To the thousands of you who comment on Steady each week, first, let me say thank you. In reading your thoughts, it is safe to say you are: a) not happy with the direction of our country, and b) really not happy with the current president.
We’ve heard reports that millions of you will express your discontent on Saturday at “No Kings” rallies across the country and the world. That is your right, guaranteed under the First Amendment to the Constitution, which reads:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
And we hope that if you choose to make your voice heard, you remain steady, hold your head high and proudly participate in one of our most cherished democratic institutions. That is what freedom is about. Anyone and everyone can speak truth to power.
But Donald Trump has a long history of hating criticism and punishing those who challenge him and his actions. So, in yet another act of fealty to their “king,” the Republican Party has coordinated an intentional perversion of reality to explain why so many people may protest against the president.
Dipping back into their playbook of characterizing something before it has even happened, Republicans have dubbed them the “hate America” rallies, claiming that anyone who attends must be “pro-Hamas” or “antifa” types. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson took it a convoluted step further.
“It’s being told to us that they [Democrats] won’t be able to re-open the government until after that rally, because they can’t face their rabid base,” he said on Fox “News.” Someone might want to tell Johnson that the shutdown ball is in his court. If he actually wants to negotiate an end to it, he would have to bring the House back in session.
Johnson’s nonsensical sentiment was mirrored by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. “You know, ‘No Kings’ means no paychecks,” he said.
“The unhinged comments are the message,” Michael Steele, an MSNBC host and former head of the Republican National Committee explained.
“This is what it looks like when you’ve fully lost control of the message and you’re panicking,” Leah Greenberg, co-founder of Indivisible, one of the groups organizing “No Kings,” posted on social media.
These comments on shaming Americans who are only exercising their constitutional rights should make everyone’s blood boil. It is absolute nonsense.
The goal of the disinformation campaign, which was no doubt coordinated in the highest ranks of the Republican Party, is simple: suppress turnout by criminalizing dissent–and change the narrative from “ peaceful protests” to “terrorism.”
“What they’re trying to do is to suppress support for the opposition, to try to make you think that you are somehow connected with violence if you show up for a peaceful protest rally,” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy told NBC News. “I think the turnout is going to be big, and I think that that’ll be a sign that their tactics aren’t working.”
The “No Kings” rallies in June mobilized roughly five million peaceful protesters who love America but despise Trump and what they believe he is doing to the country. If estimates are correct, Saturday’s protests will be even bigger.
America was built on the backs of people protesting injustice. Resistance to wrongdoing is foundational to this country’s ethos. The American Revolution was sparked by the Boston Tea Party, a protest of British taxation. The fights for women’s suffrage, civil rights, gay rights all started with protests and ended with political change.
Curtailing rights has become a hallmark of the second Trump administration. Just ask the reporters who cover the Pentagon.
On Wednesday, any journalist who works for a news organization that did not agree to sign Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s 21-page long press rules — replacing a one-pager — was shown the door. Every organization, except the far-right One America News Network, declined. Even Fox, Hegseth’s former employer, chose not to sign. Hundreds of years of institutional knowledge and reporting experience left the building.
The new rules put increased limitations on access and raise the possibility of punishment for something as simple as asking for information. Hegseth claims these “common sense” changes are necessary to protect national security.
However, the only breach of national security since he became defense secretary was perpetrated by Hegseth himself. In March, he posted possibly classified U.S. military attack plans to an unsecure group chat, to which the editor of The Atlantic had accidentally been added.
Hegseth’s paranoia about leaks and security breaches should be a red flag. If things were going well under his leadership, he would be trumpeting his accomplishments. Instead, he engages in the classic Trump ploy of misdirection. What is he trying to hide?
One story he is attempting to spin into a positive narrative is the Trump administration’s repeated attacks on boats off the Venezuelan coast. A fifth boat was hit on Tuesday, killing all six alleged drug traffickers on board. The Pentagon was asked what ordnance was used, the legal basis for the attack, and the identities of those killed. No answers were given for that strike or for any of the four previous ones.
Hegseth, the least qualified person to lead the Defense Department in U.S. history, is trying to shut down scrutiny and restrict what the American people know about what the DOD is doing with a trillion dollars in tax payer money. But it is about more than billion-dollar weapons systems. It is about the men and women who serve.
“U.S. military’s policy of opening the Pentagon to the press was never a favor to the journalists who cover the military, but rather an obligation to a country that asks its sons and daughters to volunteer for service. If the government was going to ask Americans to risk their lives for our freedoms, then those empowered to send them into harm’s way would be willing to answer questions, especially tough ones,” wrote Nancy Youssef, who has covered the Pentagon for The Atlantic for 18 years.
Since the Pentagon opened its doors in 1943, the U.S. military has been able to balance its promise to protect secrets with its responsibility to inform the public through the media. Even though more than eight decades of balancing these dueling interests has been dismantled, reporters promised to keep reporting.
“I turned in my Pentagon pass today after 30 years because like all major news organizations ABC will not sign the new restrictive Pentagon requirements… [T]o be clear. We will all continue to cover national security from outside the building,” ABC News’s Martha Raddatz posted on social media. Mary Walsh of CBS News, one of the best and most patriotic reporters I have ever known, promised the same thing.
Godspeed to Raddatz, Walsh, and their colleagues, and to the protesters on Saturday. In different ways, both groups will be heeding the words on the “No Kings” website: “The president thinks his rule is absolute. But in America, we don’t have kings and we won’t back down against chaos, corruption, and cruelty.”
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An anti-I.C.E. protester in a frog costume holds a sign at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building.Photo by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images.
As Donald Trump presides over his orchestrated government shutdown, fabricated “insurrections,” and the U.S. military moving against its own people, we must ask: Why has he chosen now to declare antifa a domestic terrorist organization—five years after he first abandoned the idea?
Trump first threatened this declaration back in 2020, when there was actual civil unrest in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. But he only followed through on the threat this year, with his September 22 executive order. As if frozen in time, Trump is focusing much of his attention on Portland, a peaceful city that was arguably once the seat of “Antifa”, claiming that there are fires and riots “burning down the city.”
This simply isn’t true. So why, five years later, when there have been no recent violent demonstrations, would Trump execute an unprecedented order “DESIGNATING ANTIFA AS A DOMESTIC TERRORIST ORGANIZATION”? If not pure political theater, what else could it be?
Yes, a would-be despot must have a bogeyman to justify attacking his own cities. But in his apparent plot to attain a totalitarian state, he or his advisors understand that classifying a structureless group like antifa as a terrorist entity gives him the ability to designate anyone who crosses him—personally or politically—as a terrorist.
There are many things wrong with the way Trump talks about antifa and the cities he claims it has destroyed. First and foremost, antifa can’t be a terrorist organization because it is simply not an organization at all. Antifa is basically an idea. It’s a decentralized movement that is more anarchist than conventionally political, lacking any formal agenda, structure, or leadership. Yet Trump’s order calls it “a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.” An idea cannot overthrow a government.
Second, there’s no legal provision for the President to designate any domestic civil group as terrorists. Trump just made that up. As the New York Times noted, the law only applies to foreign terrorist organizations and permits certain actions against them, including freezing their assets and criminalizing actions that assist them:
Federal law empowers the executive branch to deem overseas groups “foreign terrorist organizations.” The law gives such groups a due process right to hearings to challenge the designation. If the designation stands, the status allows the government to freeze such groups’ assets and makes it a crime to provide material support to them.
Trump’s attempt to cast this same “terrorist” label on domestic groups may not survive legal challenges. But the threat of legal pushback has never deterred him before, and the fear is that he will attempt to freeze assets of left-wing U.S. organizations and prosecute progressive groups for having provided material support to a terrorist group.
Trump tends to operate by making wild claims first and defending them later, just as he lied about cities being in “anarchy.” During an October 8 White House “Roundtable on ANTIFA” where he bragged that he “took the freedom of speech away” (referring to his anti-flag-burning stance), he also claimed, “I don’t know what could be worse than Portland. You don’t even have stores anymore. They don’t even put glass up. They put plywood on their windows.”
As a longtime resident, I can confidently report that Portland is a beautifully thriving city, with an active café culture and a recently revitalized downtown. We absolutely have stores. The last time plywood appeared on storefronts was during the protests in 2020. These are just more lies from Trump to justify impinging upon our rights.
From Scapegoat to Strategy
Antifa, short for “anti-fascist,” has become a catchall scapegoat for the Trump administration—a symbol his base can both fear and hate. Back in 2019, he called antifa “gutless radical left wack jobs who go around hitting people over the heads with baseball bats.” In 2020, he called them “mobs.” Now, in 2025, he describes them as “professional agitators” and “a major terrorist organization.” The shift from chaotic rabble to organized menace is deliberate—it makes the imagined threat seem more credible and urgent.
Even though Trump attempts to make antifa appear highly organized, its very lack of definition actually benefits him. Since there’s no clear standard for who counts as “Antifa,” there are almost no limits to who he can accuse of involvement. If you’re against fascism and have attended a protest in a non-MAGA capacity—BAM! You’re a terrorist. Women’s March? BLM? No Kings protest? Post about any of those? Congratulations—you’re part of antifa now, or somehow providing it material support.
We’re already seeing this demonization of Trump’s enemies and the crackdown on dissent play out with how Republicans are framing the upcoming No Kings rallies set for October 18. Republican Rep. Tom Emmer recently said Democrats want to “score political points with the terrorist wing of their party, which is set to hold … a ‘Hate America’ rally in D.C. next week.” Subtle.
When Trump signed that September 22 executive order, he accomplished more than political pageantry. He gave his own wannabe dictatorship the tools to criminalize dissent, silence opponents, and intimidate citizens into submission. Stephen Miller warned on the day of the announcement of the “domestic terrorist” designation that the government would be coming after a whole network allegedly associated with antifa:
“There is an entire system of feeder organizations that provide money, resources, weapons. And when they’re attacking ICE officers, they’re attacking federal buildings. Whether isolating public officials for harassment, doxing, intimidation, and ultimately attempted assassination, it is all carefully planned, executed and thought through. It is terrorism on our soil.”
Turning Up the Heat
You have likely heard the “boiling frog” theory: if you put a frog into boiling water, it jumps out; but if you heat the water slowly, it stays until it’s cooked alive. It’s a metaphor for how gradual change can trap us in catastrophe before we realize it’s even happening.
In our current politics, our democracy is the frog, and Trump’s steady, deliberate dismantling of checks and balances is the flame. Each move—attacking the press, undermining courts, politicizing the military—is part of a slow march toward authoritarian control.
Historians and political scientists have been warning for years about Trump’s parallels with other notorious dictators. Now, the water is scalding, and at this point, he’s barely trying to hide it. So many of his recent actions are obvious parts of the despot’s playbook. Prison camps, secret police, siccing the military on your own people, silencing the media… come on! Now he’s working on quick and easy ways to legally imprison his enemies.
The Manufactured Crisis
It matters that the White House timed this antifa declaration for just days before Trump’s repeated attempts to deploy the U.S. military against citizens in Democratic-run cities like Portland and Chicago. He needed a pretext, something bigger than his own false rhetoric.
On September 27—days after signing his antifa order and the night before he authorized 200 National Guard members to descend on Portland—Trump described the city as “war-ravaged” and “under siege by Antifa mobs.” Federal reports furnished to The New York Times told a different story: “The group exhibited low energy throughout the day… no individuals engaged in behavior that prompted intervention from law enforcement.”
And one day before that: “The demonstrator count peaked at approximately 20. The group exhibited low energy throughout the day.” One arrest was made that night when a protester was blocking a driveway. “The subject was subsequently released,” the report said. It’s clear that even federal law enforcement’s assessment of the situation did not warrant introducing the National Guard, let alone considering invoking the Insurrection Act.
While Trump was bemoaning “out-of-control” crime in Chicago and posting an AI image of himself styled like Apocalypse Now with the caption “I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” the city’s mayor cited statistics showing those crimes were actually on the decline.
Even without real violence, once antifa is labeled a terrorist group, the mere presence of non-MAGA protesters could be deemed terrorism. That’s not just propaganda—it’s legal groundwork for repression.
Turning the Aggression On Us
Trump is working overtime (when he can fit it around golf) to solidify the idea of the “enemy within.” He’s manufactured crises to justify invoking the Insurrection Act, terrorized Latino citizens and residents, and even encouraged his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to deliver a chilling speech redirecting the military’s gaze inward.
On September 30, Hegseth told senior military officers that the real battle isn’t abroad but at home. He didn’t mention Russia, North Korea, or any of the U.S.’s current geopolitical adversaries. Instead, he railed against “DEI,” “dudes in dresses,” and, surprisingly, “beardos,” declaring that “radical-left Democrat cities” like San Francisco and Chicago need to be “straightened out one by one.” He called it “a war from within.”
Trump echoed him at the same event, calling Democrats “bad people,” and his “adversaries”:
“America is under invasion from within… At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out. These people don’t have uniforms.”
In front of the nation’s highest-ranking officers, Trump and his “Secretary of War” all but declared their intent to turn the U.S. military into a domestic police force. This is a dangerous marker of an authoritarian government. Hegseth went further, promising to discard rules of engagement in favor of “overwhelming and punishing violence.” The target? American citizens in “radical-left” cities. We’re at the stage where our future dictator and his cronies are greenlighting domestic war crimes and gathering weapons to deploy against the resistors.
The Choice Ahead
So where does our story end? Does the frog leap out of the pot, or does it cook? Those who know the science will point out that the boiling frog metaphor is a myth: Real frogs do jump out. Which raises the question: Are we Americans smart enough to sense the rising heat and leap before it’s too late?
Our government institutions are designed to act as safeguards in just such an event as a president pushing for authoritarianism. We will need to rely on these protections, especially if the public remains numb to Trump’s propaganda.
As The Big Picture’s own Jay Kuo wrote in September, Trump’s efforts to rule by executive order rather than the legislative process have been met with failure in the judicial system, recently, blocking some of his more extreme orders. But entirely relying on a judicial system, often with judges appointed by Trump or Trump sympathizers, would be a mistake. So far, federal judges have protected Portland from boots on the ground. How long will this defense last?
Trump’s attempt to outlaw his political enemies by executive order is not just another act of political theater. It’s perhaps the most dangerous move yet of a man who would be king, and we dismiss it at our own peril. The question remains: Will Americans continue to allow the normalization of these attacks on our democracy, or will our institutions and the assembled resistance hold back the creep toward authoritarianism, understand the true danger…and leap.
Noir Fella Faves I can’t deny that my focus in film noir features is heavily skewed toward the femmes – there are just so many varied dames to discuss! But every now and again, I like to shine the spotlight … Continue reading →
I haven’t written for a few days because I haven’t had much to say. Instead, I’ve just been rambling around New York City with my son. We’ve had a good week doing fun stuff. No ICE in New York City, which is not something I thought I’d ever notice but I definitely do. But I haven’t had the need to say anything, which felt confusing to me because I seem to always an annoying amount to say. Then I realized why.
Things remain terrible all over the nation, but I think the Israel/Gaza thing gave us a momentary respite from things getting any worse. For the moment, and I believe the moment will be short, it feels as though entered a touch of stasis. Sure, Chicago is still being terrorized and sure the government remains shut down and sure people are getting snatched off the streets and boats are getting blown up – again, I said things remain terrible – BUT I also think we felt all of this coming. (Well, maybe we didn’t feel the blowing-up-boats-thing coming) Now it’s all here and, at least to me, it feels as though we’re waiting for the next thing to happen.
No doubt, most of you reading this will assume I mean the next bad thing to happen. But I don’t. We’re as likely to get good news as bad. I don’t know what’s coming - good or bad - only that I feel like we’re in a little bit of a pregnant moment.
Well, that’s a dumb expression to describe what I mean but I didn’t want to say “foreboding” because that felt overdramatic and, besides, I literally just said it might turn out to be good news and foreboding moments rarely turn into the kind of happy-go-lucky moment that might follow, say, a certain person’s passing from this earth. Again, terrible turn of the phrase because I would never wish death on anybody, but I do enjoy a good wake.
So, to me, it feels like we’re in a little bit of a waiting game. Maybe everybody’s just kind of holding their breath waiting to see how the “No Kings” protests unfold this weekend. I’m not worried about it. For real, I’m not. No doubt there will be some provocations and scuffles in this city or that, but whatever fears the Republicans are trying to gin up with their talk of Marxists and antifa and terrifying naked bicycle rides are likely to wind up as limp as, well, you fill in the blank.
Of course, it’s also possible that the administration will attempt to foment violence of its own this weekend. Possible but I think (I hope?) unlikely. Sure some special goon squad might throw fists with black bloc dudes or whatever, but I don’t think regular cops or National Guardsmen are going to put up with random acts of political violence in their ranks. I know, I know. Naïve, stupid, etc. But I’m going to go out on a limb and predict local police and National Guardsmen will be on good behavior because they’re, by and large, decent people trying to serve their communities. I can’t speak to whoever else they’re going to have out there.
Hopefully the weekend goes smoothly and the administration’s temper tantrums about “America haters” and whatever other nonsense they’ve been spewing will diminish. Or, rather that otherwise MAGA-sympathetic people will listen to the president’s words contrasted with peaceful images and they’ll at least pause a moment to let the cognitive dissonance wash over their brains like that first hit of morning Mountain Dew.
So that’s my hopeful take on the moment.
My unhopeful one is that the administration will use the “No Kings” protest to invoke the Insurrection Act. While I think the weekend will be peaceful, I also think any Reichstag Fire they can light will get lit. They’ve been trying for months now in Portland and Chicago and LA. So far citizens haven’t bit. I imagine Stephen Miller would like nothing more his 40th birthday (yes, he JUST turned 40) than to show Gampy Trump some scary pictures on Fox News so he can get the go-ahead to bomb San Francisco.
But here’s the thing I worry about most. I worry that the reason I didn’t feel like I had much to say over the last week is because I’m getting too accustomed to what I’m seeing. Another person getting snatched off the street by masked thugs. Another boat blown to kindling. Another ludicrous statement from our president or any member of his equally ludicrous cabinet. A $50,000 bribe that would have become an all-consuming scandal in a normal administration is shrugged off as much ado about nothing and the media shrugs. And now I’m shrugging, too. That’s my worry. That, nine months in, it feels like nothing is happening because I’ve already grown used to this shit. And that’s fascism, baby.
“And that’s fascism, baby” might be my new catchphrase. Subscribe today to see if I use it again! If I do… that’s fascism, baby.
So yeah, things are likely to get worse. But why wait for the worse thing to arrive before sounding the alarm here and now? Things are already incredibly, devastatingly bad. Things don’t have to get worse for there to be a pretty good conversation about whether the United States of America is now over. Kaput. There’s an even better conversation about what happens next, if there is a next. I’m not saying I have any sense about where we’re going or how we arrive there. As I said, we’re as likely to receive good news as bad (Ok, ok maybe not “as likely.) For all my doomsaying, I don’t feel like a doomsayer. As I say all the time, I’m wrong about everything so I put no stock in my own opinions, as earnestly as I mean them at the time. Like all of you, I’m just trying to hang on and hold on. Anyway, I took a little break. I feel like I’m waiting. But the question does have to be asked: waiting for what?
Donald Trump wants us to think Portland is a war zone. He wants us to think antifa is a “terrorist group.” And it’s clear what game he’s playing.
The fact is, antifa isn’t an organization at all, it’s a loose, unstructured movement. Yet for Trump, that is irrelevant. In antifa, he’s found his latest bogeyman to justify the militarization of U.S. cities and his crackdown on his political enemies.
In tomorrow’s piece, guest writer explores Trump’s antifa strategy and how the right is following his lead, already labeling the left broadly a “terrorist” group. Just the latest lunge forward in Trump’s march toward an authoritarian state.
And in case you missed it yesterday, dug into “The Montana Plan,” a ballot initiative set for next year’s election that could upend Citizens United. If Montana voters approve the measure, it would serve as a model for other states to begin to get dark money out of our politics.
Move to Amend holds a rally at the Supreme Court.Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call.
If you ask legal scholars and political observers to list the worst decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court in the modern legal era, Citizens United would be near the top. That 5-4 opinion ushered in an era of unlimited independent corporate money in our politics, warping our entire electoral process and tying big money to big politics for a generation.
The High Court’s decision rested on the notion that corporations, long defined as “legal persons,” are entitled to First Amendment protections just like actual people. Therefore, they held, it is a violation of their “freedom of speech” to put restrictions on what their money can say and do, even in politics.
We know what happened next. Big corporations, through super PACs and outside groups, flooded the system, drowning out individuals’ voices. And there seemed no way to stop it, short of a constitutional amendment that would allow limits on corporate political spending.
It feels like we’re stuck with the ruling forever.
Or are we? A group in Montana is pushing forward with a novel approach that could leverage the traditional power of the states to regulate corporations. It’s called the “Montana Plan,” and it’s starting to garner attention. If it works and survives legal challenges (a big if), and then spreads beyond Montana, it could turn the tide on corporate money in politics.
Before we get into the Montana Plan, a primer on how we got here.
Once upon a time, there were restrictions on how much money corporations could spend on politics. This included so-called “independent” spending, where money doesn’t go directly to any particular candidate or party. That was the state of things for centuries.
But in 2010, a conservative nonprofit group known as Citizens United sued to invalidate the campaign finance rules. It wanted to air a film criticizing then-Senator Hillary Clinton. The Supreme Court found that Citizens United had a First Amendment right, just like a real person, to spend money distributing the film.
But it went further than that. Citizens United had wanted to directly criticize a senator and likely future presidential candidate. The Court went beyond that request to also invalidate restrictions on “independent” group spending. With that, the conservative majority ushered in the super PAC era.
We all know from experience that super PACs are not “independent” at all. The money comes in and gets spent with a wink and a nod. There’s no question that the money directly helps certain candidates. And rather than be fully transparent, while super PACs are required to disclose their donors, the donors themselves may be organizations whose members and contributors remain anonymous. This is why we often call such funds “dark money.”
The explosive growth of super PACs
According to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice, using publicly available data, the 2024 election saw a huge increase in the number of donors giving five million dollars or more to presidential super PACs:
This election, the biggest super PACs supporting the major party nominees for president have together taken in $865 million from donors who each gave $5 million or more. That’s more than double the amount by this point in 2020, which was $406 million. This biggest-spending category of donors has provided more than 75 percent of the funding to presidential super PACs in the 2024 election, up from 63 percent in 2020.
If you want to understand what oligarchy looks like, this is it. Indeed, those mega-rich donors are so key to the fates of the presidential campaigns that they inevitably gain special access, privileges and rights that ordinary citizens do not.
Recent efforts to limit Citizens United
When President Obama gave his State of the Union address in January of 2010, he directly criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United:
With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections.
Justice Samuel was seated in attendance at the time and could be seen shaking his head and mouthing, “Not true.”
But over the next 15 years, President Obama was proven correct. Special interests, in the form of billionaires and big corporations, can not only outright buy influence through campaign donations, but under Donald Trump, they are expected to pony up for things like his inauguration and White House ballroom or face possible retaliation. How long until Trump demands they contribute directly or through undisclosed methods (such as crypto and dark money super PAC contributions) to Republican campaign coffers? Trump is the quintessential transactional, quid pro quo president after all.
In recent years, state-level efforts to limit this kind of money from flooding our elections have sprung up. For example, a voter initiative last year in Maine sought to cap the amount individuals and corporations could contribute to super PACs. It prevailed with roughly 75 percent in favor. As Maine Public Radio reported,
The ballot initiative approved by Maine voters last year would set a $5,000 annual limit on donations to political action committees that make “independent expenditures” on candidate campaigns. Supporters argue that the cap is needed to avoid potential quid-pro-quo corruption — which is when an individual or group makes a donation and gets political favors in return from the elected official who benefited from their supposedly independent spending.
In July, however, that law ran smack into the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling. A federal court struck down the Maine law as unconstitutional, writing that Citizens United prohibits any limits on contributions to groups that spend money to support or defeat candidates independently.
Professor Larry Lessig of Harvard, who has made it his life’s mission to get big money out of politics, wasn’t surprised by the ruling. In fact, he wants to get the issue before the appellate courts.
That’s because the Maine law addresses a loophole that he believes the federal courts have overlooked: allowing “coordinated” donations to super PACs in return for favorable actions by the candidate — the classic quid pro quo that the Supreme Court has said in earlier cases is actually a proper limitation on political contributions.
Unlike people, corporations exist by permission of the state
There are two distinct sources for most of the money pouring into our politics. First, there are billionaire donors whose individual donations can create outsized effects. Elon Musk, for example, created the America PAC, which spent $200 million in the fall of 2024 to help tip the election to Donald Trump. And second, there are the wealthy corporations, which can funnel money into super PACs under the holding in Citizens United.
Reformers who want to blunt the impact of Citizens United see an opportunity to rein in the latter using an unlikely source: the power of each of the 50 states.
Despite the notion that corporations are legal “persons” that are entitled to First Amendment protections, they differ from actual people in at least one critical way: People don’t need the state to create or license them.
Corporations exist with the express permission of the state in which they are incorporated. They are legal inventions, statutorily-created entities. They only have as much power as the states grant them.
That means the answer to Citizens United may be staring everyone straight in the face. After all, the states—and this Supreme Court majority is for “states’ rights” after all—by definition have the final say over what corporations may do in their states. As noted by the Center for American Progress, which backs campaign finance law reforms, “Corporations are pure creatures of state law. And for more than two centuries, the Supreme Court has affirmed that states have virtually unlimited authority to modify and withdraw the powers they grant to their corporations.”
Why couldn’t that authority include never granting corporations the power to spend money on political contributions in the first place?
The western and independent-minded state of Montana is about to test the limits of that authority.
The Montana Plan
The idea is deceptively simple. According to its organizers, “The Montana Plan uses the State’s authority to define what powers corporations get and stops giving them the power to spend in our politics.” In 2026, organizers hope to place the “Transparent Election Initiative” before voters as a ballot measure to implement the Montana Plan.
They argue,
“For more than a century, Montana, like every state, has given all corporations the power to do everything legal. Turns out, we don’t have to do that.
“States don’t have to give corporations the power to spend in politics. So The Montana Plan simply stops granting that power.
“Citizens United held that corporations had a right to spend in politics. But if a corporation doesn’t have the power to act, that right can’t be used. That makes Citizens United irrelevant.”
But wait. Can Montana really do this? The Montana Plan’s argument is threefold.
First, Montana law expressly allows the state to change or repeal its corporate code at any time, for any reason. There is no such thing as a permanent claim to any power or authority.
Second, any changes to the corporate code apply to every corporation, whether new or existing. That means every corporation’s authority can be redefined by rewriting the law that originally authorized it.
Third, out-of-state corporations wishing to operate within Montana can only exercise the same rights that Montana corporations have. If Montana corporations can’t spend in our politics, neither can they.
As the Center for American Progress observed, even Justice Scalia, who wrote a concurring opinion in Citizens United, would agree generally with the idea that a corporation is limited to its charter. “To be sure,” Justice Scalia wrote, “in 1791 (as now) corporations could pursue only the objectives set forth in their charters.”
It further noted that charter limitations on corporations date back hundreds of years to the 1837 case of Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge. In that opinion, the Supreme Court cited English common law and held corporate charters must be strictly construed in favor of the public, with any ambiguities cutting against the corporation:
This, like many other cases, is a bargain between a company of adventurers and the public, the terms of which are expressed in the statute; and the rule of construction in all such cases, is now fully established to be this; that any ambiguity in the terms of the contract, must operate against the adventurers, and in favour of the public, and the plaintiffs can claim nothing that is not clearly given them by the act.
If you’re a corporation, what the state grants, the state may take away, so long as it does so equally for all.
The power to speak versus the right to speak
At the heart of the Montana Plan lies a fundamental question. While the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have the right to free speech, it has never addressed whether they have the power to speak. And that power comes directly from the grants of power provided by the states.
The only reason that corporations, like people, have the right to speak is that states have always granted them the full powers that any person might have to conduct business in the state. No one has ever thought to question whether this grant of power may be limited from the outset, but we are likely about to find out if the Montana Plan passes.
As explained by the Center for American Progress,
Think of it this way: Humans are born with the inherent power to live freely, pursue happiness, and shape their destiny. But they have not been granted the power to fly. Birds have, bats, pterodactyls—but not humans. It is useless to discuss whether humans have a right to fly, because without the power to do so, the right to do so has no meaning. Even if the Supreme Court decreed that humans had a constitutional right to fly, there is no amount of arm flapping that would result in humans taking to the skies, because they would still lack that ability. This lack of power to fly could not be held to infringe on the right to fly that the Supreme Court had recognized. It is simply an underlying reality that no court—not even the Supreme Court—can touch.
The history of corporate charters in the U.S. is also illustrative. At the outset, corporations were rare, and their powers were strictly limited to the activities set out in their charters. Such powers did not include the power to make political contributions. The notion of “general charters” that gave rise to this power arose much later.
And if we’re being originalist here, as the radical majority on the Supreme Court claims to be, then we need to see what rights corporations had at the time the First Amendment was written. As Harvard law professor John C. Coates IV observed,
The fact that corporations could only act in ways and to pursue ends authorized in their charters means that – until late in the nineteenth century, when ‘general purpose’ clauses became common in corporate charters – none of the corporations in existence at the time the First Amendment … was adopted was legally authorized to engage in speech as a business activity, particularly political speech.
In a twist of irony, Justice Scalia’s concurrence in Citizens United may have inadvertently provided the clue we needed to moot the entire opinion, at least with respect to political expenditures by corporations. In Footnote 5—in law school, you soon learn that some footnotes carry greater weight than the entirety of the opinion—Scalia was responding to the dissent’s argument that the common law generally prohibited corporate political spending. Justice Scalia, in his typical legal sneer, noted,
Of course even if the common law was ‘generally interpreted’ to prohibit corporate political expenditures as ultra vires [beyond its authority], that would have nothing to do with whether political expenditures that were authorized by a corporation’s charter could constitutionally be suppressed (Emphases added.)
But that which is authorized may be unauthorized, the Montana Plan organizers would argue. Even Scalia said so!
Nor would the change to the corporate code in any way affect the First Amendment rights of the individuals who seek to incorporate in the state. After all, the law says nothing about, and places no limits upon, what they can do personally with their money, including political expenditures. You don’t need a corporation to enjoy the full rights to speak, including by way of political contributions.
Legal challenges
While the Montana Plan looks and sounds great in principle, many dismiss it on the belief that a Supreme Court majority that wants to preserve the unfettered right of corporate money in our politics will find a way to strike it down.
But to do so, it would have to violate two basic principles.
First, a corporation would have to come before a federal court asking to strike down a state court’s corporation code, presumably on First Amendment grounds. That is a big ask for a court concerned with preserving traditional state powers and our system of federalism.
Second, what exactly would be the remedy? After all, the Montana Plan seeks to revise the state’s corporate code to set out specific enumerated powers that corporations will have going forward, just like the states did before they adopted general corporate powers provisions. Courts aren’t legislators, however. They don’t have the power to write in missing powers, only to strike down the offending law. Is the Supreme Court willing to strike down the entire power of Montana to authorize corporations simply because it did not grant the specific power of political speech to them?
That would open a very large can of worms and insert the court into what is traditionally a fundamental state-level power.
Assuming it could get past this, there is the problem of what legal scholars call “unconstitutional conditions.” Those are benefits that the government will only grant provided the beneficiary surrender constitutional rights, such as the Freedom of Speech. We’ve seen this in play recently with major universities and the Trump White House, and it admittedly feels wrong and overreaching.
This is a close call, but the Court has held that refusal by the government to do something, such as fund an abortion clinic, is not a surrender of a constitutional right. Likewise, a refusal by a state to grant corporations more powers is not a surrender of a constitutional right.
What the White House is doing now is different. It is targeting specific institutions and demanding specific, content-based changes to their internal policies, resulting in the imposition of unconstitutional conditions.
By contrast, a state that defines the powers that it grants to corporations so as not to include election and campaign contributions does so without regard to which campaign and which election. It applies to Democrats and Republicans alike.
A strong first step
No one can predict whether this reimagining of corporate power, as granted by the states, will succeed in biting into Citizens United. The Montana Plan is bold, but it still has to first pass muster with voters and then withstand furious legal challenges, made more difficult by a likely skeptical Supreme Court.
This doesn’t mean the fight isn’t worth pursuing, however. On the contrary, the political and legal battles over who ultimately has more power—the people of the states or the corporations that are authorized by them—could draw significant attention to the underlying problem.
It could ultimately force the Supreme Court to show its cards by pitting it against the very states that it has otherwise deferred to on other major issues, such as abortion. If it doesn’t want to take on this fight, it could simply agree that the issue is non-justiciable, either because it is a question for each state to resolve or because courts fundamentally don’t have the ability to rewrite corporate authorizing statutes.
If the Montana Plan succeeds, or even gets stuck for years in the courts, other states—particularly powerful blue states where many corporations are based—could join the cause. While not every state legislature, particularly the GOP-controlled ones, would be keen to follow suit, citizen referenda like the one we are seeing in Montana could force plebiscites in multiple states.
At the very least, this new effort could serve as an important notice that the era of big money in politics can and must draw to an end. And if anyone has the power to regulate the activities of corporations and to limit their powers, it is the very states that gave them their powers in the first place.
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I’m very happy to share this exclusive guest post by Christopher McKittrick, author of Very Miles: The Hitchcock Blonde Who Got Away. A Big Thank You to Christopher for this article! –Annmarie at Classic Movie Hub Tracking Vera Miles:Clarifying a … Continue reading →
Recently laid-off State Department employees. Credit: Getty Images.
For many years, American public servants were celebrated for their altruism. Non-military government jobs were a good living, a steady paycheck, and a chance to contribute, to be a part of a greater good. My, how far we’ve fallen.
Today, the government, our democratically elected government, is driven by fear. It’s being used by the Republican Party to oppress Americans rather than raise them up. Just look to Chicago or Portland or Los Angeles as masked federal agents wield unchecked force, instill fear on our streets, and threaten some of our most vulnerable populations.
The president is using his power to openly, even gleefully, punish his perceived political foes, opposition donors, and anyone who threatens his agenda. And now we have hundreds of thousands of government workers who are in fear of losing their livelihoods permanently. The government shutdown has become yet another tool to help further his tactics of intimidation and control.
The Republicans control the White House and Congress. The Supreme Court is as good as a rubber stamp on Trump’s agenda. But somehow, the don’t-look-at-me party in power is blaming everyone but themselves for the shutdown.
And let us state it clearly: shutdowns matter. And this one is like none we’ve witnessed, because those serving the public are now pawns in a seemingly interminable political game. Our economy is about to get sucker-punched when all these workers fail to get paychecks.
At this point in our up-is-sideways, the-sky-is-green political reality, it is almost quaint to believe our elected officials should want to govern, never mind govern effectively. It used to be that no matter what letter was beside an elected official’s name, he or she wanted to be a part of a political system designed to improve the lives of their constituents. You might disagree with their means to that end, but the end was not in question.
The Republicans are no longer working toward that end. If their recent actions are any indication, they do not care about a majority of the electorate — they care about bestowing favor on America’s wealthy, privileged class, and that includes themselves and their families.
When they do manage to govern, they make staggering and dangerous mistakes. The administration had to walk back two big whoppers in recent days.
On Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the United States was building a Qatari Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. After a not surprising hue and cry from both sides, he offered a clarification… on social media, “[T]o be clear, Qatar will not have their own base in the United States — nor anything like a base. We control the existing base, like we do with all partners,” he wrote.
Trump’s strategy to force an end to the government shutdown dovetails with his disdain for governing. He is making good on his threat of massive layoffs across the board, at the Department of Justice, the Office of Management and Budget, even the Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services.
On Saturday, the Trump administration fired hundreds of scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Accidentally. According to The New York Times, a “substantial procedural lapse” led to laying off leaders of the federal measles response team, doctors working to control an Ebola outbreak in Africa, and members of the epidemic intelligence services, among others. Within 24 hours, many had been recalled.
Those at the Department of Education weren’t as lucky. Trump’s March executive order and subsequent staff reductions all but closed the Department of Education. On Friday, he aimed to finish off the job, laying off almost 500 people, about 20% of the remaining staff. The new round of layoffs was mainly in the special education department, which will disproportionately affect the country’s most vulnerable students.
Over on Capitol Hill, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson had his own way of dealing with the shutdown: sending everyone home.
He did it, in part, to avoid seating the newest member of the House, Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva. She won a special election on September 23 in a landslide. Johnson doesn’t want to swear in Grijalva because she will be the final signature needed on a petition to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files. All roads seem to lead back to the Epstein files.
Johnson is more interested in protecting Trump, and whoever else is in those files, than he is in trying to end the government shutdown. Let’s be real— at least until billionaires’ private planes can’t take off due to a lack of air traffic controllers, Republicans are happy to let the shutdown continue.
Enter the Democrats, who have their first real opportunity to strategically challenge the president and the Republicans since Trump took office, again. They saw an opening and are choosing to fight rather than capitulate, as they have done before. And they chose what has been a winning strategy in the past, healthcare.
It is not a hard sell. If the subsidies are not extended most people who get health insurance through the Affordable Care Act will see their premiums skyrocket. An estimated 20 million people will lose coverage because they will no longer be able to afford it. Even a majority of MAGA Republicans want the Obamacare subsidies extended.
Some have argued that the Democrats should have demanded more than just subsidy extensions. Pick an outrage: inhumane immigration enforcement, obliteration of the Bill of Rights, taking food assistance away from millions of hungry children, etc. The mind boggles at the number of potential and righteous political battles to be fought
There are two big problems with forcing the administration to accept any curtailment of these policies. One, Trump is far less likely to accept a deal that contains any checks on his amassing power. And two, allowing Trump to own these very unpopular policy stances could help in the midterms.
While Republicans may not want to govern, or see the value in governing, the American people have grown accustomed to their government providing things like disaster relief, help for children with special needs, scientific expertise on infectious diseases, and government-backed student loans.
If Republicans in Congress are unwilling to or have no desire to provide even the minimum of services, more than a few of them may see themselves out of a job in 13 months.
The shutdown is not about blame or about winning or losing, and it shouldn’t be framed as such. Any government shutdown is a loss, period. It is a loss for federal workers and for the American people.
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As Donald Trump escalates his authoritarian vision with the deployment of National Guard troops to more U.S. cities, he is getting smacked down at every turn.
After Trump nationalized the Texas and Illinois National Guard and called up hundreds of troops purportedly to protect ICE agents and federal property in Chicago, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order to protect protesters and journalists from federal agents.
Then, federal judge April Perry blocked Trump’s actual deployment for two weeks with an additional temporary restraining order.
And absolutely eviscerated Trump’s ploy, and ICE itself in a brutal takedown.
Additionally, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson issued an executive order prohibiting ICE from using any city-owned buildings.
Let’s go Brandon!💪🏼
Additionally, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker exposed Trump’s real MO here.
Just a reminder that our Tuesday and Thursday content is free for all readers.
Fifty years ago this week, “Saturday Night Live” debuted. It was quite an experiment: a live, 90-minute sketch comedy show featuring musical guests and starting at 11:30 p.m. The experiment proved a success beyond everyone’s imagination. I don’t think even creator Lorne Michaels believed it would last five decades while maintaining its place in the cultural zeitgeist.
To celebrate SNL’s unprecedented achievement and anniversary, we thought we would highlight their second-ever musical guests, Simon & Garfunkel. Paul Simon was also the host.
Simon and Art Garfunkel were already folk-rock royalty when they appeared on SNL in 1975, having been one of the best-selling musical groups of the 1960s.
The two met for the first time at their Queens, New York elementary school in 1953. They quickly discovered harmonization and Simon began to write songs for the duo. But it wasn’t until 1965 that they hit it big when a remix of “The Sound of Silence” reached No. 1 on the pop charts.
In spite of their spectacular success, the two had a notoriously stormy relationship and broke up in 1970, only to stage several reunions over the years. Their SNL appearance was one of them.
The only video we could find of their 1975 SNL performance lives on Facebook. In order to view it you need to be a member of Facebook. For those of you who are, I encourage you to click on this link to see them sing their hit, “The Boxer,” on the show.
As you can imagine, there is no shortage of Simon & Garfunkel recordings. Here is an edited version of “The Boxer” from their 1981 Central Park concert, attended by 500,000 people and their 2009 reunion at Madison Square Garden. No membership necessary.
If you want to enjoy all the songs chosen for A Reason To Smile, you can listen to this Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly.
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Hey Everyone!
Please enjoy this month’s FREE after-dinner conversation with US, Janie & Paul, your comedy couple co-hosts.
In this episode Janie wonders if Tilly Norwood will reboot every Eddie Murphy character, Paul gets invited to Riyadh after our bathroom break (not really!), and together the duo does the math on Fonzie’s existence through American authoritarianism.
Does anyone have a blu-ray copy of a particular 1994 film that captures our imagination? Let us know in the comments!
Because physical media is in danger,
Janie & PFT
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Set aside for the moment the unlikely outcome of a successful Gaza ceasefire. It may work, it may not. Historically, these things tend to simmer things down for a while until one side or the other pops off. This latest war has been the worst in memory and, though it pains me to say, I don’t think I can ever forgive Israel for the war crimes, ethnic clea…
Hey, that’s us back there. We were in the writer’s room and they didn’t think to show us in the movie :(
Well there has been so much going on with Late Night TV of late and now, the DEVIL is part of it? This film was new to both me and Paul, and it takes place ON Halloween! Can’t get more festive for spooky season than THAT! Buckle in for some 1970’s la…
Just two weeks after Donald Trump’s new hand-picked U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, MAGA loyalist Lindsey Halligan, indicted James Comey on specious grounds, she has now done the same to New York State Attorney General Leticia James. This comes almost three weeks after Trump accidentally posted a public demand that his Attorney General Pam Bondi go after his political enemies. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” The two-count indictment accuses James of bank fraud, claiming on loan documents that she would use a home she purchased in Norfolk, VA as a second home and instead using it as an investment property. The financial benefit the indictment claims James received as a result of the alleged fraud: less than $19,000.
James famously prosecuted Trump for financial fraud, receiving a judgment of half a billion dollars against him. While a New York appeals court recently upheld the judgment against Trump, they threw out the fine, finding it excessive. In response to the indictment, James said, “This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system. I am not fearful — I am fearless. We will fight these baseless charges aggressively, and my office will continue to fiercely protect New Yorkers and their rights.”
The new owners of CBS, billionaire Larry Ellison and his son David Ellison, believe CBS News is broken. And like their friend Donald Trump, they’re convinced the cure for a fracture is a sledgehammer. Let’s call it restoration by disruption.
Enter Bari Weiss, the new editor-in-chief of CBS News.
Weiss has been called a provocateur and is one of the most polarizing figures in today’s American media landscape. She has been praised for her Rolodex, her energy, and relative youth — she is 41 years-old. Weiss is unabashedly anti-woke, anti-DEI and pro-Israel, though she calls herself a “politically homeless” moderate.
The former opinion writer for The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times is not a reporter. She has never worked in television news and she has never led a staff larger than a few dozen. That all changed this week when David Ellison, whose Skydance Media recently acquired CBS, installed Weiss in a position created for her. She will not report to the president of CBS News — as one might expect — but to David Ellison directly.
Weiss’s management style has been called abrasive and disorganized. “It is chaos. She would admit that she can be difficult to work with. Even for people who totally agree with her,” a former Weiss staffer told Oliver Darcy of “Status.”
She is known to curse — a lot. At one of her first meetings at CBS News she told the assembled staffers to “cover the f*****g news.” According to some who witnessed this opening, it was met with smirks and eyerolls.
My friend, Tom Bettag, a former executive producer at CBS News said of Weiss, “An editor-in-chief is the leader of the newsroom. A leader is only as effective as he or she has been able to win the respect of the newsroom.” It will take more than salty language to win over CBS News. It will take integrity and a spine.
The Ellisons got more than just Weiss and her attendant baggage in the deal; they also got her hugely successful Substack platform, “The Free Press,” which she started in 2021. It is considered a conservative online political commentary and opinion site, not a hard-hitting news outlet as David Ellison himself described it. It is known for contrarian opinions and critique of “the woke left.”
What Weiss lacks in journalistic bonafides, she makes up for in influence. Weiss has the ear of the billionaire class. “The Free Press” is reportedly a daily must-read for the uber-wealthy who want to know what’s happening in American politics. David Ellison wanted it and wanted her clout.
For $150 million, he got both.
Though “The Free Press” is one of Substack’s most lucrative newsletters with a large readership, it is not worth $150 million. But that price tag is pocket change for David Ellison and his father, whose estimated net worth is north of $300 billion.
Though Ellison can afford to overpay for “The Free Press,” he is demanding massive layoffs at CBS News, 10% across the board. The threat of layoffs will do nothing for morale, which has to be at its lowest point, and will make the staff compliant.
In a piece on “The Free Press” announcing her move to CBS, Weiss wrote, “If the illiberalism of our institutions has been the story of the last decade, we now face a different form of illiberalism emanating from our fringes. On the one hand, an America-loathing far left. On the other, a history-erasing far right. These extremes do not represent the majority of the country, but they have increasing power in our politics, our culture, and our media ecosystem.”
While one must keep an open mind, it is hard to do so when such a statement portends a push for “bothsidesism” and arguments reliant on false equivalences. There can be no equivalences drawn between the two political extremes in this country, especially when one extreme is led by a man who rarely speaks without lying. But Weiss’s modus operandi is giving the fictitious illusion of fair and balanced coverage through such mechanisms.
It is also hard to believe Weiss will be an equitable steward of the storied news division in light of how the Ellisons acquired it.
In July, Skydance Media bought Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS, for $8 billion. The deal had to be approved by the Federal Communications Commission, which it did after Paramount settled a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump for $16 million. As part of the deal, Skydance had to agree to appoint an ombudsman. Kenneth Weinstein, an ally of Trump and a head of a conservative think tank, was chosen.
That deal and the hiring of Weiss signals to everyone, especially to the man in the Oval Office, that CBS is no longer independent, but under the tutelage of a conservative billionaire who is putting more than his thumb on the scale.
Another example came last month when, after complaints from the White House about an interview with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on “Face the Nation,” CBS agreed not to edit taped interviews on the show.
The American people will pay the price for this move, as will the journalists of CBS News who can no longer credibly serve as watchdogs because the ones they are meant to hold to account are signing their paychecks and hobnobbing with the president.
Rather than doing their jobs as sentinels of democracy, who independently cover the news and hold the powerful accountable, they now have to be concerned about how their pitches, their stories, and their scripts will be received by someone with a clear political agenda. They will be dogged by worry that anything they do, any question they ask, will be scrutinized to ensure that it suits the political powers.
Anything that runs afoul of Trump’s agenda may be flagged and is unlikely to be aired unaltered, if aired at all. No journalist or their work can remain unaffected by toiling in such an environment.
The ones who remain at CBS will work hard and do the best they can under the circumstances. But they now are being forced to deal daily with this new reality.
I wish I had been wrong decades ago when I warned about the corporatization and politicalization of the news media. But in Weiss’s ascension, it is clear that CBS News has tipped over the precipice: that corporate overlords in concert with an autocratic president are demolishing support for independent journalism in favor of financial gain, and in so doing undermining a key foundation of our democracy.
I have a deep and abiding love for the institution and the people of CBS News whose hard work made it, and continues to make it, something to be immensely proud of and a service to the nation. Their sacrifices, including some who gave their lives in far corners of the world, have long shined a light on the truth.
It is a dark day in the halls of CBS News, where the portraits of television news pioneers once hung — Cronkite, Murrow, Sevareid, Collingwood. They were journalists who made television a trusted source of information. Whom and what are we to believe today?
This is the lens through which the new, unfortunate reality at CBS News must be seen. This is why it should matter to every American who believes in the importance of free and independent journalism.
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White House Border Czar Tom Homan talks to reporters after a television interview outside the West Wing of the White House.Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
Considering the extent of Trump’s criminality, he and his minions ought to be much better covering up their crimes. Instead their ham-handed approach has been laughable, often making bad matters far worse.
That pattern is repeating as Trump and his Justice Department seek to quash their latest scandal. In late September, MSNBC reported that during an FBI undercover investigation last year, Tom Homan, who now serves as Trump’s border czar, was caught in an FBI sting accepting $50,000 in cash. In exchange, he allegedly promised FBI agents posing as business executives that they would receive favorable government contracts in a second Trump term.
At the time of the initial reporting, the Justice Department had already shut down the investigation, having “found no evidence of illegal activity” and claiming the case was just “the Biden Department of Justice…using its resources to target President Trump’s allies.” In the wake of the report, Homan himself went on Fox to issue a truly bizarre non-denial denial. And just this week, Attorney General Pam Bondi went before Congress to answer questions, including about the investigation. It was a complete train wreck.
As with the Epstein case, at every turn, Trump officials are inspiring new questions about the investigation, reinforcing Homan’s apparent guilt rather than bolstering their contention that there’s no there there. If Homan was so innocent, if there truly was just smoke and no fire, he would be on cable TV each night defending himself. But ever since his disastrous Fox Network appearance in September, he’s been nowhere to be found.
As this new scandal grows, we return to the details of the accusations against Homan. Is it true, as Homan claimed on Fox, that he “did nothing illegal”? And if so, why won’t he or the DoJ come right out and deny it?
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The Anatomy Of A Scandal
According to MSNBC’s initial report, the federal investigation into Homan originated during the summer of 2024, “after a subject in a separate investigation claimed Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for awarding contracts should Trump win the presidential election.”
Undercover FBI agents, who posed as executives seeking government contracts, then met with a business colleague of Homan, reportedly a former U.S. immigration official who had previously worked under Homan. That person ultimately connected the agents with Homan, who “indicated he would facilitate securing contracts for them in exchange for money once he was in office.”
On September 20, 2024, the agents set up the sting operation and “with hidden cameras recording the scene at a meeting spot in Texas, Homan accepted $50,000 in bills.”
Nothing further was pursued last year, with the FBI deciding to “keep monitoring Homan to determine if he landed an official role and would make good on steering contracts in a future Trump administration.”
But once the investigation was in the hands of the Trump Justice Department in early 2025, the investigation was soon sidelined by Trump loyalist and then-acting deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who opposed the investigation, calling it a “deep state” operation.
The investigation was officially shut down this summer after FBI Director Kash Patel asked for a review of the case.
The Department of Justice’s official reason for quashing the investigation was that there was “no credible evidence” of wrongdoing.
In a statement provided to MSNBC, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said, “This matter originated under the previous administration and was subjected to a full review by FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors. They found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing. The Department’s resources must remain focused on real threats to the American people, not baseless investigations. As a result, the investigation has been closed.”
This was the same message Homan tried to communicate during his disastrous Fox News interview within days of the initial report. In the interview, Homan claimed “I did nothing criminal, I did nothing illegal,” but, notably fell short of denying the charge that he had taken the cash at all.
Homan acted as if simply taking the money before he was in a position to carry out a quid pro quo is not “bribery” per se. But it is still very much a crime.
Per MSNBC,
It is still a crime, however, for anyone to seek money to improperly influence federal contracts, the legal experts said, whether they are a public official or not, and whether they ever delivered on their promise or not. People in this category could be charged with conspiracy or fraud, they say.
As Randall Eliason, the former chief of public corruption prosecutions in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. and former white-collar law professor put it:
“[T]hey can be charged with conspiracy to commit bribery. In a conspiracy charge, the crime is the agreement to commit a criminal act in the future.”
No wonder Homan has apparently been banished from any and all media appearances.
But one central problem for the administration is that the FBI was very much convinced there was a reason to initiate an investigation of Homan. And subsequently, not only did they conduct what internal DoJ documents indicate was a successful sting operation, but the DoJ’s own Public Integrity Section, which is described as “a squad of seasoned public corruption prosecutors typically assigned to sensitive cases involving elected and other high-profile figures,” agreed to take on the case in late November.
So, now, as the Trump administration seeks to spin Homan as an innocent victim, it has no choice but to try to undermine the credibility of the FBI itself, attempting to frame the investigation as yet another example of the so-called “weaponization” of the Justice Department under Joe Biden.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson slammed the probe as a “blatantly political investigation, which found no evidence of illegal activity, is yet another example of how the Biden Department of Justice was using its resources to target President Trump’s allies rather than investigate real criminals and the millions of illegal aliens who flooded our country.”
“This was another example of the weaponization of the Biden Department of Justice against one of President Trump’s strongest and most vocal supporters,” she said, accusing the FBI of “going undercover to try and entrap” Homan.
But this spin falls flat. The fact is, the FBI Director under Biden at the time was Christopher Wray, a registered Republican. And “Biden’s” Justice Department famously prosecuted Democrats, including Senator Robert Menendez and even Joe Biden’s own son, Hunter.
No wonder scrutiny into this scandal is growing every day, in spite of the amateur hour attempts to quash it.
Deeper Questions Arise
Whether or not Homan was properly cleared of any wrongdoing, and whether or not this was all a matter of a politicized Justice Department, two questions present big problems for the Trump administration. And were there truly no criminality here, they should be easy for the administration to answer:
First, where is the $50,000 in cash that Homan allegedly accepted? Second, will they release the tape they have of Homan accepting the bribe, which The New York Times reports was “recorded on audiotape”?
During a press briefing in the aftermath of the Homan scandal breaking, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt initially tried to deny Homan ever took the money in the first place. But as Senate Judiciary Democrats made clear in a press release this week, that didn’t take:
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt initially claimed that “Mr. Homan never took the $50,000 that you’re referring to,” but then walked back her denial by saying that the sting operation was just “FBI agents going undercover to try and entrap one of the President’s top allies and supporters.”
When given the chance by Laura Ingraham to deny it himself, Tom Homan did not. Nor did Attorney General Pam Bondi when testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week.
When asked what became of the $50,000, Bondi not only failed to refute the transaction, but she fired back at the Democrats with increasingly deranged verbal attacks—a clear sign that she had no good answer for them and only sought to deflect in a way Donald Trump would approve of.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asked Bondi, “What became of the $50,000 in cash that the FBI delivered to Mr. Homan?” “Are you saying they did not deliver $50,000 in cash to Mr. Homan?” “Did the FBI get it back?” “Did Homan keep the $50,000?”
Bondi wouldn’t give a straight answer to any of these questions, only repeating the DoJ’s canned response about “no wrongdoing,” referring Sen. Whitehouse to FBI Director Kash Patel, and going on the attack against him in a bizarre non-sequitor about “dark money.”
And when asked by Senator Adam Schiff whether she would support a request by the Judiciary Committee for the FBI to produce an audio and/or videotape recording of the transfer of cash from Homan to the undercover agents, she lashed out at Schiff and once again tried to pass the buck to Patel even though she is his boss.
Not once did Bondi claim that Homan never took the money, nor did she claim no such audio or video exists.
Pursuing Accountability
In the meantime, members of Congress have requested copies of any audio or video the FBI may have of the transfer, and good government groups like Democracy Forward have submitted FOIA requests for it, which the administration seems to be completely ignoring. And so Democracy Forward is now suing the DoJ.
The organization says the legal challenge aims to “compel compliance” from the FBI and DOJ to release the purported recording of Homan accepting $50,000 from undercover FBI agents in Sept. 2024.
“Numerous members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate have asked for the production of the recording of Mr. Homan’s acceptance of this cash payment,” the lawsuit notes, “and further investigation of the ethical concerns raised by and the Administration’s closure of the consequent investigation.”
In addition to this lawsuit, House Judiciary Democrats are now pursuing information from Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, who worked on the Trump transition team, as it increasingly appears the decision to cover up this scandal was made prior to Donald Trump’s inauguration.
As Reps. Jamie Raskin and Eric Swalwell wrote to Woodward:
Under standard FBI procedures for vetting senior appointees, the Bureau would have notified appropriate DOJ leadership about the ongoing criminal investigation into Mr. Homan during that transition period, particularly given his selection for such a high-profile position. DOJ leadership would have, in turn, informed appropriate personnel on the Trump-Vance Transition Team. We have every reason to believe the normal process was followed here. That means the Trump team knew that its “Border Czar” nominee was under active FBI investigation for accepting a cash bribe in a paper bag, and, nonetheless, President Trump proceeded to formally appoint Mr. Homan to the role on January 20, 2025.
Concluding:
Americans need to know whether the President colluded with Justice Department leadership to protect a corrupt official at the center of the President’s immigration crackdown whom he knowingly appointed despite evidence of bribery. And Mr. Homan’s tacit admission that he accepted a paper bag stuffed with $50,000 in cash, combined with the White House’s defensive claims about government “entrapment,” all further suggest the likelihood of pay-to- play corruption at the highest levels of this Administration.
Then there’s the biggest tell of all that there is fire behind the smoke: Tom Homan has disappeared from all media since he last appeared on Laura Ingraham’s show in September.
But if Congressional Democrats have their way, the next media appearance for Homan may be under oath before a committee.
I’m dubious about a Trump-led Gaza peace deal, but if it comes to pass that will be a very good thing. As I’ve said time and again on these pages, I don’t speak much about foreign affairs because I don’t feel like I understand the problems of other countries well enough to comment. I barely understand what the hell is going on in my own country.
I’m a Jew, of course, although until this war I don’t know whether or not I would have considered myself a Zionist. My feelings about modern Israel have always been mixed. Not because I reject a Jewish homeland but because I reject a Jewish homeland if its existence necessitates the suffering of others. Which is why I’ve always favored the two-state solution if Israel wants to preserve its Jewish demographic majority. If they don’t, and if the Palestinians are cool with it, then a democratic, non-sectarian Israel would also be a-ok with this fella.
Not that anybody asked.
If this peace deal lasts, it will be a very good thing for both sides of the conflict and, gallingly, a very good thing for Donald Trump. As much as I loathe the man and his administration, I think it’s important to recognize when good things happen on their watch. I recognize the danger of being blinded to good news when the person I despise can, rightfully, take some credit for bringing about such glad tidings.
Does that mean I will now submit a Nobel Peace Prize nomination in the name of Donald John Trump? It does not. The idea remains as absurd now as it did before this peace deal was announced. This man is as committed to peace as Elon Musk is to his children.
If he really wants that committee in Oslo to give him more than passing glance, maybe he should focus on getting American troops out of American cities. Seems a lot easier than forging a lasting peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians. The only person he would have to consult is himself. Admittedly not the easiest person to work with, but I believe our dealmaker-in-chief is up to the task, if he can stay awake long enough to have a conversation with the old guy in the mirror.
He might also consider halting the extrajudicial killing of civilians on open waters in the hopes of ginning up an excuse to invade Venezuela. Again, not the most peace-loving thing to do. Nor is threatening your political opponents with prison, as he’s done since entering politics. The difference between the chants of “lock her up” then and now, however, is that he’s actually locking them up – or at least trying to. Apparently, the cases against both James Comey and NY DA Leticia James are falling apart. Not that actual guilty verdicts are the point – the persecution itself is the aim. Prison time would just be one extra reason to hoist a glass of toilet wine.
Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine continues unabated, though Trump has made murmurings of imposing various sanctions on his BFF. Those sanctions have yet to happen, however, despite Putin’s continued destruction of Ukraine and his recent drone incursions into neighboring countries. It sort of feels like he’s considering going ham on Eastern Europe. To what end, I don’t know, other than to hasten his own demise. Even so, it’s a worrying development and I’d like to see our Peace President take a stronger hand against his chief benefactor.
And yet… despite all the terribleness of our second reign of Burger King, I’m celebrating a potential peace deal in Gaza. Hostages will be coming home, bombs will stop falling, aid will get into Gaza, and maybe the Palestinians can begin to get their lives back – those who still have their lives. Ditto for the Israelis who lost people on the October 7th massacre. If the peace holds.
As I said, I’m not optimistic considering the peace never holds, but if it ever does, it first has to start. Nor am I optimistic about peace here at home, although the nature of our warring remains, thankfully, confined to ICE goons shooting pepper balls at guys in inflatable dinosaur suits. Oh, and shooting a pastor in the head with some sort of non-lethal projectile. Oh, and shooting an American woman in Chicago five times with actual bullets. So yeah… nothing on the level of Gazan atrocities but nor is it, shall we say, great.
Good news sometimes comes from unexpected places. I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene is out there trashing the president and Dolly Parton remains alive. Some good news for me would be if you subscribed.
The good people in Oslo are unlikely to present our president with a peace prize anytime soon. Trump’s campaigning for the damned thing makes him appear even smaller and more unseemly than he already does. The thought of him, perhaps, one day receiving such an award does make me smile, though, because this man of peace will find no peace within himself even if he does one day take home the Nobel gold. The world will still hate him but, more importantly, he’ll still hate himself. Which he should, because he’s awful.
Silver Screen Standards: Mad Love (1935) I’m firmly in the “every day is Halloween” camp when it comes to classic horror movies, and I especially love the lesser-known, off-the-wall, really weird examples of the genre, from Murders in the Zoo … Continue reading →
While the Trump administration continues its cover-up of the Epstein files, Trump world is currently engaged in yet another cover-up, which has gotten less attention. Last year, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan accepted $50,000 in cash from FBI agents posing as business executives in exchange for the promise of government contracts in a second Trump term. Trump’s DoJ has since shut down the investigation.
How do we know they’re hiding something? For one, Tom Homan is nowhere to be found, hiding from any and all media scrutiny. Add to that Attorney General Pam Bondi’s combative appearance at a Senate hearing yesterday, during which she deflected questions about the money Homan accepted, awkwardly reading from a pre-scripted statement denying any wrongdoing.
In tomorrow’s piece, asks “where is Tom Homan?” and explores the Trump administration’s attempt to frame Homan as the victim of the “weaponization of the Justice Department” under Biden. Every accusation is a confession, after all.
And in case you missed it, on Monday, guest writer gave us a history lesson about the Wounded Knee massacre, a stain on our government’s history, whose participants Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are shamefully continuing to honor with Medals of Honor.
Yesterday, explored the potent power of fear when it comes to political persuasion and the stark difference between how Trump and Republicans weaponize it versus how the left does.
Somehow, with the government shut down, federal troops decamped in a bunch of American cities, and the Constitution in shreds, the day feels relatively calm. That’s one of the lessons of living through whatever this is; some days still feel relatively normal. Today, for example, I did normal-day stuff. Hung out with my son, went to the post office, made dinner plans. On days like today, I think to myself, Am I just overreacting to everything? And then I remember what I mean by “everything,” and I think nope.
Because the underappreciated lesson of Chicken Little isn’t that she was always wrong - although it’s important to remember that the sky isn’t always falling – it’s that the day came when she was right. So I can understand why there are some in this country who think the left are just a bunch of panicky Subaru Outback drivers who wouldn’t understand the difference between an acorn falling on their heads and the sky falling.
Every president in my memory has been subjected to various groups painting them as “fascists” and “Nazis” and “traitors.” There’s a famous poster that hangs on the sixth floor of Dealy Plaza in Dallas. It reads “Wanted for Treason” just below a simulated mugshot of JFK. You know, that famous traitor John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
So, this kind of shit has been with us for a long time, with various Chicken Littles from various political organizations warning of impending doom. Are we living through nothing more than an extension of that? Or is this something else entirely? You can probably guess my answer.
Of course, every moment feels unprecedented when it’s your first time experiencing it. Many Black people I’ve spoken to, for example, aren’t at all shocked by what’s going on here. Their only surprise is that it’s happening to white people, too.
The nation has experienced great upheavals in its past. The 1960’s, 1930’s, 1860’s. We’ve had political violence, economic tumult, fractured alliances, civil war. Thankfully, we’re not quite at Civil War II, although with the lack of original intellectual property these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if that particular sequel is already on the schedule for release.
Remember when JFK turned over the sovereignty of the U.S. to the communist controlled United Nations? Such. A. Bummer!!!
There isn’t a good American analogue for our current moment. For that, we have to look further afield to other nations who gave themselves over to demagogues. Such regimes rarely end politely.
And now it’s turn to deal with, perhaps, historical inevitability. Democracies always strain under the idiocy of their own citizens. How often have people voted into office those who would end their freedom? Or, how often have strongmen replaced with one bad regime with another? We’re luckier than most because we’ve had 250 years to sink our American roots into democratic soil. We may have gotten lazy with our freedom but I don’t think most Americans are ready to throw away their own liberties even if they’re willing to do so for their fellow Americans. Which might mean that, in the end, we may need Republicans to save the Republic.
Think about it: for MAGA to be removed from their vexing perch atop American governance and eradicated from American life will require a wholesale rejection of their authoritarian project. We don’t get there unless a majority of Republicans join Democrats in opposing this madman. I’m not talking about the MAGA faithful. Those deplorables are gone, baby. I mean those who felt uneasy for pulling the lever for this turd. What will it take for their support to erode? He’s already underwater on every polling issue and growing more unpopular by the day.
Which means we’re in a race against time. They’re reading the same polling data as everybody else. They know they’ve got a limited amount of time to consolidate their power and get their people and systems into place before the midterms. I don’t know what the plan is for next November, but I feel confident that “free and fair elections” isn’t it. Which isn’t to say they’ll succeed, but I’m also unwilling to say they won’t.
In the meantime, we run errands. We do laundry. We talk about “Love is Blind.” (I mean, I don’t because I’ve never seen it and will never watch it because reality television sits atop Maslow’s Hierarchy of Shit.) We watch the baseball playoffs. Those of you who have experienced a death in the family are probably familiar with that surreal sensation of walking through the world suffering a loss while, all around, people are carrying on as if everything’s normal. Don’t they understand what has been lost? They don’t. And even today, I wonder whether my fellow Americans are experiencing the same sense of profound loss and dislocation as those of us paying strict attention to this unfolding American tragedy. If the line at the Mr. Softee ice cream truck was any indication this glorious autumn afternoon, probably not. As always, I hope I’m blowing all of this way out of proportion and that, in a couple years, when things have gone back to normal, I’ll look like a fool for running around yelling that the sky is falling.
I had forgotten that the reason Chicken Little thought the sky was falling was because an acorn dropped on her head. Chicken Little, I think it’s fair to say, was a fucking idiot. Subscribe?
Isn’t that what we all hope right now? To be thought foolish rather than prescient? Because being thought of as a fool means that our worst fears weren’t realized. But the thing that keeps me wondering is that Chicken Little was wrong right up until the moment she was right.
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