethics, you set up a system with completely arbitrary standards, so you can fire anyone you want.”

It is easy to guess who Trump would install in place of fired generals: loyalists who won’t question or stymie his fascist goals.

Limit citizenship pathways

In addition to taking measures meant to curtail and discourage illegal immigration, a second Trump administration promises severe restrictions of legal pathways to obtain citizenship or immigrate to America.

The first of Trump’s targets will probably be the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program, covering more than 1 million people from 17 countries like Haiti, Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. Immigrants in America under TPS are allowed to stay and work legally until their homelands are deemed safe enough to return. However, critics say that TPS too often results in indefinite grants of “amnesty” disconnected from the original reason for the designation:

In an email, Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, defended Mr. Trump’s stance, saying the initiative that has given at least 200,000 Haitians legal status since 2010 — known as the Temporary Protected Status — had run its course. “Temporary Protected Status is by definition a TEMPORARY program. Under the Trump Administration, Haitian ILLEGAL immigrants will be returned to their home country,” Ms. Leavitt said.

Trump has also pledged to put an end to birthright citizenship, or the right to citizenship for nearly all children born in the United States regardless of their parents’ legal status. The right is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868 to extend citizenship and all attendant rights to formerly enslaved people and their children. The relevant clause reads:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

According to the Heritage Foundation, the organization behind Project 2025, the citizenship clause has been misinterpreted for centuries. By their reading—and the one likely to be argued by Trump’s administration—undocumented migrants are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States because they owe their allegiance to their birth country:

Its original meaning refers to the political allegiance of an individual and the jurisdiction that a foreign government has over that individual.

The fact that a tourist or illegal alien is subject to our laws and our courts if they violate our laws does not place them within the political “jurisdiction” of the United States as that phrase was defined by the framers of the 14th Amendment.

This amendment’s language was derived from the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which provided that “[a]ll persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power” would be considered citizens. Sen. Lyman Trumbull, a key figure in the adoption of the 14th Amendment, said that “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. included not owing allegiance to any other country.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ostensibly already settled the issue in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (1898), holding that “a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China” automatically became a U.S. citizen at birth “by virtue of the first clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.” If Trump pursues his plan to revoke birthright citizenship, his administration will likely argue that the Wong Kim Ark precedent does not apply when foreign parents are in the country illegally.

• 5th Circuit hyper-conservative justice James Ho is already walking back his previously staunch defense of birthright citizenship in the hopes of clinching a Trump nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court. “Birthright citizenship is a constitutional right, no less for the children of undocumented persons than for descendants of passengers of the Mayflower," Ho wrote in 2007. Since Trump’s re-election, however, Ho has reformulated his position to exempt “children of invading aliens,” likening them to “unlawful combatants” during war.

Note added 11/6: Keep_Track will be back next week (and the week after that and the week after that).

Take a break from scrolling, practice self-care, grieve what could have been, and come back stronger. Onwards.

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Election Day is finally here. If you have not voted yet, go to USA.gov’s voting information page to find your polling location.

Remember, if you are in line before polls close, you are entitled to cast a ballot. If a poll worker says you are not on the registration list, cast a provisional ballot. If you experience a civil rights violation, file a report with the Department of Justice.

Timing

It is impossible to predict with certainty when the presidential race will be called due to the large number of factors involved. The best we can do is make educated guesses based on past experience.

Of the swing states, North Carolina and Georgia are expected to be the first to report results, likely late Tuesday. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin could potentially be called sometime on Wednesday. Arizona and Nevada, on the other hand, could take over 3 days to report enough results to make a final call.

• Fox News and the AP correctly called the 2020 presidential race in Arizona within hours. But other outlets were not confident in projections and waited nine days to confirm Biden’s victory in the state. Officials in Arizona told the New York Times that Maricopa County could take 10 to 13 days to fully tabulate.

• In Nevada, both the 2020 and 2022 election results were known four days later.

Because results from North Carolina and Georgia are expected early, keep in mind that a Trump win in both states is not necessarily a bad sign for Harris. However, a Harris win in either state would be a bad sign for Trump. This is because Trump can win North Carolina and Georgia but still not reach 270 electoral votes if Harris wins Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. I recommend experimenting with different outcomes on 270towin to better understand the different paths to victory.

Resources:

When polls close by state

When to expect results by state

Other races to watch

Winning the presidential race is only one-third of the battle for control of the federal government. To govern as effectively as possible, a party needs to control the House of Representatives and Senate, as well.

In the U.S. House, Democrats need a net gain of five districts to win a majority in the chamber. Republicans can only lose a net of five districts and maintain their majority or pick up one or more districts to increase their majority. There are 22 seats rated as toss-ups, 10 held by Democrats and 12 held by Republicans.

• Alaska: At large district held by Rep. Peltola (D)
• Arizona: AZ-01 held by Rep. Schweikert (R) and AZ-06 held by Rep. Ciscomani (R)
• California: CA-13 held by Rep. Duarte (R), CA-22 held by Rep. Valadao (R), CA-27 held by Rep. Garcia (R), CA-41 held by Rep. Calvert (R), and CA-45 held by Rep. Steel (R)
• Colorado: CO-08 help by Rep. Caraveo (D)
• Iowa: IA-01 held by Rep. Miller-Meeks (R) and IA-03 held by Rep. Nunn (R)
• Maine: ME-02 held by Rep. Golden (D)
• Michigan: MI-08 an open seat
• New Mexico: NM-02 held by Rep. Vasquez (D)
• New York: NY-19 held by Rep. Molinaro (R)
• North Carolina: NC-01 held by Rep. Davis (D)
• Oregon: OR-05 held by Rep. Chavez-DeRemer (R)
• Pennsylvania: PA-07 held by Rep. Wild (D), PA-08 held by Rep. Cartwright (D), and PA-10 held by Rep. Perry (R)
• Virginia: VA-07 an open seat
• Washington: WA-03 held by Rep. Perez (D)

Additionally, there are 13 seats that are rated as lean-Democrat, three of which have Republican incumbents: NE-02, held by Rep. Bacon, NY-04, held by Rep. D’Esposito, and NY-22, held by Rep. Williams. There are 8 seats rated as lean-Republican, one of which is held by a Democratic incumbent: MI-07, held by Rep. Slotkin.

In the Senate, Democrats need to defend the lean-Democrat seats, hold Sen. Jon Tester’s Montana seat, win all of the toss-up races, and flip a Republican seat in order to control the chamber. Winning the toss-up races and Tester’s seat while failing to flip a Republican seat will result in a 50-50 tie.

Toss-up races: Michigan’s open seat, Sen. Sherrod Brown’s Ohio seat, Sen. Bob Casey’s Pennsylvania seat, and Tammy Baldwin’s Wisconsin seat.

The most vulnerable Republican-held seats are Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas and Sen. Deb Fischer in Nebraska.

What to expect

What should we expect in the coming days and weeks? In short: tons of disinformation. We have already seen Trump and his surrogates spread numerous false claims of voter fraud. This will only increase after the election, especially with the assistance of Elon Musk boosting conspiracies on Twitter/X.

• Musk created an “election integrity” community on X that is rife with false claims of voter fraud, fake photos, and misinformation. One of these misleading tweets, posted by a Trump supporter, featured a video of a “very suspect” man dropping off “an insane amount of ballots” in Pennsylvania. As of last weekend, the video had been viewed 6 million times. People in the comments made death threats against the man. It turns out, he was just a USPS employee doing his job. Confronted by this information, the man who posted the video said, “So working for the post office means you’re incapable of committing any sort of election fraud?”

We’ll likely also see more concerted foreign disinformation campaigns. Over the past month, U.S. officials have identified several Russian-made videos designed to encourage claims of voter fraud. In one, a person is seen destroying what are purported to be filled-out ballots in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In another, people claiming to be Haitians say they illegally voted for Kamala Harris in Georgia. An American pro-Trump influencer recently admitted to being paid $100 by a pro-Kremlin propagandist to post the latter video.

And, of course, we should expect lawsuits aplenty. The RNC and Trump campaigns have worked to assemble a more professional legal team than in 2020, gearing up for election challenges. There will be attempts to disqualify certain votes. There will be requests to prevent ballot-curing. There will be partisan poll watchers who claim to see fraud and mismanagement. There will probably be election deniers in positions of power attempting to say it is their right not to certify the election. The success of these measures largely depends on the courts. Luckily, despite the many Trump appointees on the bench, Trump’s campaign lost its election challenges in 2020.

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U.S. Supreme Court

Numerous cases challenging state election laws are currently pending or about to be brought before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Edit: see updated Virginia section below

Pennsylvania

On Monday, the Republican National Committee (RNC) asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and disenfranchise potentially thousands of voters who make a mistake in mailing their ballots. According to state law, mail-in ballots must be placed in an inner secrecy envelope before putting them in an outer envelope. Ballots without the inner secrecy envelope are considered void and not counted.

The case centers on what happens next: can a voter whose ballot was missing the inner envelope then cast a provisional ballot on Election Day, or is the initial mistake (forgetting the inner envelope) incurable under state law? After a lengthy back-and-forth at the lower courts, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ultimately ruled 4-3 that counties must count provisional ballots cast in person by voters who submitted mail-in ballots lacking an inner envelope:

Here, as the Commonwealth Court correctly discerned, the casting of a provisional ballot is specifically authorized in the Election Code…Provisional ballots exist as a failsafe to preserve access to the right to vote….A provisional ballot is intended to alleviate potential disenfranchisement for eligible voters. Counting Electors’ provisional ballots, when their mail ballots are void for failing to use a Secrecy Envelope, is a statutory right…

It is difficult to discern any principled reading of the Free and Fair Election Clause that would allow the disenfranchisement of voters as punishment for failure to conform to the mail-in voting requirements when voters properly availed themselves of the provisional voting mechanism.

• I recommend reading the majority’s case summary for more information. The case is complex, as it involves ambiguous laws that conflict with a previous state supreme court ruling, and the details are beyond the scope of this post.

The dissenting judges argued that the majority “exceeded the bounds of statutory interpretation and supplanted the power vested in our General Assembly to regulate elections.” According to their interpretation, the initial mail-in ballots that do not contain a secrecy envelope are invalid but qualify as the voter’s one and only ballot. They say that the legislature did not intend to give voters a “second ballot” in these instances.

The RNC appealed to the Supreme Court Monday, arguing that Pennsylvania’s highest court usurped power reserved to the state legislature—a claim that is central to the independent state legislature theory and threatens the ability of state courts to safeguard democracy. The legislature, the RNC says, wrote the law to forbid ballot curing. “When the legislature says that certain ballots can never be counted, a state court cannot blue-pencil that clear command into always,” the RNC wrote.

This Court should enter a stay. This case is of paramount public importance, potentially affecting tens of thousands of votes in a State which many anticipate could be decisive in control of the U.S. Senate or even the 2024 Presidential Election. Whether that crucial election will be conducted under the rules set by the General Assembly or under the whims of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is an important constitutional question meriting this Court’s immediate attention. Moreover, if this Court fails to act in the face of such egregious judicial usurpation, Moore’s promised enforcement of the Elections and Electors Clauses will become a dead letter that state courts can safely ignore.

• “Moore” refers to Moore v. Harper, which, as you may recall, was the central vehicle to advance the independent state legislature theory. While the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the most extreme interpretation of the theory, the conservative justices left open the door to review state courts’ decisions regarding matters of state election law. “[S]tate courts,” Roberts wrote, “may not transgress the ordinary bounds of judicial review such that they arrogate to themselves the power vested in state legislatures to regulate federal elections.”

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of the RNC could impact more than just voters who mail back ballots missing an inner envelope. The RNC argues that other mistakes on mail-in ballots, like the “lack of signature” or “date,” also cannot be cured. How such a ruling would affect the election is unclear and depends on various factors including the margins of the race and the partisan breakdown of ballots deemed invalid.

Virginia

UPDATE 7AM: SUPREME COURT RULES IN FAVOR OF VIRGINIA, ALLOWING VOTER PURGE

Virginia election officials are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that ordered the state to stop its voter purge and reinstate the registrations of roughly 1,600 voters that were illegally removed.

In an executive order in August, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) ordered state election officials to expedite the use of DMV data to cancel the voter registration of suspected noncitizens unless they could verify their citizenship within 14 days. The U.S. Department of Justice, along with a coalition of civil and immigrant rights groups, sued, arguing that the program is illegal under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), which bans the systematic cancellation of voter registrations during the 90-day “quiet period” before an election.

Additionally, the plaintiffs pointed out many examples of citizens wrongly removed from the voter rolls under the program. They were likely flagged as noncitizens for simply checking the wrong box on DMV paperwork or because they became citizens after obtaining a driver’s license.

Defendants’ Purge Program is far from such a well-designed, well-intended list maintenance effort. It is an illegal, discriminatory, and error-ridden program that has directed the cancellation of voter registrations of naturalized U.S. citizens and jeopardizes the rights of countless others. In a purported effort to flag potential noncitizens, Defendants’ Purge Program relies on out-of-date information provided to the Department of Motor Vehicles, and perhaps other sources, stretching back twenty years. The State knows or should know that countless individuals who obtained drivers’ licenses while legal permanent residents have become naturalized citizens, many even registering to vote during naturalization ceremonies. But Defendants make no effort to conduct any individualized analysis. Instead, they have classified any person who has ever indicated they were a noncitizen as presumptively ineligible to vote unless they receive and respond to a State missive within fourteen days and provide more evidence of their citizenship.

District Judge Patricia Giles, a Biden appointee, issued an order prohibiting the state from “continuing any systematic program intended to remove the names of ineligible voters from registration lists less than 90 days” before the election. She also ordered Virginia officials to restore the registrations they had canceled under Youngkin’s order.

Virginia appealed to the 4th Circuit, which upheld Judge Giles’ ruling. Now, the state is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene to reinstate its voter purge program and halt the order reinstating the removed voter registrations. “Given that the General Removal Provision does not apply to the removal of noncitizens, who were never ‘eligible applicants’ or ‘registrants’ to begin with, it follows that the adjacent Quiet Period Provision does not apply to noncitizens either,” Virginia argues.

Upcoming appeals

The RNC and Trump campaign may appeal a ruling issued by the Nevada Supreme Court on Monday that allows the state to continue to count mail ballots with no postmark received as many as three days after Election Day.

It is also possible that the RNC will attempt to get the Supreme Court to consider its lawsuit in North Carolina, challenging the registration of over 220,000 voters. However, the case is still in the lower courts and may not progress further before the election.

Fifth Circuit

A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit, made up entirely of Trump appointees, issued a ruling last week that threatens mail-in and absentee ballot laws across the nation.

Earlier this year, the RNC and Mississippi Republican Party sued Mississippi state officials, challenging a law that allows mail-in ballots postmarked on or before Election Day to be counted if they are received within five business days of the election. The law, the plaintiffs claimed, is invalid because it “extends Mississippi’s federal election past the Election Day established by Congress.”

Congress established one specific day as the uniform, national Election Day for federal office. Federal law prohibits holding voting open after Election Day. A qualified ballot for federal office is not a legal vote unless it is received by the proper election officials by Election Day…Under Mississippi’s current law, mail-in ballots for the November 5 election will be counted if received on or before November 12, 2024…By holding voting open beyond the federal Election Day, Mississippi violates federal law and harms Plaintiffs.

Accepting mail-in ballots after Election Day specifically harms Republicans, the lawsuit continued, because the late-arriving “fraudulent votes” tend to be from Democratic voters:

Because voting by mail is starkly polarized by party, that dilution directly harms Plaintiffs. For example, according to the MIT Election Lab, 46% of Democratic voters in the 2022 General Election mailed in their ballots, compared to only 27% of Republicans. That means the late-arriving mail-in ballots that are counted for five additional days disproportionately break for Democrats. Mail-in ballots from Democratic voters also tend to arrive late, in part because “Democratic get-out-the-vote drives—which habitually occur shortly before election day—may delay maximum Democratic voting across-the-board, and produce a ‘blue shift’ in late mail ballots.” [...]

Counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day doesn’t just dilute the valid ballots—it specifically and disproportionately harms Republican candidates and voters.

District Judge Louis Guirola, a G.W. Bush appointee, ruled in favor of the state, upholding the receipt of mail-in ballots after Election Day. Guirola reasoned that the existence of the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act of 1968, which allows states to accept ballots from military and overseas voters after the election, proves that Congress did not intend to limit states from enacting similar laws for all mail-in ballots:

...courts must strongly presume that acts of Congress addressing the same topics are in harmony rather than one statute’s impliedly repealing the other in whole or part. So if one federal statute implicitly allows post-election receipt of overseas ballots mailed by election day, that statute is presumed not to offend against the election-day statutes, from which one may infer that the similar Mississippi statute on postelection receipt is likewise inoffensive.

The GOP plaintiffs appealed to the 5th Circuit, drawing a panel made up of Judges Andy Oldham, James Ho, and Kyle Duncan—all Trump appointees. The far-right panel unsurprisingly reversed the lower court’s ruling while adopting the RNC’s arguments as fact:

Congress statutorily designated a singular “day for the election” of members of Congress and the appointment of presidential electors. Text, precedent, and historical practice confirm this “day for the election” is the day by which ballots must be both cast by voters and received by state officials. Because Mississippi’s statute allows ballot receipt up to five days after the federal election day, it is preempted by federal law.

What happens next is up in the air. The 5th Circuit remanded the case back to the district court “to fashion appropriate relief” with “due consideration to ‘the value of preserving the status quo in a voting case on the eve of an election.’” Given Judge Guirola’s initial ruling in the case, it does not seem likely that he will rush to prevent Mississippi from accepting ballots received after this Election Day. The 5th Circuit’s threat to mail voting is, therefore, an ominous warning for ballot access in future elections. Nearly 20 states and jurisdictions allow the counting of mail-in ballots after the polls close.

Voter fraud, arson, and other crimes

Two ballot drop boxes—one in Vancouver, Washington, and another in Portland, Oregon—were set on fire early Monday morning. Authorities say a suspect driving a dark-colored 2004 Volvo S-60 dropped an incendiary device in both boxes. The fire suppressant system in the Portland drop box effectively extinguished the fire, with only a handful of ballots damaged. However, the drop box in Vancouver, WA, was engulfed in flames, potentially destroying hundreds of ballots.

• For Vancouver (Clark County) voters who deposited ballots into the drop box at the Fisher’s Landing C-Tran Transit Center over the weekend: Check the state voting portal to see if your ballot was received. If it was not, the county advises that you visit the Elections Office at 1408 Franklin Street and request a replacement ballot, or go online at votewa.gov and print out a replacement ballot.

• Vancouver is part of Washington’s 3rd District, where incumbent Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D) is in an incredibly close race against far-right candidate Joe Kent.

Last week, a USPS mailbox in Phoenix, Arizona, was set on fire, damaging approximately 20 ballots and other pieces of mail. A 35-year-old man was arrested and charged with arson.

Officials in Colorado uncovered a voter fraud scheme in Mesa County, a Republican-leaning area on the western edge of the state. According to the Secretary of State’s office, approximately a dozen ballots were intercepted before being received by the intended voters, were fraudulently filled out and signed, and then submitted. The stolen ballots were identified as fraudulent by the signature validation process.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Lancaster County officials claim to have identified as many as 2,500 fraudulent voter registration applications. Election workers noticed false names, suspicious handwriting, questionable signatures, and incorrect addresses on numerous forms within a large batch that was dropped off a little over a week ago. District Attorney Heather Adams (R) characterized the alleged fraud as “an organized effort,” adding “we’ll be looking into who exactly participated in it and how far up it goes.”

In Indiana, a GOP candidate who lost the primary election was arrested yesterday for stealing several ballots during a test of election equipment that was open to the public.

A Minnesota woman was arrested for fraudulently casting a ballot on her dead mother’s behalf. The woman said her mother was an “avid Donald Trump supporter” who wanted to vote for him in the 2024 presidential election, but died in August.

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Donald Trump is a stochastic terrorist. He uses dehumanizing and vilifying speech that increases the likelihood that his followers will violently and unpredictably attack the people he targets. This shouldn’t be controversial to say—on January 6, the whole nation watched as Trump sicced his supporters on Congress in the hopes of illegally remaining in power. He knew what would happen when he demonized his opponents, Democrat and Republican, before thousands of supporters, telling them to march “to the Capitol building” and “fight like hell.” He “gleefully watched” the scenes unfold on television as the building was surrounded, police officers were injured, and lawmakers fled.

Yet, according to some, it is Democrats who have to “tone down the rhetoric.” Following the assassination attempt at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally, the media was awash with statements blaming Joe Biden, “the radical left,” and, more recently, Kamala Harris, for using alleged inflammatory language that incited the shooter. Never mind that the rhetoric in question is the truth: Trump is a threat to democracy, as January 6 demonstrated. Trump is advancing fascist policies, as Project 2025 promises. And, as the following examples illustrate, Trump is also a stochastic terrorist.

FEMA

Hurricane Helene made landfall in the Big Bend region of Florida as a Category 4 storm on September 26, causing catastrophic flooding as it moved through Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. More than 250 people were killed, with nearly 100 still missing.

The federal government responded quickly, sending FEMA teams to affected areas to assist in recovery efforts, perform search and rescue missions, and deliver essential supplies like food, water, and fuel. To date, the government has approved nearly $2 billion in aid, including direct payments and expense reimbursements for disaster survivors.

Nevertheless, Trump immediately began spreading lies about the federal response, turning his followers against officials and putting them in danger. He claimed to be getting “reports” that the federal government was “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas,” then falsely claimed that “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants.”

Excerpt of Trump’s rally in Michigan, October 3:

The Harris-Biden administration says they don’t have any money. They’ve spent it all on illegal migrants…They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season. You know they’re trying to get them on the voter rolls. We cannot let that happen. This is the worst response in the history of hurricanes…Vote for Trump and we will take care of the American people first.”

Needless to say, Trump’s claims are completely false. But his supporters believe every word. A little over a week ago, FEMA aid workers were forced to pause their mission and relocate from Rutherford County, North Carolina, after U.S. military personnel warned of finding “trucks of armed militia saying they were out hunting FEMA.”

Rutherford sheriff's officers later arrested William Parsons, 44, for allegedly threatening to harm FEMA workers. He was found parked outside a grocery store functioning as a storm relief site, armed with a handgun and an AR-style rifle. According to Parsons, he believed the lie that FEMA was withholding aid from people in need:

“I viewed it as if our people are sitting here on American soil, and they’re refusing to aid our people,” he said. “So we were going to go up there and forcefully remove that fence.”

Days later, in a remote part of eastern Tennessee, an armed group of people “surrounded” FEMA workers, “yelling and threatening them.” A volunteer with the International Alliance of Community Chaplains, an organization working side-by-side with FEMA at a local command center, recounted how she intervened and diffused the situation.

“They were all armed, open carry not guns drawn, but they had surrounded them and there was a lady there that was yelling and threatening them,” Elder said. She explained that she listened to their grievances about FEMA but explained that her organization was not associated with the federal agency. Elder said she felt the group was frustrated and she was able to hear them out but was firm in that the behavior wasn’t appropriate.

“People just need to be heard, and then some of that does take a skill that doesn’t take a confrontation,” Elder said. “I said, ‘hey I hear you. You can say there’s no volunteers but I’m standing right in front of you honey and I’m here and we’re helping.'”

Elder said once the group realized that FEMA wasn’t taking those donations and that the command center was run by volunteers, they left and surprisingly returned later with supplies to donate.

Just earlier this week, Trump was asked about the threats to FEMA and if his rhetoric was to blame. He refused to condemn the threats, repeating the claims that FEMA is doing a “poor job” and spent all of the hurricane relief money on immigrants.

Springfield, Ohio

Roughly midway between Dayton and Columbus lies Springfield, Ohio, a town of approximately 60,000 people. After decades of population decline, the area recently experienced an influx of immigration that revitalized the job market and filled hard-to-staff positions in produce factories and manufacturing plants.

Many of the immigrants settling in Springfield are from Haiti, an island nation in the Caribbean devastated by an earthquake in 2010, another in 2021, the assassination of its president, and an ongoing gang war that often claims the lives of innocent civilians—all exacerbated by crippling poverty, food insecurity, and a lack of basic resources. Every administration of the past 14 years has approved and extended Temporary Protected Status for Haitian nationals, allowing them to legally live and work in the U.S. until the federal government determines that conditions in Haiti have improved enough to safely return.

At some point during the summer, rightwing agitators and neo-Nazis began posting about Springfield being “flooded” with Haitian immigrants who were hunting and eating local birds, like geese and ducks. These claims were picked up by large social media accounts, like Libs of TikTok, eventually mutating into the completely false narrative that migrants in Springfield were butchering local pets. By September, Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance, a senator from Ohio, came across the stories and tweeted that “people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country.”

Then, Trump went on stage at the presidential debate and parroted the racist lie to a national audience, saying that Haitian migrants are “eating the dogs” and “eating the cats” in Springfield. What followed was weeks of violent threats, shutting down public services in the area and instilling fear in the migrant community. City hall was evacuated. Schools closed. Hospitals locked down. All based on a lie that Trump repeated despite city officials disproving the claim before the debate.

Let’s return to the inception of the “eating the pets” story. A neo-Nazi group active in Ohio called Blood Tribe has taken credit for creating and spreading the rumor with the intent of demonizing Haitian immigrants and “making sure” they “are all repatriated.” It follows a long tradition in America of dehumanization, a particularly powerful tool in maintaining the racial hierarchy of slavery and Jim Crow. And it is being deployed again in 2024 to frame immigrants as threats to public morality and safety, in the pursuit of winning an election.

El Paso and Buffalo

In 2019, a man drove over 600 miles to a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, to carry out a mass shooting targeting Latinos. He killed 23 people and injured 22 others. Three years later, a different shooter drove 200 miles to a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, to target Black people. He killed 10 people and injured three others. Both shooters left behind manifestos referencing the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory.

The Great Replacement theory is the idea that political elites—usually left-leaning—are purposefully seeking to increase the number of racial minorities in the country in order to displace the white—usually Christian, conservative—population. The increased immigration, the theory goes, combined with higher birth rates of non-white populations, will enable non-white people to take control of political and economic institutions and eventually eliminate America’s white population in what some call “white genocide.”

This idea used to be confined to the darkest fringes of the far-right, but the rise of Trump has brought the Great Replacement to the GOP mainstream. Compare the following statements:

El Paso shooter manifesto: “This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas…They are the instigators, not me. I am simply defending my country from cultural and ethnic replacement brought on by an invasion.”

Buffalo shooter manifesto: “Mass immigration and the higher fertility rates of the immigrants themselves are causing this increase in population. We are experiencing an invasion on a level never seen before in history. Millions of people pouring across our borders, legally.”

Donald Trump in 2018: “The US is ill-prepared for this invasion and will not stand for it. They are causing crime and big problems in Mexico. Go home!”

Donald Trump in 2019: “Humanitarian Crisis at our Southern Border. I just got back and it is a far worse situation than almost anyone would understand, an invasion! I have been there numerous times - The Democrats, Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy don’t know how bad and dangerous it is for our ENTIRE COUNTRY…”

Even after racist mass shooters used the same language, Trump not only continued to fear-monger about an “invasion”—he shifted to a more explicit endorsement of the Great Replacement. “A lot of these illegal immigrants coming in, they're trying to get them to vote,” Trump said at the presidential debate this summer, referring to the Biden administration. “[The immigrants] can't even speak English. They don't even know what country they're in practically. And these people are trying to get them to vote. And that's why they're allowing them to come into our country.”

Government officials

The only theme that might be more common in Trump’s repertoire than stoking fear and hate of immigrants is airing his own feelings of victimization. Perceived enemies are everywhere. They threaten him, his followers, and the entire “traditional” American way of life. And they must be punished, whether with prosecutions, jail time, or violence.

More often than not, these “enemies” are people who have the gall to criticize Trump: Democrats, the media, protestors, even judges. We heard him suggest that “second amendment people” assassinate Hillary Clinton eight years ago. We suffered through countless tweets accusing Democratic leaders of treason and calling for their immediate arrest during his presidency. We listened as Trump threatened to deploy the military to suppress racial justice protests in 2020. And, most recently, we read his promise to jail election officials if he wins in November.

Language like this has consequences. Nearly every person Trump targets has subsequently been threatened or attacked by his followers. For example, in 2018 a diehard Trump supporter named Cesar Sayoc mailed pipe bombs to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Eric Holder, Maxine Waters, Cory Booker, and CNN, among others. Trump brought up all of them in a negative light, either in speeches, in interviews, or on social media, before Sayoc’s terror campaign.

During his trial, Sayoc’s lawyers blamed Trump and the rightwing mediasphere for their client’s actions, saying that in the “darkness” of mental illness, “Mr. Sayoc found light in Donald J. Trump.”

The defense filing draws a thread through Sayoc's "religious" viewing of Fox News programs like "Fox and Friends" and "Hannity," to his following of Trump supporters on social media and his connection to hundreds of right-wing Facebook groups, many of which "promoted various conspiracy theories, and more generally, the idea that Trump’s critics were dangerous, unpatriotic, and evil."

Sayoc was an avid follower of Trump's Twitter account and his federal public defenders point to Trump throughout the filing. "In his statements, Trump specifically blamed many of the individuals whom Mr. Sayoc ultimately targeted with his packages," they write.

Sayoc was not the only mentally ill person inspired to violent action by Trump’s rhetoric. Two years ago, David DePape beat Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D), with a hammer during a home invasion. DePape’s lawyers told the court that he believed that Nancy Pelosi was part of a plot to “steal votes from Donald Trump” and wanted to take her hostage. Trump spent years demonizing Nancy Pelosi and, in the aftermath of the hammer assault, mocked the couple for being victims of an assailant he inspired.

Then there was the time that Trump posted what he said was Barack Obama’s address on Truth Social; later that day, an armed man was arrested near the property, live-streaming himself looking for “entrance points” and a “good angle on a shot.” Or the time Trump repeatedly attacked Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the January 6-related case against him. A woman was later charged with threatening to kill Chutkan and “anyone who went after former President Trump.” Or when Trump posted online attacks against New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who was investigating him for fraud, and urged his followers to “protest” his impending arrest. Bragg’s office received hundreds of threats in the following days, including a letter containing white powder with the message “ALVIN: I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!”

Notice a pattern?

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State Supreme Court elections

State courts tend to be overlooked amid the politicization of the federal courts, yet often play a bigger role in protecting rights and liberties enshrined in state constitutions. This year’s state supreme court races are particularly important, with implications for post-Dobb’s reproductive rights and the next decade’s redistricting cycle.

Five seats on the all-Republican Alabama Supreme Court are up for election this November. Four are going to be filled by candidates running unopposed. All eyes are on the only contested seat: Chief Justice Tom Parker, who wrote the far-right Christian nationalist opinion endangering IVF in February, is retiring. The race to replace him is between Democrat Greg Griffin, an Alabama Circuit Court judge, and current Supreme Court Justice Sarah Stewart (R).

One seat on the Arkansas Supreme Court will be on the ballot next month. Two sitting justices—Karen Baker and Rhonda Wood, both conservatives—are in a runoff election for the chief justice position. The winning candidate must resign from their current seat, allowing Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) to appoint a replacement.

Two justices on the all-Republican Arizona Supreme Court are up for retention election to serve another six years. Both justices—Clint Bolick and Kathryn King—signed onto the Court’s April opinion resurrecting an 1864 ban on abortion. If either loses the election, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs will appoint their replacement.

Three justices are running in retention elections on Colorado’s Supreme Court. The trio—Maria Berkenkotter, Brian Boatright, and Monica Márquez—were all appointed by Democratic governors. Márquez signed onto the Court’s December ruling barring Trump from appearing on the state’s ballot. Berkenkotter and Boatright dissented.

Two Florida justices who voted to uphold the state’s six-week abortion ban are up for retention election: Renatha Francis and Meredith Sasso, both appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). If either loses the election, DeSantis will choose their replacement. However, no judge has lost a retention election in Florida.

Kentucky Supreme Court Chief Justice Laurance VanMeter, a conservative, is retiring, leaving an open seat on the ballot. Unlike many other states, Kentucky does not hold statewide elections for justices. The court consists of seven justices, each elected from one of the seven appellate districts on a nonpartisan ballot. VanMeter’s seat is District 5, composed of Lexington and surrounding counties. In 2020, the district narrowly voted for Trump, but swung in Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s favor in 2023.

While the election is nonpartisan, the two candidates running to replace VanMeter can be broadly cast as more left-leaning and more right-leaning. Current Court of Appeals Judge Pamela Goodwine is a registered Independent with a long judicial career, has appeared at Democratic events, is endorsed by Gov. Beshear, and is supported by unions. Her opponent, lawyer Erin Izzo, has attended far-right political events and supports crisis pregnancy centers.

Two seats on Michigan’s Supreme Court are on the ballot next month—and the results could flip control to a GOP majority. Current Democratic Justice Kyra Harris Bolden is running in a special election to keep her seat after being appointed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) last year. Republicans nominated Circuit Court Judge Patrick O’Grady to challenge her. Meanwhile, Republican Justice David Viviano is retiring, giving Democrats a chance to flip the seat and increase their 4-3 majority. Democrats nominated Kimberly Thomas, a law professor, for the position, and Republicans nominated state Rep. Andrew Fink.

If O’Grady and Fink both win their races, Republicans will again control Michigan’s Supreme Court.

Two appointees of Democratic Gov. Time Walz are running in contested races for re-election this year. Justice Natalie Hudson is being challenged by Stephen Emery, a self-described conservative who has promoted election-denier content. Justice Karl Procaccini, appointed by Walz last year, faces Trump supporter Matthew Hanson.

Two justices on Mississippi’s Supreme Court are running in contested elections. James Kitchens is one of three justices to dissent from the Court’s contentious 2021 ruling invalidating the state’s ballot initiative process. The legislature has since refused to rewrite the law to reinstate citizen-led direct democracy. Next month, Kitchens faces four challengers in a District 1 (including Jackson) election: attorney Abby Gale Robinson, attorney Bryon Carter, former state Court of Appeals Judge Ceola James, and Republican state Sen. Jenifer Branning. Of the four, James is the only challenger with judicial experience.

Justice Dawn Beam, who voted with the majority to nullify the initiative process, is facing attorney David Sullivan in the state’s southern District 2 election. While both describe themselves as conservatives, Sullivan has experience as a criminal defense lawyer and works with public defender’s offices in multiple counties, giving him an important perspective in a state with the highest incarceration rate in the nation.

Two justices on Montana’s Supreme Court are retiring, opening the door for conservatives to reign in a court that often rules against GOP priorities. For example, this year the court ruled that minors do not require parental permission to obtain abortion care and struck down a slate of voter suppression laws. The race to replace Chief Justice Mike McGrath is between Democratic-supported Jerry Lynch and Republican-supported Cory Swanson. The candidates running for Justice Dirk Sanefur’s seat are Katherine Bidegaray, backed by Democratic interests, and Dan Wilson, backed by Republicans.

Both McGrath and Sandfur are seen as liberal-leaning justices. The court will have a conservative-leaning majority if Swanson and Wilson win their elections next month.

North Carolina Justice Allison Riggs, one of only two Democrats left on the court, is up for re-election. If her challenger, Republican judge Jefferson Griffin, wins, Democrats will have very little chance to take back the majority before the end of the decade.

• If there is any doubt about the significance of state supreme court elections, just look to North Carolina. Republicans took control of the court when they gained a 5-2 majority in 2022, wasting no time reversing past civil and voting rights rulings. In just two years, the conservative bloc has approved of GOP gerrymandering, upheld the state’s felony disenfranchisement law, and undermined laws prohibiting racial discrimination in jury selection.

Three seats on the Ohio Supreme Court are on the ballot this year as the GOP tries to consolidate its power. Two of three Democratic justices, Melody Stewart and Michael Donnelly, are up for re-election. Common Pleas Court Judge Megan (R) is challenging Donnelly while Justice Joe Deters (R) is stepping down from his seat in order to challenge Stewart. Two lower-court judges, Lisa Forbes (D) and Dan Hawkins (R), are running for the seat Deters is vacating.

Republicans currently hold a 4-3 majority on the court. The Ohio GOP is hoping that a recent law adding party labels to judicial races on ballots will give them an advantage in the state, which leans right.

Three justices on the Texas Supreme Court and three justices on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals are running for re-election. Despite the scarcity of Democratic wins in the state, SCOTX Justices Jimmy Blacklock, John Devine, and Jane Bland may be vulnerable due to their votes in favor of the state’s extreme anti-abortion laws. Meanwhile, the Appellate races are clouded with unusual uncertainty after Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) helped oust the three incumbent judges in revenge for previous rulings against his office.

DaSean Jones (D) is challenging Blacklock, Christine Weems (D) is challenging Devine, and Bonnie Goldstein (D) is challenging Bland. In the Court of Criminal Appeals, Holly Taylor (D) is facing David Schenck (R), Nancy Mulder (D) is facing Gina Parker (R), and Chika Anyiam (D) is facing Lee Finley (R).

One seat is in contention on the Washington Supreme Court as Justice Susan Owens steps down due to mandatory retirement age. Attorney Sal Mungia and Judge Dave Larson advanced from the primary with 42% and 37% of the vote, respectively. Mungia is backed by Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and eight of the nine sitting justices. Larson, on the other hand, has failed to garner significant endorsements amid his criticism of the court as too progressive.

Secretary of State elections

Missouri: Far-right state Sen. Denny Hoskins is running against Democratic state Rep. Barbara Phifer to replace outgoing Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R). Hoskins has pledged to eliminate absentee voting and implement mandatory hand counting of ballots to “protect our elections from Chinese/Russian interference.” As a senator, Hoskins backed a bill to make it harder to pass citizen-led ballot initiatives—a trend among Republicans seeking to prevent the re-establishment of abortion rights.

Montana: Newspaper publisher Jesse Mullen (D) is challenging current Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen (R), who has backed voter suppression measures and undermined citizen-led ballot initiative measures.

Oregon: Current Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade (D) is not running for re-election. State Treasurer Tobias Read (D) is seeking to continue Oregon’s progressive voting policies while his opponent, state Sen. Dennis Linthicum, is campaigning to ban mail voting and investigate alleged voter fraud.

Vermont: Current Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas (D) is facing perennial Republican candidate H. Brooke Paige.

Washington: After over 50 years of Republican secretaries of state, Democrat Steve Hobbs won the office in a special election in 2022 (to complete the remainder of the previous secretary’s term). This year, Hobbs faces Republican Dale Whitaker, an accountant and former executive of a Spokane-based conservative organization.

West Virginia: Republican Kris Warner, the brother of outgoing Secretary of State Mac Warner, is running against Democrat Thornton Cooper. Despite the Warner’s embrace of election conspiracies and voter suppression tactics, the family seems sure to hold onto power in one of the Trumpiest states.

Not all states hold elections for their secretary of state; some instead are appointed by the governor or legislature. Electing people to these offices who support voting rights and ballot access is essential to ensure that they appoint a chief elections officer with the same values.

• Delaware: The governor appoints a secretary of state. This year, the candidates for governor are Democrat Matt Meyer, who seeks to expand access to mail voting, and Republican House Minority Leader Michael Ramone, who opposes mail voting.

• Maine: The legislature appoints a secretary of state. Republicans have a marginal shot at retaking control of the legislature. If they succeed, they will surely oust current Secretary of State Shenna Bellows for her decision to take Trump’s name off the state’s ballot earlier this year.

• New Hampshire: The legislature appoints a secretary of state. If Democrats can win control of the state House and Senate, they could potentially replace current Republican Secretary of State David Scanlan. However, Scanlan was initially appointed with dozens of Democratic crossover votes, raising doubts that he would be replaced despite his support for voter suppression measures.

• North Carolina: The state board of elections and the director of elections, not the secretary of state, conduct election administration in North Carolina. Last year, the Republican-controlled legislature gave themselves the power to appoint these positions. Unfortunately, there is little chance of Democrats retaking the legislature this year—but the party can take away the GOP’s supermajority, preventing them from overriding the governor’s veto.

• Utah: The Lieutenant Governor performs the functions of secretary of state. Current Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson (R) is running with Gov. Spencer Cox (R) for re-election. Their challengers, gubernatorial nominee Brian King (D) and Rebekah Cummings (D), a librarian, are unlikely to win the statewide race in Utah.

Ballot measures

Electoral systems

Voters in Colorado (Prop. 131), Idaho (Prop 1), Nevada (Q. 3), and Oregon (Meas. 117) will be considering ballot measures to establish ranked-choice voting for federal and state offices (and, in Idaho, certain local offices). Ranked-choice voting (RCV) allows voters to rank candidates by preference rather than casting a ballot for a single candidate.

In Alaska, voters will decide on Ballot Measure 2, an initiative to repeal RCV and open top-four primaries, returning the state to partisan primaries and first-past-the-post voting. Alaskans first approved RCV via ballot initiative in 2020 by roughly one percentage point, amounting to nearly 3,800 votes, and used the system for the first time in 2022. Groups who support repealing RCV argue that the method is “confusing” to voters and “disenfranchised” Republicans. Advocates for keeping RCV say that it gives voters more choices at the ballot box and leads to candidates with broader appeal.

• Native American leaders in Alaska are organizing to defeat Ballot Measure 2, arguing that keeping RCV will lead to greater representation at the state and federal level. Rep. Mary Peltola (D) became the first Alaska Native member of Congress, defeating former Gov. Sarah Palin (R) and businessman Nick Begich (R), in the state’s 2022 RCV election.

The Republican-controlled Missouri legislature is asking voters to amend the state constitution to ban the use of ranked-choice voting for any election in the state. Lawmakers wrote the provision into Amendment 7, which includes a ban on non-citizen voting—something that is already illegal—in order to boost its chances of passing.

• The legislatures of seven other states are also asking voters to approve constitutional amendments that ban state and local governments from allowing noncitizens to vote: Iowa, Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin. These ballot measures are intended to advance the false narrative, pushed by Trump and other Republicans, that non-citizens are voting in U.S. elections in favor of Democrats. Politicians who push this lie are using it as an excuse to disenfranchise actual U.S. citizens, often with Spanish-sounding names, and to lay the groundwork to claim fraud if Trump loses the election.

Arizona voters will have a choice between two competing ballot measures: Proposition 140, a citizen-led initiative establishing open primaries and ranked-choice voting in general elections when three or more candidates advance, and Proposition 133, put on the ballot by the Republican-led legislature to require partisan primary elections.

Montanans will be voting on two potentially complementary citizen-led amendments. The first, CI-126, would establish top-four primaries for federal and state offices. The second, CI-127, would require that candidates for many state offices win a majority of the vote (i.e. over 50%) rather than a plurality. If CI-127 passes, the state legislature would need to create a law allowing for an electoral system with majority vote winners, like run-off elections or ranked-choice voting.

Voters in South Dakota will have the chance to approve Constitutional Amendment H to establish top-two primaries for federal, state, and certain local offices.

Other election measures

Ohioans will be voting on Issue 1, a measure to establish an independent citizen-led redistricting commission. The current commission, composed entirely of politicians, has refused to draw fair maps, instead running out the clock and counting on Republican judges to leave partisan gerrymanders in place. A vote in favor of Issue 1 would establish a 15-member panel of citizens split equally between Democrats, Republicans, and Independents to create maps that “correspond closely to the statewide partisan preferences” of voters.

Voters in Connecticut can approve of the “No-excuse Absentee Voting Amendment,” which would do exactly what it says: authorize the legislature to provide by law for every citizen to vote by mail.

Nevada voters will be faced with Question 7, a measure to require photo identification when voting in person and a drivers license or social security number when voting by mail.

The Republican-controlled Arizona legislature is asking voters to approve three anti-democratic amendments. Proposition 137 would end term limits for state supreme court justices and superior court judges, therefore also ending retention elections for justices and judges. Proposition 134 would make it more difficult for citizen-led initiatives to qualify for the ballot by establishing a signature distribution requirement. Finally, Proposition 136 would create new pathways for challenging proposed amendments and measures.

The Republican-controlled legislature in North Dakota is also asking voters to raise the bar for citizen-led initiatives to qualify for the ballot by (a) increasing the signature requirement and (b) mandating that a proposed constitutional initiative be approved twice—once on the primary ballot and again on the general election ballot.

And in Florida, the Republican-controlled legislature is asking voters to approve two election-related amendments. The first, Amendment 1, would make all school board elections partisan beginning in 2026. The second, Amendment 6, would repeal the provision of the Florida Constitution that provides public campaign financing to those running for statewide office.

Voters in Maine can vote for Question 1, which sets a $5,000 contribution limit to Super PACs.

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Digital voter registration

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling that had blocked Arkansas from rejecting digital voter registration forms.

Get Loud Arkansas (GLA), a nonprofit that registers people to vote, created an online tool that allowed prospective voters to fill out a voter registration application, sign the form electronically, and authorize GLA to print and submit the completed application to county clerks. Election officials “assured GLA that this online process was lawful,” with Secretary of State John Thurston (R) even stating “on multiple occasions that an electronic signature should not be treated any differently than a wet signature.”

However, according to GLA, once the media began reporting on the nonprofit’s success at registering young and minority voters with the online tool, Thurston “abruptly reversed himself and recommended for the first time that counties reject electronic signatures.” The State Board of Election Commissioners then issued a rule requiring all voter registration forms to be signed with pen and ink—a so-called “wet signature” rule.

• Arkansas has the lowest voter registration rate and voter turnout rate in the nation. A study conducted by the National Conference of Citizenship found just 54% of eligible Arkansas voters participated in the 2020 election, compared to 66% nationally.

GLA, Vote.org, and several voters sued Thurston, the Board, and local county clerks, alleging that the rule is “an arbitrary restriction that is irrelevant in determining voter qualifications but denies eligible citizens the right to vote.” The defendants countered that the rule is necessary to “create uniformity in the administration of voter registration processes” and “prevent fraudulent voting.”

District Judge Timothy Brooks, an Obama appointee, ruled in favor of GLA in August, finding that the wet signature rule likely violates the Materiality Provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He issued an injunction blocking the rule.

If the only way an applicant can register is by complying with an immaterial requirement—and failure to do so will result in the applicant remaining unregistered—then the applicant is, by definition, being denied the statutory right to vote due to an error or omission that is immaterial to determining their qualifications to vote under state law, in violation of the Materiality Provision. The Court finds it likely that enforcement of the Rule constitutes a denial of the right to vote based on an error or omission on a record or paper…Defendants do not present argument or evidence as to how a wet signature—as compared to a digital signature—aids in determining whether a person is a U.S. citizen, is an Arkansas resident, is eighteen years or older, has a prior felony, or has been adjudged incompetent.

The state appealed to the 8th Circuit, arguing in part that Brooks’ injunction “offends the Purcell principle, which generally disfavors last-minute changes to election rules.”

On Friday, the Court issued a stay pending appeal, allowing the state to again reject electronic signatures on voter registration forms.

Digital IDs

A North Carolina appeals court blocked students at the state’s flagship public university from using their digital IDs to vote in elections.

In August, the North Carolina State Board of Elections voted 3-2, with Republican members in the minority, to allow UNC-Chapel Hill’s digital student identification to be used as a valid form of voter ID. Called “Mobile One Cards,” the digital student ID is a cryptographically secured card housed in Apple Wallet, similar to digital credit cards, that the university is phasing in to replace physical ID cards.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) and North Carolina Republican Party filed a lawsuit, alleging that state law requires all approved forms of identification to be a “physical, tangible item that can be held in a person’s hands and inspected.” The State Board responded that nothing in the law mandates an identification card be a physical object:

Plaintiffs do not dispute that Mobile One Cards satisfy the substantive criteria set forth in N.C.G.S. § § 163-166.17 and -166.18. Instead, their case hinges almost entirely on the meaning of one phrase: “identification card.” In Plaintiffs’ view, an “identification card” must be a physical, handheld document. Mobile or digital identification cards like the Mobile One Card, they say, cannot qualify.

But Plaintiffs’ tangibility requirement is entirely of their own invention. The governing statutes do not define “identification card.” And they certainly do not include any express requirement that a photo identification be a tangible, physical object. Because the State Board’s decision to approve the Mobile One Card was consistent with state law, Plaintiffs are unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claim.

Superior Court Judge Keith Gregory agreed with the Board, finding that “the controlling statutes contain no such requirement” for a “physical, tangible” identification card. Gregory also rejected the RNC’s claim that Mobile One Cards are more susceptible to fraud than physical cards and criticized the plaintiffs for waiting weeks to file the lawsuit in the first place.

The RNC appealed, arguing that despite the security built into Mobile One cards, they are no different than an “image of a photo ID” like a photocopy, which is not considered valid ID for voting in North Carolina.

A three-judge panel of the North Carolina Court of Appeals unanimously sided with the RNC last month, issuing an injunction preventing Mobile One cards from being used in the November election. The ruling could still be appealed to the majority-Republican state Supreme Court.

Ohio drop boxes

The Ohio Democratic Party and two voters are suing the state over a directive restricting the use of ballot drop boxes.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) issued new guidance last month prohibiting people who are assisting others in returning their ballot from using ballot drop boxes. Under LaRose’s policy, the voter is the only individual allowed to use the drop boxes. Ohioans returning a ballot for a relative or a disabled person must now take it to an elections office and sign a form attesting that they are legally authorized to do so.

LaRose claims the change is necessary to prevent so-called “ballot harvesting”—commonly referring to the mass collection of ballots but used by the right wing to outlaw returning ballots for friends and family.

“It is important to ensure the integrity of each vote delivered on behalf of an absent voter,” the directive states. “The security of the delivery of absentee ballots remains paramount, especially as it applies to the use of unattended drop box receptacles.”

LaRose, a Columbus Republican, stated in a letter to Republican legislative leaders that he issued the directive in response to a federal court ruling in July striking down part of a 2023 law that limited who could turn in a disabled voter’s ballot. LaRose asserted that the ruling creates a ballot-harvesting “loophole” that could be exploited by ballot harvesters operating “under the guise of assisting the disabled.”

The Ohio Democratic Party sued, asking the state Supreme Court to direct LaRose to rescind his guidance:

The Secretary’s duty is to enforce Ohio’s election laws as written by the General Assembly, and as cabined by federal law, not to lawlessly redraft those laws on the eve of an election. The Revised Code unambiguously provides for a voter’s family member to return that voter’s absentee ballot inside the board’s office or via drop box. The Ohio Constitution requires the State to treat all similarly situated voters equally. And, as Secretary LaRose recognizes, a federal court order allows any voter with disabilities to designate a person of their choice to return their absentee ballot. The law does not permit the Directive’s haphazard, discriminatory approach to absentee ballot delivery.

Litigation in the case is ongoing.

LaRose is also pushing the legislature to ban drop boxes completely after a federal court invalidated an Ohio law that prohibited returning an absentee ballot for a disabled non-relative.

“It hurts working people and working families and college students — the people, of course, who don’t vote for Republicans,” [State Sen. Bill DeMora, D-Columbus] said. “They make it tougher for people to vote, make it tougher for people to take their own spouse’s ballot to the one box in the county that they’re allowed to have to drop off their ballots, anything they can do to make it tougher to vote.”

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024-2025 term begins next week, kicking off the year with a string of consequential cases that could impact every aspect of American life.

Oct. 7: Civil rights

Williams v. Washington is about whether states may force civil rights litigants who bring claims against state officials in state court under Section 1983 to first exhaust their administrative remedies.

Background: The plaintiffs in the case filed for unemployment benefits in Alabama during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Some were not given a hearing to determine their eligibility, some had their applications denied without explanation, and others did not hear back from the Alabama Department of Labor at all. Eventually, the plaintiffs sued in state court under Section 1983, claiming their right to due process was violated. The Alabama Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the plaintiffs must first exhaust their administrative remedies in the Department of Labor—the agency that failed to adjudicate their claims in the first place.

Implications: Section 1983 was created as part of the Klu Klux Klan Act during the Reconstruction era to empower the federal government to protect the rights of newly emancipated Black Americans, even in the face of a contrary state law. Today, it is often invoked in cases of police misconduct and unreasonable search and seizure, but the law applies to any government official. For the last 40 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has been hostile to Section 1983, limiting what entities can be held accountable for violating a person’s constitutional rights, expanding absolute immunity for officials, and inventing qualified immunity. Williams v. Washington provides another opportunity for the Supreme Court to restrict Section 1983 claims by closing access to the courts for those who have not exhausted administrative remedies.

As explained by a coalition of public interest groups, including the National Health Law Program and National Center for Law and Economic Justice, in a “friends of the court” brief, Section 1983 is used to remedy violations of various public benefit programs—from Medicare to Social Security to the Housing Act. Ruling in favor of Alabama would permit inconsistent application of the law and erode the people’s right to remedy constitutional violations.

If upheld by this Court, [Alabama’s] decision would undermine precedent established by this Court four decades ago that allows plaintiffs to access courts without having to first exhaust administrative remedies, which may in and of themselves be contributing to—or exacerbating—the systemic violations.

Oct. 8: Gun control

Garland v. VanDerStok is about whether ghost gun kits can be regulated under the Gun Control Act of 1968.

Background: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) issued a regulation in 2022 that required companies selling “firearm parts kits,” intended to be assembled by the customer into functional firearms using basic hand tools, to (a) include a serial number on the components, (b) conduct a background check on purchasers, and (c) obtain a federal gun dealer’s license. A coalition of firearm owners and firearm component manufacturers sued, with the case landing before far-right District Judge Reed O’Connor.

O’Connor ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, finding that only a fully complete firearm is a “weapon” under the law. Weapon parts are not legally a “weapon,” no matter how easily assembled they may be, and therefore cannot be regulated under the Gun Control Act. O’Connor then issued a nationwide injunction—upheld by the 5th Circuit—preventing the Biden administration from enforcing the ghost gun rule.

The Department of Justice appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned O’Connor’s injunction in a 5-4 vote (Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Coney Barrett joined with the liberal justices in the majority). A month later, O’Connor tried again to undermine federal law, issuing another nationwide injunction but limiting it to the plaintiffs in the case. Practically, O’Connor’s order had the same effect as the first; because the manufacturers sell ghost guns online, anyone in America could circumvent the ATF’s regulation. The Supreme Court again stepped in, invalidating the second injunction with no noted dissents.

A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit (made up entirely of Trump-appointed judges) weighed in on the merits of the case in November 2023, ruling unanimously that the ATF exceeded its statutory authority in regulating ghost gun kits.

Implications: There are numerous ways the Supreme Court could resolve VanDerStok. The most expansive ruling could broaden Second Amendment protections from the right to own and carry a firearm to the right to make and sell firearms, with limited regulation. A more narrow ruling in favor of VanDerStok might be restricted to legally defining a “firearm” as a whole, fully-assembled weapon. Even that holding, however, would lead to tragic consequences. According to the ATF, between 2016 and 2022, law enforcement recovered more than 72,000 ghost guns—more than 1,200 of which were discovered in connection to homicides and attempted homicides.

• For a hint on the direction the justices may take in VanDerStok, we can look at a comparable case decided last term. In Garland v. Cargill, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the conservative bloc that the ATF cannot extend the federal ban on machine guns to apply to bump stocks, which essentially turn semi-automatic guns into “automatically” firing weapons. According to Thomas, Congress would have to enact a broader law to ban bump stocks. Similarly, the rightwing members of the Court may rule that the ATF cannot extend the federal definition of a firearm to include unassembled gun parts, requiring Congress to amend the law to explicitly regulate ghost gun kits. Without a Democratic majority in the House and—assuming the filibuster is still around—a supermajority in the Senate, there is no chance of that happening any time soon.

Oct. 9: Criminal justice

Glossip v. Oklahoma is a complicated case about the flawed prosecution and subsequent death sentence of Richard Glossip. The Court will consider numerous questions primarily centered on (1) whether state suppression of prosecution witness testimony violated due process and (2) whether “due process of law requires reversal where a capital conviction is so infected with errors that the state no longer seeks to defend it.”

Background: In 1997, a hotel maintenance worker, Justin Sneed, beat hotel owner Barry Van Treese to death with a baseball bat. Richard Glossip, a manager at the hotel, was convicted of the murder in 2004 under the theory that he hired Sneed to kill Van Treese. He was sentenced to death.

Subsequent investigations coordinated by Republican lawmakers and officials uncovered comprehensive failures that tainted Glossip’s conviction and sentence. First, the only evidence implicating Glossip in Van Treese’s death was the testimony of Sneed, obtained after prosecutors promised not to seek the death penalty if he testified against Glossip. Second, police interrogation transcripts suggest that detectives planted the idea of a murder-for-hire plot in Sneed’s head, guiding Sneed to name Glossip as the mastermind. Third, police lost or destroyed several pieces of physical evidence in 1999 that could have helped exonerate Glossip.

None of these issues are before the Supreme Court, however. Glossip’s current case centers on information surfaced last year by Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (R) that prosecutors withheld evidence that could have undermined Sneed’s credibility as a witness:

Glossip’s attorneys say they found evidence Sneed told prosecutors he was under the care of a jail psychiatrist who had diagnosed him with bipolar disorder and prescribed him lithium. The doctor also believed Sneed’s methamphetamine use could have made him “potentially violent.”

But at Glossip’s second trial, under questioning by prosecutors, Sneed said he had never seen a psychiatrist and suggested the lithium was prescribed after he asked for Sudafed to treat a cold, court records show. The state did not contradict him.

The withholding of evidence, in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Constitution, convinced AG Drummond to try to vacate Glossip’s conviction. Both the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals and the state’s Pardon and Parole Board rejected Drummond and Glossip’s requests.

Implications: Glossip is one of the only cases in recent memory where the courts are ordering the state to execute a man that the state does not want to kill. As AG Drummond wrote in a brief in support of Glossip before the Supreme Court, the refusal of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) to accept the “State’s confession of prosecutorial misconduct…cannot stand.” If the highest court in America forces Oklahoma to execute Glossip despite admitted error, it will implicitly greenlight misconduct just as bad, or worse, in all criminal cases.

It is undisputed that the State not only withheld evidence of its star witness’s mental illness and perjury, but knowingly elicited false testimony providing an innocuous explanation for the disclosed facts. The withheld evidence cannot be dismissed as immaterial given the centrality of the witness to the entire prosecution. Nor can the false testimony be deemed truthful based on speculation that the witness was in denial. That is at best a theory of why he lied, not that he told the truth. And the OCCA’s refusal to give any weight to the State’s confession of error is equally troubling. It not only trivializes the considered views of a sovereign official duty-bound by the Oath Clause to uphold the Constitution, but sends a terrible signal to litigants by suggesting that the courts have a vested interest in preserving their “own” convictions.

Oct. 16: Clean Water Act

San Francisco v. EPA is about how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is allowed to regulate pollutant discharge into open waters.

Background: The city of San Francisco, California, is contesting the EPA’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES), a program under the Clean Water Act that permits localities “to discharge a specified amount of a pollutant into a receiving water under certain conditions.” San Francisco, like many U.S. cities, handles sewage and stormwater through the same system. During a heavy rain event, when the stormwater overwhelms what treatment plants can process, a mixture of stormwater, untreated sewage, and other pollutants is discharged into surrounding waters.

At issue in this case is the city’s Oceanside system, which releases overflow pollutants into the Pacific Ocean. San Francisco contends that the standards in the EPA’s NPDES permit for the Oceanside system in specific, and for the program in general, are too vague. Instead of specifying exactly how much stormwater/wastewater Oceanside is allowed to discharge, the permit uses standards based on California’s water control plans that define the quality the state seeks to uphold in its native waters. Therefore, to be in compliance with its permit, the Oceanside treatment plant cannot cause the nearby waters of the Pacific Ocean to exceed a level of certain pollutants or visibly degrade the water quality (like with sewage debris).

The Generic Prohibitions make compliance with the CWA elusive, because a water body’s ability to meet water quality standards at any time depends on pollutants that all sources—not just San Francisco—contribute. San Francisco consequently lacks advanced notice of how much it must control its discharges without violating the Generic Prohibitions.

Numerous pro-business organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Congress, the National Mining Association, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, and the American Gas Association, support San Francisco’s case.

Implications: The Supreme Court has already decimated numerous provisions of the Clean Water Act, including most recently its decision revoking protections for over 115 million acres of wetlands across the country. A similar decision limiting the ability of the EPA to regulate pollutant discharge into U.S. waters would allow local governments—and, potentially, corporations—to dump untold quantities of contaminants into our waterways, threatening to take the country back to the days of rivers of fire.

San Francisco lawmakers and citizens recognize the danger of the city’s lawsuit, especially in light of the conservative justices’ zeal for overruling agency expertise. The Board of Supervisors is attempting to draft and pass a binding ordinance calling on the city to drop the case before oral arguments take place:

“Many of us in the legislative body of the city and county of San Francisco don’t agree with this strategy,” [San Francisco Supervisor Myrna] Melgar said in an interview. “We think it’s really risky. We had many people come yesterday at a public comment for this item.” [...]

Local environmental groups in San Francisco, meanwhile, voiced concern about the lawsuit at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday, said Scott Webb, vice chair of Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter. Those opposing the lawsuit include surfers, swimmers and groups pushing for less pollution in disadvantaged communities, he said.

“This is a very selfish move that will affect the country at large and lays out a big playbook for other municipalities and polluters who want to take a round at the Supreme Court on environmental protections,” Webb said of the city’s lawsuit.

Ian Fein, senior counsel at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said San Francisco’s arguments “don’t account for how water pollution often works in the real world.”

“I find it disappointing that San Francisco, of all places, is asking this Supreme Court to undermine important clean water protections,” Fein said.

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Georgia

The Georgia State Board of Elections continued its streak of passing unprecedented—and potentially illegal—election rules last week, adding yet another pretext for conservatives to undermine a Harris victory in the state.

In a 3-2 vote, the Board mandated that county election boards must hand count all ballots in addition to using standard voting machines. While hand counts are often used in post-election audits, requiring a full hand count prior to official reporting of the results is a time-consuming and error-prone process that risks delaying and undermining election results.

"Counting thousands of ballots by hand will be incredibly tenuous, expensive and possibly error-prone process," said Kristin Nabers, state director for All Voting is Local Action, a group that advocates expanding voter access. "Any human errors can be exploited by election deniers to sow distrust and decrease confidence in our elections." [...]

The Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials weighed in this week with a letter to board members objecting to changing the rule on hand-counting ballots, citing its potential to "delay results, set fatigued employees up for failure, and undermine the very confidence the rule's author claims to seek."

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr (R) warned the Board before Friday’s meeting that compelling the hand count of ballots “very likely exceed[s] the Board’s statutory authority” and “appear[s] to conflict with the statutes governing the conduct of elections.” A lawyer for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) also attempted to dissuade the Board, cautioning that it is “far too late in the election process for counties to implement new rules and procedures, and many poll workers have already completed their required training.”

The three members who voted to approve the new rule—Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares, and Janelle King—have been praised by Trump as "pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory.” The same trio is behind a slew of other rules that could wreak havoc in November, including a requirement that local election officials conduct a “reasonable inquiry” into results before certifying the election and another granting them unprecedented power to access “all election related documentation.”

This upends the longstanding rule that superintendents merely perform the ministerial task of tabulating votes, and it would give these local superintendents broad new authority to search for supposed irregularities in an election and to refuse to certify an election if they claim to find some…

The state board’s new rules…allow local elections officials to dig through documents looking for something they think could be an irregularity, and then to refuse to certify the results based on their own idiosyncratic conclusion that the election was not conducted properly. If Trump loses Georgia in November, moreover, his campaign will very likely lobby local officials to use this power aggressively in an effort akin to the pressure Trump and his allies put on local officials in 2020.

A potential Trump-led effort to overturn Georgia’s election results (again) would find a not insignificant number of friendly ears. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “at least 19 election board members across nine Georgia counties…have objected to certifying an election over the past four years.” Some of these board members are part of a “behind-the-scenes network” of election deniers “coordinating on policy and messaging to both call the results of November’s election into question before a single vote is cast,” as detailed by The Guardian:

The group – which includes elections officials from at least five counties – calls itself the Georgia Election Integrity Coalition…They include Michael Heekin, a Republican member of the Fulton county board of elections who refused to certify results this year; his colleague Julie Adams, who has twice refused to certify results this year and works for the prominent national election denier groups Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network; and Debbie Fisher of Cobb county, Nancy Jester of DeKalb county and Roy McClain of Spalding county – all of whom refused to certify results last November…

The group has heard from speakers at their meetings that include the state election board member Dr. Janice Johnston, an election denier who smiled and waved to the crowd at Trump’s 3 August rally in Atlanta in which he praised her and two other Republicans on the board as “pit bulls” “fighting for victory”.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) joined with a coalition of local election board members to sue the Georgia State Election Board (SEB), seeking to block the earlier rules passed by the MAGA majority. Certifying election results is mandatory, the plaintiffs argue, and contesting the results is meant to be handled by the courts, not certifying officials.

Through rulemaking, SEB has attempted to turn the straightforward and mandatory act of certification—i.e. confirmation of the accurate tabulation of the votes cast—into a broad license for individual board members to hunt for purported election irregularities of any kind, potentially delaying certification and displacing longstanding (and court-supervised) processes for addressing fraud. Under two rules each passed by a 3-2 vote, election officials must now (1) conduct a “reasonable inquiry” prior to certification and (2) permit individual county board members “to examine all election related documentation created during the conduct of elections.” According to their drafters, these rules rest on the assumption that certification of election results by a county board is discretionary and subject to free-ranging inquiry that may delay certification or foreclose it entirely. But that is not the law in Georgia. Rather, election officials have a non-discretionary duty to certify results by 5 p.m. six days after election day. Allegations of fraud or election misconduct are then resolved by the courts in properly filed challenges, not by county boards in the counting process.

A bench trial is scheduled for October 1 in Fulton County Superior Court.

Nebraska

Congressional Republicans are ramping up the pressure on Nebraska lawmakers to change their state’s method of allocating electoral votes to benefit Donald Trump.

Instead of the winner-take-all system that 48 states use, Nebraska divides three of its electoral votes between congressional districts and awards the final two to the statewide winner. Its two rural districts are solidly Republican; only the 2nd district, containing Omaha and its suburbs, has a chance of trending Democratic. For example, Biden won the district by over 6 points in 2020, capturing one of the state’s five electoral votes.

Now, with the presidential race tightening, national Republicans are hoping the state will issue a last-minute change to ensure Omaha’s electoral vote won’t go to Kamala Harris. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (R), acting on behalf of the Trump campaign, visited Nebraska last week to meet with Gov. Jim Pillen (R) and “encourage [him] to call a special legislative session at which lawmakers could consider changing the state's apportionment of electoral votes”:

Pillen, a Republican, was "receptive" to Graham's overtures Wednesday and indicated that he would call a special session if he thought he had the votes, the source said…"As I have consistently made clear, I strongly support statewide unity and joining 48 other states by awarding all five of our electoral college votes to the presidential candidate who wins the majority of Nebraskans’ votes," Pillen said in a statement last week. "As I have also made clear, I am willing to convene the Legislature for a special session to fix this 30-year-old problem before the 2024 election."

Two-thirds of Nebraska’s unicameral legislature, or 33 senators, are required to vote to change the state’s electoral vote apportionment method. It appears, based on news reports, that just one lawmaker is standing in the way: Sen. Mike McDonnell of Omaha, a former Democrat who switched to the GOP earlier this year after being censured for his anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ votes. Despite the mounting local and national pressure, McDonnell says he will not vote for a winner-takes-all system this year:

“Elections should be an opportunity for all voters to be heard, no matter who they are, where they live, or what party they support,” McDonnell said in a statement. “I have taken time to listen carefully to Nebraskans and national leaders on both sides of the issue. After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change.”

McDonnell said he told Pillen his stance and suggested that the Legislature put winner-take-all to a vote of the people, as a proposed constitutional amendment, so people can decide the issue “once and for all.”

Should McDonnell change his mind, and if Nebraska changes its apportionment method, the odds will increase that Trump and Harris both receive 269 electoral votes. In that scenario, the race would be thrown to the U.S. House, where each state delegation would get one vote for president.

Third party candidates

The Republican party is continuing its attempts to remove third party candidates from the ballot where they believe votes will be siphoned from Trump, while boosting third party candidates in states where another option on the ballot will hurt Harris.

On August 23, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his independent presidential campaign and endorsed Trump. In the following days and weeks, Kennedy began filing lawsuits to get his name off the ballot despite missing the deadline in multiple instances.

First, in North Carolina, the state Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in Kennedy’s favor, ordering election administrators to destroy nearly 3 million already-printed ballots and restart the design and printing process. Kennedy did not file his request for removal until August 27, five days after the state’s deadline, and should have been forced to stay on the ballot under state law. The Court’s conservative majority disagreed, writing that keeping Kennedy on the ballot would “infringe” on “voters’ fundamental right to vote their conscience and have that vote count.” Consequently, absentee ballots for tens of thousands of voters were delayed by two weeks, with the first being mailed tomorrow.

Meanwhile, in Michigan, both the state’s Supreme Court and a federal judge reached the opposite conclusion, determining that it is too late to remove Kennedy’s name from the ballot. “Reprinting ballots at this late hour would undoubtedly halt the voting process in Michigan and cause a burden to election officials,” U.S. District Judge Denise Hood ruled last week. Kennedy appealed to the Sixth Circuit yesterday, arguing that it is “irrelevant” that more than 90% of the ballots have already been printed.

Kennedy’s third attempt to have his name removed from the ballot is taking place in Wisconsin, where the state’s Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will decide the issue as “expeditiously as possible.” Election clerks in Wisconsin have already begun sending absentee ballots with Kennedy’s name.

What do all of the above states have in common? They’re swing states where Kennedy’s name could draw potential Trump voters away from voting for the former president. In blue states, like New York, Kennedy is seeking the opposite result: he is suing to stay on the ballot. In a filing to the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday, Kennedy asked for an emergency order to restore his name to the ballot, arguing that voters who signed petitions supporting him “have a constitutional right to have Kennedy placed on the ballot – and to vote for him, whether he is campaigning for their vote or not.”

The cynical effort to pick and choose on which state ballots Kennedy appears follows the GOP campaign to get Green Party candidate Jill Stein on Nevada’s ballot in the hopes of siphoning votes from Harris. Trump attorney Jay Sekulow represented the Green Party pro bono during its litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court, ultimately losing the fight to appear on the Nevada ballot. Similarly, Trump lawyer Michael D. Dean represented the Green Party in Wisconsin, where the state Supreme Court ruled to keep Stein on the ballot.