There comes a moment in every collapsing democracy when absurdity and menace fuse into something uniquely destabilizing—a phenomenon I’m tempted to call “malignant farce.” We’ve reached that moment. The President of the United States, after invoking a 1798 wartime law to mass-deport migrants to a third country, now claims he didn’t do it. “Other people handled it,” he told reporters, despite his signature appearing on the document.
This is not merely a lie—though it is certainly that—but something more fundamentally corrosive: the introduction of the Toddler Theory of Presidential Power. Like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar insisting “I didn’t do it,” Trump has advanced the novel constitutional principle that presidential actions somehow occur without presidential agency. Documents bearing his signature, orders issued under his authority, and policies implemented by his administration apparently materialize through some mysterious process for which he bears no responsibility.
The obvious absurdity of this claim would be comedic if it weren’t deployed to evade accountability for using the Alien Enemies Act—a law intended for declared wars against nations, not immigration enforcement—to justify mass deportations that a federal judge has already ruled likely unconstitutional. We have now entered territory where the head of the executive branch simultaneously claims the power to ignore judicial rulings while denying responsibility for the very actions judges are ruling against.
This isn’t just a president lying—a common enough occurrence in any administration. This is a president who wishes to exercise power without accountability, who signs documents then disclaims knowledge of their contents, who demands obedience to his authority while disavowing his own actions. It is the logic of the autocrat who wishes to be unbound by any constraint while maintaining plausible deniability for the consequences.
The pathetic spectacle of a president who claims vast powers while shirking basic responsibility reveals the infantile core of authoritarianism. For all its pretensions to strength and decisiveness, the authoritarian personality cannot bear the weight of consequence, cannot accept that power entails responsibility, cannot face the fundamental reality that actions have effects for which one might be accountable.
Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And a president’s signature on an executive order means he ordered it. These are not complicated truths, yet their denial suggests something profoundly broken in our political system. When the most powerful person in the country can point to his own signature and say “I didn’t do that,” we’ve moved beyond normal political dishonesty into the realm of reality dissolution.
The Founders designed a system based on the assumption that those in power would at least acknowledge their own actions, even if they abused their authority. They never envisioned a president who would simultaneously claim unlimited power while disavowing the exercise of that very power—a constitutional Schrödinger’s cat, both authoritarian and abdicated, depending on which serves his interests in the moment.
This is the essence of despotism—not the iron fist, but the infantile will that demands absolute authority without corresponding responsibility. It is, as Hannah Arendt recognized, the banality of evil clothed in the childish refusal to acknowledge reality itself.
If there is any comfort to be taken from this spectacle, it is the realization that such profound dishonesty reveals not strength but weakness. A president secure in his authority and confident in his actions would not need to deny his own signature. He would not hide behind the claim that “other people handled it.” He would own his decisions, defend them on their merits, and accept the constitutional constraints that make a president a democratic leader rather than a petulant monarch.
But comfort is cold indeed when the lie is in service of violating human rights, defying court orders, and systematically dismantling constitutional governance. The Presidential Toddler Theory may be absurd, but its consequences are deadly serious. And recognizing the absurdity, while necessary, is no substitute for confronting the danger.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
Be the “deep state” you want to see in the world. That’s the new FBI under conspiracy theorist/Trump acolyte Kash Patel’s “leadership.” Instead of being the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it will become the Federal Bureau of Investigating People Trump Doesn’t Like. I wouldn’t be too surprised to hear journalists are getting their phone records seized again, something that happened the last time Trump was in charge of the country.
The FBI has cut staffing in an office focused on domestic terrorism and has scrapped a tool used to track such investigations, in a shift that could undermine law enforcement’s ability to counter white supremacists and anti-government extremists, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The moves, sources said, are an indication that domestic terrorism investigations, which in recent years have largely involved violence fueled by right-wing ideologies, may be less of a priority under FBI Director Kash Patel, a prominent critic of the effort.
Well, you can strike the word “may” from that sentence and replace it with “will.” If Donald Trump thinks no one involved in the January 6, 2021 raid of the Capitol building should ever have been charged, much less jailed, it’s safe to assume he and Patel agree there’s no reason to go after terrorists who support Trump and his ideals.
Right now it’s a trickle, but it may become a flood if Trump and Patel can convince the rest of the FBI leadership that this is the way to go. (Or fire enough of the current leadership that there’s no longer any measurable objection.)
Two sources familiar with the changes said about 16 people had been reassigned from the section, which would have hundreds of employees if fully staffed. A different source said senior FBI officials have discussed disbanding it entirely, though a final decision has not yet been announced.
A department that was already likely understaffed (and definitely undermined by far too many Trump loyalists within the Bureau) is going to lose more resources. But those being reassigned have to go somewhere, so guess where they’re likely headed:
The Trump administration has separately directed the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces, which investigate domestic and international terrorist threats, to assist in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, according to a memo seen by Reuters.
I guess having the DHS, ICE, CBP, Border Patrol, US National Guard, and dozens of overly compliant local law enforcement agencies focused on border security and mass expulsions just isn’t enough. From now on, the FBI will also be helping Trump achieve his goal of converting bigotry into nice round numbers that will ensure steady salivation from the frothiest of his followers.
But Trump and Patel may have pulled the trigger on domestic terrorism cuts a bit too soon. After all, there’s a new brand of domestic terrorism Trump is particularly hot and bothered about: a nationwide wave of disdain targeting Elon Musk, Tesla owners, and Tesla dealerships. While most of the activity has been non-violent (even when it crosses the line into harassment), some of it has not. If nothing else, there are probably a few vandalism and arson cases to be pursued, but that’s not the sort of thing that usually involves the FBI.
However, Trump considers these acts to be “domestic terrorism,” and wants the full force of the law applied against people who vandalize Tesla dealerships — going so far as to suggest these specific criminals should be rerouted to El Salvadorian prisons. With this “threat” still present, it might make a bit more sense to keep the domestic terrorism group intact. I mean, unless Trump really doesn’t believe his own heated rhetoric about Tesla and terrorism, which is just as likely an explanation as anything.
Either way, the FBI will no longer be investigating the sort of terrorism that routinely involves Trump supporters. Kash Patel and Trump have deliberately created a bug and are touting it as a feature. And for all their blowharding about “politicizing the FBI” when complaining about Biden and Obama, they seem perfectly fine with weaponizing federal agencies against their political and ideological enemies when they’re holding the keys to the government Cabinet.
Trump seems very interested in speed-running the martial law curve. His previous term in office saw him suggesting the military should help quell anti-police violence protests around the nation, as well as participating in his undeclared war on immigration by aiding in the policing of our southern border.
With Trump taking office for a second time, every bad idea is now worse. Right now, the administration is using a 225-year-old law to justify its unlawful immigrant removal efforts. The 1798 law (one that has no expiration date) was passed to grant the government additional powers to remove enemies of the state in times of war.
Its previous invocations demonstrate when it’s (possibly) prudent to invoke this act. During the War of 1812, it was used to report and remove British nationals. In World War I and World War II, it was used to detain or remove foreign non-citizens. In the latter case, it led directly to one of the most shameful periods in US history — one in which more than 100,000 US residents of Japanese descent were sent to concentration camps located inside the United States for the duration of the war.
That alone should have been enough to keep any post-WWII president from invoking the Alien Enemies Act. But Trump and his enablers are not regular people. They are hateful, spiteful, performative, and completely unworthy of the power they have been gifted with.
The invocation of this power to “justify” the mass deportation of immigrants to whatever foreign country will take them is a deliberate attempt to bypass judicial review of Trump’s deportation programs, which have already been met with injunctions blocking further expulsions.
While controversy immediately arose over whether the administration had defied a court order to stop the deportation flights, the more important question will soon demand an answer: whether the Alien Enemies Act applies at all. The act grants sweeping powers to the executive branch but only during a time of declared war or “invasion or predatory incursion” by “a foreign nation or government.” President Trump will have to make a difficult case that TdA [Tren de Aragua] and other gangs act at the behest of foreign nations that are conducting an invasion of the United States.
Yoo thinks Trump can’t actually make this case. It takes a declared war to invoke this act. But no war has been declared here. Instead, Trump simply insists that mere (alleged) presence of foreign gang members in the US is all the “invasion” or “predatory incursion” he needs to declare war, without… you know… actually getting Congress involved and officially declaring war.
Yoo’s article argues there’s nothing there to support Trump’s assertions. Tellingly, he quotes possibly the only thing that might make that case for Donald Trump, even if Trump himself isn’t smart enough to make this argument on his own. And, of course, it’s from the same entity behind the Project 2025 effort — one that deliberately aims to consolidate executive power at the expense of literally everything and everyone that doesn’t fit into its ghastly, narrow-minded view of the future.
In support of the administration, one could cite a Heritage Foundation report that states that “the goal of the TdA, whether in Chile or the United States, is to establish territorial control to impose a criminal economy that connects illicit networks from urban and suburban areas to penitentiaries in or near those neighborhoods.” According to that report, “once an uptick in crime and violence in a local neighborhood is detected and attributed to Venezuelan migrants, the presence of the TdA is probably already established.”
That appears to be the rationale the Trump administration is using: any signs of violence linked to foreign gangs is enough to trigger a state of war and the executive branch’s ability to wield war powers.
As Yoo sees it, it will likely accomplish exactly what Trump wants: an immediate boost in power and reduced friction from the federal court system. But the long game won’t work out in Trump’s favor, and it’s definitely going to do a lot of long-term damage to the reputation of the US and millions of people who currently reside in this country.
[T]he cost would be the creation of a state of war between the United States and Venezuela. If the United States has been invaded by Venezuelan agents, then the president can go to war in national self-defense without need of a congressional act or declaration of war. Washington could not only detain any and all Venezuelan citizens within the United States but also use military force against Caracas. It could take lethal action against the Venezuelan military, invade and occupy Venezuelan territory, and overthrow the Maduro regime. And Venezuela could try to do the same to the United States.
We hold no brief for Venezuela; the country’s people and the region would be far better off if Maduro fell and were replaced by the democratically elected opposition. But it may not be worth backsliding into a state of war to expedite the removal of illegal aliens, who could be deported under regular immigration laws anyway. Such a symbolic show of resolve on illegal immigration could hamper Trump’s effort to revive the Monroe Doctrine and win the cooperation of Latin American leaders to reduce illegal immigration and drug-trafficking.
While it’s not as full-throated as one would hope in terms of criticizing Trump’s bold and buffoonish invocation of war powers, it’s probably the best we can expect from someone who has always been supportive of CIA torture efforts and, presumably, its occasional foreign government coups.
Trump seems intent on going to war with most of the world, whether its a militaristic show of force, a handy way to consolidate power, or simply by escalating hostilities via public statements and vindictive tariffs that have done nothing more than alienate many of our long-term allies.
Martial law, it may end up being. At the very least, we should definitely expect some form of police state to arise from this situation if the courts can’t shut these efforts down.
This isn’t the only problem with Trump’s War on Immigrants. It now appears the DOJ feels this war power invocation means immigration enforcement agencies (and their local law enforcement partners) will no longer need to worry about the Fourth Amendment.
Trump administration lawyers have determined that an 18th-century wartime law the president has invoked to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang allows federal agents to enter homes without a warrant, according to people familiar with internal discussions.
[…]
“All such alien enemies, wherever found within any territory subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, are subject to summary apprehension,” the proclamation said.
Senior lawyers at the Justice Department view that language, combined with the historical use of the law, to mean that the government does not need a warrant to enter a home or premises to search for people believed to be members of that gang, according to two officials familiar with the new policy.
Swell. That means any home in an area where officers believe some gang members might reside can be searched without a warrant. If the DOJ’s legal team buys into this bullshit, entire apartment blocks and neighborhoods will be raided. And the searches won’t stop until those doing the searching decide they’ve found all they can find or simply need to get back to the station to clock out.
Living in interesting times is fine, if occasionally stressful. But we’re living in times that are far more frightening than interesting. When even torture enthusiasts and CIA-backers think the government is going too far, it’s well past time to start worrying.
I think lots of people know the kind of person who thinks they’re more clever than they really are. The kind of person who thinks that they can outwit the system by playing stupid games. The kind of person who thinks that this kind of beating the system is because they’re smart. This kind of person is usually viewed as a dipshit. Donald Trump’s DOJ seems to be, as a group, acting like just that kind of dipshit.
Like that overconfident student who thinks they’ve discovered one weird trick to beat the system, the DOJ keeps playing increasingly transparent games in court — making patently ridiculous arguments while acting shocked and offended when judges see right through their obvious nonsense.
It is a form of contempt. Not necessarily in the legal sense. But it is a kind of obvious contempt for the very systems and institutions of our judicial system that they are supposed to be protecting as a part of the constitutional order. And while judges are often willing to give great leeway to bad actors in their courtroom, at some point the outright contempt for the court can turn into something judges will start calling out.
I’m reminded of a college classmate who exemplified this mindset perfectly. He’d spend countless hours finding elaborate ways to game every assignment and test, devising increasingly convoluted schemes to avoid doing the actual work. The irony was that his schemes typically required far more effort than simply completing the assignments properly would have taken. But he sure was proud of the ways he believed he was beating the system.
That same misguided energy now permeates Trump’s DOJ (indeed, I just looked up on LinkedIn if that classmate might now work for the DOJ — thankfully he’s not there). These officials pour tremendous effort into crafting obviously laughable legal arguments, filing misleading declarations, and playing semantic games with court orders — all while seemingly convinced of their own clever brilliance. Just like my former classmate, they’re expending more energy trying to game the system than it would take to actually fulfill their constitutional duties and serve the American people. The result is a particularly toxic form of institutional contempt — not just disregard for the courts, but a sort of smirking certainty that they’re somehow outsmarting the entire judicial system.
It is nearly impossible to keep track of all of the various lawsuits that have been filed against the plethora of illegal actions taken by the Trump administration in the last two months since inauguration (though kudos to folks like Just Security who have been tracking them as best as they can).
The Boasberg case represents a critical escalation in this pattern of contempt. While legal scholars debate what precisely constitutes a constitutional crisis, Corbin Barthold makes a compelling case that we’ve now crossed that threshold. When a federal judge explicitly orders planes carrying deportees to return and the administration simply ignores that order, we’re witnessing something qualitatively different from their usual games.
THE LONG-AWAITED CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS has now arrived. It is time for a court to say so.
On Saturday night, James Boasberg, a federal judge in the District of Columbia, issued a pair of emergency orders. The government, he had just been told at a hastily convened hearing, was removing from the country, without due process, more than a hundred alleged gang members. The planes, he learned, were already in the air. To justify this stunning move, President Trump had issued a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
At around 6:45 p.m., Boasberg orally ordered the planes turned around. “Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States,” he ruled from the bench. “This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.”
At 7:26 p.m., he issued a briefwritten orderbarring the government from relying on the Alien Enemies Act to remove noncitizens from the country.
The government ignored both orders.
This outright defiance marks a subtle, but notable, departure from the administration’s playbook the past few months. Until now, they’ve preferred more smirking forms of contempt — slow-walking court orders, playing word games with compliance, or burying judges in misleading declarations. But each of these smaller acts of contempt has apparently emboldened them toward more brazen defiance.
A second administration official said Trump was not defying the judge whose ruling came too late for the planes to change course: “Very important that people understand we are not actively defying court orders.”
This argument, that the order came too late, is nonsense. But it’s notable how the administration is trying to insist it’s actually obeying orders in court, while doing wink, wink, nod, nod stuff out of court.
The administration’s attempts to characterize this as a routine “deportation” matter represent perhaps their most cynical wordplay yet (and one the media should stop repeating, though that’s a different issue). Deportation is a legal process with established due process rights. What happened here was something far darker: the US government engaging in what amounts to human trafficking, shipping people to El Salvador as forced labor without any due process. The mask slipped entirely when El Salvador’s President tweeted “Oopsie… too late” in response to Judge Boasberg’s order — a tweet that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Elon Musk both found amusing enough to amplify:
The full scope of what’s happening deserves to be called out directly. Start with the legal sleight-of-hand: The administration has resurrected the Alien Enemies Act, a widely disparaged authoritarian relic that only applies during “a declared war” or “invasion” — neither of which exists. They’re wielding this zombie legislation to deny basic due process rights to people on American soil, shipping them to El Salvador (not even their country of origin) to become literal slave labor — all funded by US taxpayers.
The contempt deepens with their public justification. Without due process requirements, they don’t actually have to prove their claims that these people are gang members. And they can’t — because the claims are false for many of those shipped out. Reports show that many of the deportees have no gang connections at all. Any competent law enforcement official would recognize these allegations as nonsense.
But the most chilling display comes in their response to judicial oversight: when a federal judge attempts to restore basic due process rights, the administration not only ignores his order, but the Secretary of State publicly mocks it while coordinating with their partner in human trafficking. This isn’t just contempt of court — it’s contempt for the entire concept of legal constraints on executive power.
The administration’s response to Judge Boasberg perfectly encapsulates their broader strategy: when the facts aren’t on your side, attack the judge. Their characterization of Boasberg as a “radical left lunatic partisan” would be merely laughable if it weren’t so deliberately misleading. This is the same conservative judge who repeatedly ruled in Trump’s favor in other cases — ordering Hillary Clinton’s emails released, blocking the release of Trump’s tax returns, and limiting disclosures from both the Mueller investigation and the classified documents grand jury.
The contempt here operates on multiple levels: there’s the surface-level dishonesty of painting a conservative judge as a radical leftist, but more insidiously, there’s the implicit message that any judge who dares enforce the law against Trump must be acting from partisan motives. This fits a broader pattern where the administration’s lawyers aren’t just playing games with legal arguments — they’re actively working to undermine the legitimacy of judicial oversight itself.
The Boasberg case may be the most brazen example, but it’s far from isolated. Across multiple courts, judges are increasingly witnessing this administration’s attempts to treat the judicial system like a game they can cleverly exploit. Their contempt generally takes three forms, each more concerning than the last:
First, there’s the malicious compliance playbook — taking court orders so literally they become absurd. The Social Security Administration exemplifies this approach. When Judge Ellen Hollander blocked DOGE from accessing records, interim SSA head Lee Dudek responded by threatening to shut down the entire Social Security system, claiming his entire IT staff were somehow “DOGE affiliates.” This led to an increasingly furious series of clarifications from the judge, culminating in her observation that either Dudek was lying or the DOJ lawyers were.
Second, there’s the strategy of procedural manipulation — exploiting court customs and courtesy to gain tactical advantages. Take the EPA case, where officials used procedural games to try to circumvent judicial oversight. They asked for a routine 24-hour extension on a hearing (which opposing counsel typically grant as a professional courtesy), then used that delay to sneak in actions that would have been prevented by the pending TRO:
Third, we’re seeing increasingly more open defiance of court orders, coupled with attempts to delegitimize any judge who rules against them. The Perkins Coie case perfectly demonstrates this escalation. When Judge Beryl Howell issued a TRO blocking an obviously unconstitutional executive order targeting the law firm for representing Democratic interests, Attorney General Pam Bondi and OMB Director Russell Vought responded with explicit defiance:
The Executive Branch’s position is that Executive Order 14230 is permissible, and that the Court’s order was erroneous. The government reserves the right to take all necessary and legal actions in response to the “dishonest and dangerous” conduct of Perkins Coie LLP, as set forth in Executive Order 14230.
At the same time, the DOJ is trying to disqualify Judge Howell for… “hostility” towards the President, again setting up the idea that any judicial action holding them to account is driven by bias, rather than an actual respect for the Constitution.
The pattern of contempt continues across other cases, each fitting into these three categories of increasingly brazen defiance:
More malicious compliance games appear in the DOGE leadership saga, where pretend DOGE boss Amy Gleason filed a declaration claiming to run the agency even as Trump himself said in his address to Congress that Elon Musk runs it. When called on this discrepancy, Gleason’s response dripped with technically-accurate-but-misleading wordplay: “Elon Musk does not work at USDS. I do not report to him, and he does not report to me. To my knowledge, he is a Senior Advisor to the White House.” The contempt deepened when it emerged that Gleason was simultaneously appointed as an HHS consultant a week after being named DOGE head.
The EPA case shows how procedural games escalate to outright dishonesty. EPA boss Lee Zeldin, fixated on a deceptively edited Project Veritas video, illegally froze a Citibank account, and attempted to launch a grand jury investigation. When challenged in court, DOJ lawyers told Judge Tanya Chutkan they couldn’t provide evidence of any criminal violation because “this Court is not in a position to rule upon whether or not this termination was consistent with the contracts.”
Perhaps most telling is the transgender military ban case, where the administration’s contempt for judicial oversight is laid bare. The DOJ keeps insisting to the judge that there is no ban on transgender service members, while Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth openly declares exactly the opposite:
These examples paint a clear picture of an administration that, like my college classmate from years ago, believes it’s brilliantly outsmarting the system while actually just making itself look increasingly desperate to avoid any accountability. But unlike that student’s academic games, these legal shenanigans carry profound constitutional implications.
What started as wannabe-clever-but-obvious attempts to circumvent court orders has evolved into something far more dangerous: a systematic effort to delegitimize judicial oversight itself. Each time they respond to a court order with malicious compliance, procedural manipulation, or outright defiance, they’re not just showing contempt for individual judges — they’re undermining the very concept of judicial review.
The progression is clear: first came the word games and barely-technically-accurate-but-misleading declarations, then the exploitation of court procedures and customs, and now increasingly open defiance coupled with attempts to paint any judge who enforces the law as politically biased. This is how institutional guardrails get dismantled — not through dramatic confrontation, but through a thousand small acts of contempt that gradually normalize the idea that court orders are merely suggestions to be cleverly evaded.
Trump has already effectively neutered congressional oversight. Now his DOJ appears determined to do the same to the judiciary, treating federal judges like frustrated professors whose rules are just obstacles to be gamed. But unlike my former classmate’s academic adventures, the stakes here aren’t just a passing grade — they’re the continued functioning of our constitutional system of checks and balances.
Judges are starting to catch on, calling out these games with increasing fury. But judicial anger alone won’t be enough. An administration that responds to court orders with winks, nods, and “technically accurate” lies isn’t demonstrating clever lawyering — it’s showing fundamental contempt for constitutional governance itself. Those who shrug this off as mere legal gamesmanship are missing the escalating danger: when government lawyers treat the judicial branch as a system to be cleverly gamed rather than an essential check on power, they’re not just failing their professional obligations. They’re actively participating in the dismantling of judicial review itself.
These officials seem convinced they can keep playing these games forever — or at least until there’s no independent judiciary left to play games with. At some point, judges need to stop writing angry opinions and start issuing contempt charges. And Congress needs to wake the fuck up before it’s too late.
This didn’t work last time. But neither did a lot of things the first Trump administration tried. This time, though, the federal government is at war with itself, attacked from all sides by the rabid DOGE in its midst. Given that novel development, the chances of information damaging to the Trump administration being leaked to journalists has increased exponentially.
The last time Trump declared war on leakers, his DOJ focused its attention on the journalists being leaked to, rather than tracking down those doing the leaking. On top of that, the first Trump administration went after more whistleblowers than even the notoriously anti-whistleblower Obama administration. Obama, in his defense, had to deal with perhaps the most notorious leaker in human history: Edward Snowden.
Nothing of that magnitude has happened to either Trump Administration, but being proactive is generally more useful than resigning yourself to reacting.
The DHS, under former South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, has already declared it’s going to do something to limit leaking. This “something” appears to be the polygraph-assisted “interviews” of leak suspects — an effort that’s going to do little more than generate a bunch of false positives and negatives. It’s certainly not going to deter leaking. Nor is it going to help the DHS (and its components) root out the leakers it employs.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, announced the investigations in a statement on Friday. Among the accusations, she said The Washington Post had published leaked information on Iran and Israel, and NBC had published leaked information on the state of U.S.-Russia relations.
It was not clear that any published information was classified, or that the news organizations had received classified materials. There are tight restrictions on the circumstances under which intelligence officials can provide information to the news media.
“Politically motivated leaks undermine our national security and the trust of the American people, and will not be tolerated,” Ms. Gabbard wrote. “Unfortunately, such leaks have become commonplace with no investigation or accountability. That ends now.”
I know this is the sort of thing government officials are expected to say when offering public statements, but even Gabbard has to know this new effort — whatever it actually entails — will not “end” leaks of government information to journalists. In fact, the harder this administration goes after leakers, the more likely it is to encourage people to leak info to journalists.
This was accompanied by another statement from Gabbard that’s equally unbelievable:
Ms. Gabbard promised to take action against unauthorized disclosures, even while saying she would create better avenues for whistle-blowers to report concerns.
That might mean something if anyone just waiting to be fired en masse by Executive Order or DOGE disorder actually believe this government can be trusted to protect whistleblowers. But the acts most likely to generate leaks are the acts most likely to encounter vindictive treatment if raised internally. Almost no one in any position of power is interested in hearing about the problems they’re causing. The only response they desire is immediate capitulation and, perhaps, some sort of public display of affection by those under their boot heels.
And, finally, let’s just unpack the loaded language being used by DNI Gabbard. “politically motivated leaks.” Leaks involving the government — one headed by a president who represents a single political party — will always be “politically motivated.” It’s inevitable. But it doesn’t mean every leak is motivated solely by political opposition to the party currently in the Oval Office. Most leaks are motivated by government employees being genuinely concerned about the government’s actions, including those they’re being asked to perform themselves. These are acts of people who, for the most part, feel the public show know what’s going on behind the scenes — actions that members of the public are now complicit in simply because they elected people and their tax dollars are being used to pay for them.
This won’t stop leaks. It will certainly deter whistleblowing through proper channels. This government (like many before it) doesn’t want its dirty laundry aired. But it also has little interest in keeping its laundry as clean as possible, preferring to shoot messengers than have to deal with the minor inconveniences of respecting rights, following the law, or otherwise doing what it can to earn the trust and respect of the governed.
In what may be one of the most shameful displays of institutional cowardice we’ve seen, law firm Paul Weiss has completely capitulated to Donald Trump’s ridiculously unconstitutional executive order targeting the firm. This cave-in comes mere days after another targeted firm, Perkins Coie, successfully obtained a court order blocking an almost identical order. The contrast could not be more stark: one law firm stood up for basic constitutional principles, while another folded at the first sign of pressure.
Paul Weiss, a firm that has long touted its commitment to democratic principles, had multiple obvious paths to fight this blatantly unconstitutional order. They could have filed their own challenge or sought to join Perkins Coie’s successful case. Instead, they chose perhaps the worst possible option: complete surrender.
In short, they caved. They folded like a cheap suit. They made it clear that Paul Weiss not only won’t fight for its clients, it won’t fight for itself.
The announcement of the total and complete capitulation came via a post by Donald Trump on Truth Social:
The full text is insane. If I were a lawyer at Paul Weiss, I would be looking for another job, starting immediately. Everything about this is shameful.
Today, President Donald J. Trump agreed to withdraw his March 14, 2025 Executive Order regarding the Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP law firm (“Paul, Weiss”), which has entered into the following agreement with the President: 1. Paul, Weiss agrees that the bedrock principle of American Justice is that it must be fair and nonpartisan for all. Our Justice System is betrayed when it is misused to achieve political ends.
Lawyers and law firms play a vital role in ensuring that we live up to that standard as a Nation. Law firms should not favor any political party when it comes to choosing their clients. Firms also should not make decisions on whom to hire based on a person’s political affiliation. To do otherwise is to deny some Americans an equal opportunity for our services while favoring others.
Lawyers abandon the profession’s highest ideals when they engage in partisan decision-making, and betray the ethical obligation to represent those who are unpopular or disfavored in a particular environment.
2. Paul, Weiss affirms its unwavering commitment to these core ideals and principles, and will not deny representation to clients, including in pro bono matters and in support of non-profits, because of the personal political views of individual lawyers.
3. Paul, Weiss will take on a wide range of pro bono matters that represent the full spectrum of political viewpoints of our society, whether “conservative” or “liberal.”
4. Paul, Weiss affirms its commitment to merit-based hiring, promotion, and retention, and will not adopt, use, or pursue any DEI policies. As part of its commitment, it will engage experts, to be mutually agreed upon within 14 days, to conduct a comprehensive audit of all of its employment practices.
5. Paul, Weiss will dedicate the equivalent of $40 million in pro bono legal services over the course of President Trump’s term to support the Administration’s initiatives, including: assisting our Nation’s veterans, fairness in the Justice System, the President’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects.
Statement from the White House: “The President is agreeing to this action in light of a meeting with Paul, Weiss Chairman, Brad Karp, during which Mr. Karp acknowledged the wrongdoing of former Paul, Weiss partner, Mark Pomerantz, the grave dangers of Weaponization, and the vital need to restore our System of Justice.”
In response to the President’s announcement, Paul, Weiss’s Chairman Brad Karp said: “We are gratified that the President has agreed to withdraw the Executive Order concerning Paul, Weiss. We look forward to an engaged and constructive relationship with the President and his Administration.”
Yes, the executive order was a potential existential threat to the existence of Paul Weiss, but that’s why you fight it, rather than cave. Everything about this decision is ridiculous and puts anything that Paul Weiss does from here on out at an incredibly suspect level.
The pro bono requirements in this agreement are perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this capitulation. Trump’s original executive order bizarrely attacked Paul Weiss’s pro bono work as harmful, claiming it somehow deprived others of access to justice:
Additionally, they have sometimes done so on behalf of clients, pro bono, or ostensibly “for the public good” — potentially depriving those who cannot otherwise afford the benefit of top legal talent the access to justice deserved by all. My Administration will no longer support taxpayer funds sponsoring such harm
This Orwellian logic — that providing free legal services somehow reduces access to justice — is incredibly dangerous. But rather than challenge this absurd reasoning, Paul Weiss has now agreed to redirect $40 million worth of pro bono work specifically “to support the Administration’s initiatives.” In other words, they’ve agreed to let the government dictate how they allocate their charitable legal services.
This is nothing less than government compelled speech – a textbook First Amendment violation. The government is explicitly forcing a private entity to dedicate resources to supporting specific political initiatives. That a major law firm would accept such an obviously unconstitutional demand, rather than challenge it as Perkins Coie did, represents a complete abdication of their professional responsibilities.
The agreement’s Orwellian doublespeak only compounds the offense. While claiming to prevent “partisan decision-making,” it literally requires the firm to engage in partisan pro bono work supporting specific administration initiatives. And everyone (including the firm’s current and potential clients) knows exactly what happened here.
And, even if their earlier work was “partisan” (it wasn’t really, the firm worked for Fox News!), being partisan is core political speech and association rights protected by the First Amendment. The attack on that violates the First Amendment.
The silence from those who previously claimed that mere suggestions from the Biden administration to social media companies constituted First Amendment violations is deafening. Here we have explicit government compulsion of speech and association rights, backed by threats of economic destruction, yet these supposed defenders of the First Amendment are nowhere to be found.
This capitulation, even more than the original unconstitutional order, should mark the end of Paul Weiss as we know it. A law firm that won’t even defend its own constitutional rights cannot be trusted to defend anyone else’s. Any current Paul Weiss attorney with an ounce of professional integrity should be updating their resume — not just because of the shame of this surrender, but because the firm has demonstrated it will abandon principle at the first sign of serious pressure.
History has shown repeatedly that appeasing authoritarianism only invites more aggressive demands. The MAGA movement’s pattern of escalating bullying after each successful intimidation is well documented. Paul Weiss’s surrender, especially after watching Perkins Coie successfully obtain an immediate restraining order against an identical threat, signals to every would-be autocrat that even our most powerful legal institutions can be cowed through raw intimidation.
And, as if to immediately prove that capitulating won’t lead Trump to stop the bullying, soon after the surrender was announced, the NY Times revealed that despite Paul Weiss’ chairman, the powerful Brad Karp, spending days working out the exact wording of the “agreement” with Trump people, the statement that Trump posted? Wasn’t what they agreed to. Trump simply added in all that nonsense about DEI.
According to two people familiar with the matter, the White House and Mr. Karp had reached an agreement on the wording of the statement. But despite that agreement, the wording of the statement changed, including a reference to the fact that the firm would “not adopt, use, or pursue any DEI policies.”
Trump altered the deal. And everyone has to know he may alter it further.
The damage here goes far beyond one law firm’s reputation. Paul Weiss has just helped normalize government compelled speech and association, while providing a blueprint for future attacks on the independence of the legal profession. Any lawyer who remains at the firm after this isn’t just accepting a resume stain — they’re becoming complicit in the steady erosion of core constitutional principles that the legal profession is supposed to defend.
Let me start this off with a brief confession: while I’m not particularly into conspiracy theories in general, the JFK assassination is an outlier for me. I’ve been fascinated with JFK since I was a child and I don’t believe the official version of the story is the entire story, at a minimum. That throat clearing isn’t the main topic of this post, but it will inform you as to why any new information that comes out about the topic is of great interest to me.
So, while I’m no fan of the current administration, I did sit up and take notice when Trump released additional government files about the assassination in his first term, and again recently when the administration announced the release of the rest of the documents it has on the matter. I’m also completely unsurprised that the main reaction to what has been reviewed in the new files thus far has been mostly “meh.” I have not seen anything that remotely looks like a counterfactual to the official story in these documents and I didn’t expect to. There wasn’t going to be some secret document in there entitled, “Here’s how we killed him and who was involved.”
But I also didn’t expect to learn that the administration released the documents in such a disorganized and careless manner that they essentially doxxed a bunch of people who are very much still alive today.
And in typical Trump fashion, the release has been chaotic and slipshod. The files aren’t organized, summarized, or labeled in a way that makes sense. It’s just raw PDFs with a long numeric string uploaded onto a website. Click the PDF and see what you get. And, according to one lawyer going through them, they include the sensitive personal information of living people.
“The Trump Administration dox’d countless people who served on the staff of the House Select Committee on Assassinations back in 1977-79 by releasing their SSNs in full,” Mark Zaid, an attorney who works on National Security issues, said on Bluesky. “Some of these people are alive. I know them. This was totally unnecessary & contributed nothing to understanding 11/22/63.”
What is darkly funny about all of this is that the only reason Trump didn’t release these very files the first time around was, according to the man himself, so that the government could go through the documents to redact anything that pertained to current security concerns or corporeal human beings. Five years later, upon release, we learn that said review either wasn’t done at all, was done exceptionally poorly, or that this sensitive and personal information of living human beings was done purposefully.
Given the disorderly manner in which this release occurred, I would guess the last of those was not the actual intention. Never assume malice where incompetance is an equal or better explanation, as the saying goes. But with this adminstration, one fueled by grievance and revenge, you never can tell, I guess.
To be clear, more government transparency is a good thing, even if it has to come with several decades worth of baggage. But just like the supposed aim to reduce government spending, there is the orderly and intelligent way to approach it all, or the Trump way. The latter is done so incompetently so as to cause collateral damage. That’s the problem.
There is no question that you are a dedicated public servant. You believe in our democracy. You believe in the norms that maintain it. You believe in its mission of bringing us together to promote the general welfare. There are many, many favorable things that can be said about you, your service, and your leadership up to now.
But you are not up for this fight for our nation’s future. And we need in leadership someone who is ready for it, right now, if any of those things that you value are going to survive.
That person is not you. You do not even seem to recognize that the fight for our country’s survival is already upon us. While people take hit after hit, to their livelihoods, physical well-being, freedoms and futures, and already countless have rolled up their sleeves to try to stem the onslaught, you continue as though everything is business as usual and there is not already an existential threat to our country that has landed at our door. “We will fight, and we will win!” you say, as if the moment to begin that fight has yet to come. You keep conjugating the Constitutional crisis in the future tense, apparently oblivious to the fact that it has been unfolding, at greater and greater cost, every day for the past two months, from the moment Trump took office—if not also long before.
And all you have done is greased the skids for it, as you have allowed a lawless tyrant the privilege of normal order that he has otherwise been upending with his every other move. You have allowed him, with only the most minimal resistance, to lawfully embed the corrupt and incompetent into the highest official roles in government, while also effectively allowing his most dangerous henchman to evade Senate supervision entirely as he attacks, without lawful authority or restraint, the country’s infrastructure and resources, as well as Congress’s own legislative and fiduciary roles.
Yet it is not clear that you have even noticed. Because while you acknowledge the role of the courts in trying to, belatedly, clean up the mess, at no point do you seem to understand your own. You have done almost nothing to resist, nothing to fight back, nothing to say no to all of these Trump-driven assaults on our Constitutional order. Your silence instead keeps saying yes.
Worse, you keep undermining anyone else’s ability to stand against it. No matter how right you thought you were on the continuing resolution, to undercut your party as unilaterally as you did is inexcusable. Even if you were right on the merits of the risked shutdown—and at best it was dubious, both legally and in terms of calculating the political cost to the GOP if it were pursued—you could not have been right enough to justify such destructive hubris to blow up the unity and momentum that at last had finally started to coalesce and surrender, for nothing, the power it possessed.
It’s a hubris that also expects voters to be fools. “We will win in 2026,” you predict, while daily negating any reason voters should reward you or your party with such victory and leaving the democratic institutions that would enable such an election to further erode. By refusing to flex your power in any even slightly meaningful way you teach the electorate that there is no point in voting for Democrats, no point giving them any more power, when you so adamantly refuse to use what power you already have. Yet you seem to hope voters somehow won’t notice, that they won’t notice how unqualified you are as stewards of the rule of law, when you cannot even recognize that it has been attacked when laws themselves aren’t obeyed and not just orders, or how ill-equipped you are to do anything but stand idly by while Trump dissects the nation. You do nothing but dull the alarm you should be raising, and yet still you assume the public will flock to Democrats when your silent complicity with all the harm he has already wrought obviates the primary need to elect Democrats at all: to stop it. It will garner no votes to continue down this road of inaction. It will only cause Democrats to lose and the country to be lost—in 2026, or, at this rate, even sooner.
It is time to meet the moment; the only question is how you will decide to. If you stay this course, tightly gripping the reins of power while you sabotage the fight your party and your people are ready and desperate to enter, few will see you as any sort of hero. No message you could hope to deliver will ever be taken seriously if you persist in behaving in this obstructive way. Whatever you may have accomplished in your career will be lost to the sands of time and you will be written into history as a Vichy clown, plagued by obtuse cowardice, who used his own power to make sure the nation would suffer the consequences of his own personal failures.
But if you are the public servant, the statesman, and the man you want to be remembered as, or indeed anywhere near qualified for the leadership role you are trying so hard to hold onto, then the true power play of such a leader is to stand aside. Even if you are at last ready to step up, to lead the fight that must be led, giving way to another may still be the best medicine, to bring something new to the calcified corridors of Congress. How things once were is no longer how they are now, and it is time for a different playbook than the one you had mastered. But you of all people should of course understand the importance of getting out of the way; after all, if you could yield to the GOP on the continuing resolution because you thought it was the right thing to do for the future, then you can yield to your own party for the same reason.
But if you do yield, now, under your own power, with the gratitude of the nation, you can do so knowing that we are a country that understands and appreciates the value of a noble sacrifice for the public good. And how for nearly 250 years we have celebrated those who set aside their power voluntarily, which is a lesson we all would benefit from being reminded of through your example.
Choose, then, to stand down as Senate Minority Leader, as the affirmative gift you are giving to the country you love.
And choose it before it is chosen for you.
WATCH: Schumer says "our democracy will be at stake" if Trump disobeys the Supreme Court—but "we're not there yet."
I guess this is going to become a theme for who knows how long. For reasons I cannot begin to understand, the Trump administration’s distaste for any criticism of itself, as well as any politics it does not agree with, is resulting in many in corporate America folding into alignment with those desires. Whether it’s the capitulation to an anti-DEI stance or an exit from any kind of political entanglements, the general stance appears to be that all the boots must be licked as thoroughly as possible.
That puts companies like Ben & Jerry’s, famous for its social stances, in a tough spot. The company has not been shy about criticizing the Trump team, going all the way back to the first administration. Nor has it been shy about taking moral stances on conflicts around the world, with one such stance notably resulting in some level of backing from its parent company, Unilever.
While Ben & Jerry’s has decades of activism as part of its corporate tradition, Unilever appears to have tried to stamp that out starting in 2025. The parent company refused to allow B&J to issue corporate statements criticizing the Trump administration on matters of politics. This resulted in a lawsuit against Unilever, with B&J claiming that Unilever is contractually obligated to allow for B&J’s independent ability to make those statements as part of the acquisition. This ramped up even further more recently with the news that Unilever terminated B&J CEO David Stever as a result of his activism.
In an amended complaint filed Tuesday in New York, lawyers for the ice cream brand said that rules stemming from its 2000 merger “protects Ben & Jerry’s interests by precluding the unilateral removal of its CEO,” but Unilever did just that — “removing and replacing” CEO David Stever by not following the proper protocols and said it was because of the brand’s continued comments on progressive issues.
The lawsuit said that Unilever’s motive for the removal of Stever was due to his “commitment to Ben & Jerry’s Social Mission and Essential Brand Integrity … rather than any genuine concerns regarding his performance history.”
This elective censorship in order to appease ranking politicians ought to scare the hell out of everybody. Whatever you might think about B&J’s opinions on politics, we surely don’t want to foster an ecosystem of feigned group-think. The only thing that changed between 2024 and 2025 was the new presidential administration. The stances by B&J haven’t changed. The company’s desire to speak on those stances hasn’t changed. The type of rhetoric in those desired statements haven’t changed.
This is purely about Unilever deciding, counter-contractually as alleged, that it wants to bow at the altar of Donald Trump. And the tactics from Unilever appears to be decidedly heavy-handed.
Ben & Jerry’s initial lawsuit, filed in November 2024, alleged Unilever silenced its attempts to publicly support Palestinian refugees and resolutions to end military aid to Israel, where the company had done business since 1987.
It also alleged that Unilever threatened to dismantle Ben & Jerry’s board and sue members because the company’s management and board planned to issue a statement calling for “peace” and a “permanent and immediate ceasefire.”
This is a marriage of the free market and free speech, ideals that the conservative party in America has long championed. If people don’t like B&J’s politics, they’re free to buy a different brand of ice cream. If Unilever doesn’t like those politics, but are disallowed contractually from censoring them, then Unilever can sell the company to someone else, which is reportedly exactly what Unilever is doing.
If corporate America is simply going to rollover based on the whims of every change in administration, that kind of whipsawing on corporate stances is going to get real confusing, real fast. If this is only being done with this administration out of fear, which I believe is the case, that should be setting off all kinds of alarm bells.
And if the so-called speech-champions can’t be bothered to get out of bed to advocate for speech protections they don’t agree with, then we can cease calling them champions of speech, full stop.
Donald Trump has proudly shown off his new spoil of war—the Declaration of Independence. A document, which to me, has so much meaning and importance. Well, I’m quite upset about it.
Not because I believe such a document should never leave the National Archives. Historical artifacts can and sometimes should travel for legitimate purposes. But what unsettles me is the casual proprietorship implied by this transfer—the transformation of our collective heritage into one man’s trophy.
The Declaration of Independence isn’t just parchment and ink. It represents something far more profound: a moment when imperfect people reached for perfect ideals. When Jefferson, despite his own moral contradictions and hypocrisies, articulated principles that would ultimately challenge the very systems of privilege he benefited from.
What makes this document sacred isn’t its physical form but what it embodies: the audacious proposition that governance derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. That power flows upward from the people, not downward from a ruler.
When I think about the Continental Congress deliberating over each word, knowing the risk they were taking, I’m reminded that democracy has always been both fragile and resilient. Those men, flawed as they were, understood they were creating something that would outlive them—something that belonged not to them but to generations unborn.
That’s why seeing the Declaration displayed as a presidential prop feels so viscerally wrong. It’s not simply inappropriate; it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what the document means. It belongs to all of us—not as a relic to be possessed, but as a living covenant that continues to challenge and inspire us.
This is where I have a serious point of departure with some of my more left-leaning friends who have taken a disinterested and detached view of history. Jefferson owned slaves. A hypocrisy he acknowledged. And he laid the intellectual groundwork for its end. This is the problem of puritanism. It can’t see progress. It can’t see these mile-markers where real moral progress occurred. Where the human heart expanded.
To reduce the Declaration to the personal failings of its author is to miss its revolutionary significance. It’s not that Jefferson’s moral contradictions don’t matter—they absolutely do. But the document he crafted transcended him. It contained principles that would later be wielded against the very institutions of oppression he participated in. Frederick Douglass understood this when he asked, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” He wasn’t rejecting the Declaration—he was claiming it, insisting that its promises be fulfilled for all Americans.
The Declaration wasn’t the end of America’s moral journey but its beginning. It established a standard against which we could measure our failures and toward which we could direct our aspirations. It created a language of liberty that marginalized people would later use to demand their rightful place in the American project.
This document, this Declaration of Independence was the beginning of a radical idea that human civilization had never seen before: that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, not from divine right or brute force or inherited privilege. That all people are created equal—a claim that would repeatedly challenge America to expand its understanding of who counts as “all.”
That it now sits in the office of a man who has no appreciation for any of this is quite frankly hard to take. A man who has explicitly called for the “termination” of constitutional rules, who has claimed “absolute immunity” from prosecution, who has said “I am your retribution”—phrases that echo precisely the kind of monarchical authority the Declaration was written to reject.
I am quite romantic about that document and I do not apologize for it. This romanticism isn’t blind nostalgia or uncritical patriotism. It’s a clear-eyed recognition that in those words, something profound happened—a doorway opened to possibilities that hadn’t existed before. The beginning of a conversation about freedom and equality that continues to this day, sometimes halting, sometimes regressing, but ultimately advancing toward a more inclusive understanding of those self-evident truths.
This is an important part of my praxis. Understanding and embracing these historical contingencies, and recognizing them for the moral mile-markers that they are. We should be proud of this history. We should be proud of our progress. And I am proud. I will always hold the stars and stripes high. Because I know what the flag stands for.
This isn’t blind patriotism; it’s an informed commitment to what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” It’s recognizing that America has always existed in the productive tension between what we are and what we aspire to be. The flag, like the Declaration, represents not just our history—with all its contradictions and failings—but the ongoing project of creating “a more perfect union.”
To truly honor these symbols requires neither uncritical reverence nor cynical dismissal, but a mature engagement with their complexity. It means acknowledging darker chapters while still affirming the underlying principles that have allowed for moral growth and self-correction. It means understanding that our national symbols derive their power not from mythological perfection but from their capacity to inspire continual improvement.
This approach stands in stark contrast to how these symbols are currently being weaponized. When national treasures like the Declaration become personal trophies, when the flag becomes a brand rather than a covenant, something essential is lost. These symbols are diminished when they’re reduced to instruments of division rather than recognized as repositories of shared aspirations.
The Declaration now sitting in Trump’s office represents a fundamental misunderstanding of its meaning. It’s not a decoration or status symbol; it’s a challenge to power itself. Its presence in the Oval Office should remind every president of the limits of their authority, not serve as a backdrop for authority’s expansion.
What makes America’s founding documents revolutionary isn’t that they established a perfect nation, but that they created a framework for ongoing moral progress—a way to acknowledge our shortcomings while working toward their remedy. They represent the radical idea that a nation can be founded not just on shared history or ethnicity, but on shared principles.
This is the patriotism worth defending—not one that demands blind loyalty, but one that invites perpetual renewal. Not one that glosses over failures, but one that confronts them in service of our highest ideals.
Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And the Declaration of Independence belongs not to any president or party, but to the American people—a document whose meaning transcends its authors’ limitations and continues to challenge us to live up to its promise.
Jefferson understood this when he wrote: “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” He knew that the document he crafted wasn’t merely a historical artifact but a living covenant between generations—between those who began this experiment in self-governance and those who would carry it forward.
The Declaration now sits in the Oval Office. But its spirit—the radical notion that power flows from the people, not to them—remains where it has always been: in the collective conscience of a nation still striving to make its founding promises real for all. That, more than any physical parchment, is Jefferson’s true legacy. And it’s one worth defending with all the moral clarity we can muster.
Mike Brock is a former tech exec who was on the leadership team at Block. Originally published at his Notes From the Circus.
