“Every American who is concerned about the state of our liberties ought to find harrowing President Donald Trump’s recent declaration that the National Guard is now in place in Portland, Oregon. As he wrote on social media, the goal is to restore law and order as “conditions continue to deteriorate into lawless mayhem.”
There are some protests against ICE’s increasingly abusive raids and detentions, but this is nothing more than a pretext to exert federal control over cities. I’m in Portland regularly, and it’s one of the nation’s most placid and safest big cities. Protests have at times been unruly over the years, but are well within the ability of local police to control.
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We should all be fearful when politicians exaggerate problems to grab more power. And it’s not just Portland. Trump previously deployed National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles and is threatening to do so in Chicago and Memphis. The president’s declared reason—to tamp down on protests—should raise the hair on everyone’s neck. He also suggested federal troops would target crime problems.
In his speech to the nation’s generals, Trump said, “We should use some of the dangerous cities as training grounds” for military intervention, as he prattled about a “war from within.” That’s authoritarian bluster of the sort heard in despotisms. Note the support or eerie silence from limited-government, constitutional conservatives who spent years warning us about government oppression.”
Thanks to Trump and Trump supporters, the United States is not currently a strong Constitutional Democracy.
“After the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September, many on the political right set out to punish anyone making light of the tragedy, or even simply being insufficiently upset. In one of the more brazen examples, a Tennessee man was arrested, accused of threatening a school shooting, and held on a $2 million bond, for posting a somewhat uncivil meme on Facebook.
Larry Bushart, a 61-year-old former police officer, posted the offending meme last month. In response to a Facebook post about an upcoming vigil for Kirk, Bushart shared an image of President Donald Trump with the quote, “We have to get over it,” which Trump said in January 2024 after a shooting at Iowa’s Perry High School. Text added to the image said, “This seems relevant today.”
Bushart did not elaborate, but the context seems clear: Why should I care about this shooting, when the sitting president said I should “get over” this other shooting?
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According to the Perry County Sheriff’s Office website, Bushart was arrested the following morning on a charge of Threats of Mass Violence on School Property and Activities—a class E felony punishable by between one and six years in prison and up to a $3,000 fine. Worse, Bushart’s bail is set at an astonishing $2 million.
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In its entirety, the post consists of a direct quote of a statement by the then-former president about a newsworthy event, with text providing context, plus a four-word phrase added. Bushart didn’t even create the meme: The Tennesseean’s Angele Latham noted it had been “posted numerous times across multiple social media platforms not connected to Bushart going back to 2024.”
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In context, it’s clear Bushart meant to suggest that since Trump previously said people should “get over” a school shooting, then they shouldn’t be expected to care about the murder of a conservative public figure. It’s quite a stretch to suggest this constituted a threat to shoot up a high school. Yes, a nearby high school happened to have a similar name, but that was clearly a coincidence, and there is nothing to suggest Bushart intended to carry out violence against the local school.
On social media, some have suggested the meme in question was part of a larger pattern indicating Bushart posed a threat. But in his statement to The Tennesseean, Weems specifically singled out the Trump meme as the offender, saying while the other posts were “hate memes,” they were “not against the law and would be recognized as free speech.”
Perhaps some teachers, parents, or students really did find Bushart’s post threatening—though since it was a reply on a Facebook page for local news, it’s not clear how many people even saw it. And even if people did see and interpret it as a threat of violence, that doesn’t mean it meets the standard for a “true threat,” in violation of the First Amendment.
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Bushart’s arrest would be humorous if it weren’t so serious. He now faces a potential years-long prison sentence for reposting a Facebook meme that doesn’t come anywhere close to qualifying as an exception to the First Amendment. Even if the case gets thrown out, he has already spent two weeks in jail and is set to spend two more months until his first hearing.”
The United States military is making extrajudicial illegal killings of potential drug traffickers, apparently killing a boat of Colombians this time. The U.S. is threatening a regime change war with Venezuela.
“When conservatives reject constitutional limits on executive power and foment civil conflict, what exactly are they conserving?
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“There was a time when the American right was conservative: appreciative of inherited wisdom, skeptical of rationalism, wary of excessive government power, and against radical change.
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The New Right is not interested in defending these distinctively American ideals. Drawing instead on collectivist, nationalist, and even monarchist traditions from continental Europe, this New Right seeks to wield the tools of government to advance its own social, cultural, and religious priorities. For years, the New Right, by its own admission, has rejected the tenets of classical liberalism, including individual liberty, mutual toleration, and limited government.
“After Trump picked Patel to run the FBI, the nominee assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that, despite his vow to “come after” the “conspirators,” there would be “no politicization at the FBI” and “no retributive actions” against the president’s enemies. [The] indictment of Comey, which charges him with two felonies based on allegedly false congressional testimony in September 2020, epitomizes the emptiness of that promise.
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It is telling that Patel explicitly tied Comey’s indictment to “the Russiagate hoax” even though the charges are legally unrelated to that investigation. In a December 2023 podcast interview, Patel made it clear that he was determined to punish the “corrupt actors” who had wronged Trump even if it required some legal creativity. “Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out,” he said. “But yeah, we’re putting all of you on notice.””
“Trump issued an executive order that purports to address the recent spate of political violence. But the order is remarkably one-sided, taking the apparent position that only leftists can be violent, and it treats speech clearly protected by the First Amendment as evidence of criminal behavior.
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“These movements portray foundational American principles (e.g., support for law enforcement and border control) as ‘fascist’ to justify and encourage acts of violent revolution,” the order claims. “This ‘anti-fascist’ lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
Regardless of one’s view on “anti-fascism” in its current usage, this entire paragraph is an assault on the First Amendment. Terms like extremism and hostility are amorphous and mostly exist in the eye of the beholder.
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That leaves the order’s contention that “domestic terrorists” are characterized by “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.” One can oppose all of these traits, but they are unquestionably protected by the First Amendment. It is not illegal to criticize America, or capitalism, or Christianity—in fact, so long as it doesn’t cross over into “imminent lawless action,” it’s perfectly legal to criticize anything or anyone.
Most of all, the order is designed to target people Trump and his supporters don’t like, lumping them all together as members of an “anti-fascist” movement.”
“The legal rationales for prosecuting James Comey, Adam Schiff, and Letitia James suggest the president is determined to punish them one way or another.
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Trump fired Comey in 2017 out of anger at the FBI investigation of alleged ties between his 2016 campaign and the Russian government. In the years since, Trump has made no secret of his desire to punish Comey for that “witch hunt,” which Patel cited as a justification for the charges against Comey.
Those charges, however, seem to stem from an entirely different investigation: the FBI’s 2016 probe of the Clinton Foundation. Although the skimpy indictment is hazy on this point, it implicitly alleges that Comey authorized the disclosure of information about that investigation and then falsely denied doing so during a 2020 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
That claim is highly doubtful for several reasons, as former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy notes in a National Review essay that describes the indictment as “so ill-conceived and incompetently drafted” that Comey “should be able to get it thrown out on a pretrial motion to dismiss.” McCarthy’s take is especially notable because he wrote a book-length critique of the Russia probe that concurs with Trump’s chief complaints about it.
In other words, even if you think that investigation epitomized the “politicization of law enforcement” (as Patel puts it), that does not necessarily mean the charges against Comey are factually or legally sound. In fact, the case is so shaky that neither career prosecutors nor Erik Siebert, the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, thought it was worth pursuing.
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Schiff, a longtime thorn in Trump’s side, spearheaded his first impeachment and served on the House select committee that investigated the 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. James sued Trump for business fraud in New York, obtaining a jaw-dropping “disgorgement” order that was later overturned by a state appeals court, which nevertheless thought she had proven her claims.
Although Trump has averred that Schiff’s conduct as a legislator amounted to “treason,” it plainly does not fit the statutory definition of that crime. And whatever you think about the merits of James’ lawsuit, the fact that both a judge and an appeals court agreed Trump had committed fraud by overvaluing his assets suggests her claims were at least colorable.
Casting about for a legal pretext to prosecute Schiff and James, the Justice Department is mulling allegations that both committed mortgage fraud by claiming more than one home as a primary residence. Although it’s not clear there is enough evidence to convict either of them, that is beside the point as far as Trump is concerned.
As the president sees it, Schiff and James, like Comey, deserve to suffer because they wronged him. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” he told Bondi.
Judging from the Comey case, Bondi probably will follow the president’s marching orders, to the cheers of his most enthusiastic supporters. But the rest of us have ample cause to conclude that Trump has conflated justice with revenge.”
And revenge for actions that were much more appropriate in the first place.