insurrection

Trump’s threat to China sent stock prices tumbling

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Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

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Heather Cox Richardson

October 10, 2025

All of President Donald J. Trump’s lobbying for the Nobel Peace Prize came to naught today as the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded this year’s prize to María Corina Machado of Venezuela. Machado has led a movement to challenge Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, President Nicolás Maduro. The committee cited “her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.”

When she learned of the award, Ms. Machado responded “This is an achievement of a whole society. I am just, you know, one person. I certainly do not deserve this.”

White House communications director Steven Cheung responded: “The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.”

Russian president Vladimir Putin said the committee’s “credibility has largely been lost,” prompting Trump to thank him on social media.

That Trump and his loyalists are standing with the autocrat Putin rather than democracy is clearer every day.

Federal agents in Chicago have been targeting journalists, and yesterday, U.S. District Judge Sara L. Ellis granted a two-week temporary restraining order prohibiting federal agents in Chicago from “[d]ispersing, arresting, threatening to arrest, threatening or using physical force against any person whom they know or reasonably should know is a Journalist, unless Defendants have probable cause to believe that the individual has committed a crime.”

Today, masked border patrol agents pinned WGN-TV producer Debbie Brockman to the ground and arrested her after she recorded agents detaining a Latino man. The agents said she had been detained for “obstruction.” Later, Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin accused Brockman of throwing “objects” at a Border Patrol vehicle and said she was arrested “for assault on a federal law enforcement officer.”

According to WGN, Brockman was later released without charges against her. But the agents accomplished their goal of terrorizing a journalist as a warning to others.

Yesterday a second Republican governor, Phil Scott of Vermont, opposed the administration’s deployment of federalized National Guard troops to Chicago and to Portland, Oregon. “I don’t think our guard should be used against our own people. I don’t think the military should be used against our own people. In fact, it’s unconstitutional,” Scott said. “Unless, of course, there’s an insurrection, much like we saw January 6 a few years ago.”

ICE agents denied Illinois senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, both Democrats, access to the Broadview, Illinois, ICE facility today, although Congress members have the right to conduct oversight. Durbin noted that this was their fourth attempt to access ICE facilities. “I’ve never had this kind of stonewalling by any presidential administration. Something’s going on in there that they don’t want us to see. I don’t know what it is, but all Americans should be asking the same question: ‘What is it? Can you justify it under the Constitution?’”

Nandita Bose, Jana Winter, Jeff Mason, Tim Reid, and Ted Hesson of Reuters reported on Thursday that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is playing a central role in the administration’s crackdown on opponents. The administration is threatening to target funding behind what the administration calls “domestic terror networks,” those it claims embrace “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.”

House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) got into the act of attacking the administration’s opponents today, claiming that the Democratic senators holding out for the extension of the premium tax credits so that healthcare premiums don’t skyrocket—a position supported by 78% of Americans—are taking that position only because they’re afraid of anti-Trumpers. Johnson called the October 18 No Kings rally a “hate America rally” of “[t]he antifa crowd, the pro-Hamas crowd, and the Marxists…. It is an outrageous gathering for outrageous purposes,” he said.

Majority whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) joined in, calling those who are taking a stand against Trump’s destruction of the nation’s constitutional checks and balances “the terrorist wing” of the Democratic Party, saying it “is set to hold…a hate America rally in [Washington, D.C.] next week.” Legal scholar David Noll noted that it’s “interesting that if you say the [C]onstitution creates a separation of powers systems in which there are no kings, they think you hate [A]merica.”

Josh Dawsey reported in the Wall Street Journal today that administrative officials joke about ruling Congress with an “iron fist” and that Trump ally Steve Bannon has compared Congress to Russia’s largely ceremonial Duma.

Today House speaker Johnson announced he would cancel another week’s session, making four weeks he has kept House members from their jobs. Johnson first sent the members home on September 19. Staying out of session means not working on the budget that is overdue or hammering out the necessary appropriations bills. It means not working on figuring out a way to extend the healthcare premium tax credits that Democrats are demanding.

It also means not swearing in Representative Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), who won election on September 23 and who will provide the 218th vote on a discharge petition to trigger a vote on a measure requiring the release of the files the government has on the investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The administration is trying to ram its will through Congress. Republicans have tried to pin the blame for the shutdown on Democrats, sending automatic out-of-office email replies that blame Democrats for the shutdown, for example, in violation of the Hatch Act that prohibits using government resources for partisan purposes. As the shutdown drags on and most Americans blame Republicans, their efforts to shift the blame are ratcheting up. Now the administration has posted a video at airport Transportation Security Administration (TSA) lines featuring Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem saying that operations are impacted because “Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government.”

Immigration lawyer Aaron Reichlin-Melnick commented: “Can you think of a single movie in which there is a video from the government denouncing its political opponents playing on a loop in public spaces in which that government was the good guy?”

Natalie Allison and Riley Beggin of the Washington Post reported yesterday that members of the administration have not engaged with Democrats at all to negotiate an end to the shutdown. Tonight the Washington Post’s Hannah Natanson, Meryl Kornfield, and Jacob Bogage reported that the administration has begun another round of firings to put more pressure on the Democrats, although legal analysts say such layoffs are illegal. Trump told reporters they were laying off “people that the Democrats want.”

Labor unions sued preemptively to prevent the layoffs after Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought threatened he would use a shutdown to slash more of the government.

Among the duties of Congress Trump has taken into his own hands are tariff duties, authority for which the Constitution gives solely to Congress. Nonetheless, Trump is continuing to monkey with tariff rates. This morning he posted on social media that “[s]ome very strange things are happening in China!” China is the world’s largest producer of the rare earth minerals necessary for a wide range of manufacturing, including robotics, electric vehicles, and electronics. Yesterday, Chinese officials restricted exports of the minerals. In his post, Trump threatened to retaliate against China and suggested that there was no reason to go through with an upcoming meeting with China’s president Xi Jinping.

Trump’s threat sent stock prices tumbling.

After the stock market closed for the day, Trump posted on social media again, saying he would impose tariffs of 100% on products from China beginning on November 1. This levy is on top of current tariffs. Stocks fell further in after-market trading.

Source: Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

Trump: “Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect ICE Officers! Governor Pritzker also!”

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Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

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Heather Cox Richardson

October 8, 2025

Yesterday, journalists observed members of the Texas National Guard at a U.S. Army Reserve Center in Elwood, Illinois, about 55 miles (89 kilometers) southwest of Chicago. This morning, the Defense Department announced the federal activation of about 200 soldiers from the Texas National Guard and about 300 from the Illinois National Guard, saying they would be protecting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and other federal agents “who are performing federal functions, including the enforcement of federal law, and to protect federal property.”

The statement said the National Guard soldiers “are under federal command and control in a Title 10 status.” The section of the legal code to which the announcement pointed was the one permitting the president to call into federal service members of the National Guard whenever the U.S. is invaded or in danger of invasion by a foreign nation, there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the U.S. government, or the president cannot execute the laws of the United States with the power of regular law enforcement.

It is this power under Title 10 that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller yesterday claimed was “plenary,” or absolute. The idea that exceptions to the rule of law reveal who is really in charge of the government was central to the political philosophy of German political theorist Carl Schmitt, who joined the Nazis and whose work is increasingly popular among the radical right in the U.S. these days. Since taking office in January, Trump has declared at least eight national emergencies that the administration has used to justify the use of emergency powers.

As J.V. Last of The Bulwark laid out clearly last night, there is no crisis in Chicago that makes it necessary for the administration to send in National Guard troops. Last points out that any instability in Chicago has been caused by the administration’s surge of federal agents into the city, where they shot and killed Chicago resident Silverio Villegas González; raided and ransacked an apartment building, leaving residents—including U.S. citizens and children—bound outside for hours; shot an unarmed woman, Marimar Martinez; and aimed a weapon at a resident who was simply recording what the agent was doing, In each case, the government initially insisted the federal agents either were under attack or were rounding up “the worst of the worst,” but subsequent information has showed the federal agents were the aggressors in each situation.

Federal agents have held journalists, who are now suing ICE and the Department of Homeland Security for the use of “extreme force” against them, and pummeled them with tear gas and pepper spray. As Last notes, local police chief Thomas Mills has testified that the “use of chemical agents by federal agents at the ICE facility in Broadview has often been arbitrary and indiscriminate. At times it is used when the crowd is as small as ten people.”

Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker warned that the administration is deliberately trying to “cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at them. Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can send military troops to our city.”

As Joseph Nunn of the Brennan Center explained earlier this year, the Insurrection Act brings together a number of laws Congress passed between 1792 and 1871. They make up sections 251 through 255 in Title 10 of the United States Code. Together, they suspend the Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits the U.S. military from taking part in civilian law enforcement.

The Insurrection Act permits the president to deploy troops to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” in a state that “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”

Courtney Kube, Katherine Doyle, Carol E. Lee, and Garrett Haake of NBC News report today that White House officials, led by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, have been having increasingly serious discussions about having Trump invoke the act.

This morning, President Donald J. Trump’s social media account posted: “Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice [sic] Officers! Governor Pritzker also!”

But Pritzker is standing up to the administration.

“I will not back down,” he posted. “Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power. What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?”

“His masked agents already are grabbing people off the street. Separating children from their parents. Creating fear. Taking people for ‘how they look.’ Making people feel they need to carry citizenship papers. Invading our state with military troops. Sending in war helicopters in the middle of the night. Arresting elected officials asking questions. We must all stand up and speak out.”

In an interview with MSNBC senior political correspondent Jacob Soboroff, Pritzker noted that Trump, who is a convicted felon, has a lot of nerve calling for Pritzker’s arrest. “[T]his guy’s unhinged. He’s insecure, he’s a wannabe dictator.” Pritzker said directly to Trump: “If you come for my people, you come through me. So come and get me…. We’ve done nothing wrong here and…it’s Donald Trump that is breaching the Constitution, breaking the law.”

Illinois has sued to stop the administration from sending federalized National Guard troops from any state to Illinois, “because it is unconstitutional,” Pritzker said. “[I]t’s important to recognize that the Trump administration doesn’t seem to respect any laws in the United States. They just do what they want to do, and they’ll keep doing it unless someone stops them. Here in Illinois, we’re stopping it. We’re doing everything that we can to push back.”

The administration is engaging in “a show of force,” Pritzker said, because it “wants to militarize major cities across the United States, especially blue cities in blue states, because he wants us to get used to the idea of military on the streets” before the 2026 elections. “I believe that he’s going to post people outside of ballot boxes and polling places. And if he needs to in order to control those elections, he’ll assume control of the ballot boxes” and let the administration count the results. Pritzker said we will have free and fair elections in 2026, “if we all stand up and speak out.”

Today the White House tried harder than ever to push the idea that the country is consumed by violence from the “Radical Left.” This afternoon a press release from the White House claimed that “[f]or years, an Antifa-led hellfire has turned Portland into a wasteland of firebombs, beatings, and brazen attacks on federal officers and property—yet the Fake News remains in shameful denial about the Radical Left’s reign of terror.” In fact, before Trump ordered troops into the city, federal agents described the small protests at the ICE facility as “low energy,” consisting of people standing in front of vehicles, raising a middle finger, and playing loud music.

To push the administration’s narrative, Trump held an “Antifa Roundtable” at the White House this afternoon. There, far-right influencers tried to make the case that “antifa” is real and has harassed them, although as The Guardian noted, many of those influencers feed their media channels by confronting protesters and filming the responses they’ve provoked. The press release claimed that “terrorists” have “laid siege” to the ICE office in Portland, Oregon, and at the meeting, Trump claimed that “paid anarchists” want to “destroy our country.” Bizarrely, he claimed that “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.”

Antifa is a term used by the far right to define anyone who does not support MAGA: it means “antifascist.” During the meeting, influencer Jack Posobiec—a proponent of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory—warned that “Antifa” went back all the way to Germany’s Weimar Republic. As Holly Baxter of The Independent pointed out, “it is absolutely true that there were anti-fascist protesters in the Weimar Republic. If you’ll remember, those were the people taking issue with the early versions of the Nazis.”

Source: Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

Read Sarah Kendzior’s incredibly spot-on 2016 prophesy: “We’re heading into dark times”

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By Sarah Kendzior

My fellow Americans, I have a favor to ask you.

Today is November 18, 2016. I want you to write about who you are, what you have experienced, and what you have endured.

Write down what you value; what standards you hold for yourself and for others. Write about your dreams for the future and your hopes for your children. Write about the struggle of your ancestors and how the hardship they overcame shaped the person you are today.

Write your biography, write down your memories. Because if you do not do it now, you may forget.

Write a list of things you would never do. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will do them.

Write a list of things you would never believe. Because it is possible that in the next year, you will either believe them or be forced to say you believe them.

A president-elect who wants to strip our country down for parts

It is increasingly clear, as Donald Trump appoints his cabinet of white supremacists and war-mongers, as as the that are supposed to protect us cower, as are shattered, that his ascendency to power is 

This is an American authoritarian kleptocracy, backed by millionaire white nationalists both in the United States and abroad, meant to strip our country down for parts, often using ethnic violence to do so.

This is not a win for anyone except them. This is a moral loss and a dangerous threat for everyone in the United States, and by extension, everyone abroad.

I have been studying authoritarian states for over a decade, and I would never exaggerate the severity of this threat. Others who study or have lived in authoritarian states have come to the same conclusion as me.

And the plight is beyond party politics: it is not a matter of having a president-elect whom many dislike, but having a president-elect whose explicit goal is to destroy the nation.

None of us deserves what’s coming

I am writing this not for those who oppose him, but for those who support him, because Trump and his backers are going to hurt you too.

I live in Missouri, now a bright red state, alongside you. I have faced the same economic misery as you, struggling to stay afloat since the recession, which never ended though many falsely claimed it did. I have the same anxiety over crime and racial tension and corrupt leadership as you. I am an independent, not a Democrat or a Republican, because I am as disappointed in political parties as you.

I am writing down my own good memories, and some of them are with you. I have walked beside you in our state parks, along our flowing rivers, and in our cities and small towns. I have talked and laughed with you in St. Louis, in Cape Girardeau, in Hannibal, in the Ozarks, and in the devastated rural areas in between, while surrounded by your signs and hats proclaiming support for Donald Trump. You do not deserve what is going to happen to you, and I do not deserve what is going to happen to me, because there is absolutely no one in the world who deserves what may be coming.

He told us his plans all along, though most chose to downplay or deny them

You can look to the president-elect himself for a vision of what is to come. He has told you his plans all along, though most chose to downplay or deny them. You can even look back to before his candidacy, when in February 2014, he went on Fox News to defend Russia. Why a reality TV host was on Fox News defending Russia is its own story, but about his desired outcome for the United States:

“You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster. Then you’ll have a [chuckles], you know, you’ll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great.”

This is what “Make America Great Again” means to Donald Trump. It is how he has operated his businesses, taking advantage of economic disasters like the for personal gain. It is why, during a long and painful recession, he made “You’re fired” a national catchphrase, because he understands that sometimes it feels good to know that the person getting fired, for once, is not you. He said he could and people would still vote for him, and he said he could “by the pussy” because “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

The system is rigged in his favor

He is right about that last part. No one holds Trump accountable, because he is exactly what he claimed to be railing against: an elite billionaire with no concern for the average person, a kleptocrat who enjoys taunting people less powerful than him with threats. When you have that kind of money, which Trump was given in birth and further gained through fraud, there are few limitations to the ways you can hurt people.

He is right that the system is rigged: it is rigged in his favor. And now it is rigged against you, unless we find a way to stop it.

I have been to the Trump rallies, not as a journalist, but as an observer in the crowd. I talked with you and you told me your hopes for the country under him, how you felt you were watching history being made, how you thought he was going to stick it to those who have been screwing us. I know the loyalty he inspires. I know it is unearned, because he lied.

Trump’s vision for the United States is echoed in that of his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, a man who even the very right-wing Glenn Beck describes as a dangerous, sociopathic racist. In 2016, a reporter from the Daily Beast recalled this 

“I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.

Shocked, I asked him what he meant.

“Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

The days of free speech may soon end

This mirrors Trump’s own goals of destroying the United States, and it mirrors the intentions of dictators everywhere, who see people as objects to be manipulated and discarded, and not as real human beings. I have seen dictatorships firsthand in the former Soviet Union. I have friends who were imprisoned for expressing even the slightest criticism of the state, friends who had their businesses shaken down by the government and were left bankrupt, and friends whose family members were murdered by state security services.

I have worked, often unpaid, as an expert witness in political asylum cases for people from authoritarian states, because I will do anything to help people in this terrible position. The brutality they have endured, the fear of the state that prevents them from making independent choices, is something difficult for American minds to fathom.

The mainstream media has promoted him ceaselessly and are now rationalizing and normalizing Trump’s most extreme policies

We are a deeply flawed nation, and those who are minorities or poor have faced state-sanctioned cruelty as well as limited opportunities. But it is simply not the same as authoritarianism.

Though our speech is often challenged, we can still speak. We can debate each other and come up with ways to improve our country. We can scream at each other and mock each other and tell each other our political choices are terrible. You will miss those days, they may end soon.

You may be wondering why I am writing a letter to Americans in a Dutch news outlet. It is because I do not trust the US outlets to remain free, and believe that many are already compromised. The mainstream media who Trump proclaims to hate are actually his best friend. They have been all along, promoting him ceaselessly, and they are now rationalizing and normalizing his most extreme policies. Trump tells you to boycott CNN, but CNN’s boss always had a framed Trump tweet on the wall.

For what it’s worth, Trump supporters, I have always supported your boycott of CNN. But this common ground is grim.

Preparing to live like a nation of dissidents

It is possible that I will end up living like the dissidents who I defended from foreign dictatorships for so long. I will talk in coded terms, as I have started to do already. Did you think it was a coincidence that I published an article about a journalist who sought freedom for all and was killed by St. Louis mobs, right before the election? I will try to continue to publish in foreign outlets. I will rearrange my life so I can fight this fight, because I am fighting for my country, and I never give up on my country or on my countrymen.

But I need you to fight too, in the way that matters most, which is inside. Authoritarianism is not merely a matter of state control, it is something that eats away at who you are. It makes you afraid, and fear can make you cruel. It compels you to conform and to comply and accept things that you would never accept, to do things you never thought you would do.

You do it because everyone else is doing it, because the institutions you trust are doing it and telling you to do it, because you are afraid of what will happen if you do not do it, and because the voice in your head crying out that something is wrong grows fainter and fainter until it dies.

We are heading into dark times, and you need to be your own light. Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal even if it is sanctioned

That voice is your conscience, your morals, your individuality. No one can take that from you unless you let them. They can take everything from you in material terms – your house, your job, your ability to speak and move freely. They cannot take away who you truly are. They can never truly know you, and that is your power.

But to protect and wield this power, you need to know yourself – right now, before their methods permeate, before you accept the obscene and unthinkable as normal.

My heart breaks for the United States of America. It breaks for those who think they are my enemies as much as it does for my friends. You still have your freedom, so use it. There are many groups organizing for both resistance and subsistence, but we are heading into dark times, and you need to be your own light. Do not accept brutality and cruelty as normal even if it is sanctioned. Protect the vulnerable and encourage the afraid. If you are brave, stand up for others. If you cannot be brave – and it is often hard to be brave – be kind.

But most of all, never lose sight of who you are and what you value. If you find yourself doing something that feels questionable or wrong a few months or years from now, find that essay you wrote on who you are and read it. Ask if that version of yourself would have done the same thing.

And if the answer is no? Don’t do it.

Source: We’re heading into dark times. This is how to be your own light in the Age of Trump – The Correspondent