Trump’s Guilt-By-Association Law Enforcement
The groundwork has been laid to go after innocent people, opposition groups, and even No Kings protesters.
Some unbelievable scenes out of Israel this morning, where the last hostages held by Hamas have just been returned as part of the preliminary ceasefire deal in Gaza. Negotiating hurdles remain, but leaders are projecting optimism: “The war is over,” Donald Trump said from Air Force One yesterday, as he took off bound for Israel. Addressing the Knesset on Monday morning, he declared a “historic dawn of a new Middle East.”
“This is not only the end of a war, it is the end of an age of terror and death, and the beginning of the age of faith, hope, and of God.”
Let’s hope. Let’s hope he’s right that the situation will now “normalize.” But let’s be clear-eyed, too. That won’t happen overnight; the path ahead remains enormously challenging. For today, though, it’s enough to be grateful: The bombs are stopping, and the hostages are home. Happy Monday.
Have You Seen This Domestic Terrorist?
by Andrew Egger
When it comes to slowly tightening a lawless grip on a people, one of the authoritarian’s most potent tools is guilt by association. The bedrock idea that force of state is justified only against those persons who have committed specific illegal acts is abandoned, replaced by the idea that force can permissibly be deployed against certain kinds of people. The vaguer the definitions involved, the more room the authoritarian has to maneuver.
This year, the Trump White House has gone to some pains to habituate the American people to guilt-by-association enforcement. They’ve tried to deport migrants with no due process based merely on the accusation that they were gang members—an accusation based, in some cases, on no more than the migrant’s clothing and tattoos. They’ve sent masked plainclothes agents in unmarked vans to arrest international students they claim are terrorist sympathizers—which might mean no more than they publicly criticized Israel. And lately, they’ve been laying the groundwork to exercise similar tactics against American citizens. The White House has used the label “domestic terror” to describe a vast swath of anti-Trump protest and organization, from Antifa protesters to left-wing NGOs.
“With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people,” Stephen Miller said last month.
So the question now is: Who counts under Miller’s definition? How broad a brush does the administration intend to use amid this promised crackdown? Some recent comments from Republican lawmakers suggest they’re prepared to go further than you’d think.
On Friday, both House Speaker Mike Johnson and his top deputy, Rep. Tom Emmer, made some eyebrow-raising comments about a forthcoming protest in D.C. This protest, Johnson said, would be a “hate America rally” run by “the pro-Hamas wing and Antifa people.” Standing next to Johnson a few hours later, Emmer sneered about “the terrorist wing of [the Democratic] party, which is set to hold a hate-America rally in D.C. next week.”
What protest were Johnson and Emmer referring to? The second “No Kings” protest, scheduled to take place on October 18.
If you followed (or participated in) the first “No Kings” event back in June, you might already be laughing. That protest, which was planned by a coalition of normie liberal groups and which attracted millions of people across dozens of cities, was almost comedically star-spangled in its affect and remarkably peaceful in its execution. One vignette to give you an idea: In Chattanooga, Tennessee, rally speakers dressed like 1776 colonists, solicited rounds of applause for the military veterans in the crowd, and encouraged rallygoers to be “the most boring protesters ever.” Organizers took deliberate measures to ensure no violence would break out around their protests and, with genuinely minimal exception given the size and scale, they were successful.
Now No Kings is happening again, and this is how Republicans are talking about it.
But it’s not merely grossly unfair. These days, after all, accusations like “terrorist wing,” “pro-Hamas,” and “Antifa” aren’t just insults. They’re talismans—phrases that unlock, in the view of the administration, a permission structure for the deployment of state violence. The largest, most organized, peaceful protest movement of the Trump 2.0 Resistance is coming back this week—and Republicans are talking as if they’re prepared to unleash the might of their increasingly politicized federal law enforcement (and, perhaps, accompanying military?) on it.
This isn’t to say, of course, that a state crackdown on No Kings 2 is guaranteed to take place. Even Donald Trump and Stephen Miller might flinch from the headlines that would result from their militarized cops cracking heads in a peaceful crowd flying American flags. That’s no way to win a Nobel Peace Prize!
The point, though, is that they’re keeping their options open. It may be better to put down protest through fear than through action—but either works. In the rhetoric of today’s Republicans, a No Kings protester is functionally equivalent to a domestic terrorist. That gives them all the room to maneuver they might need.
Actually, it’s not quite the same constellation of normie lib groups behind No Kings this time around. Our friends at Home of the Brave are participating too—rolling out a $1 million campaign today to encourage Americans to attend this Saturday. You can watch the video George Conway cut for the campaign here.
Keeping Hope Alive
by William Kristol
As you may have noticed, we’re in a kind of “abandon all hope, ye who enter here” moment for the American republic.
Yesterday morning, I watched Vice President JD Vance refuse to rule out the Trump administration invoking the Insurrection Act—even though there is nothing resembling an insurrection going on in America. At noon, I had as my guest on The Bulwark on Sunday Tom Joscelyn, who compellingly analyzed the progress of the Trump administration’s purposeful and sometimes cunning authoritarianism, along with MAGA’s dark and nihilistic worldview. Last night, I listened at a dinner to a couple of former senior government officials lamenting, accurately and intelligently, the extraordinary damage done by the Trump administration to the parts of the government in which they’d previously been proud to serve.
And all of this came after the Mets failed to make the playoffs on the last day of the baseball season and the Red Sox lost to the Yankees in the first round of the playoffs. Ugh.
So why am I surprisingly cheerful this morning? It’s not simply because the Yankees quickly lost in the next round.
It’s because of the kids, the Pope, and the protesters.
I was in the L.A. area last week for talks at the University of Southern California and at Claremont McKenna College, and was able to spend some time with the students.
Now I’ve had my ups and downs on college campuses. (For example, having a chocolate cream pie thrown at me by a student two decades ago as I spoke on a campus more or less defending George W. Bush’s foreign policy was a bit of a downer.) But the college students with whom I was able to meet in small groups last week, while admittedly a self-selected bunch, were impressive. They were sane and open-minded, neither entranced by the intolerant wokeness of the left nor the rabid fanaticism of the right. They seemed to be going about their business of getting a good education. They were concerned but not despairing about the future of the country.
And so, I thought, perhaps the kids will be alright. And after all, it’s not the kids who have failed America in the last decade. It’s the boomers on Facebook who have fallen for lies and been tempted by bigotry. And it’s the grownups running our major institutions who’ve capitulated to authoritarianism.
Speaking of major institutions, there is at least one American boomer now running such an institution who’s truly impressive: Robert Francis Prevost of Chicago, now Pope Leo XIV. He’s been a consistent voice of reason and compassion since ascending to the papacy five months ago.
Just this past Thursday, Pope Leo asked journalists to “act as a barrier against those who, through the ancient art of lying, seek to create divisions in order to rule by dividing.” He urged them to “be a bulwark of civility against the quicksand of approximation and post-truth.” And he quoted Hannah Arendt’s warning that “the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”
Could the first American pope succeed in defending freedom, civility, and truth against the assault on it by our first truly authoritarian president? (And let me also applaud Pope Leo’s use of the word “bulwark”!)
Finally, one has to be impressed by the courageous and peaceful resistance of so many Americans in Chicago and Portland and elsewhere to the armed and masked men deployed by the Trump administration in its indefensible assaults on immigrants. And one has also to be impressed by the protesters’ use of humor and ridicule. I especially like the excellent inflatable costumes. I trust we’ll see lots of them at the No Kings gatherings on Saturday.
So I’m oddly cheerful. Could the inflatables ultimately carry the day against ICE? Could the pope prevail over the president? Could young people save the country from their elders?
Here’s hoping.
AROUND THE BULWARK
What’s a College President to Do in the Trump Era? Not going on bended knee to Washington would be a good start, writes Wesleyan University president MICHAEL S. ROTH.
The Speaker of the House Is Abetting Authoritarianism… Every Trump needs his Johnson: a flunky who will rationalize his crimes, argues WILL SALETAN.
The Birth Pangs of the U.S. Navy… It was founded 250 years ago today—and, oddly, was promptly ordered to attack what is today its biggest base, ANDREW LAWLER explains.
Can Democrats Mock Trump Into Defeat? As the president embraces strongman politics, Democrats are increasingly trying to make him seem little, notes LAUREN EGAN in The Opposition.
How The Jews Fought Rome… On Shield of the Republic, BARRY STRAUSS joins ERIC EDELMAN and ELIOT COHEN to discuss the Jewish revolts against Roman rule, touching on politics, religion, and archaeology.
“Stop and Frisk” Didn’t Work. This Did… Does “broken windows” policing actually work? On How to Fix It, JOHN AVLON and JOHN MILLER dig into how a small idea changed New York City—and why it still sparks huge debates today.
Quick Hits
LIBERATION DAY 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO: Anyone else having April flashbacks? Donald Trump is rage-tweeting and rage-policymaking against China, and markets are experiencing the old familiar palpitations.
On Friday, steamed at China for introducing new export controls on its domestic rare-earths market, the president posted that a “massive increase of tariffs on Chinese products coming into the United States of America” was now under consideration.
Even in the era of TACO, where traders know Trump could back off any tariff threat at any time, this post was enough to wipe trillions off the stock market before Friday’s closing bell. Hours later, Trump made the threat semi-official: “The United States of America will impose a Tariff of 100% on China,” he wrote just before 5 p.m. on Friday, “over and above any Tariff that they are currently paying.”
If the goal is to scare China straight, it’s far from clear it’s working. “Frequently threatening high tariffs is not the right approach to engaging with China,” a Chinese official said in a Sunday statement. “China’s position on a tariff war is consistent: We do not want one, but we are not afraid of one.”
By Sunday evening, Trump had seemed to back down a bit. “Don’t worry about China, it will all be fine!” he wrote. “Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment. He doesn’t want depression for his country, and neither do I. The U.S.A. wants to help China, not hurt it!!!”
YOU’RE FIRED, PART NINETY-SIX: Russell Vought promised he’d use any government shutdown as an excuse to fire more federal workers, and on Friday the Office of Management and Budget director made good on his word. OMB declared in a court filing that thousands of employees were being laid off across the departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, Treasury, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Homeland Security, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The full extent of Vought’s actions remains unknown, for a variety of reasons. The first: the administration had to scramble in certain cases to hire people back just hours after they were fired. Apparently, cutting Ebola experts was done by accident. The second: some of those fired were already furloughed due to the government shutdown, meaning that they could not check their email to see if they’d been let go.
But to get a good sense of the devastation, consider the blow delivered to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. SAMHSA is a relatively small agency with the Department of Health and Human Services, with an overall budget of just $8 billion dollars. But it plays a vital role funding, overseeing and advising state and local programs on everything from opioid addiction treatment to suicide prevention.
The agency was already reeling from the DOGE firings earlier this year and RIFs in July. It now appears to have lost at least 100 more employees, according to a source we consulted over the weekend (note: this mirrors reporting from NPR). Another person we talked to who is in touch with SAMHSA workers said they believe the office was now close to being one-third its size from the beginning of the year, when there were 900 employees—though, again, no one is entirely certain about the numbers. This latest round seems to have wiped out several divisions, including one that manages programs for “special populations” including the child, adolescent, and family branch. Also on the list, apparently, is a division that oversees grants for hundreds of community mental health clinics, as part of an innovative program that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had praised during his Senate confirmation hearings.
We’re using words like “appears,” “seems,” and “apparently” because there was no official statement from HHS or anybody else in the Trump administration detailing what or who they were cutting, or why. Instead journalists like us are piecing together based on what we can learn from insiders who know, and who are circulating crowdsourced tallies being put together by current and former employees. What we can definitively say is that morale is in the toilet among those who are still there.
“None of my colleagues want to go back to work for the government. Or if they do, they don’t want to do the same work,” one person told us.
—Jonathan Cohn
THE FARMWORKERS WE NEED AFTER ALL: It’s long been an uncomfortable truth about the U.S. economy that Americans benefit from the underpaid labor of illegal immigrants through things like lower food prices. Economists have warned for months that the White House’s migration crackdown—targeting not only gangsters and criminals but day laborers and farm workers—would lead to higher costs for consumers. What’s unusual to see is the White House itself admitting these things. But last week, they did—quietly. The Washington Post reports:
The Labor Department warned in an obscure document filed with the Federal Register last week that “the near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens” is threatening “the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers.”
“Unless the Department acts immediately to provide a source of stable and lawful labor, this threat will grow,” with increased funding for immigration enforcement from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the Labor Department said in the Federal Register, which is the place where all proposed rules are recorded for the public to view and comment.
The Labor Department said these things as part of implementing changes to make it easier for farmers to hire foreign seasonal agricultural workers in the near term. Stepping up immigration enforcement while also making it easier for farmers to legally get the help they need is certainly no cause for criticism—but it’s worth noting that these quiet admissions totally contradict the pat narrative the White House has pushed in its political messaging, arguing that the jobs currently done by illegal immigrants will soon be filled by more deserving Americans.
Cheap Shots
Dear Mike Johnson and fellow GOP leaders,
The hate America rally was the one on January 6, 2021. You probably remember it.
The No Kings protest is for those of us who love America. Can’t wait!
Don’t let the threats scare you, or keep you away from the Oct 18th No Kings protest. I have been to several and they have all been peaceful. The cops and the crowd all behaved well.