This Week in Democracy – Week 37: Trump Goes Full Fascist and Denounces 'Enemy From Within'
Another week of Zeteo's project to document the growth of authoritarianism in Trump's second term.
Team Zeteo
October 4, 2025
Zeteo
Trump speaks to senior military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico on Sept. 30, 2025. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Week 37. Where do we even begin?
Donald Trump went full fascist, telling the country’s military leaders they need to confront the “enemy from within” (do you know who else warned of ‘internal enemies’?).
Government websites blamed the “radical left” for the shutdown (it’s not only a lie, but the message may have violated the law).
Trump officially told Congress the US is at war with the cartels (as if that suddenly makes using deadly force on boats that Trump says, without providing evidence, are carrying drugs to the US legal under international law).
And that’s just the beginning of what the president and his allies did this week that harms democracy, undermines the Constitution, and hurts free societies worldwide. We’ve got the rest of the list below.
Before you hop in, though, there was one great thing that happened for democracy – a courageous federal judge issued a truly stunning 161-page rebuke of the president and his assault on the First Amendment: “The president’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech.”
Here’s ‘This Week in Democracy – Week 37’:
Saturday, September 27
On Truth Social, Trump announced that he directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to deploy troops to Portland, Oregon, which he baselessly called “War ravaged” and “under siege” by antifa. In response, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said, “the number of necessary troops is zero, in Portland and any other American city.”
Week 37. Where do we even begin?
Donald Trump went full fascist, telling the country’s military leaders they need to confront the “enemy from within” (do you know who else warned of ‘internal enemies’?).
Government websites blamed the “radical left” for the shutdown (it’s not only a lie, but the message may have violated the law).
Trump officially told Congress the US is at war with the cartels (as if that suddenly makes using deadly force on boats that Trump says, without providing evidence, are carrying drugs to the US legal under international law).
And that’s just the beginning of what the president and his allies did this week that harms democracy, undermines the Constitution, and hurts free societies worldwide. We’ve got the rest of the list below.
Before you hop in, though, there was one great thing that happened for democracy – a courageous federal judge issued a truly stunning 161-page rebuke of the president and his assault on the First Amendment: “The president’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech.”
Here’s ‘This Week in Democracy – Week 37’:
Saturday, September 27
On Truth Social, Trump announced that he directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to deploy troops to Portland, Oregon, which he baselessly called “War ravaged” and “under siege” by antifa. In response, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said, “the number of necessary troops is zero, in Portland and any other American city.”
Sunday, September 28
Oregon sued the Trump administration in an effort to block the deployment of National Guard troops to Portland. The lawsuit called the move “provocative and arbitrary,” and argued it “threaten[s] to undermine public safety by inciting a public outcry.”
Monday, September 29
Reuters reported that the number of federal drug prosecutions dropped to its lowest number in decades after the Trump administration shifted the focus of enforcement agencies to its crackdown on immigration. Meanwhile, the number of people charged with money laundering also decreased by 24% this year.
The Guardian reported that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has taken a prominent role in the Trump administration’s strikes against suspected Venezuelan drug boats, sometimes exerting more influence than Secretary of State and national security adviser Marco Rubio.
MSNBC reported that the FBI investigation into Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, began after his colleague suggested to federal agents posing as businessmen that Homan could facilitate lucrative government contracts if Trump became president, in exchange for $1 million.
YouTube agreed to a $24.5 million settlement with Trump to end a lawsuit he brought after the platform suspended his account following the Jan. 6 insurrection. As part of the settlement, YouTube will provide $22 million to help fund the construction of the White House State Ballroom, and another $2.5 million that will go to a group of Trump’s supporters, including the American Conservative Union.
Politico reported that the Trump administration is planning to slash more than half of its federal funding for a homelessness program at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which could put more than 170,000 people at risk of becoming homeless.
The New York Times reported that top Trump aides, led by Marco Rubio, are ramping up their push to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, which could include escalating military pressure to force him out.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Health and Human Services sent a letter to the president of Harvard University, notifying the school that the Trump administration would refer it to a process called debarment, which could make Harvard ineligible for federal grants.
The New York City Bar Association issued a statement about the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, writing, “We are at a turning point in our history,” and adding that “the Supreme Court has long recognized that prosecutions animated by impermissible motives are unconstitutional.”
Trump welcomed Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House for the fourth time since he took office in January. He also introduced a 20-point “peace plan” to end the war in Gaza, which would include putting Gaza under a “temporary” committee known as the “Board of Peace,” led by Trump and featuring former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. The plan doesn’t appear to have included any official input from Palestinians. During a joint press conference, during which neither Trump nor Netanyahu took questions, Trump said if Hamas doesn’t accept the deal, Israel would have the “full backing” of the US to “do what you have to do.”
New bodycam footage was released that suggested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s arrest at an ICE facility in May was ordered by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. The video shows the arresting officer saying he would be placing Baraka under arrest at the direction of Blanche, and telling other federal agents to turn off their bodycams.
On Truth Social, Trump once again suggested he would withhold federal funds from New York City if Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor, writing, “He won’t be getting any of it, so what’s the point of voting for him?”
He also posted a vulgar and racist AI-generated video of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, with Jeffries wearing a sombrero and Schumer saying in the fabricated audio that Democrats “have no voters anymore because of our woke, trans bullshit,” and that “if we give all these illegal aliens health care, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us.” In response, Jeffries tweeted, “Bigotry will get you nowhere,” and Schumer said, “If you think your shutdown is a joke, it just proves what we all know: You can’t negotiate. You can only throw tantrums.”
The Trump administration deported dozens of Iranians back to Iran after striking a deal with Tehran. The move raised concerns among human rights advocates who fear for the immigrants’ safety. Later, a lawyer representing two of the immigrants said his clients were removed from the US without due process and are now at risk of persecution in their home country.
Trump signed an executive order vowing to protect Qatar, weeks after Israel’s attack on the country targeting Hamas leaders, which he reportedly received prior notice about. The order states that the US “shall regard any armed attack on the territory, sovereignty or critical infrastructure of the state of Qatar as a threat to the peace and security of the United States.”
Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez reported that some of Trump’s top government officials are concerned that the president’s outbursts could make it harder for his administration to charge, convict, and imprison his political opponents.
Tuesday, September 30
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gathered hundreds of top US military leaders at Quantico for a speech in which he slammed “woke” standards and promised a return to “the highest male standard” for combat positions. Hegseth announced he is “overhauling” the department’s Inspector General’s Office, which is currently investigating him over the Signal scandal, claiming the office “has been weaponized, putting complainers, ideologues, and poor performers in the driver’s seat.” He also said the department will be making changes to the retention of adverse information in personnel records.
Speaking to the military leaders, Trump went full fascist and warned about an unspecified “enemy from within,” saying, “We’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don’t wear uniforms.” He also suggested that cities like San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles could be used “as training grounds for our military.”
A Reagan-appointed federal judge issued a scathing opinion against the Trump administration, finding its effort to deport pro-Palestinian academics “continues unconstitutionally to chill freedom of speech to this day.” He went on to write, “The President’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech.” He added, “I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up for, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected. Is he correct?”
Politico reported that the White House is considering a primary challenge to Governor Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) if she continues to avoid efforts to redistrict a new Congressional map in her state.
Speaking to reporters, Trump blamed Democratic lawmakers for the impending government shutdown, but added that his administration “can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible, that are bad for them, and irreversible by them. Like cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”
Trump also repeated his false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election, saying, “We did win the election. We did great. But unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way from a practical standpoint.”
Fortune reported that approximately 100,000 federal workers who signed up for the Trump administration’s “fork in the road” Deferred Resignation Program were set to formally quit their jobs as the fiscal year came to a close, marking what the outlet calls the country’s “largest mass resignation in history.”
The acting inspector general for the National Archives opened an investigation into the release of Rep. Mikie Sherrill’s (D-N.J.) military records, which were almost completely unredacted, including her Social Security number, the addresses for her and her parents, and life insurance information. The investigation follows a request from ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who called the release “an illegal and likely politically motivated disclosure.”
The Department of Housing and Urban Development posted a bright red banner on its website blaming the “radical left” for the impending government shutdown. The banner read, “The Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish list of demands. The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people.” The non-profit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen subsequently filed a complaint with the US Office of Special Counsel, calling the banner a “blatant violation” of the Hatch Act.
Federal labor unions sued the Trump administration in an effort to block mass firings during the government shutdown, arguing the move is illegal and exceeds the government’s authority.
ICE agents allegedly assaulted three journalists at an immigration court in New York City, resulting in one of the reporters, L. Vural Elibol from Turkey’s Anadolu Agency, being removed from the building on a stretcher and hospitalized.
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from reallocating $233 million worth of FEMA disaster assistance funds from 12 Democratic states, hours before the funds would have expired at the end of the fiscal year. During the hearing, the judge called the move to repurpose the funds “yet another case where the administration is saying … I’m going to do what I want to do and not what the law says and make the court make me.”
Trump said Education Secretary Linda McMahon is “finishing up the final details” on an agreement with Harvard University that he claims will see the school pay $500 million and begin operating trade schools.
The Washington Post reported that although the USAID Global Health Supply Chain Program resumed just days after Trump signed an executive order suspending foreign aid, the decision caused months-long delays and disruptions of medications, rapid screening tests, and other life-saving supplies to more than 40 countries that ultimately led to the deaths of children.
A federal judge ruled that Trump’s acting US attorney for Nevada “is not validly serving” in her position and that her involvement in prosecutions “would be unlawful.” It marks the second time in Trump’s term that one of his acting US attorneys has had their authority stripped by the courts.
Trump withdrew his nomination of E.J. Antoni, the chief economist at the Heritage Foundation who contributed to Project 2025, to serve as the new Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner.
A class action lawsuit was filed against the Trump administration, arguing its efforts to aggregate the personal data of hundreds of millions of US citizens from federal agencies violate the Constitution and federal privacy laws, put sensitive data at risk of being hacked, and could disenfranchise voters.
Another lawsuit was filed against the Trump administration by a US citizen from Alabama who was detained twice by ICE in recent months while working at a construction site despite showing agents his identification. The lawsuit argues ICE’s warrantless raids and arrests are unconstitutional.
The Trump administration said it determined that Minnesota and its governing body for high school sports were in violation of federal law over their policies allowing trans athletes to compete in girls’ sports, giving them 10 days to reverse their policies or risk enforcement action.
Federal agents conducted a massive late-night raid at a Chicago apartment building that resulted in the arrests of 37 people. The Chicago Sun Times reported that armed federal agents in military fatigues busted down doors, pulling residents, including women and children, some of them naked, from their apartments. After the raid, toys, shoes, and food remained in piles in the building’s hallways, and property managers were seen throwing mattresses and broken doors into dumpsters.
Wednesday, October 1
The federal government shut down after the Republican-controlled Congress failed to pass proposals to keep the government open. It’s the first government shutdown since Trump’s first term, which lasted 34 days between December 2018 and January 2019.
The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon is planning to require more than 5,000 personnel, including many top officials, to sign strict nondisclosure agreements and undergo random polygraph testing in an effort to identify leakers and those who are deemed to be insufficiently loyal.
The Supreme Court ruled that Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, whom Trump attempted to fire in August, can remain in her position for the time being, with arguments in her case scheduled for January 2026.
A coalition of 20 states sued the Trump administration in an effort to block a new Justice Department rule that would prohibit states from helping victims of sexual assault and domestic violence unless they can immediately prove their immigration status.
An immigration judge rejected a motion by Kilmar Abrego Garcia to reopen his asylum claim, ruling that the motion was filed beyond a 90-day deadline. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers argued he was eligible to apply for asylum within one year of his last entry into the US, which occurred when he was returned from El Salvador, where he was mistakenly deported. (Read more about the Trumpy immigration judge who made the decision here.)
On a podcast, former Trump campaign manager and current DHS adviser Corey Lewandowski suggested ICE agents will be at the Super Bowl for Bad Bunny’s halftime show, saying, “There is nowhere you can provide safe haven to people who are in this country illegally. Not the Super Bowl and nowhere else.” He added, “It’s so shameful they’ve decided to pick somebody who seems to hate America so much to represent them at the Halftime Show.”
On Twitter, Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought announced that the Trump administration is canceling nearly $8 billion in climate funding for 16 states, none of which voted for Trump in 2024.
Politico reported on a White House memo that found the US could lose $15 billion of its gross domestic product each week of a government shutdown, with a monthlong shutdown threatening to lead to 43,000 people losing their jobs. The job losses are in addition to the 1.9 million federal employees who are either furloughed or working without pay.
NBC News reported that a coalition of more than 150 US doctors, nurses, and other medical workers who volunteered in Gaza sent a letter to Trump urging his administration to end the country’s “military, economic, and diplomatic support” for Israel’s destruction of Gaza, writing that “with only marginal exceptions, everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both,” and adding that “the scale of violence directed at Gaza’s civilians is unlike anything any of us has ever seen.”
CNN reported that FBI Director Kash Patel fired a trainee for displaying a pride flag on his desk when he was working as an FBI support specialist in California last year. In a letter to the trainee obtained by MSNBC, Patel accused him of “exercis[ing] poor judgment with an inappropriate display of political signage in your work area.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump recently signed off on providing Ukraine with intelligence for long-range missile strikes on Russia’s energy infrastructure, marking the first time, officials say, the Trump administration has done so.
ICE officials transferred the last 18 remaining immigrants awaiting deportation from the US Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, though their final destinations were not known.
The Trump administration sent an offer to nine major universities to receive more favorable access to federal funds if they sign on to an agreement that would involve gutting any transgender policies, ending the consideration of race, gender, and other student demographics in the admissions process, and requiring undergraduate applicants to take the SAT or ACT.
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from withholding $34 million in federal funds to protect New York’s transportation system from terrorist attacks.
Thursday, October 2
Politico reported that while one-third of White House employees will be furloughed during the government shutdown, all 45 officials working for the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will stay on the job.
CBS News reported that the director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library was forced to resign this week after he pushed back against Trump taking an original Eisenhower sword from the library’s collection to give to King Charles as a gift during his state visit to the UK. He told CBS News that he was directed to “resign – or be fired.”
On Truth Social, Trump announced a meeting with Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought to determine what “Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM” should be cut, and whether the cuts should be temporary or permanent. Trump bragged, “I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity.”
During an interview on One America News Network, Trump threatened to fire federal workers if a government shutdown continues. He also suggested his administration would permanently cut projects supported by Democrats, saying, “I am allowed to cut things that should have never been approved in the first place and I will probably do that.”
The New York Times reported that Trump sent a confidential notice to Congress, informing lawmakers that the US is formally engaged in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels his administration has designated as “terrorist organizations.” The notice described individuals suspected of smuggling drugs for these groups as “unlawful combatants.” Under international law, declaring an armed conflict gives Trump the authority to target enemy fighters even if they pose no immediate threat. The move has experts questioning whether the notice itself is lawful, with a former Army senior adviser for law-of-war issues calling it an “abuse” that crossed a major legal line.
Wired reported that after Education Department employees set up their automatic out-of-office email responses following the government shutdown, the language of the response message was altered to blame Senate Democrats for the shutdown.
Asked by a reporter whether emergency room doctors should check the immigration status of a dying patient before treating them, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt refused to answer, saying, “That’s a question for health care professionals and legal experts to answer.”
Apple said it removed ICEBlock and other similar apps that alert users to ICE agents in their area from its App Store after facing pressure from Justice Department officials, at the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi, to take them down.
Friday, October 3
Spanish-language journalist Mario Guevara, who has lived in the US for over 20 years, was deported after spending more than three months in ICE custody. Guevara, who had a work permit and is the father of two US citizens, was arrested in June while covering the “No Kings” protest. The Guardian called his imprisonment “among the longest for any reporter arrested in connection with their work as a journalist” in US history.
The FBI cut ties with the non-profit organization Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors right-wing extremism. On Twitter, FBI Director Kash Patel baselessly called the organization a “partisan smear machine.” The move comes two days after Patel cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League. Both organizations had named Turning Point USA, founded by the late Charlie Kirk, as a group affiliated with “extremism” and “hate.”
Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng reported that top Trump administration officials are furious with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for undermining the government’s narrative about Jeffrey Epstein in a New York Post podcast earlier this week. On the podcast, Lutnick, who was once Epstein’s neighbor, said he was shown Epstein’s “massage room” during a tour of his townhouse, claimed Epstein’s rich and famous associates “participated” in the late sex trafficker’s crimes, and called him “the greatest blackmailer ever,” something the Trump administration strenuously denies.
On Twitter, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that, on Trump’s orders, he directed a strike on an alleged drug boat in the waters off Venezuela. According to Hegseth, four men were killed during the strike. Hegseth added, “These strikes will continue until the attacks on the American people are over!!!!”
On Truth Social, Trump gave Hamas a deadline of 6 pm Sunday to accept the terms of his deal to end the war in Gaza. If Hamas rejects the deal, Trump warned that “all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out” against them. Hamas later said it would release all Israeli hostages under Trump’s plan, and signaled its readiness to enter into negotiations. Hamas also agreed to transfer the administration of Gaza to an independent body of Palestinian technocrats, “based on Palestinian national consensus and Arab and Islamic support.”
AP reported that the first group of Army lawyers the Trump administration tapped to serve as temporary immigration judges is set to begin training on Monday. Experts have warned that the move could harm both immigration and military courts.
Wired reported that ICE is looking to hire private vendors for a multiyear surveillance program that would involve employing 30 contractors to monitor social media platforms for content that could be used as intelligence to target people for deportation.
A veteran federal prosecutor who was abruptly fired this week after a pro-Trump writer, without evidence, linked him to internal pushback related to Comey’s indictment, left a note on his office door warning colleagues that the Trump administration “is more concerned with punishing the President’s perceived enemies than they are with protecting our national security.”
The Supreme Court ruled the Trump administration can move forward with terminating the temporary protected status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants living in the US.
A federal judge ordered discovery in Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case after suggesting that his prosecution “may stem from retaliation by the DOJ and DHS due to Abrego’s successful challenge of his unlawful deportation in Maryland.”
A coalition of unions, employers, and religious groups sued the Trump administration to block its effort to impose a $100,000 application fee on new H-1B visas for high-skilled foreign workers.
AP reported that the Trump administration sent offers to migrant shelters to pay migrant children aged 14 and older $2,500 to self-deport to their home countries, giving them 24 hours to accept the deal.
A second federal appeals court ruled that Trump’s executive order to ban birthright citizenship is unconstitutional.
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Zeteo is a new media organization that seeks to answer the questions that really matter, while always striving for the truth. Founded by Mehdi Hasan, Zeteo is a movement for media accountability, unfiltered news and bold opinions.
https://zeteo.com/p/trump-antifa-executive-order-national-security-memo-anti-fascism-free-speech
Trump Just Issued Two of His Most Dangerous Directives Yet
The president is taking steps to criminalize being anti-Trump in America. It puts us all at risk.
by Kim Wehle
October 3, 2025
Zeteo
by Kim Wehle
October 3, 2025
Zeteo
Trump signs an executive order in the White House. Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Donald Trump’s escalating war on the left – and his critics in general – should send a chill down the spine of every adult in America.
Just in the last two weeks, he and his administration deployed the National Guard to “war-ravaged” Portland, Oregon, over so-called “antifa;” warned a gathering of 800 military officials about “a war from within;” declared that “we’re gonna straighten them out one by one” in “very unsafe places” like San Francisco and New York; used an official government website to announce that “The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government;” and issued two presidential orders directing the Justice Department and other federal law enforcement agencies to go after anyone he considers left-wing “domestic terrorists.”
The president is taking steps to criminalize being anti-Trump in America.
Donald Trump’s escalating war on the left – and his critics in general – should send a chill down the spine of every adult in America.
Just in the last two weeks, he and his administration deployed the National Guard to “war-ravaged” Portland, Oregon, over so-called “antifa;” warned a gathering of 800 military officials about “a war from within;” declared that “we’re gonna straighten them out one by one” in “very unsafe places” like San Francisco and New York; used an official government website to announce that “The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government;” and issued two presidential orders directing the Justice Department and other federal law enforcement agencies to go after anyone he considers left-wing “domestic terrorists.”
The president is taking steps to criminalize being anti-Trump in America.
https://truthout.org/articles/illinois-lawsuit-seeks-to-block-trumps-deployment-of-national-guard-to-chicago/
News
Politics & Elections
Illinois Lawsuit Seeks to Block Trump’s Deployment of National Guard to Chicago
Americans “should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military,” the lawsuit states.
by Chris Walker
October 6, 2025
Truthout
Americans “should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military,” the lawsuit states.
by Chris Walker
October 6, 2025
Truthout
Protesters gather outside of the suburban Chicago ICE Detention Center in Broadview, Illinois, on September 19, 2025. Dominic Gwinn/AFP via Getty Images.
The city of Chicago and the state of Illinois have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, seeking to halt the White House’s plans to send National Guard troops to the city.
The lawsuit comes as Trump is deploying troops to Democratic-run cities across the country to advance his authoritarian and anti-immigrant agenda under the guise of fighting crime.
The White House has said it needs 300 troops from the Illinois National Guard to “protect federal officers and assets,” parroting its justification for sending troops to Los Angeles earlier this year to repress protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Notably, a federal judge later ruled that the use of National Guard troops in that instance was unlawful.
The Trump administration has indicated that it would also like to deploy National Guard troops from other states to Chicago.
President Donald Trump’s “deployment of federalized troops to Illinois is patently unlawful,” reads the complaint from the state and city. “Plaintiffs ask this court to halt the illegal, dangerous, and unconstitutional federalization of members of the National Guard of the United States, including both the Illinois and Texas National Guard.”
Related Story:
News
Politics & Elections
Judge Blocks Trump From Sending National Guard Troops to Oregon — for Now
Gavin Newsom had challenged an order to send California troops, and warned that the US is on the “brink of martial law.”
by Jon Queally
October 6, 2025
Common Dreams
The lawsuit further argues that Trump’s calls to deploy troops are politically motivated, given the president’s many “threatening and derogatory” comments regarding Chicago over the years.
Troops shouldn’t be deployed to a state without the state’s consent, the lawsuit contends, saying:
The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor.
The administration’s actions “subjected and are subjecting” residents of the state “to serious and irreparable harm,” the lawsuit adds.
According to the U.S. Constitution, while the president is commander-in-chief of the military, only Congress has the power “to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.” While Congress has passed subsequent laws allowing the president to call up the National Guard in limited circumstances, Trump’s recent attempts to deploy troops in American cities likely fall outside the scope of these statutes.
In anticipation of Trump deploying the National Guard during his second term in office, Joseph Nunn, legal counsel on Liberty and National Security for the Brennan Center for Justice, said in November that Trump cannot do so without the consent of states, except in some very rare instances.
“The law is not a blank check allowing the president to use military forces anywhere in the country and for any purpose so long as they can find one willing governor,” Nunn wrote at the time.
He added:
Deployments of the National Guard…must in all cases respect the co-equal and territorially limited sovereignty of the states. As a constitutional matter, the deployment of unfederalized Guard personnel into a nonconsenting state is never permissible.
Nunn also suggested that Trump could only use the military unilaterally through the Insurrection Act — which some observers caution the administration may consider invoking in the future.
The lawsuit from Illinois and Chicago comes after Oregon and Portland sued last week to block Trump’s use of the National Guard in Portland. U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut, a Trump appointee, sided with the state and city, placing an injunction on the administration barring them from sending troops.
Afterward, Trump called up troops from California and Texas instead, violating the spirit of Immergut’s ruling. In response, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced that California would join in Oregon’s suit, and filed an emergency petition this weekend. Immergut, once again, placed a hold on Trump’s actions.
“How could bringing in federalized National Guard from California not be in direct contravention of the (decision) I issued yesterday? … Is there any legal authority for what you are doing?” Immergut said to White House lawyers during oral arguments before her order was made.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Chris Walker
Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on the American people. He can be found on most social media platforms under the handle @thatchriswalker.
The city of Chicago and the state of Illinois have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, seeking to halt the White House’s plans to send National Guard troops to the city.
The lawsuit comes as Trump is deploying troops to Democratic-run cities across the country to advance his authoritarian and anti-immigrant agenda under the guise of fighting crime.
The White House has said it needs 300 troops from the Illinois National Guard to “protect federal officers and assets,” parroting its justification for sending troops to Los Angeles earlier this year to repress protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Notably, a federal judge later ruled that the use of National Guard troops in that instance was unlawful.
The Trump administration has indicated that it would also like to deploy National Guard troops from other states to Chicago.
President Donald Trump’s “deployment of federalized troops to Illinois is patently unlawful,” reads the complaint from the state and city. “Plaintiffs ask this court to halt the illegal, dangerous, and unconstitutional federalization of members of the National Guard of the United States, including both the Illinois and Texas National Guard.”
Related Story:
News
Politics & Elections
Judge Blocks Trump From Sending National Guard Troops to Oregon — for Now
Gavin Newsom had challenged an order to send California troops, and warned that the US is on the “brink of martial law.”
by Jon Queally
October 6, 2025
Common Dreams
The lawsuit further argues that Trump’s calls to deploy troops are politically motivated, given the president’s many “threatening and derogatory” comments regarding Chicago over the years.
Troops shouldn’t be deployed to a state without the state’s consent, the lawsuit contends, saying:
The American people, regardless of where they reside, should not live under the threat of occupation by the United States military, particularly not simply because their city or state leadership has fallen out of a president’s favor.
The administration’s actions “subjected and are subjecting” residents of the state “to serious and irreparable harm,” the lawsuit adds.
According to the U.S. Constitution, while the president is commander-in-chief of the military, only Congress has the power “to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions.” While Congress has passed subsequent laws allowing the president to call up the National Guard in limited circumstances, Trump’s recent attempts to deploy troops in American cities likely fall outside the scope of these statutes.
In anticipation of Trump deploying the National Guard during his second term in office, Joseph Nunn, legal counsel on Liberty and National Security for the Brennan Center for Justice, said in November that Trump cannot do so without the consent of states, except in some very rare instances.
“The law is not a blank check allowing the president to use military forces anywhere in the country and for any purpose so long as they can find one willing governor,” Nunn wrote at the time.
He added:
Deployments of the National Guard…must in all cases respect the co-equal and territorially limited sovereignty of the states. As a constitutional matter, the deployment of unfederalized Guard personnel into a nonconsenting state is never permissible.
Nunn also suggested that Trump could only use the military unilaterally through the Insurrection Act — which some observers caution the administration may consider invoking in the future.
The lawsuit from Illinois and Chicago comes after Oregon and Portland sued last week to block Trump’s use of the National Guard in Portland. U.S. District Judge Karin J. Immergut, a Trump appointee, sided with the state and city, placing an injunction on the administration barring them from sending troops.
Afterward, Trump called up troops from California and Texas instead, violating the spirit of Immergut’s ruling. In response, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced that California would join in Oregon’s suit, and filed an emergency petition this weekend. Immergut, once again, placed a hold on Trump’s actions.
“How could bringing in federalized National Guard from California not be in direct contravention of the (decision) I issued yesterday? … Is there any legal authority for what you are doing?” Immergut said to White House lawyers during oral arguments before her order was made.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Chris Walker
Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on the American people. He can be found on most social media platforms under the handle @thatchriswalker.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/stephen-miller-elon-musk-judge-tweet/
Politics
Trump’s Minions Are Trying to Terrorize Judges Into Submission
Facing rebukes from the courts, Stephen Miller and Elon Musk are threatening the independence of the judiciary.
by Jeet Heer
October 6, 2025
The Nation
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller attends a Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission Event in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, May 22, 2025. (Jacquelyn Martin / AP)
Donald Trump’s second term has been marked by attacks on the Constitution so extreme that even judges Trump appointed in his first term are aghast. On Saturday, US District Judge Karin Immergut, nominated by Trump in 2019, blocked the president’s deployment of 200 National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon. Trump had claimed that Portland was “war-torn” and “under siege” by “Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” Judge Immergut brushed off Trump’s justification as “untethered to facts” and affirmed, “This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”
Responding to the ruling on Sunday, Trump justified the charge that he was “untethered to facts” by misgendering Judge Immergut. “I wasn’t served well by the people who pick judges,” Trump complained to reporters on Sunday. “If he made that decision, Portland is burning to the ground…. That judge ought to be ashamed of himself.”
More alarming were attacks on the judiciary made by two of Trump’s most important political associates, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and tech billionaire Elon Musk.
On Saturday, Miller posted on X (a social media site owned by Musk):
Legal insurrection. The President is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Oregon judge. Portland and Oregon law enforcement, at the direction of local leaders, have refused to aid ICE officers facing relentless terrorist assault and threats to life…. This is an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers, and the deployment of troops is an absolute necessity to defend our personnel, our laws, our government, public order and the Republic itself.
A White House official describing a judicial decision as “insurrection” is no small matter. But Musk took things further by calling on Trump to emulate Nayib Bukele, the authoritarian president of El Salvador who has destroyed his country’s independent judiciary. The right-wing pundit Eric Daugherty then quoted Bukele’s attack on the judiciary and insisted, “We need to Bukele our court system. WATCH how quickly this country is fixed.” Musk boosted Daughtery’s tweet and wrote, “essential.” He responded to another tweet critical of Judge Immergut by simply saying “treason.”
Former Obama adviser Tommy Vietor provided some essential context for Musk’s tweet, noting that “Bukele forced out independent judges, packed the courts with loyalists, then declared a state of emergency that allowed him to arrest and indefinitely detain people without any due process. When we say these guys are advocating for fascist ideas, it’s because they literally are.”
Donald Trump’s second term has been marked by attacks on the Constitution so extreme that even judges Trump appointed in his first term are aghast. On Saturday, US District Judge Karin Immergut, nominated by Trump in 2019, blocked the president’s deployment of 200 National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon. Trump had claimed that Portland was “war-torn” and “under siege” by “Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” Judge Immergut brushed off Trump’s justification as “untethered to facts” and affirmed, “This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”
Responding to the ruling on Sunday, Trump justified the charge that he was “untethered to facts” by misgendering Judge Immergut. “I wasn’t served well by the people who pick judges,” Trump complained to reporters on Sunday. “If he made that decision, Portland is burning to the ground…. That judge ought to be ashamed of himself.”
More alarming were attacks on the judiciary made by two of Trump’s most important political associates, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and tech billionaire Elon Musk.
On Saturday, Miller posted on X (a social media site owned by Musk):
Legal insurrection. The President is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Oregon judge. Portland and Oregon law enforcement, at the direction of local leaders, have refused to aid ICE officers facing relentless terrorist assault and threats to life…. This is an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers, and the deployment of troops is an absolute necessity to defend our personnel, our laws, our government, public order and the Republic itself.
A White House official describing a judicial decision as “insurrection” is no small matter. But Musk took things further by calling on Trump to emulate Nayib Bukele, the authoritarian president of El Salvador who has destroyed his country’s independent judiciary. The right-wing pundit Eric Daugherty then quoted Bukele’s attack on the judiciary and insisted, “We need to Bukele our court system. WATCH how quickly this country is fixed.” Musk boosted Daughtery’s tweet and wrote, “essential.” He responded to another tweet critical of Judge Immergut by simply saying “treason.”
Former Obama adviser Tommy Vietor provided some essential context for Musk’s tweet, noting that “Bukele forced out independent judges, packed the courts with loyalists, then declared a state of emergency that allowed him to arrest and indefinitely detain people without any due process. When we say these guys are advocating for fascist ideas, it’s because they literally are.”
Current Issue
These incendiary attacks on the judiciary don’t just reflect anger at Judge Immergut, or the many other federal judges who have been ruling against Trump’s policies on immigration and other matters. They are also setting the stage for the series of looming battles that Trump faces at the Supreme Court.
While lower-level federal judges have been a major check on Trump’s policies, the Supreme Court is a different ballgame. It has granted Trump extraordinary (though supposedly temporary) power in a series of emergency rulings that have almost always favored the president. The Washington Post, citing the research of Georgetown legal scholar Irving L. Gornstein, notes, “The Trump administration has been overwhelmingly successful in these provisional cases, prevailing in 18, losing two and receiving mixed rulings in two others.” But the newspaper also points out that in the new term starting Monday, the court and Trump both face a “reckoning” because these provisional decisions will have to give way to “full, final verdicts.”
The court’s pro-Trump tilt would seem to make the president’s normal bullying tactics unnecessary. But why take chances? Miller and Musk could be trying to keep the court completely in line by making clear the full wrath of MAGA if judgments are made against Trump’s wishes.
This threat might even be literal. New York Times columnist David French, a Never Trump conservative, argues that Miller’s rhetoric is “incredibly dangerous” and could incite violence against Judge Immergut or any other judge who provokes Trump’s wrath. This claim is plausible given the history of MAGA violence, including the January 7, 2021, attack on the Capitol. (On Saturday, the home of Diane Goodstein, a South Carolina state judge, was burned to the ground. While it’s too early to say whether Goodstein was deliberately targeted or what any potential suspect’s motivation might have been, Goodstein had reportedly been receiving death threats after issuing a ruling against the Trump administration in September.)
The most optimistic reading of Miller’s words is that they come from a place of fear. Miller knows his window to establish enduring authoritarianism in America is small, and he has to act frantically now. This interpretation of events is given credibility by an unlikely source, the far-right thinker Curtis Yarvin, a writer much admired by tech lord Peter Thiel and vice president JD Vance. In a hysteria-laden Substack post, Yarvin worried that the Trump revolution was “failing” and is on the verge of producing a fierce political backlash:
Because the vengeance meted out after its failure will dwarf the vengeance after 2020—because the successes of the second revolution are so much greater than the first—I feel that I personally have to start thinking realistically about how to flee the country. Everyone else in a similar position should have a 2029 plan as well. And it is not even clear that it will wait until 2029: losing the Congress will instantly put the administration on the defensive.
Yarvin has to be read with care. He is unmoored from reality and mostly not a useful guide to events. But he does have a following on the far right because he is an accurate gauge of their mood. Further, there are ample reasons for Yarvin’s pessimism. Polls show that immigration, once a strong issue for Trump, is now one where a majority of the population disapprove of his policies. The New York Times reports that 51 percent of Americans feel Trump has gone “too far” with immigration enforcement. In cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago, the immigration crackdown has been met by fierce local protests. Coupled with the pushback from federal judges and the pending midterms, there is ample reason to think Miller’s war on immigrants is running out of time.
The shift of public opinion on immigration has come despite the cowardice of the Democratic Party. Believing that the party is stronger on economic issues such as healthcare, congressional Democrats have shied away from challenging Trump on immigration. Further, referring to Miller’s inflammatory tweet, Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz pointed out that there is often a tendency to downplay dangerous rhetoric from the White House. Schatz said he acknowledged “the need not to overreact and I understand that no one in the media wants to chicken little this thing” while also recognizing that Miller’s words seem “escalatory and also rather emotional.”
But with the comments from Miller and Musk, this ostrich strategy no longer makes sense. Miller and Musk have given Democrats a gift: a way of tying the defense of immigrant rights with a broader defense of constitutional norms. With the Trump White House on the defensive, it would be foolish for Democrats to avoid attacking.
While lower-level federal judges have been a major check on Trump’s policies, the Supreme Court is a different ballgame. It has granted Trump extraordinary (though supposedly temporary) power in a series of emergency rulings that have almost always favored the president. The Washington Post, citing the research of Georgetown legal scholar Irving L. Gornstein, notes, “The Trump administration has been overwhelmingly successful in these provisional cases, prevailing in 18, losing two and receiving mixed rulings in two others.” But the newspaper also points out that in the new term starting Monday, the court and Trump both face a “reckoning” because these provisional decisions will have to give way to “full, final verdicts.”
The court’s pro-Trump tilt would seem to make the president’s normal bullying tactics unnecessary. But why take chances? Miller and Musk could be trying to keep the court completely in line by making clear the full wrath of MAGA if judgments are made against Trump’s wishes.
This threat might even be literal. New York Times columnist David French, a Never Trump conservative, argues that Miller’s rhetoric is “incredibly dangerous” and could incite violence against Judge Immergut or any other judge who provokes Trump’s wrath. This claim is plausible given the history of MAGA violence, including the January 7, 2021, attack on the Capitol. (On Saturday, the home of Diane Goodstein, a South Carolina state judge, was burned to the ground. While it’s too early to say whether Goodstein was deliberately targeted or what any potential suspect’s motivation might have been, Goodstein had reportedly been receiving death threats after issuing a ruling against the Trump administration in September.)
The most optimistic reading of Miller’s words is that they come from a place of fear. Miller knows his window to establish enduring authoritarianism in America is small, and he has to act frantically now. This interpretation of events is given credibility by an unlikely source, the far-right thinker Curtis Yarvin, a writer much admired by tech lord Peter Thiel and vice president JD Vance. In a hysteria-laden Substack post, Yarvin worried that the Trump revolution was “failing” and is on the verge of producing a fierce political backlash:
Because the vengeance meted out after its failure will dwarf the vengeance after 2020—because the successes of the second revolution are so much greater than the first—I feel that I personally have to start thinking realistically about how to flee the country. Everyone else in a similar position should have a 2029 plan as well. And it is not even clear that it will wait until 2029: losing the Congress will instantly put the administration on the defensive.
Yarvin has to be read with care. He is unmoored from reality and mostly not a useful guide to events. But he does have a following on the far right because he is an accurate gauge of their mood. Further, there are ample reasons for Yarvin’s pessimism. Polls show that immigration, once a strong issue for Trump, is now one where a majority of the population disapprove of his policies. The New York Times reports that 51 percent of Americans feel Trump has gone “too far” with immigration enforcement. In cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago, the immigration crackdown has been met by fierce local protests. Coupled with the pushback from federal judges and the pending midterms, there is ample reason to think Miller’s war on immigrants is running out of time.
The shift of public opinion on immigration has come despite the cowardice of the Democratic Party. Believing that the party is stronger on economic issues such as healthcare, congressional Democrats have shied away from challenging Trump on immigration. Further, referring to Miller’s inflammatory tweet, Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz pointed out that there is often a tendency to downplay dangerous rhetoric from the White House. Schatz said he acknowledged “the need not to overreact and I understand that no one in the media wants to chicken little this thing” while also recognizing that Miller’s words seem “escalatory and also rather emotional.”
But with the comments from Miller and Musk, this ostrich strategy no longer makes sense. Miller and Musk have given Democrats a gift: a way of tying the defense of immigrant rights with a broader defense of constitutional norms. With the Trump White House on the defensive, it would be foolish for Democrats to avoid attacking.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jeet Heer
Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.
https://lithub.com/states-rights-to-racism-the-existential-fight-to-enshrine-civil-rights-in-the-constitution/
States’ Rights to Racism: The Existential Fight to Enshrine Civil Rights in the Constitution
Brando Simeo Starkey on the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, Racism, and Federal Power
by Brando Simeo Starkey
June 5, 2025
Brando Simeo Starkey on the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, Racism, and Federal Power
by Brando Simeo Starkey
June 5, 2025
Literary Hub
The Thirteenth Amendment reads briskly. Split into two sections, the first states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The second provides that “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
Congress can only enact what the Constitution allows. In Article I, Section 8, the Constitution lists most of Congress’s enumerated powers, like the powers to maintain an army and a navy, tax, borrow money, regulate interstate and foreign commerce, coin money, establish Post Offices, and “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers.”
The Thirteenth Amendment’s enforcement clause carried transformational potential, permitting Congress to legislate to ensure Black folk enjoyed the rights provided in Section 1. Those forty-three words, so sweet, so delicious, yet millions force-fed bondage relished their taste only in the afterlife.
The Republican Party, far more supportive of Black rights than the pro-slavery Democrats, imagined the Thirteenth Amendment would stretch beyond ending bondage, and fence the freed people from incursions into their fundamental rights. Republican Illinois Congressman Ebon Ingersoll, for example, expected the amendment would “secure to the oppressed slave his natural and God-given rights.”
Abolitionists argued that enslaved people lacked these rights because the law deemed them property. The new amendment denied state governments, reasoned New York attorney general J. H. Martindale, “a logical argument on which to rest the exclusion of the native-born black man from all the [rights] inherent to citizenship.” States could not degrade one “because he is black, any more than they have the constitutional right to classify and degrade white men.”
Those forty-three words, so sweet, so delicious, yet millions force-fed bondage relished their taste only in the afterlife.
In those days, legal thinkers separated rights among three different buckets—civil rights, political rights, and social rights. The right to enter contracts, the right to sue and be sued, the right to testify in court, the right to inherit, own, and convey property fell into the civil rights bucket.
The right to vote went into the political rights bucket. And the social rights bucket involved questions like whether Black people could attend school with White children. Eat at a restaurant alongside White patrons. Marry interracially.
The experiences of Carl Schurz, during a summer 1865 southern tour, indicated those forty-three words would not afford the freed- men equal access to the civil rights bucket.
*
Schurz, a German-born union general whose long beard contrasted with his bookish circular spectacles, conversed with a thirty-something-year-old White man who bellyached with a “resigned helplessness” about his plantation’s future. On a steamer carrying him south at the behest of President Johnson, who charged him with taking the post-Civil-War temperature of the locals, Schurz implored the former Confederate officer to “make fair contracts with [the people he once owned] and set them to work as free laborers.”
The man’s anger churned. “There was even a slight flurry of excitement in his voice,” Schurz recalled. “What? Contracts with those niggers? It would never work.” He told Schurz, “Niggers would not work unless compelled to. A free nigger was never good for anything.”
This exchange exemplified Schurz’s experience. White southerners associated Black skin with slavery—a worldview mass-produced through a centuries-long assembly line of racist thought—and nothing could compel them to disjoin the connection.
By the early 1800s, White Americans had demonstrated they viewed Black people as an outsider race. But to the extent that they considered Black people as lower beings, they typically attributed that inferiority to environmental factors that the race could overcome.
Maybe. When Thomas Jefferson expressed in 1784, “I advance it… as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to whites both in body and mind,” such extreme thinking had yet to permeate the mainstream.
But as the nineteenth century plodded onward, abolitionists had developed increasingly persuasive arguments for emancipation, provoking slaveowners to answer with a vicious theory of Black inferiority to defend bondage. Slaveowners championed slavery’s supposed virtues, describing the African as, biologically, suited perfectly for enslavement and improved by it because proximity to Whiteness gifted him knowledge and culture unavailable to him in his former state of savagery.
William Gilmore Simms, a writer and South Carolina politician, spoke for slaveowners when stating, “I do not believe that [the African] will ever be other than a slave, or that he was made to be otherwise; but that he is designed as an implement in the hand of civilization always.” Thomas R. R. Cobb, Georgia politician and lawyer, professed that an African’s “natural affections are not strong, and consequently he is cruel to his offspring, and suffers little by separation from them,” to rebut the charge that slavery unleashed monstrous pain.
Society, in fact, needed to continue slavery for the interests of both Black and White since unshackling enslaved people would spark the race’s reversion to barbarism, imperiling White society. As Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright promised, “the negro must, from necessity, be the slave of man or the slave of Satan.”
On his return north, Schurz advised Johnson that “although the freedman is no longer considered the property of the individual master, he is considered the slave of society, and all the independent state legislation will share the tendency to make him such.”
Schurz spoke truth. Beginning in winter 1865, with slavery outlawed, southern states enacted Black Codes. The freed people, per the codes, could make contracts, sue, be sued, and testify in court, although some codes restricted their testimony to conflicts involving only Black parties.
The rights curtailed, however, defined the codes. Most southern states legally compelled freed people to sign labor contracts that they could not breach without risking, oftentimes criminal, sanction. An implied right not to enter a contract coexists with the right to enter a contract, but the codes refused such liberties.
Black folk, overwhelmingly illiterate, would often sign one-sided contracts whose few beneficial terms they struggled to enforce in hostile courts. The Union freed Black folk, but the dilemma of race persisted. Despite those forty-three words, the ghoul that the North Carolina Freedmen’s Convention feared most had risen—caste preservationists debuted a new caste system.
Those seeking civil equality for the freed people needed a sharper blade.
On December 4, 1865, the first day of the 39th Congress’s first session, Republican Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens paced toward the South Wing of the U.S. Capitol, shouldering the hopes of Black Americans.
Months before, Stevens feared President Johnson was pursuing a Reconstruction program that would readmit Confederate states to the Union without them exorcising the demon that animated secession. Stevens had articulated his dismay in a Lancaster, Pennsylvania, speech.
“The whole fabric of southern society must be changed,” the seventy-four-year-old caste abolitionist with blue sunken eyes told an audience in September 1865. “The Southern States have been despotisms, not governments of the people. It is impossible that any practical equality of rights can exist where a few thousand men monopolize the whole landed property.”
He, and other Radical Republicans, the party faction he led that once demanded a prompt end to slavery, committed themselves to clothing the freedmen in the same citizenship that White folk wore.
Many colleagues shared his desire to wrestle the administration of Reconstruction from President Johnson, start congressional Reconstruction, and restore self-government in the South under leadership that accepted the civil equality of the freed people.
Many colleagues shared his desire to wrestle the administration of Reconstruction from President Johnson, start congressional Reconstruction, and restore self-government in the South under leadership that accepted the civil equality of the freed people. Below the House Chamber’s stained glass skylight, Stevens pushed for a committee of fifteen congressmen and senators “who shall inquire into the condition of the States which formed the so-called confederate States of America.”
Stevens joined that committee, which formed nine days later, and it would soon draft an amendment to secure in the Constitution the conditions of the North’s victory.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, during this time, focused on burning equality principles into federal law. Committee chairman Lyman Trumbull, Illinois Republican, authored a bill to protect “fundamental rights belonging to every man as a free man.” Nearly the entire Republican Party, which occupied about seventy percent of congressional seats, voted for it.
President Johnson vetoed it, however, considering it an unfair racial handout. On April 9, Congress overrode his veto, enacting, under the Thirteenth Amendment’s second section, the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
*
Stevens’ joint Committee, meanwhile, rededicated itself to proposing an amendment. Champions of this endeavor wanted to engrave the 1866 Act into the Constitution. Angst coursed through Republicans—maybe the Supreme Court would rule that the new amendment never empowered Congress to pass the act and pronounce it unconstitutional.
Should the Democrats recapture Congress, moreover, they could dismantle it legislatively. If Americans enshrined the act in the Constitution, only a repeal could annul their production. Republicans, though, anticipated failure, having previously stumbled in devising a proposal two-thirds of both houses of Congress supported.
On May 8, 1866, Stevens presented to the House the joint committee’s five-sectioned amendment proposal that built on abolitionist thinking. The first section stated,
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The fifth granted Congress the “power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
“Our fathers,” Stevens stated, “had been compelled to postpone the principles of their great Declaration [of Independence] and wait for their full establishment till a more propitious time. That time ought to be present now.”
As the congressmen watched from their ornate oak desks and chairs, Stevens said,
the Constitution limits only the action of Congress and is not a limitation on the States. This amendment [fixes] that defect and allows Congress to correct the unjust legislation of the States, so far that the law which operates upon one man shall operate equally upon all. Whatever law punishes a white man for a crime shall punish the black man precisely in the same way and to the same degree.
This new proposal would cure the illness ailing southern states, Stevens argued, where “different degrees of punishment are inflicted, not on account of the magnitude of the crime, but according to the color of the skin.”
He championed the proposal because “unless the Constitution should restrain them those States will all, I fear, keep up this discrimination, and crush to death the hated freedmen.”
The Fourteenth Amendment, consequently, reimagined the relationship between the federal government and the states, promoting the former over the latter.
With representatives from the disloyal states still unseated in Congress, New Jersey Democrat Andrew Jackson Rogers articulated their perspective. “I want it distinctly understood that the American people believe that this Government was made for white men and white women,” the caste preservationist declared. “They do not believe, nor can you make them believe—the edict of God Almighty is stamped against it—that there is a social equality between the black race and the white.”
The amendment proposal prevailed anyway, and two years later, on July 28, 1868, Secretary of State William H. Seward certified the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification.
Before this amendment, Congress could not enact legislation to counteract civil rights deprivations committed by states. The Constitutional Convention delegates who met during summer 1787 set out to structure a floundering nation’s underdeveloped democracy.
The document they created transformed a feckless confederation of thirteen separate mini-republics into a nation of thirteen states under a strong, central federal government, but one whose power was limited by that same document. Those most supportive of a strong federal government convinced the reticent to endorse the Constitution by agreeing to reserve to the states a wide array of powers.
The delegates, therefore, chose not to explicitly grant Congress the authority to act as the custodian of the civil rights bucket. They believed nature, they believed God, granted such basic rights, and allowed the duty to protect them to reside with the states. Already in existence before the Constitution arrived, state governments often did in their constitutions. The 1776 Pennsylvania constitution provided that “no man…can be compelled to attend any religious worship,” for example.
The first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, operated against federal, not state, intrusion. Simply put, the states safeguarded the civil rights bucket on behalf of their citizens. Southern leaders, however, had long exhibited zeal to invade Black people’s buckets.
The Fourteenth Amendment, consequently, reimagined the relationship between the federal government and the states, promoting the former over the latter. Once the federal Constitution could protect civil rights from state infringement, Congress could pass laws enforcing those rights, and Americans could sue in federal court to prevent states from denying them.
Per the Republicans who championed it, the Fourteenth Amendment consolidated power in Washington, D.C. Turned the guardianship of civil rights into a national obligation. Strangled the conception that the state could narrow, based on race, an individual’s rights. Crushed the South’s states’ rights theory of government.
Two weeks after the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification, the remains of Thaddeus Stevens lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda. Caste preservationists danced, with one newspaper editor penning, “The prayers of the righteous have at last removed the Congressional curse!” Stevens wanted the Fourteenth Amendment to enfranchise Black men but settled for the achievable.
The amendment charged the federal government with protecting civil equality. Without the ballot, though, could freed people protect themselves?
__________________
From Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System by Brandon Simeo Starkey. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Brandon Simeo Starkey
The Thirteenth Amendment reads briskly. Split into two sections, the first states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The second provides that “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
Congress can only enact what the Constitution allows. In Article I, Section 8, the Constitution lists most of Congress’s enumerated powers, like the powers to maintain an army and a navy, tax, borrow money, regulate interstate and foreign commerce, coin money, establish Post Offices, and “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers.”
The Thirteenth Amendment’s enforcement clause carried transformational potential, permitting Congress to legislate to ensure Black folk enjoyed the rights provided in Section 1. Those forty-three words, so sweet, so delicious, yet millions force-fed bondage relished their taste only in the afterlife.
The Republican Party, far more supportive of Black rights than the pro-slavery Democrats, imagined the Thirteenth Amendment would stretch beyond ending bondage, and fence the freed people from incursions into their fundamental rights. Republican Illinois Congressman Ebon Ingersoll, for example, expected the amendment would “secure to the oppressed slave his natural and God-given rights.”
Abolitionists argued that enslaved people lacked these rights because the law deemed them property. The new amendment denied state governments, reasoned New York attorney general J. H. Martindale, “a logical argument on which to rest the exclusion of the native-born black man from all the [rights] inherent to citizenship.” States could not degrade one “because he is black, any more than they have the constitutional right to classify and degrade white men.”
Those forty-three words, so sweet, so delicious, yet millions force-fed bondage relished their taste only in the afterlife.
In those days, legal thinkers separated rights among three different buckets—civil rights, political rights, and social rights. The right to enter contracts, the right to sue and be sued, the right to testify in court, the right to inherit, own, and convey property fell into the civil rights bucket.
The right to vote went into the political rights bucket. And the social rights bucket involved questions like whether Black people could attend school with White children. Eat at a restaurant alongside White patrons. Marry interracially.
The experiences of Carl Schurz, during a summer 1865 southern tour, indicated those forty-three words would not afford the freed- men equal access to the civil rights bucket.
*
Schurz, a German-born union general whose long beard contrasted with his bookish circular spectacles, conversed with a thirty-something-year-old White man who bellyached with a “resigned helplessness” about his plantation’s future. On a steamer carrying him south at the behest of President Johnson, who charged him with taking the post-Civil-War temperature of the locals, Schurz implored the former Confederate officer to “make fair contracts with [the people he once owned] and set them to work as free laborers.”
The man’s anger churned. “There was even a slight flurry of excitement in his voice,” Schurz recalled. “What? Contracts with those niggers? It would never work.” He told Schurz, “Niggers would not work unless compelled to. A free nigger was never good for anything.”
This exchange exemplified Schurz’s experience. White southerners associated Black skin with slavery—a worldview mass-produced through a centuries-long assembly line of racist thought—and nothing could compel them to disjoin the connection.
By the early 1800s, White Americans had demonstrated they viewed Black people as an outsider race. But to the extent that they considered Black people as lower beings, they typically attributed that inferiority to environmental factors that the race could overcome.
Maybe. When Thomas Jefferson expressed in 1784, “I advance it… as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to whites both in body and mind,” such extreme thinking had yet to permeate the mainstream.
But as the nineteenth century plodded onward, abolitionists had developed increasingly persuasive arguments for emancipation, provoking slaveowners to answer with a vicious theory of Black inferiority to defend bondage. Slaveowners championed slavery’s supposed virtues, describing the African as, biologically, suited perfectly for enslavement and improved by it because proximity to Whiteness gifted him knowledge and culture unavailable to him in his former state of savagery.
William Gilmore Simms, a writer and South Carolina politician, spoke for slaveowners when stating, “I do not believe that [the African] will ever be other than a slave, or that he was made to be otherwise; but that he is designed as an implement in the hand of civilization always.” Thomas R. R. Cobb, Georgia politician and lawyer, professed that an African’s “natural affections are not strong, and consequently he is cruel to his offspring, and suffers little by separation from them,” to rebut the charge that slavery unleashed monstrous pain.
Society, in fact, needed to continue slavery for the interests of both Black and White since unshackling enslaved people would spark the race’s reversion to barbarism, imperiling White society. As Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright promised, “the negro must, from necessity, be the slave of man or the slave of Satan.”
On his return north, Schurz advised Johnson that “although the freedman is no longer considered the property of the individual master, he is considered the slave of society, and all the independent state legislation will share the tendency to make him such.”
Schurz spoke truth. Beginning in winter 1865, with slavery outlawed, southern states enacted Black Codes. The freed people, per the codes, could make contracts, sue, be sued, and testify in court, although some codes restricted their testimony to conflicts involving only Black parties.
The rights curtailed, however, defined the codes. Most southern states legally compelled freed people to sign labor contracts that they could not breach without risking, oftentimes criminal, sanction. An implied right not to enter a contract coexists with the right to enter a contract, but the codes refused such liberties.
Black folk, overwhelmingly illiterate, would often sign one-sided contracts whose few beneficial terms they struggled to enforce in hostile courts. The Union freed Black folk, but the dilemma of race persisted. Despite those forty-three words, the ghoul that the North Carolina Freedmen’s Convention feared most had risen—caste preservationists debuted a new caste system.
Those seeking civil equality for the freed people needed a sharper blade.
On December 4, 1865, the first day of the 39th Congress’s first session, Republican Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens paced toward the South Wing of the U.S. Capitol, shouldering the hopes of Black Americans.
Months before, Stevens feared President Johnson was pursuing a Reconstruction program that would readmit Confederate states to the Union without them exorcising the demon that animated secession. Stevens had articulated his dismay in a Lancaster, Pennsylvania, speech.
“The whole fabric of southern society must be changed,” the seventy-four-year-old caste abolitionist with blue sunken eyes told an audience in September 1865. “The Southern States have been despotisms, not governments of the people. It is impossible that any practical equality of rights can exist where a few thousand men monopolize the whole landed property.”
He, and other Radical Republicans, the party faction he led that once demanded a prompt end to slavery, committed themselves to clothing the freedmen in the same citizenship that White folk wore.
Many colleagues shared his desire to wrestle the administration of Reconstruction from President Johnson, start congressional Reconstruction, and restore self-government in the South under leadership that accepted the civil equality of the freed people.
Many colleagues shared his desire to wrestle the administration of Reconstruction from President Johnson, start congressional Reconstruction, and restore self-government in the South under leadership that accepted the civil equality of the freed people. Below the House Chamber’s stained glass skylight, Stevens pushed for a committee of fifteen congressmen and senators “who shall inquire into the condition of the States which formed the so-called confederate States of America.”
Stevens joined that committee, which formed nine days later, and it would soon draft an amendment to secure in the Constitution the conditions of the North’s victory.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, during this time, focused on burning equality principles into federal law. Committee chairman Lyman Trumbull, Illinois Republican, authored a bill to protect “fundamental rights belonging to every man as a free man.” Nearly the entire Republican Party, which occupied about seventy percent of congressional seats, voted for it.
President Johnson vetoed it, however, considering it an unfair racial handout. On April 9, Congress overrode his veto, enacting, under the Thirteenth Amendment’s second section, the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
*
Stevens’ joint Committee, meanwhile, rededicated itself to proposing an amendment. Champions of this endeavor wanted to engrave the 1866 Act into the Constitution. Angst coursed through Republicans—maybe the Supreme Court would rule that the new amendment never empowered Congress to pass the act and pronounce it unconstitutional.
Should the Democrats recapture Congress, moreover, they could dismantle it legislatively. If Americans enshrined the act in the Constitution, only a repeal could annul their production. Republicans, though, anticipated failure, having previously stumbled in devising a proposal two-thirds of both houses of Congress supported.
On May 8, 1866, Stevens presented to the House the joint committee’s five-sectioned amendment proposal that built on abolitionist thinking. The first section stated,
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The fifth granted Congress the “power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”
“Our fathers,” Stevens stated, “had been compelled to postpone the principles of their great Declaration [of Independence] and wait for their full establishment till a more propitious time. That time ought to be present now.”
As the congressmen watched from their ornate oak desks and chairs, Stevens said,
the Constitution limits only the action of Congress and is not a limitation on the States. This amendment [fixes] that defect and allows Congress to correct the unjust legislation of the States, so far that the law which operates upon one man shall operate equally upon all. Whatever law punishes a white man for a crime shall punish the black man precisely in the same way and to the same degree.
This new proposal would cure the illness ailing southern states, Stevens argued, where “different degrees of punishment are inflicted, not on account of the magnitude of the crime, but according to the color of the skin.”
He championed the proposal because “unless the Constitution should restrain them those States will all, I fear, keep up this discrimination, and crush to death the hated freedmen.”
The Fourteenth Amendment, consequently, reimagined the relationship between the federal government and the states, promoting the former over the latter.
With representatives from the disloyal states still unseated in Congress, New Jersey Democrat Andrew Jackson Rogers articulated their perspective. “I want it distinctly understood that the American people believe that this Government was made for white men and white women,” the caste preservationist declared. “They do not believe, nor can you make them believe—the edict of God Almighty is stamped against it—that there is a social equality between the black race and the white.”
The amendment proposal prevailed anyway, and two years later, on July 28, 1868, Secretary of State William H. Seward certified the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification.
Before this amendment, Congress could not enact legislation to counteract civil rights deprivations committed by states. The Constitutional Convention delegates who met during summer 1787 set out to structure a floundering nation’s underdeveloped democracy.
The document they created transformed a feckless confederation of thirteen separate mini-republics into a nation of thirteen states under a strong, central federal government, but one whose power was limited by that same document. Those most supportive of a strong federal government convinced the reticent to endorse the Constitution by agreeing to reserve to the states a wide array of powers.
The delegates, therefore, chose not to explicitly grant Congress the authority to act as the custodian of the civil rights bucket. They believed nature, they believed God, granted such basic rights, and allowed the duty to protect them to reside with the states. Already in existence before the Constitution arrived, state governments often did in their constitutions. The 1776 Pennsylvania constitution provided that “no man…can be compelled to attend any religious worship,” for example.
The first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, operated against federal, not state, intrusion. Simply put, the states safeguarded the civil rights bucket on behalf of their citizens. Southern leaders, however, had long exhibited zeal to invade Black people’s buckets.
The Fourteenth Amendment, consequently, reimagined the relationship between the federal government and the states, promoting the former over the latter. Once the federal Constitution could protect civil rights from state infringement, Congress could pass laws enforcing those rights, and Americans could sue in federal court to prevent states from denying them.
Per the Republicans who championed it, the Fourteenth Amendment consolidated power in Washington, D.C. Turned the guardianship of civil rights into a national obligation. Strangled the conception that the state could narrow, based on race, an individual’s rights. Crushed the South’s states’ rights theory of government.
Two weeks after the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification, the remains of Thaddeus Stevens lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda. Caste preservationists danced, with one newspaper editor penning, “The prayers of the righteous have at last removed the Congressional curse!” Stevens wanted the Fourteenth Amendment to enfranchise Black men but settled for the achievable.
The amendment charged the federal government with protecting civil equality. Without the ballot, though, could freed people protect themselves?
__________________
From Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System by Brandon Simeo Starkey. Reprinted by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Brandon Simeo Starkey
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Brando Simeo Starkey
Brando Simeo Starkey is a writer and scholar. He is the author of Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System. A graduate of Harvard Law School and a member of the New York Bar, he taught law at Villanova Law School and wrote for several years for ESPN’s The Undefeated (now Andscape). Born and raised in Cincinnati, he lives in Southern California with his wife and two sons. He will launch a newsletter, The Braveverse, about law, politics, and freedom from caste, at the TheBraveverse.com, in January 2025.
How Chief Justice John Roberts Rewrote the Constitution and Helped Trump Return to Power
In an excerpt from her new book, Lisa Graves, one of the leading experts on this right-wing Supreme Court, outlines how Roberts and his fellow politicians in robes have helped undermine our democracy.
by Lisa Graves
October 5, 2025
Zeteo
by Lisa Graves
October 5, 2025
Zeteo
John Roberts ascended to the Supreme Court and for nearly two decades maintained a reputation as a fair referee. But most people really have no idea who Roberts is, what a destructive force he is to American jurisprudence, and how he has helped fracture our political system and our society.
In 2002, as part of my work for the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, one of my first tasks was to evaluate Roberts, whom George W. Bush had nominated to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Roberts would impress some of the senators with his amiable confidence, his calm reassurances, and his easy smile. He looked like a Norman Rockwell–style embodiment of judicial restraint and rectitude. But a thorough examination of his record and career path convinced me that, his carefully constructed résumé and polished persona notwithstanding, he would make a seriously detrimental addition to the federal appeals court. In the Senate hearings on his elevation to the Supreme Court, he demonstrated his grit for disarming opponents when he proclaimed, “I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.”
The image of Roberts as an impartial umpire proved to be persuasive and durable, but instead of being a genuine expression of his temperament and approach, it was a meticulously planned and effectively delivered public relations strategy. He presented himself as a dedicated institutionalist who sought to uphold American judicial traditions. Far from being a protector, however, he has used his position as chief justice to orchestrate a pattern of extreme decisions that have unmoored American democracy from its foundations – and that was before Donald Trump’s three appointees joined the Court. Despite Roberts’s claims that there are no Republican or Democratic federal judges, he has established himself not as a fair referee but as a diabolically effective player rewriting the Constitution and remaking America in accord with his reactionary political agenda, as he strategizes how to move the ball forward and disarm the opposition.
Roberts’s reactionary docket has included destroying environmental rules that protect our planet from predatory billionaires, overturning legal precedents that limited access to deadly guns, forging the shield of religious freedom into a sword to attack equality and access to healthcare, decimating labor unions’ power to bargain for workers’ rights, and unleashing waves of billionaire spending in our elections in ways that corrupt our representative democracy and sever public institutions from vital traditions of impartiality. Democrats credited him with, and Republicans lambasted him for, saving the Affordable Care Act (dubbed Obamacare), but Roberts is playing for team GOP, and his occasional nods at moderation allow him to more effectively realize his long-term agenda. Kicking millions of Americans off of health insurance could have caused the GOP even bigger losses in 2012, and embracing the dubious legal theories against Obamacare would have undermined the power to enact tax policy that favors the rich.
In 2002, as part of my work for the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, one of my first tasks was to evaluate Roberts, whom George W. Bush had nominated to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Roberts would impress some of the senators with his amiable confidence, his calm reassurances, and his easy smile. He looked like a Norman Rockwell–style embodiment of judicial restraint and rectitude. But a thorough examination of his record and career path convinced me that, his carefully constructed résumé and polished persona notwithstanding, he would make a seriously detrimental addition to the federal appeals court. In the Senate hearings on his elevation to the Supreme Court, he demonstrated his grit for disarming opponents when he proclaimed, “I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat.”
The image of Roberts as an impartial umpire proved to be persuasive and durable, but instead of being a genuine expression of his temperament and approach, it was a meticulously planned and effectively delivered public relations strategy. He presented himself as a dedicated institutionalist who sought to uphold American judicial traditions. Far from being a protector, however, he has used his position as chief justice to orchestrate a pattern of extreme decisions that have unmoored American democracy from its foundations – and that was before Donald Trump’s three appointees joined the Court. Despite Roberts’s claims that there are no Republican or Democratic federal judges, he has established himself not as a fair referee but as a diabolically effective player rewriting the Constitution and remaking America in accord with his reactionary political agenda, as he strategizes how to move the ball forward and disarm the opposition.
Roberts’s reactionary docket has included destroying environmental rules that protect our planet from predatory billionaires, overturning legal precedents that limited access to deadly guns, forging the shield of religious freedom into a sword to attack equality and access to healthcare, decimating labor unions’ power to bargain for workers’ rights, and unleashing waves of billionaire spending in our elections in ways that corrupt our representative democracy and sever public institutions from vital traditions of impartiality. Democrats credited him with, and Republicans lambasted him for, saving the Affordable Care Act (dubbed Obamacare), but Roberts is playing for team GOP, and his occasional nods at moderation allow him to more effectively realize his long-term agenda. Kicking millions of Americans off of health insurance could have caused the GOP even bigger losses in 2012, and embracing the dubious legal theories against Obamacare would have undermined the power to enact tax policy that favors the rich.
Chief Justice John Roberts attends Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on March 04, 2025. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
Devastatingly, Roberts has systematically altered the very structure of our democracy by sabotaging voting rights and permitting illegitimate and undemocratic electoral maps that have all but eliminated incentives to seek compromise, fueling extremism and division. But Roberts’s masterstroke was alchemy: turning gold into speech by judicially rewriting the First Amendment to allow mountains of gold in the form of dark money to distort our elections. His Court did so by barring Congress from regulating the corrupting influence of unlimited cash supplied by billionaires seeking to manipulate our elections. The result in that case, called Citizens United v. FEC, was orchestrated by the Roberts Court, which ordered an out-of-season oral argument on new questions to clear the decks for a surge in secret cash for the 2010 midterms – just in time to try to rein in America’s first Black president, Barack Obama. That tsunami of cash has been deployed to distort the ensuing elections, epitomized by the actions of the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, who spent $288 million to procure the presidency for Donald Trump (and an unelected co-presidency for a while) in 2024. Big money has also altered the makeup of the nation’s highest court and, with it, how our Constitution and laws are interpreted, creating a self-reinforcing circle of corruption. Roberts’s success in dismantling the guardrails needed for fair elections and fairness in general has greatly weakened – and, in fact, imperiled – our democracy.
Through action and inaction, Roberts has also allowed a culture of corruption to run rampant. For more than a decade, he has worked to stall congressional efforts to require an enforceable code of conduct for the Supreme Court, even though every other judge in the nation is subject to such rules. He has not taken any public action to redress the numerous investigative reports about the mountain of secret gifts and serious ethical failures associated with Clarence Thomas and others. Roberts stood silent as Thomas sat on the case involving Donald Trump’s immunity claims in a criminal case about Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election, even though Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, actively sought to stop the count and even to secure fake electors. Roberts adopted the same do-nothing approach toward Samuel Alito, despite evidence that flags tied to the January 6 insurrection were flown over his homes. Why? Roberts needed their votes in order to accomplish his most reactionary agenda to date and to cement the most unprecedented edict of all: to effectively pardon Trump and pave the way for his return to power, emboldened by kinglike immunity from prosecution for any of his “official acts” as president.
The pattern of conduct is clear: Roberts has made extraordinary efforts to ensure that those with great power and wealth have the opportunity to corrupt every aspect of our politics and society, and when the long-festering corruption of his Court has become front-page news, he has refused to clean up the mess. On the surface, his response has been singularly feckless and an insult to the institution of the Court, but on a deeper level, he understands that actually cleaning up the Court would undermine his overarching political agenda to remake the law. On Roberts’s watch, the Court has become a creature more beholden to the influence of the richest few –and their political operatives – than at any time in the past century. This is not a bug; it is the design.
Adapted from Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights by Lisa Graves, available now from Bold Type Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Copyright © 2025 by Lisa Graves
Devastatingly, Roberts has systematically altered the very structure of our democracy by sabotaging voting rights and permitting illegitimate and undemocratic electoral maps that have all but eliminated incentives to seek compromise, fueling extremism and division. But Roberts’s masterstroke was alchemy: turning gold into speech by judicially rewriting the First Amendment to allow mountains of gold in the form of dark money to distort our elections. His Court did so by barring Congress from regulating the corrupting influence of unlimited cash supplied by billionaires seeking to manipulate our elections. The result in that case, called Citizens United v. FEC, was orchestrated by the Roberts Court, which ordered an out-of-season oral argument on new questions to clear the decks for a surge in secret cash for the 2010 midterms – just in time to try to rein in America’s first Black president, Barack Obama. That tsunami of cash has been deployed to distort the ensuing elections, epitomized by the actions of the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, who spent $288 million to procure the presidency for Donald Trump (and an unelected co-presidency for a while) in 2024. Big money has also altered the makeup of the nation’s highest court and, with it, how our Constitution and laws are interpreted, creating a self-reinforcing circle of corruption. Roberts’s success in dismantling the guardrails needed for fair elections and fairness in general has greatly weakened – and, in fact, imperiled – our democracy.
Through action and inaction, Roberts has also allowed a culture of corruption to run rampant. For more than a decade, he has worked to stall congressional efforts to require an enforceable code of conduct for the Supreme Court, even though every other judge in the nation is subject to such rules. He has not taken any public action to redress the numerous investigative reports about the mountain of secret gifts and serious ethical failures associated with Clarence Thomas and others. Roberts stood silent as Thomas sat on the case involving Donald Trump’s immunity claims in a criminal case about Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election, even though Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, actively sought to stop the count and even to secure fake electors. Roberts adopted the same do-nothing approach toward Samuel Alito, despite evidence that flags tied to the January 6 insurrection were flown over his homes. Why? Roberts needed their votes in order to accomplish his most reactionary agenda to date and to cement the most unprecedented edict of all: to effectively pardon Trump and pave the way for his return to power, emboldened by kinglike immunity from prosecution for any of his “official acts” as president.
The pattern of conduct is clear: Roberts has made extraordinary efforts to ensure that those with great power and wealth have the opportunity to corrupt every aspect of our politics and society, and when the long-festering corruption of his Court has become front-page news, he has refused to clean up the mess. On the surface, his response has been singularly feckless and an insult to the institution of the Court, but on a deeper level, he understands that actually cleaning up the Court would undermine his overarching political agenda to remake the law. On Roberts’s watch, the Court has become a creature more beholden to the influence of the richest few –and their political operatives – than at any time in the past century. This is not a bug; it is the design.
Adapted from Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights by Lisa Graves, available now from Bold Type Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. Copyright © 2025 by Lisa Graves
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Zeteo.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lisa Graves
Award-winning investigative researcher. Author of Without Precedent, on John Roberts. Writer of Grave Injustice, contributor at Legal AF/MeidasTouch, co-host of the Five 8 1/2, leader of True North Research + co-founder of Court Accountability.
Check out more from Zeteo:
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Zeteo is a new media organization that seeks to answer the questions that really matter, while always striving for the truth. Founded by Mehdi Hasan, Zeteo is a movement for media accountability, unfiltered news and bold opinions.
https://abc7chicago.com/post/ice-chicago-federal-agents-surround-south-shore-apartment-building-dhs-requests-military-deployment-illinois/17908911/
immigration
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Lisa Graves
Award-winning investigative researcher. Author of Without Precedent, on John Roberts. Writer of Grave Injustice, contributor at Legal AF/MeidasTouch, co-host of the Five 8 1/2, leader of True North Research + co-founder of Court Accountability.
Check out more from Zeteo:
‘Israel’s Sugar Daddy’ – Mehdi and Bassem on Trump, Kimmel, Mamdani, and Two Years of Genocide
Mehdi Hasan and Team Zeteo
September 30
Read full story
The Supreme Court Is Committing Judicial Malpractice
Kim Wehle
September 10
Read full story
The Real Reason the Far Right in America Doesn’t Care About ‘Free Speech’
Alonso Gurmendi
September 24
Read full story
Subscribe to Zeteo
Zeteo is a new media organization that seeks to answer the questions that really matter, while always striving for the truth. Founded by Mehdi Hasan, Zeteo is a movement for media accountability, unfiltered news and bold opinions.
https://abc7chicago.com/post/ice-chicago-federal-agents-surround-south-shore-apartment-building-dhs-requests-military-deployment-illinois/17908911/
immigration
ICE agents raid South Shore apartments; Trump says Chicago could become military training ground
PHOTO: Anti-ICE protesters marched up Michigan Avenue on Tuesday evening.
by Cate Cauguiran, Craig Wall, Tre Ward, and Lissette Nuñez
October 1, 2025
https://abc7chicago.com/videoClip/17930815/
VIDEO:
https://abc7chicago.com/video/embed/
A downtown Chicago protest against ICE got underway on Tuesday night as the city braces for a possible National Guard deployment.
CHICAGO (WLS) -- Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided a South Shore apartment building overnight as the city braces for a possible military deployment.
Residents and neighbors are speaking out at what they call a traumatic event.
ABC7 Chicago is now streaming 24/7. Click here to watch
"My building is shaking. So, I'm like, 'What is that?' Then I look out the window, it's a Blackhawk helicopter," said witness Dr. Alii Muhammad.
Wednesday morning, DHS officials said in a statement, ""In the early morning hours of September 30, 2025, allied federal law enforcement agencies with CBP, FBI, and ATF, executed an enforcement operation in Chicago's South Shore area, a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates. Some of the targeted subjects are believed to be involved in drug trafficking and distribution, weapons crimes, and immigration violators."
DHS said 37 people were arrested.
ABC7 spoke to Pertissue Fisher, a woman who lives in the building. She said ICE agents took everyone in the building, including her, and asked questions later.
"They just treated us like we were nothing," Fisher said.
Fisher said she came out to the hallway of her apartment complex on the corner of 75th and South Shore Drive in her nightgown around 10 p.m. Monday only to find armed ICE agents yelling "police."
"It was scary, because I had never had a gun in my face," Fisher said. "They asked my name and my date of birth and asked me, did I have any warrants? And I told them, 'No,' I didn't."
Fisher said she was handcuffed before being released around 3 a.m., and she was told that if anyone had any kind of warrant out for them, even if it was unrelated to immigration, they would not be released.
SEE ALSO | Chicago federal intervention: Tracking surge in immigration enforcement operations | Live updates
"They, like, piling us all up in the back on the other side, and it wasn't no room to move nowhere," Fisher said.
Citizen app video captured the chaotic scene, and neighbors say there were dozens of ICE agents.
"As I got to my unit to stick my key in the door, I was grabbed by an officer. And, I said, 'What's going on? What's going on?' He never actually told me. He said I was being detained.," said Alicia Brooks.
Neighbors like Eboni Watson say they ducked for cover as they heard several flash bangs.
"They was terrified. The kids was crying. People was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other," Watson said. "That's all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where's the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, 'f*** them kids.'"
Watson said trucks and military-style vans were used to separate parents from their children. Other neighbors said agents destroyed property to get in the building.
"They had a big, 15-inch chainsaw with round blade on it, cutting this fence down," said witness Darrell Ballard. "We're under siege. We're being invaded by our own military."
Marlee Sanders' boyfriend was detained, Sanders said.
"They had the Black people in one van, and the immigrants in another van," Sanders said.
The FBI confirmed on Tuesday morning that they were helping U.S. Border Patrol carry out a targeted immigration enforcement operation in the area, adding that they have been supporting these efforts at the U.S. attorney general's direction.
Border Patrol Commander-At-Large Gregory Bovino, with his officers, spoke on the ground in an exclusive interview with News Nation.
"How about you live in the apartment next-door to the Tren de Aragua members that are trafficking prostitution, guns, drugs and taking advantage of American citizens in a violent way," Bovino said.
Destruction was left behind inside the apartment complex, with doors blown off their hinges and holes left in the walls.
Immigrant advocates and elected officials gathered to condemn the overnight operation.
"We're trying to fight so we can all stay in this neighborhood, but that can't happen when we have people pulling us out of our beds at night," said Dixon Romeo with South Side Together.
While immigrant advocates say they believe about 30 to 40 people were detained, federal authorities have not confirmed that number, so it is unclear just how many were held and possibly arrested.
Protesters block streets downtown
A downtown Chicago protest against ICE got underway on Tuesday night as the city braces for a possible National Guard deployment.
Protesters have been gathering in response to raids like the one carried out in the South Shore neighborhood.
President Donald Trump maintains that the surge in enforcement is about public safety, but protesters say this is about intimidation and fear.
"It's ridiculous that our tax dollars are going toward these types of raids," said Nick Sous with the U.S. Palestinian Community Network. "When it could be funding healthcare, housing and other issues and needs of the community here in Chicago."
On Tuesday evening, demonstrators against immigration enforcement blocked part of westbound Wacker Drive at Michigan Avenue.
Speeches on Wacker were ongoing around 6 p.m. before the group started marching northbound on Michigan Avenue, blocking streets in the process.
One organizer told ABC7 that as the Trump administration and the Department of Homeland Security ramp up their efforts, so will the community.
The Coalition Against the Trump Administration organized what they call an "emergency protest against ICE and federal troops in Chicago."
SEE ALSO | Border Patrol agents chase after cyclist after he claims he's 'not a US citizen' in downtown Chicago
Organizers and protesters told ABC7 this demonstration is in direct response to what played out overnight in the South Shore neighborhood and over the weekend in other parts of the Chicago area.
"We saw over the weekend how ICE agents shamelessly occupied the streets of downtown and detained fellow residents," one speaker said.
Dozens of armed federal agents could be seen swarming downtown Chicago, at times appearing to detain multiple people on Sunday, in addition to the events that took place at an ICE facility in Broadview, where agents in full tactical gear used a variety of chemical agents.
"What I was learning in history class, I'm seeing it now, in the streets, with ICE detaining legal immigrants and treating them like they're nothing," said protester Mohamed Douhabi.
Trump suggests Chicago should be training ground for military
President Donald Trump is putting Chicago back in the spotlight on Tuesday, saying it is one several Democratic cities that should be used as training grounds for the military.
Meanwhile, Trump is putting Chicago back in the spotlight on Tuesday, saying it is one of several Democratic cities that should be used as training grounds for the military.
And while federal agents continue their efforts as part of operation "Midway Blitz," Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson raised new concerns in response to the president's suggestion that Chicago could be used as a proving ground for the National Guard.
DHS has been ramping up its immigration enforcement efforts and its show of force in Chicago, with armed Border Patrol agents making their presence known downtown in recent days.
On Monday, Pritzker said he has learned that DHS sent a memo suggesting it is planning to deploy 100 members of the National Guard to help protect ICE agents, who have frequently clashed with protesters.
Now, Trump has raised the stakes for Chicago during a meeting with military leaders and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The president called Chicago an unsafe place that he plans to straighten out.
"And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war, too. It's a war from within. I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military," Trump said.
The governor and the mayor fired back.
"American cities are not training ground for the military. It's, quite frankly, it's appalling that he would even suggest such a thing," Johnson said.
"Sending troops into cities, thinking that that's some sort of proving ground for war, or that indeed there's some sort of internal war going on in the United States, is, just frankly, inane," Pritzker said.
Some Republicans are calling on the governor to tone down the rhetoric. They also believe the National Guard could help restore order in light of the escalating tensions between ICE agents and protesters.
"I think in order to keep things under control, you have to get things under control," said Assistant Illinois House Minority Leader and Republican state Rep. C. D. Davidsmeyer.
"I believe that the governor and the mayor are afraid, what if? What if it works? What if additional support actually lowers crime and keeps people safe?" said Illinois House Minority Leader and Republican state Rep. Tony McCombie.
Pritzker pointed to the conflicts at the ICE processing station on Broadview, saying the state is offering assistance.
"They deserve peace. That is why ICE needs to back off, and that is why the president of the United States should not send troops to the state of Illinois," Pritzker said.
The governor said he has no new information about a National Guard or troop deployment to the Chicago area, but the state remains poised and ready to file lawsuits if and when it happens.
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https://thetriibe.com/2025/09/feds-detain-dozens-of-immigrants-in-massive-south-shore-apartment-building-raid-in-chicago/
The News
President Donald Trump is putting Chicago back in the spotlight on Tuesday, saying it is one several Democratic cities that should be used as training grounds for the military.
Meanwhile, Trump is putting Chicago back in the spotlight on Tuesday, saying it is one of several Democratic cities that should be used as training grounds for the military.
And while federal agents continue their efforts as part of operation "Midway Blitz," Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson raised new concerns in response to the president's suggestion that Chicago could be used as a proving ground for the National Guard.
DHS has been ramping up its immigration enforcement efforts and its show of force in Chicago, with armed Border Patrol agents making their presence known downtown in recent days.
On Monday, Pritzker said he has learned that DHS sent a memo suggesting it is planning to deploy 100 members of the National Guard to help protect ICE agents, who have frequently clashed with protesters.
Now, Trump has raised the stakes for Chicago during a meeting with military leaders and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The president called Chicago an unsafe place that he plans to straighten out.
"And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war, too. It's a war from within. I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military," Trump said.
The governor and the mayor fired back.
"American cities are not training ground for the military. It's, quite frankly, it's appalling that he would even suggest such a thing," Johnson said.
"Sending troops into cities, thinking that that's some sort of proving ground for war, or that indeed there's some sort of internal war going on in the United States, is, just frankly, inane," Pritzker said.
Some Republicans are calling on the governor to tone down the rhetoric. They also believe the National Guard could help restore order in light of the escalating tensions between ICE agents and protesters.
"I think in order to keep things under control, you have to get things under control," said Assistant Illinois House Minority Leader and Republican state Rep. C. D. Davidsmeyer.
"I believe that the governor and the mayor are afraid, what if? What if it works? What if additional support actually lowers crime and keeps people safe?" said Illinois House Minority Leader and Republican state Rep. Tony McCombie.
Pritzker pointed to the conflicts at the ICE processing station on Broadview, saying the state is offering assistance.
"They deserve peace. That is why ICE needs to back off, and that is why the president of the United States should not send troops to the state of Illinois," Pritzker said.
The governor said he has no new information about a National Guard or troop deployment to the Chicago area, but the state remains poised and ready to file lawsuits if and when it happens.
Report a correction or typo
Copyright © 2025 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved.
Related Topics
CHICAGO
LOOP
SOUTH SHORE
STREETERVILLE
IMMIGRATION
ICE
BORDER PATROL
PROTEST
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
INVESTIGATION
ATTACK
POLITICS
WASHINGTON POLITICS
TRAFFIC
DONALD TRUMP
MILITARY
https://thetriibe.com/2025/09/feds-detain-dozens-of-immigrants-in-massive-south-shore-apartment-building-raid-in-chicago/
The News
Feds detain dozens of immigrants in ‘massive’ South Shore apartment building raid in Chicago
by Dave Byrnes and Raven Geary
October 2, 2025
The Tribe
October 2, 2025
The Tribe
PHOTO: A door to an apartment on the floor in the hallway of 7500 South Shore Drive. Photos provided by Maira Khwaja, Invisible Institute.
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Support independent, Black-owned journalism today.
The TRiiBE is working in collaboration with indie investigative newsroom Unraveled Press and alt-weekly Chicago Reader to bring you confirmed sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents in the Chicago area.
A large federal immigration enforcement operation left a trail of destruction in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood overnight Tuesday.
Activists and community leaders say at least 40 people were taken into federal custody during the raid, which took place shortly after 1:00 a.m. Tuesday. Videos shared to social media and the Citizen neighborhood watch app show swarms of federal agents at 75th and South Shore during the operation. Neighbors saw platoons of militarized agents transported in moving trucks, and video shows CTA buses being rerouted in response.
The raid took place in the South Side neighborhood of South Shore, a predominantly-Black community that saw an influx of asylum seekers from Latin America who were bused to sanctuary cities like Chicago by the Republican governors of Texas and other bordering states. Between August 2022 and December 2024, over 51,000 migrants arrived in Chicago, according to the city’s New Arrivals Dashboard. In April, a TRiiBE investigation revealed housing stock and affordability as the underlying reasons why migrants landed in Black Chicago communities of South Shore, Englewood and North Lawndale.
On Tuesday, photos of ransacked apartments show doors kicked in and belongings tossed around in the aftermath of the raid. Initial reports of gunfire at the location turned out to be flash grenades launched by federal agents. Videos shared to social media show a significant number of FBI agents among the mix.
This moment demands more revolutionary voices in journalism.
Support independent, Black-owned journalism today.
The TRiiBE is working in collaboration with indie investigative newsroom Unraveled Press and alt-weekly Chicago Reader to bring you confirmed sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents in the Chicago area.
A large federal immigration enforcement operation left a trail of destruction in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood overnight Tuesday.
Activists and community leaders say at least 40 people were taken into federal custody during the raid, which took place shortly after 1:00 a.m. Tuesday. Videos shared to social media and the Citizen neighborhood watch app show swarms of federal agents at 75th and South Shore during the operation. Neighbors saw platoons of militarized agents transported in moving trucks, and video shows CTA buses being rerouted in response.
The raid took place in the South Side neighborhood of South Shore, a predominantly-Black community that saw an influx of asylum seekers from Latin America who were bused to sanctuary cities like Chicago by the Republican governors of Texas and other bordering states. Between August 2022 and December 2024, over 51,000 migrants arrived in Chicago, according to the city’s New Arrivals Dashboard. In April, a TRiiBE investigation revealed housing stock and affordability as the underlying reasons why migrants landed in Black Chicago communities of South Shore, Englewood and North Lawndale.
On Tuesday, photos of ransacked apartments show doors kicked in and belongings tossed around in the aftermath of the raid. Initial reports of gunfire at the location turned out to be flash grenades launched by federal agents. Videos shared to social media show a significant number of FBI agents among the mix.
Photos provided by Maira Khwaja, Invisible Institute.
Advocates are still working to confirm the true number of people now gone from the apartments. The timing of the raid and the tremendous number of federal police present made it difficult for volunteers to respond appropriately. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not provided a statement on the operation or detailed the number of people detained.
“We’re not being given any information directly,” Veronica Castro of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights said at a press conference outside the South Shore apartment building.
“[This] looked like hundreds of masked agents knocking down doors and dragging families out in the middle of the night…holding babies that were unclothed,” Castro added.
Screenshot from social media shows federal agents transported by moving van late last night near 75th and South Shore Drive.
Video shared to social media shows a number of federal agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) at the South Shore raid last night.
A couple who live nearby and only provided first names told reporters they were shocked to see the enormous militarized raid in their community.
“I think all that money could be better spent,” said Mike.
They also expressed concern about President Donald Trump pivoting to target Black people or other communities of color. The apartment building is adjacent to Excel Academy of South Shore and Powell Elementary School.
“You know, we’re used to the parade of kids going by our home on their way to school. This morning, we saw a small fraction of that,” said Mike.
While the community has seen occasional ICE arrests, the South Shore neighborhood has not been a daily hotbed of activity in recent weeks—nor since Border Patrol’s arrival last week. Castro noted the community largely welcomed people to the neighborhood when Texas Governor Greg Abbott began purchasing bus tickets to Chicago for newly- arrived migrants in 2022.
A couple who live nearby and only provided first names told reporters they were shocked to see the enormous militarized raid in their community.
“I think all that money could be better spent,” said Mike.
They also expressed concern about President Donald Trump pivoting to target Black people or other communities of color. The apartment building is adjacent to Excel Academy of South Shore and Powell Elementary School.
“You know, we’re used to the parade of kids going by our home on their way to school. This morning, we saw a small fraction of that,” said Mike.
While the community has seen occasional ICE arrests, the South Shore neighborhood has not been a daily hotbed of activity in recent weeks—nor since Border Patrol’s arrival last week. Castro noted the community largely welcomed people to the neighborhood when Texas Governor Greg Abbott began purchasing bus tickets to Chicago for newly- arrived migrants in 2022.
Know-your-rights flyers left at the scene. Photo by Dave Byrnes of Unraveled Press.
“There’s things we can’t do. We’re facing the full force of the federal government,” said Illinois Sen. Robert Peters (D-13th) after Tuesday’s press conference. He said this in response to questions about what the state government can do to address the immigration raids.
Referring to Trump, Peters added, “He’s doing blackhawk helicopters and people in masks. I want to temper people’s expectations.”
On Monday, Gov. JB Pritzker announced DHS is now also seeking the addition of 100 National Guard troops to protect ICE operations in Chicagoland.
“This morning’s raid in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago represents a further escalation of ICE and CBP’s operation in Illinois, and a further militarization of Black neighborhoods in Chicago,” said ICIRR spokesperson Brandon Lee in a prepared statement. “This is part of a prolonged attack on Chicago communities by Trump and other MAGA leaders to sow discord and divide communities.”
“There’s things we can’t do. We’re facing the full force of the federal government,” said Illinois Sen. Robert Peters (D-13th) after Tuesday’s press conference. He said this in response to questions about what the state government can do to address the immigration raids.
Referring to Trump, Peters added, “He’s doing blackhawk helicopters and people in masks. I want to temper people’s expectations.”
On Monday, Gov. JB Pritzker announced DHS is now also seeking the addition of 100 National Guard troops to protect ICE operations in Chicagoland.
“This morning’s raid in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago represents a further escalation of ICE and CBP’s operation in Illinois, and a further militarization of Black neighborhoods in Chicago,” said ICIRR spokesperson Brandon Lee in a prepared statement. “This is part of a prolonged attack on Chicago communities by Trump and other MAGA leaders to sow discord and divide communities.”
The TRiiBE is a media company that is reshaping the narrative of Black Chicago in pursuit of truth and liberation.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/supreme-court-term-worst-cases/
Society / Feature
The Supreme Court v. Democracy
The Nation’s justice correspondent previews the court’s coming term—and explains why it will never stand up to Trump.
by Elie Mystal
October 6, 2025
The Nation’s justice correspondent previews the court’s coming term—and explains why it will never stand up to Trump.
by Elie Mystal
October 6, 2025
The Nation
(Olivier Douliery / AFP via Getty Images)
This article appears in the November 2025 issue, with the headline “Elie Mystal for the Defense (of Democracy).”
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 with its landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, I hoped that Democrats would finally get a clue: The Supreme Court is not our friend. It has been corrupted and weaponized and functions as an antidemocratic enforcement mechanism of the Republican political agenda. When it’s not prosecuting the culture war on behalf of white-wing bigots, it’s destroying organized labor, engaging in copaganda, and anointing kings. The revocation of abortion rights was an opportunity for elected Democrats to wean themselves off the anachronistic view that the court is an “apolitical” engine of justice that must be deferred to and respected.
The opportunity was squandered. The Biden administration not only followed the letter and spirit of the Supreme Court’s various rulings, hobbling its own agenda; the president failed to use his bully pulpit to its fullest to turn public opinion against the court. The high court stymied one of Biden’s most popular initiatives, student-loan debt relief, and the administration did nothing. ProPublica handed the Democrats the largest Supreme Court corruption scandal in US history—the revelation that billionaire Harlan Crow had provided lavish, undisclosed vacations and other gifts to Justice Clarence Thomas—and the Democrats did next to nothing beyond writing a few angry letters and voting to issue some congressional subpoenas that were promptly ignored. Democrats refused to organize around court expansion or any other reform that could have reduced the power of this antidemocratic institution. They continued to prop up the court at the very moment there was an opportunity to cut it down to size.
Anytime I complained about this in print, on television, or at any bar in DC that would still offer me service, I was informed by establishment Democrats, left-of-center lawyers, and even some progressives that protecting the independence and strength of the Supreme Court was necessary. They argued that the public would not accept a Democratic Party that openly defied the courts. They said that a strong Supreme Court was a necessary check against a potential Trump administration.
I told those people they were fools—and events have since proved me right. The Supreme Court has shown time and again that it will provide no resistance to Donald Trump. Quite the opposite, as the court has become an enforcement arm of Trump’s illegal, unconstitutional agenda. Meanwhile, Trump flouts and defies court orders he doesn’t like without paying any appreciable price in the court of public opinion. The Supreme Court has revealed itself to be a useful tool for legitimizing Trump’s policies, and an ineffectual restraint against anything Trump wants to do.
Recall, if you can bear it, the court’s last term. The justices refused to stop Trump’s various assaults on democratic self-government, prevented poor women from receiving healthcare at Planned Parenthood, tried to eradicate transgender children, and perverted the 14th Amendment into a tool of white supremacy. Those were not the rulings of people who are “just trying to call balls and strikes” or are committed to stopping the rise of fascism. Even in the rare instances when Republican justices might disagree with Trump’s policy agenda, they know it is the smart play to give Trump what he wants now, and wait for him to move on or die.
Current Issue
All of which brings us to the first Monday in October, when the Supreme Court returns to work after an extended summer break. Nobody should be under any illusion that this court will stop or restrain Trump in any meaningful way this term. Nobody should imagine that it is interested in doing anything approaching the impartial application of “the law.”
This term, the court will continue to prop up the Trump regime. The six conservative justices will use the shadow docket—the name for the cases the court hears on “emergency” appeal, without regular argument or hearings—to fast-track Trump’s executive orders without even bothering to explain their reasoning. They’ll remove lower court injunctions to clear the path for Trump’s policies. They’ll use every procedural trick in the book, and when that’s not good enough, they’ll either rule for Trump outright or create opportunities for him to get second and third and fourth bites of the same apple until his unhinged administration tweaks its arguments to the court’s satisfaction.
When the court isn’t playing handmaiden to Trump’s particular brand of authoritarianism, it will do what it’s generally been trying to do for the past 20-plus years under John Roberts’s leadership: continue to suck the life out of the democratic process and crush the rights of anybody who doesn’t happen to be a cishetero white man. While Democrats patiently wait for the magical day when the Supreme Court tells Trump no, the six Republicans will bully trans kids and poison the environment for all kids lucky enough to survive the next school shooting.
None of this is speculation. Democrats, liberals, and those who value human decency will lose the highest-profile cases set to be argued in front of the Supreme Court this year. But while I can and will explain how this will happen, I can’t explain why so many of us are resigned to taking it. In March, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told NBC’s Meet the Press: “I believe that if Donald Trump should defy the courts, the public will rise up.” The public has not risen up, and they likely never will as long as leaders keep telling them all is well and the rule of law is functioning as intended. Leaders must rise up and lead; they must explain to the people who their true enemy is.
The Supreme Court is not our friend. And I don’t know how often this court has to kick us in the face to get people to realize that. But the answer, for at least another term, appears to be “more.”
A banner moment: At Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, New Jersey, before the start of a National Women’s Soccer League match.(Ira l. Black / Corbis via Getty Images)
Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J.
Argument date: TBA
The Supreme Court is poised to violate the civil rights of an entire group of people, and this time the Democrats are unlikely even to object. The court is taking direct aim at transgender athletes’ participation in sports, but the Democratic consulting class has decided that discrimination against trans people is so popular that Democrats should sacrifice them to the slings and arrows of outrageous cishetero culture.
The first of these cases is called Little v. Hecox. In 2020, Idaho became the first state in the nation to ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports at any level. The law, called the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, also allows any participant in sports to “question” a rival’s gender, triggering an invasive gynecological exam to establish “sex at birth.” There is no corresponding ban on people who wish to participate in men’s sports.
Lindsay Hecox was a student at Boise State University in Idaho who was barred from trying out for the school’s track and field team because she is transgender. Another, unnamed student believed that her body type would cause opponents to question her gender and force her to submit to medical examinations. Both athletes sued the state, alleging a violation of their equal-protection rights. They won in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but Idaho appealed to the Supreme Court.
Since then, Hecox has moved to withdraw from the case. She says she no longer wants to participate in sports because of the “negative public scrutiny from certain quarters” as well as illness and her father’s death; she also wants to focus on her academics. The request could lead to the Supreme Court declaring the case moot and refusing to rule on it, but the right-wing legal group Alliance Defending Freedom wants the court to keep going. That makes sense, from the conservative perspective. With six conservative justices steeped in anti-trans bigotry, conservatives have a good chance of winning this case—and defeating trans women athletes before they get another turn at bat.
I recognize that it is hard for some people to wrap their minds around the fact of transgender athletes because it requires them to, you know, understand things. You have to understand that there is a difference between gender and sex. You have to understand that being trans is not some kind of societal “contagion” you can catch from watching other people live their best lives. You have to understand that nearly 2 percent of the population is born intersex and simply doesn’t fit biologically into the false gender binary that you remember from watching Friends. You have to learn, and grow, and the entire Republican media machine is designed to tell people they never have to learn anything they can’t noodle out from the vantage point of their own porch.
What I can’t understand is when educated people see blatant, unconstitutional discrimination staring them in the face yet decide to not care because that discrimination isn’t targeting them at that exact moment. You don’t need to be an expert in constitutional law to recognize that a law that treats participants in women’s sports differently than participants in men’s sports violates any fundamental protection of equality. And you shouldn’t need me or anybody else to tell you that a law that requires women, but not men, to drop their pants on someone else’s say-so to determine their sex is wrong and disgusting.
The second case the court will decide along these same unconstitutional and vile grounds is called West Virginia v. B.P.J. This case involves a 15-year-old trans girl known as Becky, who was banned from participating in girls’ track and field when West Virginia passed a law similar to Idaho’s. Becky started taking hormone blockers at age 10 to interrupt the onset of puberty. Taking hormone blockers is one of the things the NCAA and the International Olympic Committee require trans athletes to do in order to compete; in Becky’s case, she just wanted to play sports with her friends. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with her, ruling that West Virginia’s ban violated the equal-protection clause of the US Constitution as well as Title IX. But West Virginia appealed to the Supreme Court.
These bans do nothing to help women and girls who play sports, and they clearly violate the Constitution. Nevertheless, I expect that these cases will be decided in favor of the anti-trans bigots, 6–3, with alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh writing for the majority. I imagine some kind of opinion in which he talks about how much he likes coaching girls’ basketball and how that gives him the moral clarity to mandate that women athletes take off their underwear and submit to gynecological exams. You know, for their own “protection.”
Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J.
Argument date: TBA
The Supreme Court is poised to violate the civil rights of an entire group of people, and this time the Democrats are unlikely even to object. The court is taking direct aim at transgender athletes’ participation in sports, but the Democratic consulting class has decided that discrimination against trans people is so popular that Democrats should sacrifice them to the slings and arrows of outrageous cishetero culture.
The first of these cases is called Little v. Hecox. In 2020, Idaho became the first state in the nation to ban transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports at any level. The law, called the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, also allows any participant in sports to “question” a rival’s gender, triggering an invasive gynecological exam to establish “sex at birth.” There is no corresponding ban on people who wish to participate in men’s sports.
Lindsay Hecox was a student at Boise State University in Idaho who was barred from trying out for the school’s track and field team because she is transgender. Another, unnamed student believed that her body type would cause opponents to question her gender and force her to submit to medical examinations. Both athletes sued the state, alleging a violation of their equal-protection rights. They won in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but Idaho appealed to the Supreme Court.
Since then, Hecox has moved to withdraw from the case. She says she no longer wants to participate in sports because of the “negative public scrutiny from certain quarters” as well as illness and her father’s death; she also wants to focus on her academics. The request could lead to the Supreme Court declaring the case moot and refusing to rule on it, but the right-wing legal group Alliance Defending Freedom wants the court to keep going. That makes sense, from the conservative perspective. With six conservative justices steeped in anti-trans bigotry, conservatives have a good chance of winning this case—and defeating trans women athletes before they get another turn at bat.
I recognize that it is hard for some people to wrap their minds around the fact of transgender athletes because it requires them to, you know, understand things. You have to understand that there is a difference between gender and sex. You have to understand that being trans is not some kind of societal “contagion” you can catch from watching other people live their best lives. You have to understand that nearly 2 percent of the population is born intersex and simply doesn’t fit biologically into the false gender binary that you remember from watching Friends. You have to learn, and grow, and the entire Republican media machine is designed to tell people they never have to learn anything they can’t noodle out from the vantage point of their own porch.
What I can’t understand is when educated people see blatant, unconstitutional discrimination staring them in the face yet decide to not care because that discrimination isn’t targeting them at that exact moment. You don’t need to be an expert in constitutional law to recognize that a law that treats participants in women’s sports differently than participants in men’s sports violates any fundamental protection of equality. And you shouldn’t need me or anybody else to tell you that a law that requires women, but not men, to drop their pants on someone else’s say-so to determine their sex is wrong and disgusting.
The second case the court will decide along these same unconstitutional and vile grounds is called West Virginia v. B.P.J. This case involves a 15-year-old trans girl known as Becky, who was banned from participating in girls’ track and field when West Virginia passed a law similar to Idaho’s. Becky started taking hormone blockers at age 10 to interrupt the onset of puberty. Taking hormone blockers is one of the things the NCAA and the International Olympic Committee require trans athletes to do in order to compete; in Becky’s case, she just wanted to play sports with her friends. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with her, ruling that West Virginia’s ban violated the equal-protection clause of the US Constitution as well as Title IX. But West Virginia appealed to the Supreme Court.
These bans do nothing to help women and girls who play sports, and they clearly violate the Constitution. Nevertheless, I expect that these cases will be decided in favor of the anti-trans bigots, 6–3, with alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh writing for the majority. I imagine some kind of opinion in which he talks about how much he likes coaching girls’ basketball and how that gives him the moral clarity to mandate that women athletes take off their underwear and submit to gynecological exams. You know, for their own “protection.”
Partners in crime: Donald Trump and John Roberts at Trump’s 2025 inauguration.(Chip Somodevilla / Getty images)
Louisiana v. Callais
Argument: OCTOBER 15
The Republicans on the Supreme Court do not think the Voting Rights Act should be constitutional. The Voting Rights Act is the most important piece of legislation in American history. It is the law that enforces the 15th and 19th Amendments and thus secures the belated promise of political participation for all. It is the thing that makes this country a democracy instead of a white, male, apartheid state.
But Chief Justice John Roberts hates it. He has spent much of his career trying to destroy it. Since he was elevated to the Supreme Court, Roberts has taken shot after shot at the Voting Rights Act, most famously in 2013 when, in Shelby County v. Holder, he and four of his conservative colleagues ruled that an entire section of the act was both unconstitutional and unnecessary because they decided that white people no longer need to be stopped from acting on their worst racist instincts. I view Shelby County as directly responsible for Trump’s election in 2016.
Since then, the attacks on the voting rights of non-white people have been nigh unceasing. Red-state governments have closed polling places in Black communities, added myriad voter-ID requirements, and attempted to gerrymander Black people, Latinos, and the Democratic Party out of political significance. The Supreme Court has gone along with every devious plan to take away the political power of non-white people, except one. In 2023, in a case called Allen v. Milligan, the court forced Alabama to draw a second majority-minority congressional district. Alabama has seven congressional districts and is 27 percent Black. The state had tried to make one majority-minority district while letting whites dominate the other six. The courts forced Alabama to make a second one (which resulted in 28 percent of Alabama’s congressional districts being majority-minority), and the Supreme Court ruled, 5–4, that this was required under the Voting Rights Act and allowed under the Constitution.
At the time, people like me wondered if the case marked a new commitment to racial equality in voting from the Supreme Court. This term, Louisiana v. Callais will answer that question with a resounding “no.” Instead of ruling as the Voting Rights Act requires, the court is likely to make yet another application of the act unconstitutional.
Louisiana v. Callais is basically indistinguishable from Allen v. Milligan. Louisiana has six congressional districts and is around 30 percent Black and Hispanic. White legislators tried to pack as many Black and brown people as possible into a single congressional district, allowing whites to dominate the other five. Courts forced Louisiana to draw a second majority-minority district. Under a straight application of the just-decided Milligan precedent, this case should be over. But it’s not, because the Supreme Court does not want non-white people to have fair representation in government.
This case was actually argued last term, but the court did not reach a decision. The Republicans seemed unwilling to affirm the precedent they had set down just a year earlier with Milligan. Instead, the court asked for the case to be reargued this term, with lawyers presenting briefs on a new set of questions—specifically, whether the Voting Rights Act’s prohibitions against racist gerrymandering are unconstitutional.
To explain that without jargon: The court is asking whether the failure to overrepresent white voters is a violation of white people’s constitutional rights against discrimination. They’re asking whether the 14th and 15th Amendments prevent the state from drawing a racially fair congressional map.
That they’re even asking this question gives away the answer they intend to deliver. Again, this case could have been decided in one sentence: “Read Allen v. Milligan and stop wasting our time.” The fact that they want to reargue the case, and reargue it on this wild ground of white grievance, means that the two people who sided with the liberals in Milligan, Roberts and alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh, are eager to resume their campaign against the Voting Rights Act.
American democracy cannot survive the Supreme Court’s attacks on the Voting Rights Act, because American democracy did not really exist before the Voting Rights Act. White rule existed. And that is what this court wants to return us to with this case.
Chiles v. Salazar
Argument: OCTOBER 7
Conversion therapy, the pseudo-scientific process of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation through psychotherapy and religious programming, is a form of child abuse. As of this writing, 23 states and the District of Columbia have banned the practice—for minors.
Predictably, right-wing Christofascists are outraged. They believe they can bully children into being cishetero normies, and they demand the right to try. This term, the Supreme Court will give them their wish and allow the antigay culture warriors to pursue this front in their ongoing war against LGBTQ children.
The case is called Chiles v. Salazar. It involves a Christian “counselor,” Kaley Chiles, who is challenging Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy. She claims she has a First Amendment right to tell kids that their sexual orientation is wrong and can be changed. She also claims she has a First Amendment right to practice conversion therapy under the free-exercise clause, which allows her to practice her religion in whatever way she deems fit.
Despite her gross and bigoted desires, Chiles’s claims have the contours of a legitimate legal argument. Licensed medical professionals should be given a wide berth to talk about whatever they want to talk about with their patients. And we broadly accept the notion that religious adherents should be allowed to program their kids according to their beliefs.
But parents, religious or otherwise, don’t have a First Amendment right to beat their kids as much as they deem necessary. Therapists don’t have a religious right to administer medically dubious shock treatments, or shove bamboo sticks under kids’ fingernails until they promise to not be gay. If you understand conversion therapy as a similar form of abuse, you understand that people shouldn’t have a constitutional right to do it.
Of course, the alleged Christians on the Supreme Court do not understand conversion therapy as child abuse. They think of it as just another tool in their arsenal to eradicate LGBTQ children. They will likely declare, 6–3, that Colorado cannot legally ban this practice, because it violates the First Amendment rights of child abusers who are just trying to “help” little Jimmy see the error of his ways.
Conversion therapy shouldn’t be allowed under the First Amendment. It should be banned under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Louisiana v. Callais
Argument: OCTOBER 15
The Republicans on the Supreme Court do not think the Voting Rights Act should be constitutional. The Voting Rights Act is the most important piece of legislation in American history. It is the law that enforces the 15th and 19th Amendments and thus secures the belated promise of political participation for all. It is the thing that makes this country a democracy instead of a white, male, apartheid state.
But Chief Justice John Roberts hates it. He has spent much of his career trying to destroy it. Since he was elevated to the Supreme Court, Roberts has taken shot after shot at the Voting Rights Act, most famously in 2013 when, in Shelby County v. Holder, he and four of his conservative colleagues ruled that an entire section of the act was both unconstitutional and unnecessary because they decided that white people no longer need to be stopped from acting on their worst racist instincts. I view Shelby County as directly responsible for Trump’s election in 2016.
Since then, the attacks on the voting rights of non-white people have been nigh unceasing. Red-state governments have closed polling places in Black communities, added myriad voter-ID requirements, and attempted to gerrymander Black people, Latinos, and the Democratic Party out of political significance. The Supreme Court has gone along with every devious plan to take away the political power of non-white people, except one. In 2023, in a case called Allen v. Milligan, the court forced Alabama to draw a second majority-minority congressional district. Alabama has seven congressional districts and is 27 percent Black. The state had tried to make one majority-minority district while letting whites dominate the other six. The courts forced Alabama to make a second one (which resulted in 28 percent of Alabama’s congressional districts being majority-minority), and the Supreme Court ruled, 5–4, that this was required under the Voting Rights Act and allowed under the Constitution.
At the time, people like me wondered if the case marked a new commitment to racial equality in voting from the Supreme Court. This term, Louisiana v. Callais will answer that question with a resounding “no.” Instead of ruling as the Voting Rights Act requires, the court is likely to make yet another application of the act unconstitutional.
The weight of history: Civil rights activists march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge as part of the long campaign for voting rights.(Bettmann Archive / Getty Images)
Louisiana v. Callais is basically indistinguishable from Allen v. Milligan. Louisiana has six congressional districts and is around 30 percent Black and Hispanic. White legislators tried to pack as many Black and brown people as possible into a single congressional district, allowing whites to dominate the other five. Courts forced Louisiana to draw a second majority-minority district. Under a straight application of the just-decided Milligan precedent, this case should be over. But it’s not, because the Supreme Court does not want non-white people to have fair representation in government.
This case was actually argued last term, but the court did not reach a decision. The Republicans seemed unwilling to affirm the precedent they had set down just a year earlier with Milligan. Instead, the court asked for the case to be reargued this term, with lawyers presenting briefs on a new set of questions—specifically, whether the Voting Rights Act’s prohibitions against racist gerrymandering are unconstitutional.
To explain that without jargon: The court is asking whether the failure to overrepresent white voters is a violation of white people’s constitutional rights against discrimination. They’re asking whether the 14th and 15th Amendments prevent the state from drawing a racially fair congressional map.
That they’re even asking this question gives away the answer they intend to deliver. Again, this case could have been decided in one sentence: “Read Allen v. Milligan and stop wasting our time.” The fact that they want to reargue the case, and reargue it on this wild ground of white grievance, means that the two people who sided with the liberals in Milligan, Roberts and alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh, are eager to resume their campaign against the Voting Rights Act.
American democracy cannot survive the Supreme Court’s attacks on the Voting Rights Act, because American democracy did not really exist before the Voting Rights Act. White rule existed. And that is what this court wants to return us to with this case.
Chiles v. Salazar
Argument: OCTOBER 7
Conversion therapy, the pseudo-scientific process of trying to change a person’s sexual orientation through psychotherapy and religious programming, is a form of child abuse. As of this writing, 23 states and the District of Columbia have banned the practice—for minors.
Predictably, right-wing Christofascists are outraged. They believe they can bully children into being cishetero normies, and they demand the right to try. This term, the Supreme Court will give them their wish and allow the antigay culture warriors to pursue this front in their ongoing war against LGBTQ children.
The case is called Chiles v. Salazar. It involves a Christian “counselor,” Kaley Chiles, who is challenging Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy. She claims she has a First Amendment right to tell kids that their sexual orientation is wrong and can be changed. She also claims she has a First Amendment right to practice conversion therapy under the free-exercise clause, which allows her to practice her religion in whatever way she deems fit.
Despite her gross and bigoted desires, Chiles’s claims have the contours of a legitimate legal argument. Licensed medical professionals should be given a wide berth to talk about whatever they want to talk about with their patients. And we broadly accept the notion that religious adherents should be allowed to program their kids according to their beliefs.
But parents, religious or otherwise, don’t have a First Amendment right to beat their kids as much as they deem necessary. Therapists don’t have a religious right to administer medically dubious shock treatments, or shove bamboo sticks under kids’ fingernails until they promise to not be gay. If you understand conversion therapy as a similar form of abuse, you understand that people shouldn’t have a constitutional right to do it.
Of course, the alleged Christians on the Supreme Court do not understand conversion therapy as child abuse. They think of it as just another tool in their arsenal to eradicate LGBTQ children. They will likely declare, 6–3, that Colorado cannot legally ban this practice, because it violates the First Amendment rights of child abusers who are just trying to “help” little Jimmy see the error of his ways.
Conversion therapy shouldn’t be allowed under the First Amendment. It should be banned under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
On the stump: JD Vance campaigning for the Senate in November 2022. (Drew Angerer / Getty images)
National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC
Argument date: TBA
In 2022, a pre-eyeliner JD Vance, along with Congressman Steve Chabot, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and others filed suit against the Federal Election Commission over its rules limiting the amount of money that political parties can spend in coordination with federal candidates. They brought the lawsuit several months after a good-government group filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that Vance’s Senate campaign had illegally coordinated with his billionaire backer, Peter Thiel. As the FEC did its thing (and ultimately dismissed the complaint), the case wound its way through the courts. Procedural nonsense ensued, with appellate courts in Ohio talking about appellate courts in Colorado in the kinds of ways that would put a 10-year-old on a sugar high to sleep. Eventually, the NRSC, Vance, and others went to the Supreme Court, asking it to change the campaign finance rules—because nothing says “hillbilly” quite like stuffing somebody else’s money in your pockets and then begging to keep it.
The rules they all disliked were designed to limit, in some small way, the potential for corruption in politics; the idea was to prevent big-money donors from circumventing the individual campaign contribution spending limits by simply giving all their money to PACs that are wholly controlled by their desired political candidates.
The Supreme Court has upheld these FEC rules in the past, but that was in 2001—before Roberts took over, before Citizens United, and before the Supreme Court essentially endorsed the bribery of public officials last year.
Vance and the National Republican Senatorial Committee are now asking the Supreme Court to do away with the FEC’s few remaining rules and allow political candidates unfettered access to dark money. There’s no earthly reason to think that the six Republicans on the court will say no. Several of the court’s justices have themselves been exposed as brazenly corrupt—eager and greedy to accept whatever gifts and vacations come their way from the same group of big-money donors who would like to further infect our politics. The Republican plaintiffs are asking the fox to open the door to the henhouse so all the other foxes can come inside.
When Peter Thiel is sitting in the Oval Office in a few years, with President JD Vance on his lap, some people will ask, “How did this happen?” This case will be one of the reasons why.
National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC
Argument date: TBA
In 2022, a pre-eyeliner JD Vance, along with Congressman Steve Chabot, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and others filed suit against the Federal Election Commission over its rules limiting the amount of money that political parties can spend in coordination with federal candidates. They brought the lawsuit several months after a good-government group filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that Vance’s Senate campaign had illegally coordinated with his billionaire backer, Peter Thiel. As the FEC did its thing (and ultimately dismissed the complaint), the case wound its way through the courts. Procedural nonsense ensued, with appellate courts in Ohio talking about appellate courts in Colorado in the kinds of ways that would put a 10-year-old on a sugar high to sleep. Eventually, the NRSC, Vance, and others went to the Supreme Court, asking it to change the campaign finance rules—because nothing says “hillbilly” quite like stuffing somebody else’s money in your pockets and then begging to keep it.
The rules they all disliked were designed to limit, in some small way, the potential for corruption in politics; the idea was to prevent big-money donors from circumventing the individual campaign contribution spending limits by simply giving all their money to PACs that are wholly controlled by their desired political candidates.
The Supreme Court has upheld these FEC rules in the past, but that was in 2001—before Roberts took over, before Citizens United, and before the Supreme Court essentially endorsed the bribery of public officials last year.
Vance and the National Republican Senatorial Committee are now asking the Supreme Court to do away with the FEC’s few remaining rules and allow political candidates unfettered access to dark money. There’s no earthly reason to think that the six Republicans on the court will say no. Several of the court’s justices have themselves been exposed as brazenly corrupt—eager and greedy to accept whatever gifts and vacations come their way from the same group of big-money donors who would like to further infect our politics. The Republican plaintiffs are asking the fox to open the door to the henhouse so all the other foxes can come inside.
When Peter Thiel is sitting in the Oval Office in a few years, with President JD Vance on his lap, some people will ask, “How did this happen?” This case will be one of the reasons why.
Our collective inheritance: A woman and her son participate in a protest outside the US Supreme Court over President Donald Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship.(Drew Angerer / AFP via Getty images)
Urias-Orellana v. Bondi
Argument date: TBA
It wouldn’t be a proper Supreme Court term if there weren’t a case that allowed the Republicans on the court to do something shocking and cruel to immigrants. This year, that case involves the harrowing life of Douglas Humberto Urias-Orellana.
Urias-Orellana is a Salvadoran national who fled to the United States with his wife and child after a hit man, known in court documents as Wilfredo, vowed to kill his entire family. Wilfredo shot and seriously injured both of Urias-Orellana’s half-brothers. Urias-Orellana himself was repeatedly harassed by armed masked men who demanded money and, on several occasions, assaulted him. Urias-Orellana moved repeatedly, but anytime he went near his hometown, Wilfredo’s men would find him. In 2021, after spying Wilfredo’s masked attackers patrolling the latest town where he was living, apparently looking for him, Urias-Orellana and his family fled to the United States without a visa.
I am a little bit afraid even to write about Wilfredo, and I’ve only read the summary of facts of the case. According to court documents, the dispute started because Wilfredo’s mother and the father of UriasOrellana’s half-brothers were (quoting the First Circuit here) “involved in a relationship of which Wilfredo did not approve.” I mean, at least Jean Valjean actually stole something. Urias-Orellana is getting hunted because his mother’s ex-lover had an affair with somebody else.
In any event, Urias-Orellana applied for asylum in the United States, as well as protection under the Convention Against Torture, saying that he feared persecution and death if he was sent home. That strikes me as an eminently reasonable application.
An immigration judge disagreed. The judge found that Urias-Orellana could “avoid” persecution in El Salvador as long as he never went back to his hometown and Wilfredo never found him. Urias-Orellana appealed, but the First Circuit rejected his appeal, saying these types of decisions were not reviewable by the courts. Urias-Orellana appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear his case.
That may sound like good news for Urias-Orellana, because the anti-immigrant Supreme Court wouldn’t necessarily take a case in which the plaintiff lost at all lower levels of review if it didn’t disagree with those rulings. But the court is not reviewing the merits of Urias-Orellana’s asylum application; it’s reviewing how much “deference” appellate courts should give to immigration judges who deny asylum applications. Urias-Orellana argues that courts should be able to review those decisions, just as they can review anything else. Anti-immigration forces believe the decision of an immigration judge should be final. Trump’s solicitor general, John Sauer, urged the court to take this case to resolve the fact that some circuits do review asylum denials. Sauer wants the Supreme Court to tell those circuits that they are wrong.
The Republican justices almost certainly will. Republicans always like to pretend that every potential non-white immigrant is more like Wilfredo than Urias-Orellana. They ignore the fact that people like Wilfredo are doing quite well in their home countries and have little need to seek “asylum” in the US. Wilfredo ain’t the one who needs to leave. But Republican judges have sent immigrants back to their doom in situations even more deadly than the one faced by Urias-Orellana and his family.
Sometimes, I wish Republicans would just read the case histories of asylum seekers. Like, really read them, and imagine themselves in their situations. Of course, that is me being naïve. Republicans can read. What they can’t do is care.
Urias-Orellana will probably lose this case, 9–0. The liberals will go along with sending him back to Wilfredo to mitigate whatever unhinged claptrap Sam Alito would write if this case were decided 6–3.
This list of five vile things the Supreme Court will do this term should make us revolt against the Supreme Court as a staff, jurisprudential label, and freaking crew. And yet it probably doesn’t capture the worst things the court will do because the court hasn’t even slated all its cases yet. It’s likely that we’ll get a new birthright citizenship case before next June, to say nothing of all the crazy, fascist things Trump will orchestrate in the coming months that will wind up on the court’s shadow docket to be approved without debate by the Republican supermajority.
And at the end of the term, next June, we might get the most important decision of all: an announcement from either Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas that they are retiring and thus giving Trump yet another justice who will hold us hostage for the rest of our lives.
It will be easy to despair as the court’s decisions roll in and Trump continues to rack up victories in front of his handpicked justices. But I can only hope that the court’s capitulation to Trump and his fascist regime breaks Democrats and the left wing more generally of their institutionalized learned helplessness.
The Supreme Court does not have the final say over how we have to live as a society. We do. The Supreme Court is not even the supreme arbiter of what is constitutional and what is not. We are. By ignoring court decisions he doesn’t like and continuing to act regardless of judicial or constitutional approval, Trump has proved that these justices’ rulings mean nothing in the face of a committed political party hellbent on having things its way.
A new left-wing political approach must emerge from the Supreme Court’s destruction of laws and rights—an approach that doesn’t rely on the courts to enforce social progress, but relies on the people to force social progress on the courts. The strategy of suing our way to freedom, equality, and social justice has failed. It’s time for a new strategy, one that puts the Republican politicians running the Supreme Court back in their place.
Getting Back in the Ring
Republicans may think they can achieve salvation through Christ, but they know that they can achieve victory through the courts. Republican voters do not vote for primary candidates who don’t focus on the courts, and that is the key reason they have been able to reshape this branch of government in their image.
In contrast, Democrats have dropped the ball on this issue. Democratic voters regularly vote for senators and even presidents who do not care about the courts and are unwilling to challenge their authority. I believe this is largely because of information asymmetry between the parties’ voters on this issue. Republican candidates use a tight lexicon to convey where they stand on the courts—think “supports the Second Amendment” or “believes in the original Constitution”—while Democrats are all over the map. Democrats don’t even have a consistent jurisprudential philosophy, much less one that can easily be conveyed on a bumper sticker. Our voters do not know the difference between, say, Sheldon Whitehouse and Dick Durbin when it comes to the courts, even though that difference is as stark as an ICBM versus a wet noodle.
I think liberal organizations need to start putting out a “scorecard” that grades Democratic candidates on their commitment to resisting and reforming the courts—some kind of easily digestible shorthand that would help voters know who their friends are and who doesn’t have the stomach for the fight. It works for the National Rifle Association: An “A” rating from the NRA is coveted by Republican primary candidates. We should do something similar.
There are a number of organizations that could do this work. I’m a board member of Demand Justice, which is an organization committed to court reform. I also do a lot of work with Court Accountability, a nonpartisan organization that highlights the corruption of the courts. And the American Constitution Society has long attempted to get liberals to take the courts more seriously. There are other groups as well.
The problem for any group trying to hold elected Democrats to a standard for court reform is that elected Democrats will get angry at that group and not invite them to whatever reindeer games they’re playing inside the Beltway. Democratic donors, for reasons completely passing my powers of understanding, have generally been reluctant to spend big money on controlling the Supreme Court the way Republican donors have for decades.
But I believe that the left needs this. We need a common, easy way to signal to voters which candidates will take power away from the court and give it back to the people—and which ones just want a better parking space in DC and are content to let the Supreme Court make all the important decisions.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Urias-Orellana v. Bondi
Argument date: TBA
It wouldn’t be a proper Supreme Court term if there weren’t a case that allowed the Republicans on the court to do something shocking and cruel to immigrants. This year, that case involves the harrowing life of Douglas Humberto Urias-Orellana.
Urias-Orellana is a Salvadoran national who fled to the United States with his wife and child after a hit man, known in court documents as Wilfredo, vowed to kill his entire family. Wilfredo shot and seriously injured both of Urias-Orellana’s half-brothers. Urias-Orellana himself was repeatedly harassed by armed masked men who demanded money and, on several occasions, assaulted him. Urias-Orellana moved repeatedly, but anytime he went near his hometown, Wilfredo’s men would find him. In 2021, after spying Wilfredo’s masked attackers patrolling the latest town where he was living, apparently looking for him, Urias-Orellana and his family fled to the United States without a visa.
I am a little bit afraid even to write about Wilfredo, and I’ve only read the summary of facts of the case. According to court documents, the dispute started because Wilfredo’s mother and the father of UriasOrellana’s half-brothers were (quoting the First Circuit here) “involved in a relationship of which Wilfredo did not approve.” I mean, at least Jean Valjean actually stole something. Urias-Orellana is getting hunted because his mother’s ex-lover had an affair with somebody else.
In any event, Urias-Orellana applied for asylum in the United States, as well as protection under the Convention Against Torture, saying that he feared persecution and death if he was sent home. That strikes me as an eminently reasonable application.
An immigration judge disagreed. The judge found that Urias-Orellana could “avoid” persecution in El Salvador as long as he never went back to his hometown and Wilfredo never found him. Urias-Orellana appealed, but the First Circuit rejected his appeal, saying these types of decisions were not reviewable by the courts. Urias-Orellana appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear his case.
That may sound like good news for Urias-Orellana, because the anti-immigrant Supreme Court wouldn’t necessarily take a case in which the plaintiff lost at all lower levels of review if it didn’t disagree with those rulings. But the court is not reviewing the merits of Urias-Orellana’s asylum application; it’s reviewing how much “deference” appellate courts should give to immigration judges who deny asylum applications. Urias-Orellana argues that courts should be able to review those decisions, just as they can review anything else. Anti-immigration forces believe the decision of an immigration judge should be final. Trump’s solicitor general, John Sauer, urged the court to take this case to resolve the fact that some circuits do review asylum denials. Sauer wants the Supreme Court to tell those circuits that they are wrong.
The Republican justices almost certainly will. Republicans always like to pretend that every potential non-white immigrant is more like Wilfredo than Urias-Orellana. They ignore the fact that people like Wilfredo are doing quite well in their home countries and have little need to seek “asylum” in the US. Wilfredo ain’t the one who needs to leave. But Republican judges have sent immigrants back to their doom in situations even more deadly than the one faced by Urias-Orellana and his family.
Sometimes, I wish Republicans would just read the case histories of asylum seekers. Like, really read them, and imagine themselves in their situations. Of course, that is me being naïve. Republicans can read. What they can’t do is care.
Urias-Orellana will probably lose this case, 9–0. The liberals will go along with sending him back to Wilfredo to mitigate whatever unhinged claptrap Sam Alito would write if this case were decided 6–3.
This list of five vile things the Supreme Court will do this term should make us revolt against the Supreme Court as a staff, jurisprudential label, and freaking crew. And yet it probably doesn’t capture the worst things the court will do because the court hasn’t even slated all its cases yet. It’s likely that we’ll get a new birthright citizenship case before next June, to say nothing of all the crazy, fascist things Trump will orchestrate in the coming months that will wind up on the court’s shadow docket to be approved without debate by the Republican supermajority.
And at the end of the term, next June, we might get the most important decision of all: an announcement from either Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas that they are retiring and thus giving Trump yet another justice who will hold us hostage for the rest of our lives.
It will be easy to despair as the court’s decisions roll in and Trump continues to rack up victories in front of his handpicked justices. But I can only hope that the court’s capitulation to Trump and his fascist regime breaks Democrats and the left wing more generally of their institutionalized learned helplessness.
The Supreme Court does not have the final say over how we have to live as a society. We do. The Supreme Court is not even the supreme arbiter of what is constitutional and what is not. We are. By ignoring court decisions he doesn’t like and continuing to act regardless of judicial or constitutional approval, Trump has proved that these justices’ rulings mean nothing in the face of a committed political party hellbent on having things its way.
A new left-wing political approach must emerge from the Supreme Court’s destruction of laws and rights—an approach that doesn’t rely on the courts to enforce social progress, but relies on the people to force social progress on the courts. The strategy of suing our way to freedom, equality, and social justice has failed. It’s time for a new strategy, one that puts the Republican politicians running the Supreme Court back in their place.
Getting Back in the Ring
Republicans may think they can achieve salvation through Christ, but they know that they can achieve victory through the courts. Republican voters do not vote for primary candidates who don’t focus on the courts, and that is the key reason they have been able to reshape this branch of government in their image.
In contrast, Democrats have dropped the ball on this issue. Democratic voters regularly vote for senators and even presidents who do not care about the courts and are unwilling to challenge their authority. I believe this is largely because of information asymmetry between the parties’ voters on this issue. Republican candidates use a tight lexicon to convey where they stand on the courts—think “supports the Second Amendment” or “believes in the original Constitution”—while Democrats are all over the map. Democrats don’t even have a consistent jurisprudential philosophy, much less one that can easily be conveyed on a bumper sticker. Our voters do not know the difference between, say, Sheldon Whitehouse and Dick Durbin when it comes to the courts, even though that difference is as stark as an ICBM versus a wet noodle.
I think liberal organizations need to start putting out a “scorecard” that grades Democratic candidates on their commitment to resisting and reforming the courts—some kind of easily digestible shorthand that would help voters know who their friends are and who doesn’t have the stomach for the fight. It works for the National Rifle Association: An “A” rating from the NRA is coveted by Republican primary candidates. We should do something similar.
There are a number of organizations that could do this work. I’m a board member of Demand Justice, which is an organization committed to court reform. I also do a lot of work with Court Accountability, a nonpartisan organization that highlights the corruption of the courts. And the American Constitution Society has long attempted to get liberals to take the courts more seriously. There are other groups as well.
The problem for any group trying to hold elected Democrats to a standard for court reform is that elected Democrats will get angry at that group and not invite them to whatever reindeer games they’re playing inside the Beltway. Democratic donors, for reasons completely passing my powers of understanding, have generally been reluctant to spend big money on controlling the Supreme Court the way Republican donors have for decades.
But I believe that the left needs this. We need a common, easy way to signal to voters which candidates will take power away from the court and give it back to the people—and which ones just want a better parking space in DC and are content to let the Supreme Court make all the important decisions.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Elie Mystal is The Nation’s justice correspondent and a columnist. He is also an Alfred Knobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. He is the author of two books: the New York Times bestseller Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution and Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America, both published by The New Press. You can subscribe to his Nation newsletter “Elie v. U.S.” here.
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/comedy-saudi-arabia-human-rights/
Culture
It turns out that edgy free-speech warriors will scuttle their principles for a check from a brutal autocratic regime.
by Ben Schwartz
October 2, 2025
The Nation
PHOTO: Comedian Bill Burr, recently domesticated by a Saudi regime that he says is “just like us.”(Jamie McCarthy / via Getty Images)
“The royals loved the show,” said Bill Burr, a recently hired court jester to Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman (known familiarly as MBS), on his podcast Monday. “Everyone was happy.”
That’s a relief, because the last people in Saudi Arabia you want unhappy with you is the Saudi royal family. Burr had just returned from the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which claims to be the biggest in the world. It’s running from September 26 to October 5, in case you’re in the neighborhood, and boasts Louis C.K., Pete Davidson, Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, and many others, who received significant pay bumps to play birthday-party clowns to a despot.
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“They’re just like us!” Burr assured his listeners. You can’t get too mad at Burr for saying that about the hereditary monarchs of the House of Saud, because that is what they paid for: a normalization of Saudi Arabia’s abysmal image worldwide—an image that is especially well-earned in the realm of human rights. The litany of abuses the Saudis have on their permanent record is staggering. Saudi courts execute journalists for tweets, and MBS, its reigning crown prince, infamously ordered the murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi. The Saudi regime allows modern-day slavery, executions for nonviolent crimes like adultery and blasphemy, as well as noncrimes like homosexuality. One blogger, Raif Badawi, received a sentence of 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for “insulting Islam” and founding an online site for political debate. “Beneath the progressive, glitzy image that Saudi Arabia is trying to present to the world, lie horrid stories of abuses and violations,” Amnesty International’s acting deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, Diana Semaan, has said. “The world will not be fooled by sham fanfare.”
The Saudis understand that—and the organizers of the Riyadh Comedy Festival took pains to ensure that none of the performers would allude to the daily horrors beneath the glitz. Each contract signed came with a list of prohibited topics not to mention onstage. Burr assured his listeners that the festival brass was accommodating when he pushed back on some of the restrictions. “They just negotiated it all the way down,” he said, “to like, you can talk about anything, other than a couple of things, which was basically, you know, religion, don’t make fun of the royals.”
In Saudi Arabia, there is a core partnership between the fundamentalist Wahabi sect of Sunni Islam and the royal family—an alliance that’s shared leadership between the royals and Wahabists for nearly 300 years. The basic agreement was to elevate to state law the extreme edicts of Wahabism—such as executions for witchcraft and sorcery or the requirement that women have male guardians with legal rights over their decisions. In exchange, the Saudi monarchy claims moral authority to rule.
Since 2017, MBS has distanced the government from its religious backers and called it “reform,” but that consolidation of secular power still allowed for the brutal murder of Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. In other words, those “couple of things” Burr mentions as expendable topics in his set—religion and the royals—represent that whole “speaking truth to power” thing comedians like to do, because no one else has any power in Saudi Arabia.
Burr has ridiculed the idea of comedians “speaking truth to power” before, but he’s also made frequent use of that American pastime—as when he pilloried Joe Rogan for his MAHA-style distrust of masks and vaccines, derided America’s epidemic of billionaires, or gleefully ridiculed the insurance industry’s terrified reaction to Luigi Mangione’s assassination of a healthcare CEO. He’s genuinely outraged that people die because of a billionaire elite class’s decisions, which is why it’s hard to watch him casually toss it away.
Comics don’t have a responsibility to speak truth to power. Rodney Dangerfield would not have been funnier talking about school shootings or 9/11—but he didn’t build a career doing that. When you do, and then go to Riyadh, the audience isn’t wrong to ask what you actually care about. How can Burr ever get mad about billionaires here after insisting that the Saudi royal family over there is “just like us”?
The list of massive, ironic self-owns these comics just racked up in Riyadh is impressive. Burr himself once went off on Beyoncé as a woman who embraces feminism yet flew to Libya to perform for its late strongman misogynist leader Moammar El-Gadhafi. Chappelle has criticized Israel on Gaza, but just took money from a country that backed a civil war in Yemen that caused the famine deaths of at least 85,000 children and killed hundreds of thousands more Yemeni civilians. In 2014, Hannibal Burress went after Bill Cosby for his criticism of young Black men, and said out loud what many knew but were afraid to say: that Cosby was a serial rapist. Journalism was limited in what it could say about Cosby, because it has rules. Law enforcement was limited in what it could do, because it has rules. Comedians don’t, and Burress’s takedown kickstarted Cosby’s ultimate downfall.
Dave Chappelle has railed against cancel culture and defended freedom of speech in the United States, because the public, and especially social media, criticized him for his views on Jews, the trans community, and homosexuals. He’s claimed it’s made his job very hard. In Saudi Arabia, whose citizens have no freedom of speech and whose government proves his point every day, he happily signed his free speech away to the regime that sends you to jail for insulting Islam. Perhaps he talked them down to the same free speech deal that Burr got. If only trans activists had known what size check to cut for Chappelle, they could have shut him up years ago and saved themselves all the picketing at Netflix.
The Riyadh Comedy Festival is only one front on Saudi Arabia’s bigger effort to whitewash its national image on the world stage. This is the real agenda behind events like the Riyadh festival—Saudi leaders using their autocratic power and enormous wealth to buy respectability in the West. They brought Formula 1 racing to Saudi and began their own world-class golf tournament. They’ve recently announced a sizable investment in movies with Universal and Columbia Pictures, clearly modeled on China’s large investment partnerships with Disney. The partnerships work two ways, however, which Disney found out when it made a movie China did not like.
Some comics found out the same thing before they got to Riyadh. Podcaster Tim Dillon accepted a reported $375,000 to appear there, which the event’s producers rescinded when he said, “They are paying me enough to look the other way.” Jim Jeffries said on Theo Von’s podcast, “One reporter was killed by the [Saudi] government—unfortunate, but not a fucking hill that I’m gonna die on.” Guess what—Jeffries died there anyway, because he disappeared from the lineup advertising for even mentioning the Khashoggi killing. The point of whitewashing and soft-power spectacles like the Riyadh festival isn’t to get a couple of stand-up comics to look the other way; it’s to get the whole world to look the other way.
The Riyadh court jester parade won’t mean much to the careers of most of these comics. No one’s going to lose a Hollywood deal for movie or a show, and, with Saudi money in Hollywood, some might come home to new deals. All they lost is any credibility on lecturing anyone else on right and wrong ever again. But that’s a real loss—it’s the reason Donald Trump hates comedians so much. When they handed over their credibility to MBS, they handed it over here, too, and for free.
Ricky Gervais once told an awards show crowd, “If ISIS started a streaming service, most of you would call your agent.” Give the man credit—he was pretty much right.
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“The royals loved the show,” said Bill Burr, a recently hired court jester to Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman (known familiarly as MBS), on his podcast Monday. “Everyone was happy.”
That’s a relief, because the last people in Saudi Arabia you want unhappy with you is the Saudi royal family. Burr had just returned from the Riyadh Comedy Festival, which claims to be the biggest in the world. It’s running from September 26 to October 5, in case you’re in the neighborhood, and boasts Louis C.K., Pete Davidson, Dave Chappelle, Kevin Hart, and many others, who received significant pay bumps to play birthday-party clowns to a despot.
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“They’re just like us!” Burr assured his listeners. You can’t get too mad at Burr for saying that about the hereditary monarchs of the House of Saud, because that is what they paid for: a normalization of Saudi Arabia’s abysmal image worldwide—an image that is especially well-earned in the realm of human rights. The litany of abuses the Saudis have on their permanent record is staggering. Saudi courts execute journalists for tweets, and MBS, its reigning crown prince, infamously ordered the murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi. The Saudi regime allows modern-day slavery, executions for nonviolent crimes like adultery and blasphemy, as well as noncrimes like homosexuality. One blogger, Raif Badawi, received a sentence of 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for “insulting Islam” and founding an online site for political debate. “Beneath the progressive, glitzy image that Saudi Arabia is trying to present to the world, lie horrid stories of abuses and violations,” Amnesty International’s acting deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, Diana Semaan, has said. “The world will not be fooled by sham fanfare.”
The Saudis understand that—and the organizers of the Riyadh Comedy Festival took pains to ensure that none of the performers would allude to the daily horrors beneath the glitz. Each contract signed came with a list of prohibited topics not to mention onstage. Burr assured his listeners that the festival brass was accommodating when he pushed back on some of the restrictions. “They just negotiated it all the way down,” he said, “to like, you can talk about anything, other than a couple of things, which was basically, you know, religion, don’t make fun of the royals.”
In Saudi Arabia, there is a core partnership between the fundamentalist Wahabi sect of Sunni Islam and the royal family—an alliance that’s shared leadership between the royals and Wahabists for nearly 300 years. The basic agreement was to elevate to state law the extreme edicts of Wahabism—such as executions for witchcraft and sorcery or the requirement that women have male guardians with legal rights over their decisions. In exchange, the Saudi monarchy claims moral authority to rule.
Since 2017, MBS has distanced the government from its religious backers and called it “reform,” but that consolidation of secular power still allowed for the brutal murder of Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul. In other words, those “couple of things” Burr mentions as expendable topics in his set—religion and the royals—represent that whole “speaking truth to power” thing comedians like to do, because no one else has any power in Saudi Arabia.
Burr has ridiculed the idea of comedians “speaking truth to power” before, but he’s also made frequent use of that American pastime—as when he pilloried Joe Rogan for his MAHA-style distrust of masks and vaccines, derided America’s epidemic of billionaires, or gleefully ridiculed the insurance industry’s terrified reaction to Luigi Mangione’s assassination of a healthcare CEO. He’s genuinely outraged that people die because of a billionaire elite class’s decisions, which is why it’s hard to watch him casually toss it away.
Comics don’t have a responsibility to speak truth to power. Rodney Dangerfield would not have been funnier talking about school shootings or 9/11—but he didn’t build a career doing that. When you do, and then go to Riyadh, the audience isn’t wrong to ask what you actually care about. How can Burr ever get mad about billionaires here after insisting that the Saudi royal family over there is “just like us”?
The list of massive, ironic self-owns these comics just racked up in Riyadh is impressive. Burr himself once went off on Beyoncé as a woman who embraces feminism yet flew to Libya to perform for its late strongman misogynist leader Moammar El-Gadhafi. Chappelle has criticized Israel on Gaza, but just took money from a country that backed a civil war in Yemen that caused the famine deaths of at least 85,000 children and killed hundreds of thousands more Yemeni civilians. In 2014, Hannibal Burress went after Bill Cosby for his criticism of young Black men, and said out loud what many knew but were afraid to say: that Cosby was a serial rapist. Journalism was limited in what it could say about Cosby, because it has rules. Law enforcement was limited in what it could do, because it has rules. Comedians don’t, and Burress’s takedown kickstarted Cosby’s ultimate downfall.
Dave Chappelle has railed against cancel culture and defended freedom of speech in the United States, because the public, and especially social media, criticized him for his views on Jews, the trans community, and homosexuals. He’s claimed it’s made his job very hard. In Saudi Arabia, whose citizens have no freedom of speech and whose government proves his point every day, he happily signed his free speech away to the regime that sends you to jail for insulting Islam. Perhaps he talked them down to the same free speech deal that Burr got. If only trans activists had known what size check to cut for Chappelle, they could have shut him up years ago and saved themselves all the picketing at Netflix.
The Riyadh Comedy Festival is only one front on Saudi Arabia’s bigger effort to whitewash its national image on the world stage. This is the real agenda behind events like the Riyadh festival—Saudi leaders using their autocratic power and enormous wealth to buy respectability in the West. They brought Formula 1 racing to Saudi and began their own world-class golf tournament. They’ve recently announced a sizable investment in movies with Universal and Columbia Pictures, clearly modeled on China’s large investment partnerships with Disney. The partnerships work two ways, however, which Disney found out when it made a movie China did not like.
Some comics found out the same thing before they got to Riyadh. Podcaster Tim Dillon accepted a reported $375,000 to appear there, which the event’s producers rescinded when he said, “They are paying me enough to look the other way.” Jim Jeffries said on Theo Von’s podcast, “One reporter was killed by the [Saudi] government—unfortunate, but not a fucking hill that I’m gonna die on.” Guess what—Jeffries died there anyway, because he disappeared from the lineup advertising for even mentioning the Khashoggi killing. The point of whitewashing and soft-power spectacles like the Riyadh festival isn’t to get a couple of stand-up comics to look the other way; it’s to get the whole world to look the other way.
The Riyadh court jester parade won’t mean much to the careers of most of these comics. No one’s going to lose a Hollywood deal for movie or a show, and, with Saudi money in Hollywood, some might come home to new deals. All they lost is any credibility on lecturing anyone else on right and wrong ever again. But that’s a real loss—it’s the reason Donald Trump hates comedians so much. When they handed over their credibility to MBS, they handed it over here, too, and for free.
Ricky Gervais once told an awards show crowd, “If ISIS started a streaming service, most of you would call your agent.” Give the man credit—he was pretty much right.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ben Schwartz
Ben Schwartz is an Emmy-nominated writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, The New York Times, and many other publications.
His Bluesky address is @benschwartz.bluesky.social.
