Crossing So Many Lines
In this edition:
- The Trump regime crosses many red lines with a meek opposition response; the assassination of Minnesota Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman is the latest example of right-wing political violence; clearing my tabs; and what’s giving me hope!
Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.
“It might be helpful for you to know that you are not alone. And that in the long, twilight struggle which lies ahead of us, there is the possibility of hope.” “The Long Twilight Struggle.” Babylon 5, created and written by J. Michael Straczynski, Season 2, Episode 20, 1995.
#1
- From Fort Bragg to LA, Trump enlists the military in a slow-motion coup (Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Link to Article)
- Bragg Soldiers Who Cheered Trump's Political Attacks While in Uniform Were Checked for Allegiance, Appearance (Konstantin Toropin and Steve Beynon, Military.com, Link to Article)
- ‘Everybody stood up’: Why a union leader’s arrest galvanized California Democrats on immigration (Jeanne Kuang, CalMatters, Link to Article)
- NYC Mayoral Candidate Brad Lander Latest Victim of ICE Violence (Whitney Curry Wimbish, The American Prospect, Link to Article)
- L.A. curfew continues for third night as Marines prepare to deploy for more ICE operations (Matthew Rodriguez, KCAL News, Link to Article)
- Padilla Assault Fails to Stop Senate Business as Usual (David Dayen, The American Prospect, Link to Article)
The Trump regime has crossed so many red lines in the past couple of weeks that it is challenging to keep up with them all. But it is important that we try to do so.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, Representative LaMonica McIver (R-NJ), U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, and SEIU California President David Huerta have been detained or indicted for their responses to the Trump regime’s mass deportation actions.
The arrests and detentions of opposition leaders is a red line no one would accept in a healthy democracy.
While the United States has a history of not politicizing the military, President Trump used the 82nd Airborne Division as props in a political rally. As Military.com’s Konstantin Toropin and Steve Beynon reported:
As Trump viciously attacked his perceived political foes, he whipped up boos from the gathered troops directed at California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom – amid the president's controversial move to deploy the National Guard and Marines against protesters in Los Angeles – as well as former President Joe Biden and the press. The soldiers roared with laughter and applauded Trump's diatribe in a shocking and rare public display of troops taking part in naked political partisanship.
They add that internal 82nd Airborne Division communications indicate that organizers screened out soldiers who were not Trump supporters and insisted on “no fat soldiers.” The rally also included a vendor selling MAGA supplies and phony credit cards labeled “White Privilege Card: Trumps Everything.”
As the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch explained:
It’s not an exaggeration to say that June 10, 2025, will go down in American history as a day of infamy, when an authoritarian president made clear that the world’s largest and most lethal fighting force now exists to enforce his personalist political agenda, and not to defend the nation’s people.
The crass politicization of the military is a red line no one would accept in a healthy democracy.
As part of its mass deportation actions, Trump nationalized 2,000 California National Guard soldiers and put 700 Marines on Los Angeles streets based on lies regime officials shared about the situation in a few square blocks of the downtown area.
It was the first time since 1965 that a president nationalized the National Guard of a state without the consent of its governor. There has been at least one instance of Marines detaining a U.S. citizen—an initial step towards using the military as law enforcement on U.S. soil.
Many people have noted over the years why it is a mistake to use the military as law enforcement. But few have explained it better than writer Ronald D. Moore using the fictional Commander William Adama in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica’s first season episode Water:
“There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”
There are many historical examples to back up that observation. One of the United States’ strengths has been its focus on avoiding that abyss.
The abuses of the power to nationalize the National Guard and station military troops on U.S. soil is a red line no one would accept in a healthy democracy.
While there has rightly been a focus on what happened to U.S. Senator Padilla when he was detained for trying to ask a question of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, I believe it is essential that we not overlook what Noem said right before Padilla attempted to ask his question. It ranks among the most ominous statements made by a cabinet official.
“The Department of Homeland Security and the officers, agencies, departments and military personnel working on this operation will continue to sustain and increase our operations in this city. We are not going away,” Noem said. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert to this city.”
Read that again. It would be alarming enough coming from a Fox News pundit. But Noem made this threat while serving as the head of the internal security office.
A senior federal government official threatening to replace lawfully elected local government officials is a red line no one should accept in a healthy democracy.
Crossing all these red lines should be enough to create a robust opposition. The American people rose to the occasion last week with the No Kings rallies held in all 50 states.
But our elected Democratic Party leaders have continued to act like the situation is normal.
While Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and other Democrats took to the Senate Floor to condemn Senator Padilla’s detention, I am still waiting for them to do something beyond mere words.
In the moments after their speeches about Padilla, Senate Democrats allowed the Senate to return to regular business. The American Prospect’s David Dayen explains:
The interesting context is what Schumer actually interrupted. His outraged comments came right after the Senate advanced a substitute amendment to the GENIUS Act, with the assistance of 16 Democrats. If Schumer and his fellow Democrats were truly sick to their stomachs—and I believe they were—over witnessing representatives of a Republican administration assault one of their colleagues, why are they continuing to collaborate with Republicans legislatively?
In theory, you can compartmentalize actions happening outside legislative votes with the votes themselves. But in this instance, cooperating with a Republican Party that keeps arresting, indicting, and detaining the political opposition, on a bill that would place congressional sanction on corruption in the digital asset space, including that personally conducted by Donald Trump, as well as severely destabilizing the financial system, cannot be blindly forgotten without some highly situational ethics. “They will continue to stern-letter us into fascism,” one former Hill staffer told me.
Why wasn’t the assault of one of their colleagues enough to get at least one Senate Democrat to say the magic words “I object” when Republicans needed a unanimous consent request to keep moving that horrible bill forward? Where were the demands for the presence of a quorum? Where are the threats to use the new exception Republicans carved out of the filibuster rule as discussed in a previous edition of this newsletter?
This is not a normal situation. Nearly two percent of Americans showed up at rallies to make it clear that they understood what’s at stake. It would be great if elected Democrats stepped up to protect an American democracy that may not have many more red lines left for the Trump regime to cross.
As I was finishing my editing of this newsletter, Trump announced the unconstitutional bombing of Iran. Will Congress care? Authoritarians, after all, love using the threat of war to expand their powers.
#2
- Rep. Melissa Hortman, killed in targeted attack, was a champion for Minnesotan families (Grace Panetta, The 19th, Link to Article)
- There's no such thing as a right-wing "lone wolf" (Garrett Graff, Doomsday Scenario, Link to Article)
- Inside the DHS: Former Top Analyst Says Agency Bowed to Political Pressure (Interview with Daryl Johnson, Southern Poverty Law Center, Link to Article)
- MAGA Whips Up Conspiracy Theories To Muddy An Act Of Right-Wing Violence (Kate Riga, Talking Points Memo, Link to Article)
- MAGA political violence claims more victims (Noah Berlatsky, Public Notice, Link to Article)
- The Fear Coursing Through State Capitols (Elaine Godfrey, The Atlantic, Link to Article)
The assassination of Minnesota Speaker of the House Emerita Melissa Hortman is the latest incident in an epidemic of white nationalist far-rightwing political violence that President Trump and his MAGA supporters have proudly exacerbated over the past decade.
An assassin killed Hortman and her husband and attempted to kill Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman and his wife. The assassin also visited several other legislators’ homes during his spree.
Hortman was one of the most influential state legislators of this century. While Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) rightly received credit for signing a slate of progressive bills into law during his campaign for Vice President last year, it was Hortman who skillfully shepherded that legislation through a closely divided legislature.
I mourn these deaths. Public service should not lead to a death sentence.
There have been efforts to raise alarms about the rise of far-right violence. But Republicans and conservative media personalities have gone to the mattresses for decades to cover up this story. In 2009, for example, the Department of Homeland Security prepared a report for law enforcement about the radicalization of rightwing extremism. That report was leaked to conservative outlets, and the Obama Administration withdrew it rather than contend with the misleading narrative. (You can download a PDF of that report from this Stanford University archive.)
As Garrett Graff explains, that failure is just one example of how our politicians and media have ignored the increasing trend of rightwing violence over the past 40 years.
The US government made some effort to dismantle the shadow network of white nationalist terror groups in the 1980s, but ever since Tim McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City federal building, the US government and leaders have made a conscious choice to pretend that all this right-wing domestic terrorism is made up of “lone wolves” — as if all these terrorists just spawned independently believing the same thing and following the same tactics.
They’re not lone wolves. They’re foot soldiers.
This hate and extremism emerges from the fever swamp the right-wing media has built over the last generation — McVeigh was a huge fan of Bill Cooper, the extremist host who help inspire and mentor Alex Jones in the 1990s — and that fever swamp has been amplified and accelerated by the internet and social media.
This dynamic is one of the reasons so many right-wing pundits and social media influencers worked overtime to mislead the public about the Minnesota assassin. As Talking Points Memo’s Kate Riga writes:
The right-wing machine’s task, obfuscating this clear-cut episode of right-wing political violence, should have been difficult. In addition to a manifesto, which has not been released, Boelter had written down the names of other targets: a list, per an FBI affidavit, of “mostly or all” Democratic politicians, reportedly in addition to abortion providers and activists. The anti-abortion motivation slots in neatly with archetypal right-wing violence, which has often involved misogynistic elements.
There was also, by Sunday, an easily excavated tranche of evidence suggesting his political ideology: interviews with his roommate who said he’d be “offended” to be called a Democrat, that he was a staunch Trump supporter and that he considered abortion to be “murder,” along with a sermon he’d delivered about the evils of abortion-supporting American churches.
We know that our elected leaders are all too aware of the danger they face from rightwing violence. Former Senator Mitt Romney wrote in his memoir that his colleagues were afraid to join his objections to Trump because they could not afford the personal security. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) shared a similar story in an interview earlier this year. The story by Garrett Graff that I quoted earlier also includes many examples of Republicans discussing how they feel they cannot oppose Trump because of the potential of violence against them and their families.
Trump has encouraged violence since the earliest days of his first campaign for the presidency, including telling his supporters he would pay their legal bills if they roughed up protestors at his events.
So we should not be surprised that legislators around the country are worried about their safety in the wake of the Minnesota assassinations.
We should spend more taxpayer money to ensure the safety of our federal and state lawmakers. Public service in a functioning democracy should not leave elected officials and their staff fearing for their lives.
Ensuring legislators’ safety may also allow more Republicans to oppose the Trump regime’s authoritarian takeover. That is an added benefit worth paying for.
Clearing My Tabs
- Surprise: Minnesota Killer Used Data Brokers To Target And Murder Politicians (Karl Bode, TechDirt, Link to Article)
The failure of our federal government to regulate how our data is traded and monetized has once again had deadly consequences. (Also, to be clear, the surprise in the deadline is sarcastic.) - Georgia Takes Brain-Dead Woman Off Life Support After Using Her Corpse as Incubator (Lauren Tousignant, Jezebel, Link to Article)
That headline says it all. Forced-birth advocates need to own the atrocities they create. Making Adriana Smith’s family pay the expenses is an added bit of horribleness. - How MAGA Took Over America’s 250th Birthday (Amanda Moore and Dan Friedman, Mother Jones, Link to Article)
Planning for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence has been underway for years. But MAGA supporters have taken over the process and pushed out historians unwilling to make it a Trump-centered celebration. - This Fucking Guy (Rebecca Traister, Link to Article)
With the New York City mayoral primary coming up on Tuesday, Traister reminds us of all the ways Andrew Cuomo failed as Governor and acted very Trumpian in how he treated people and opponents. It is shameful that so many establishment Democrats are supporting him. - By any objective standard, Stephen Miller is a hater (Lindsay Beyerstein, The Editorial Board, Link to Article)
Terry Moran didn’t lie about Miller in the tweet that ended his ABC News career. The more people understand the truth about Miller, the better! But Moran did expose just how cowed ABC is to Trump and his regime. We should remember that as we see how they cover the regime. - Selling salvation: Trump has earned $1.3 million (so far) from his MAGA Bible grift (Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist, Link to Article)
Last I checked, Jesus didn’t actually approve of the merchants and money changers in the temple. It’s one of the few stories appearing in all four canonical gospels, after all. - FIFA has taken us for fools over its promise to fight racism (Nick Miller, The Athletic, Link to Article)
It isn’t surprising that the governing authority of global soccer is awful. But the fact that they couldn’t even continue their minimal messaging against racism during the current Club World Cup because it is being held in the United States of Trump is pathetic. Also, how will our country successfully host the men’s World Cup (2026) and the Summer Olympics (2028) under these Trumpian circumstances?
The Possibility of Hope
- Protests Big (Lauren Thiesen, Defector, Link to Article)
I am glad I joined the No Kings protest in Sacramento last week. It was so wonderful to be in a crowd of people willing to make their opposition to the Trump regime’s attempt to end our democratic experiment. I want to draw attention to all of the protests with a few hundred people in the red areas of the nation. That kind of visibility comes with risk, but it is also how conversations start and minds are changed. It is a good foundation from which to build.
What’s giving you hope? Please e-mail me at craig@thelongtwilightstruggle.com.
Post-Game Comments
Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:
“It is 100% carrying water for the opposition to participate in this collective delusion that Dems for some reason need to answer for every teen who throws a rock rather than hold the Trump admin accountable for intentionally creating chaos and breaking the law to stoke violence.”—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)
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On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump instigated a violent insurrection against the United States government. Here’s a video from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol that one can review if their memory fades.
People were hurt and police officers died protecting the Capitol. Vice President Pence and other elected officials just barely escaped danger. Our national streak of peaceful transfers of power ended.
It was not, as Trump claims, a “day of love.” And we must resist his efforts to rewrite the history of that dark day.
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