Category: FirstAmendment

Trump builds strong impeachment case against himself

Posted on by Emily Singer

The United States' descent into authoritarianism accelerated over the weekend, as President Donald Trump used the power of the presidency to punish his enemies and reward his allies—just like a dictator would do.

On Saturday, Trump admitted that he fired the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia because he would not charge his perceived enemies with crimes—a blatant example of the kind of lawfare he wrongly says he’s been subjected to.

Trump then demanded that Attorney General Pam Bondi appoint someone who will charge California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and New York state Attorney General Tish James with federal crimes, even though there is no evidence to warrant such charges.

Trump made the comment on Saturday in a Truth Social message, which sounded a lot like he was trying to direct-message Bondi rather than make a public post.

Trump wrote:

Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, “same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.” Then we almost put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a really bad Republican past. A Woke RINO, who was never going to do his job. That’s why two of the worst Dem Senators PUSHED him so hard. He even lied to the media and said he quit, and that we had no case. No, I fired him, and there is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so. Lindsey Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a lot. We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT

Later Saturday night, Trump officially announced he was appointing Halligan to replace ousted U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert. 

Halligan, who served as one of Trump’s personal attorneys, is currently working on the Trump administration’s effort to whitewash American history by purging the Smithsonian museums of content Trump and Republicans think promotes “improper ideology.”

Meanwhile, also on Saturday, MSNBC and The New York Times both reported that Trump's racist border czar, Tom Homan, was caught in an FBI sting in September 2024, in which he allegedly accepted a $50,000 cash bribe from two undercover agents posing as businessmen, in exchange for getting those agents federal contracts in a potential Trump administration. 

But when Trump took office, the investigation was closed after FBI Director Kash Patel got involved.

That means Trump is seeking to prosecute his enemies who did not break the law, while letting his allies off after committing apparent violations of the law.

Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks during a news conference at the White House on Aug. 11.

“White House knew Homan had accepted $50K to influence contracts. They appointed him anyways. Then they disbanded the DOJ's Public Integrity unit and quashed the Homan investigation. There's no end to the corruption in Trump's White House,” Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon wrote in a post on X.

If that lawfare wasn't terrifying enough, the Department of Defense told media outlets that they are no longer permitted to report on unauthorized information.

“Information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified,” reads a memo sent to reporters and obtained by the Associated Press.

If reporters do not agree to become stenographers for the Pentagon, they risk losing their press credentials—a move that experts say is a blatant violation of the First Amendment.

“This policy operates as a prior restraint on publication, which is considered the most serious of First Amendment violations,” Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told CNN.

That is just the latest First Amendment violation for the Trump administration. Last week, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr demanded that ABC remove late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel from the air or else face consequences. The network folded.

Ultimately, Trump’s actions during this weekend alone should get him impeached and removed from office. But given that Congress is filled with Republican yes-men who excuse Dear Leader’s actions both because they are scared to anger the MAGA base and because they are okay with lawlessness if it benefits them.

Trump spends weekend in full dictator mode—plus golf

Posted on by Emily Singer

President Donald Trump thrust the country even further into a constitutional crisis over the weekend with a series of blatantly illegal actions that left legal scholars sounding alarm bells about the future of the United States.

Not only has Trump declared speech he doesn’t like to be illegal, he is even ignoring court orders as part of his deportation quest.

“Court order defied. First of many as I've been warning and start of true constitutional crisis,” Mark Zaid, a lawyer whom Trump targeted by removing his security clearance, wrote in a post on X. 

Zaid also predicted that the actions Trump took this weekend “[u]ltimately will lead to Trump impeachment proceedings” if Democrats win control of Congress.

Trump began his past weekend by baselessly accusing media outlets that do not publish universally positive news about him of engaging in unlawful activity, saying in a nakedly partisan speech at the Department of Justice on Friday, “It’s totally illegal what they do. I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal." 

President Donald Trump waves from the stairs of Air Force One upon his arrival at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on. March 17, 2025

On the same day, Trump signed an executive order targeting the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, revoking security clearances of lawyers who work at the firm, and saying he will cancel the contracts of any companies or entities that are represented by the law firm’s attorneys. 

He targeted this law firm because it hired a prosecutor who worked on former special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia. Trump also targeted the firm because it employed a lawyer who worked at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which successfully prosecuted Trump for falsifying business records.

Trump had already targeted two other large law firms—Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling—for similar reasons, all an attempt to try to scare lawyers out of representing people or causes Trump doesn’t like.

When Trump issued the new executive order against Paul, Weiss, a federal judge had already blocked part of Trump’s order against Perkins Coie, whose lawyers Trump tried to ban from federal buildings. U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell accused the Trump administration of illegally retaliating against the firm, which she said “sends little chills down my spine,” The Washington Post reported.

Not content with that illegality, Trump also effectively axed seven federal agencies created and funded by Congress, including the government-funded media outlet Voice of America. It was the latest time Trump ignored Congress’ directives by making the unilateral decision to cancel congressionally appropriated spending—many of which have already been overturned by federal judges. 

On Saturday, Trump invoked an 18th century law that the United States once used to shamefully lock up Japanese-Americans in internment camps during World War II, using it to justify deporting immigrants without due process.

Trump declared that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a foreign terrorist organization and an invading force, and used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—which allows for noncitizens to be deported without due process if the president declares that the U.S. is at war—to say that anyone he deems a member of Tren de Aragua will be subject to “immediate apprehension, detention, and removal, and further that they shall not be permitted residence in the United States.”

“The United States is not at war, nor has it been invaded. The president’s anticipated invocation of wartime authority—which is not needed to conduct lawful immigration enforcement operations—is the latest step in an accelerating authoritarian playbook,” Democracy Forward President and CEO Skye Perryman, whose organization sued the Trump administration over the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, said in a news release. 

“From improperly apprehending American citizens, to violating the ability of communities to peacefully worship, to now improperly trying to invoke a law that is responsible for some of our nation’s most shameful actions, this administration’s immigration agenda is as lawless as it is harmful,” she continued.

In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador on March 16, 2025.

Trump put more than 230 Venezuelans he accused of being Tren de Aragua members on a plane and sent them to a violent prison in El Salvador, where thousands of men are housed in cramped cells and are never allowed outdoors. It’s unclear if any of the men on the plane were actually members of the gang, with one lawyer for one of the deported immigrants saying that his client had been wrongfully labeled a gang member because of misinterpreted tattoos, The New York Times reported. 

Trump sent the immigrants to El Salvador despite a judge ordering him to turn the planes around and return the immigrants to the United States, a blatant violation of the separation of powers. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the administration did not follow the order because "[a] single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil." 

Even more disturbing is that the Trump administration then posted a propaganda video to his Truth Social profile. The video depicts the deportations, with masked jail officials mistreating the Venezuelans whom Trump sent to El Salvador, possibly never to be seen again.

And on Sunday, Trump took his lawlessness to new heights when he ridiculously declared in a batshit-crazy Truth Social post that pardons former President Joe Biden issued to members of Congress on the now-defunct committee that probed the Capitol insurrection are "VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT."

Trump said Biden’s pardons of the members of Congress are void because he baselessly claimed that Biden did not know that the pardons were issued. He appears to have based this new conspiracy theory off an article in the right-wing New York Post, which said that a “key aide” to Biden determined which orders he would sign and which would be signed by autopen.

However, from the Post’s own report:

One Biden White House source told The Post they suspect that a key aide to the then-president may have made unilateral determinations on what to auto-sign. The Post is not publishing that staffer’s name due to the lack of concrete evidence and refutations by other colleagues.

Meanwhile, as the United States delved deeper into authoritarianism, Trump was more concerned with his favorite pastime: golf.

In a move taken straight from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s playbook, Trump congratulated himself for winning a golf championship at one of his shitty golf properties in Florida, writing in a Truth Social post: "Such a great honor! The Awards dinner is tonight, at the Club. I want to thank the wonderful Golf Staff, and all of the many fantastic golfers, that participated in the even. Such fun!"

We are in seriously dark times.  

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Trump again threatens the media. Will the media care?

Posted on by Mark Sumner

In an infamous article from 1922, The New York Times introduced the United States to a rising German politician by insisting that "Hitler's anti-Semitism was not so violent or genuine as it sounded." It would be nice to think that in the intervening century the nation’s largest media outlets have learned a lesson. And they have. They’ve learned to lean into it.

As Daily Kos’ Laura Clawson reported on Tuesday, a new study shows that the media is willing to cut Donald Trump infinite slack when it comes to using dehumanizing and threatening language toward everyone he sees as an opponent. Which is … everyone. Democrats. Republicans. Former members of his staff. Judges. The whole legal system. Steve Jobs’ widow.

But no one seems as eager to indulge Trump as America’s leading news outlets. It’s not just that they’re willing to look the other way when he attacks others; they are also eternally willing to bend over and take another one for team “objective journalism.” Except what they’re promoting isn’t anything like fairness, and what they’re protecting certainly isn’t some platonic ideal of truth.  

The nation’s major media outlets are begging Trump to hurt them again. Hurt them good. Oh, and to destroy the nation while he’s at it.

Overnight, Trump attacked MSNBC. The reason for this isn’t particularly clear and doesn’t particularly matter. However, in this attack, Trump makes an overt threat against the network, its leader, and the whole concept of the First Amendment.

In response to Trump’s attack, NBC News has issued this heartfelt reply: silence. But then, why wouldn’t they? They also didn’t comment back in September, when Trump threatened NBC’s parent company and insisted they should be investigated for “Country Threatening Treason.”

Silence in response to Trump’s threats is what major media outlets do.

Trump already declared the free press “the enemy of the people.” He already put journalists in cages so that his supporters could jeer them as Trump pointed them out for mockery. He didn’t do these things in the early days of his 2016 campaign. He did them while occupying the White House. Trump stood behind the bully pulpit and regularly informed the American public that the media was their enemy.

Those journalists were in a cage for a rally that Trump held in 2018, far from any presidential election. That the link to that Iowa rally is from an Australian news outlet is not a coincidence, as the reporter from that outlet seems to be the only one who was shocked by the way journalists were being pointed out for threats and derision, or by how an undercover filmmaker approached the cage to whisper that he was too afraid to try and conduct interviews, or how they weren’t even allowed to go to the bathroom without being supervised by a member of Trump’s staff. By that point, American journalists following Trump seemed to have simply accepted this as their lot.

Just over a month ago, Trump threatened journalists with prison rape unless they gave up sources who were informing on Trump’s crimes. And those same journalists went back to work the next day, cutting Trump every possible break.

The biggest of those breaks is simply this: Acting as if because Trump espouses fascism, racism, misogyny, bigotry, and violence every day, it’s not news. This is the most ass-backward idea ever cooked up in a newsroom. The fact that Trump does it over, and over, and over is the news. Responsible, objective journalism isn’t ignoring Trump’s threats because he makes them regularly. The regularity of his vile statements makes them both worse and more newsworthy.

If the mass media treated the Son of Sam killings the way they do Donald Trump, they would have stopped reporting after the first victim. After all, it’s just more of the same thing, right?

Trump is out there attacking journalists every day. He’s out there spitting on the First Amendment every day. He’s doubling down on his attacks on democracy every day. And all major media seems to think about is how many more clicks, views, and ad dollars they will make if they can use silence and selective reporting to ease Trump over the line to the White House.

Every time Trump calls out journalists or a media outlet, the reaction seems to be the same. Rather than fighting back, or defending their reporting, outlets slink further into the placating corner. Or hire another former Trump official. They seemed genuinely more concerned about offending Nazis than fighting them.

News outlets appear willing to keep up the pretense of being objective, even when studies show that they are leaning on the accelerator for Trump. They’ll keep up that pretense even in the face of the absolute reality that, should their boost carry Trump back to the Oval Office, he will come for them. He will come for the “enemies of the people.” He will come for those guilty of “country threatening treason.” He will make the days when he only put reporters in cages and encouraged the crowd to scream at them seem like a fond memory.

Trump is dedicated to destroying democracy. He’s absolutely insistent on ending the free press. He is openly using Nazi propaganda and threatening to repeat the most despicable events in history. Even so, as Laura wrote on Tuesday:

There is no question, by the hard numbers, that the media is giving Donald Trump a pass. His dehumanizing rhetoric describing his political opponents as “vermin” that he will “root out” is a nonstory as far as the broadcast networks, cable news networks, and largest newspapers in the country are concerned

Unless something changes, it will go on being a nonstory right up until the time Trump is telling them what stories are allowed.

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No, Republicans, Trump’s indictment isn’t about free speech

Posted on (Updated by Joan McCarter

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell might not be commenting on the former president’s latest indictment, but those Republicans who have spoken up are dismissing Donald Trump’s alleged conspiracy to overthrow an election by claiming that it was merely “free speech.”

Apparently it is now a crime to make statements challenging election results if a prosecutor decides those statements aren’t true. So when should we expect indictments of the democrat politicians who falsely claimed Russia hacked the 2016 election?

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) August 2, 2023

“Apparently it is now a crime to make statements challenging election results if a prosecutor decides those statements aren’t true,” Sen. Marco Rubio asserted, knowing full well that this is not about Trump’s statements, but about his actions.

Bogus “free speech” arguments are a tried-and-true Republican favorite, and Trump’s legal team is no exception. “[O]ur focus is on the fact that this is an attack on free speech, and political advocacy,” said Trump lawyer John Lauro on CNN. “And there’s nothing that’s more protected, under the First Amendment, than political speech.” (Lauro might want to do a quick review of how that defense has been working for Jan. 6 defendants, including the Proud Boys.)

Special counsel Jack Smith knew this would be a key argument from Trump, and quickly debunked it on page 2 of the indictment. “The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won,” the indictment says. “He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means …. [I]n many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts … were uniformly unsuccessful.

“Shortly after Election Day, the Defendant also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.” That’s what Trump is being indicted for: his actions.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the Jan. 6 committee and lead manager of Trump’s second impeachment, explained all of this during a appearance on MSNBC, poking a big hole in Republican arguments with a simple analogy. “[Y]ou can say ‘I think the currency is phony and everybody should be allowed to make up their own money … but the minute that you start printing your own money, now you run afoul of the counterfeit laws, and it’s the exact same thing with the Electoral College,” the Maryland Democrat said.

YouTube Video

Here’s the full transcript:

We know that our friends across the aisle are trying to mobilize some big free speech defense of Donald Trump here, which is just comical. Of course you have a right to say for example, “I think that the meeting of the House and the Senate in joint session to count Electoral College votes is a fraud or is taking away Donald Trump’s presidency.” You can say whatever you want, but the minute you actually try to obstruct the meeting of Congress, you crossed over from speech to conduct.

It’s like you can say, “I think the currency is phony and everybody should be allowed to make up their own money.” You can say that, but the minute that you start printing your own money, now you run afoul of the counterfeit laws, and it’s the exact same thing with the Electoral College. They can say, “Well, we don’t think that Joe Biden really won in these states,” even though every federal and state court rejected all of their claims of electoral fraud and corruption. The minute that they start manufacturing counterfeit electors and trying to have them substitute for the real electors that came through the federal and state legal process, at that point, they’ve crossed over from speech to conduct. I think the indictment is really tight in focusing just on the conduct.

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Conservatives cried about how the “woke” (whatever that means) “Barbie” movie would fail. It didn’t. In fact, the film has struck a chord with American and international audiences. Daily Kos writer Laura Clawson joins Markos to talk about the film and the implications of the Republican Party’s fixation on mythical culture wars, which is failing them in bigger and bigger ways every day.

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Infowars host Owen Shroyer overlooked in abortion coverage while Jan. 6 plea deal may be in works

Posted on by Brandi Buchman

Owen Shroyer has a history of promoting his anti-abortion stance publicly. There is a reported record of his sharing misinformation or outright false information about organizations like Planned Parenthood, including the lie that they engage in human sacrifice rituals. 

This is untrue, like much else that springs forth from Shroyer’s lips or that of his cohort, Alex Jones, the host of the popular right-wing conspiracy program known as InfoWars.

And if people were unfamiliar with Shroyer for InfoWars, or perhaps wouldn’t recognize his face from a public outburst he had during an impeachment inquiry hearing for Trump in 2019—he was hauled out by police—they could also turn to the wealth of public reporting that exists about Shroyer and his very public fight to beat charges related to the attack of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Owen Shroyer was led out of a public impeachment inquiry hearing for President Donald Trump. 

And yet, when ABC ran World News Tonight on Sunday, the network included a video clip where Shroyer is briefly interviewed about his anti-abortion stance. He is, bizarrely, identified only as a “protester” in the chyron below his name.

Christine Pelosi talks about the Supreme Court's leaked decision on Roe v. Wade, and what Democrats are doing now, on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast

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Noted by Media Matters for America first, what makes the chyron particularly concerning is that less than 24 hours before this interview in Texas by a reporter for ABC’s KVUE affiliate, Shroyer boosted his apperance on Infowars for over an hour. 

During that Infowars program, Shroyer is even seen in clips wearing the same shirt as he did in the ABC interview. He was also carrying a giant picture of a crying baby’s face with him that he apparently cut out, glued to a stick, and held up over his own to taunt pro-abortion rights activists. 

The plain descriptor of Shroyer at the protest is also troublesome because of his history of trolling the abortion rights movement and capitalizing on fears of violence. On the ninth anniversary of the murder of Dr. George Tiller in 2018 by Scott Roeder, for example, Shroyer coordinated a protest in Texas and live-streamed right outside of the Texas Planned Parenthood. 

Meanwhile, Shroyer’s defense attorney made a virtual appearance in federal Washington, D.C., court on Monday afternoon as his client pushes to have criminal charges for Jan. 6 dropped, including entering restricted grounds and disorderly conduct. 

Shroyer, who was arrested in August, has argued that because he is a journalist he should not be charged. His conduct on Jan. 6, he claims, was protected speech under the First Amendment. 

Interestingly, when Shroyer’s Infowars colleague Alex Jones was in divorce court fighting for custody of his children with then-wife Kelly Jones, Alex Jones’s lawyer described Infowars—on the record—as “fake news” and told the judge that Jones was just playing a character. 

Shroyer couched his First Amendment claim in the argument that he was merely trying to calm the mob at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and essentially do crowd control. The judge presiding over his case, U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly, an appointee of former President Donald Trump’s, rejected that bid once before. 

Motion to Dismiss Shroyer Second Attempt by Daily Kos on Scribd

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Another status conference for Shroyer was set for June 23, according to an entry on the court docket by Judge Kelly. 

Shroyer’s attorney, Norm Pattis, told Daily Kos in an email Monday, that after the hearing Monday, no plea agreements had been struck yet. 

“We are negotiating,” he said. 

Another plea agreement appears to be well in the works for fellow Infowars staffer Samuel Christopher Montoya.

Montoya—who was reported to the FBI by his family before his arrest last April—was meant to appear in court Monday for a status conference. But late last week, his attorney filed a motion to delay the hearing as a plea agreement was negotiated. 

US Montoya Motion to Continue Hearing by Daily Kos on Scribd

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