Heather Cox Richardson's Blog, page 9
August 26, 2025
The Nineteenth Amendment
Yesterday, I intended to write about the Nineteenth Amendment prohibiting states from denying women the right to vote because today is the anniversary of the amendment’s certification in 1920. But I decided the political news yesterday couldn’t wait, so I dropped the plan and wrote about Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker’s stand against President Donald J. Trump.
Still, as right-wing Christian nationalists supported by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth are calling for an end to women’s right to vote, it seems crucial to remember the history of the drive for women’s suffrage in the United States of America. While you won’t get the full letter about it I had intended, my team put together a 3-minute video about the history, linked here.
(This is not tonight’s letter, by the way. I just couldn’t bear to let the anniversary pass without noting it.)
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August 25, 2025
August 25, 2025
This morning, President Donald J. Trump talked to reporters as he signed several executive orders in the Oval Office. Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk as he has been doing lately, seeming to put its bulk between him and the reporters. Also as he has been doing lately, he kept his left hand over the right, seemingly to hide a large bruise.
Trump was there to announce an executive order charging Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth with creating “specialized units” in the National Guard that will be “specifically trained and equipped to deal with public order issues,” apparently setting them up to take on domestic law enforcement as part of Trump’s attempt to take control of Democratic-run cities.
At the press opportunity, Trump claimed that he saved Washington, D.C.—where crime was at a 30-year low before he took control of the Metropolitan Police Department and mobilized the National Guard—from such rampant crime that no one dared to wear jewelry or carry purses. “People,” he said, “are free for the first time ever.”
Although in 1989 the Supreme Court ruled that burning a flag is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment, Trump ordered the Department of Justice to prosecute anyone who burns a flag, claiming they would automatically go to prison for a year (he has no authority to make such an order). After seven European leaders rushed to the White House to stabilize the U.S. approach to Russia after Trump’s disastrous meeting with Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska on August 15, Trump claimed that the seven leaders actually represented 38 countries and that they refer to Trump as “the president of Europe.”
Calling Chicago, Illinois, a “a disaster” and “a killing field,” Trump referred to Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker as “a slob.” Trump complained that Pritzker had said Trump was infringing on American freedom and called Trump a dictator. Trump went on: “A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator. I don't like a dictator. I'm not a dictator. I'm a man with great common sense and a smart person. And when I see what's happening to our cities, and then you send in troops instead of being praised, they're saying you're trying to take over the Republic. These people are sick.”
This afternoon, standing flanked by leaders from business, law enforcement, faith communities, education, local communities, and politics at the Chicago waterfront near the Trump Tower there, Governor Pritzker responded to the news that Trump is planning to send troops to Chicago.
He began by saying: “I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in the city and as a state and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.”
He acknowledged that “[o]ver the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning for quite a while now to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country's founders warned against. And it’s the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances. What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal, it is unconstitutional. It is un-American.”
Pritzker noted that neither his office nor that of Chicago’s mayor had received any communications from the White House. “We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did. We read a story in the Washington Post. If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor or the police?”
“Let me answer that question,” he said. “This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city in a blue state to try and intimidate his political rivals. This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey Stephen Miller searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities, and end elections. There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no insurrection.”
Pritzker noted that every major American city deals with crime, but that the rate of violent crime is actually higher in Republican-dominated states and cities than in those run by Democrats. Illinois, he said, had “hired more police and given them more funding. We banned assault weapons, ghost guns, bump stops, and high-capacity magazines” and “invested historic amounts into community violence intervention programs.” Those actions have cut violent crime down dramatically. Pritzker pointed out that “thirteen of the top twenty cities in homicide rates have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago. Eight of the top ten states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois.”
If Trump were serious about combatting crime, Pritzker asked, why did he, along with congressional Republicans, cut more than $800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants? “Trump,” Pritzker said, “is defunding the police.”
Then Pritzker turned to the larger national story. “To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country,” he said, “I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president's actions. Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidents, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.”
Pritzker continued: “Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, ‘Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?’ Instead, I say, ‘Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy.’”
The governor called out the president for his willingness to drag National Guard personnel from their homes and communities to be used as political props. They are not trained to serve as law enforcement, he said, and did not “sign up for the National Guard to fight crime.” “It is insulting to their integrity and to the extraordinary sacrifices that they make to serve in the guard, to use them as a political prop, where they could be put in situations where they will be at odds with their local communities, the ones that they seek to serve.”
Pritzker said he hoped that Trump would “reconsider this dangerous and misguided encroachment upon our state and our city's sovereignty” and that “rational voices, if there are any left inside the White House or the Pentagon, will prevail in the coming days.”
But if not, he urged Chicagoans to protest peacefully and to remember that most members of the military and the National Guard stationed in Chicago would be there unwillingly. He asked protesters to “remember that they can be court martialed, and their lives ruined, if they resist deployment.” He suggested protesters should look to members of the faith community for guidance on how to mobilize.
Then Pritzker turned to a warning. “To my fellow governors across the nation who would consider pulling your national guards from their duties at home to come into my state against the wishes of its elected representatives and its people,” he said, “cooperation and coordination between our states is vital to the fabric of our nation, and it benefits us all. Any action undercutting that and violating the sacred sovereignty of our state to cater to the ego of a dictator will be responded to.”
He went on: “The state of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever in our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their rights.”
“Finally,” he said, “to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous, we are watching, and we are taking names. This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now. And eventually, the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf. You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually.
“If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law. As Dr. King once said, the arc of the moral Universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Humbly, I would add, it doesn't bend on its own. History tells us we often have to apply force needed to make sure that the arc gets where it needs to go. This is one of those times.”
—
Notes:
https://newrepublic.com/post/199551/trump-tries-hide-bruised-hand-cameras-no-makeup
https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/25/politics/trump-executive-order-national-guard-units-crime
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-burning-american-flag-executive-order-conservative-reaction-2119061
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/08/prosecuting-burning-of-the-american-flag/
YouTube:
August 24, 2025
August 24, 2025
As the administration of President Donald Trump is using loopholes in the nation’s laws to claim the right to use the military against American citizens, Democratic governors are pushing back.
The administration has taken control of the Washington, D.C., police under the 1973 Home Rule Act, which permits that takeover if “special conditions of an emergency nature exist.” Although the Department of Justice itself reported that crime in the city is at a 30-year low, Trump declared a crime emergency in the District of Columbia on August 11 to take control of the police.
The Home Rule Act limits the president’s takeover to 30 days unless the House and Senate pass a joint resolution to extend that time. On Friday, Representative Andy Biggs (R-AZ) introduced a bill to extend the takeover for about six months and to make that time the default for all future “emergencies.”
Tonight, California governor Gavin Newsom’s social media account posted: “Trump’s militarization of Los Angeles seems to have been just the start of an authoritarian takeover of American cities. This is not leadership. This is a scary, unlawful grab for power, and we should all be deeply concerned.”
Newsom has been calling attention to Trump’s erratic behavior and mental incapacity by imitating the president’s disjointed all-caps social media posts and mimicking the president’s merchandise. He recently replaced Trump’s name with his own on ball caps, for example, to say “Newsom was right about everything” after Trump appeared Friday with a cap saying “Trump was right about everything,” and has offered flags that say “Make America GAVIN Again” to troll Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. Right-wing media complaints about Newsom’s unprofessional behavior highlight Trump’s instability, for Newsom is simply imitating Trump.
On Saturday, Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post reported that for weeks the Pentagon has been planning a military deployment of National Guard members and possibly active-duty troops to Chicago. The president cannot send National Guard troops unless a governor requests them, but Trump deployed troops in Los Angeles with the argument that the soldiers were protecting federal buildings and personnel, an argument that could apply almost anywhere he sends Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker responded: “The State of Illinois at this time has received no requests or outreach from the federal government asking if we need assistance, and we have made no requests for federal intervention. The safety of the people of Illinois is always my top priority. There is no emergency that warrants the President of the United States federalizing the [Illinois National Guard], deploying the National Guard from other states, or sending active duty military within our own borders. Donald Trump is attempting to manufacture a crisis, politicize Americans who serve in uniform, and continue abusing his power to distract from the pain he's causing families. We'll continue to follow the law, stand up for the sovereignty of our state, and protect Illinoisans.”
This morning, Trump threatened to send troops to Baltimore, Maryland, after Maryland governor Wes Moore invited him in what Trump called “a rather nasty and provocative tone,” to join him on a walk through the streets of Baltimore. Trump wrote that “I gave Wes Moore a lot of money to fix his demolished bridge. I will now have to rethink this decision???” Trump appeared to be referring not to his own money, but to federal funds supporting the rebuilding of Baltimore’s Key Bridge, which collapsed after a container ship hit it on March 26, 2024. The collapse stopped operations at one of the busiest ports in the nation.
In another post, Trump suggested that Moore, who served in Afghanistan and received a Bronze Star, awarded for acts of valor in combat, had lied about getting a Bronze Star.
Moore responded: “President Bone Spurs will do anything to get out of walking—even if that means spouting off more lies about the progress we’re making on public safety in Maryland. Hey Donald, we can get you a golf cart if that makes things easier. Just let my team know.” He added: “Did Donald Trump, the President of the United States, lie about an injury to dodge the Vietnam draft?”
The AI feature of X, called “Grok,” helpfully added: “Trump received four student deferments during the Vietnam era, followed by a 1968 medical deferment for bone spurs in his heels, per official records. The diagnosing doctor's daughters later claimed it was a favor to Trump's father, with no actual spurs. [Trump fixer] Michael Cohen testified Trump admitted faking it. Trump denies this, saying it was legitimate but temporary. No medical records confirm or refute.”
On Face the Nation today, Moore said he was actively looking at redistricting in Maryland to offset the Republican mid-decade redistricting in Republican-dominated states Trump is demanding. Moore said: “[W]e…need to make sure that if the president of the United States is putting his finger on the scale to try to manipulate elections because he knows that his policies cannot win in a ballot box, then it behooves each and every one of us to be able to keep all options on the table to ensure that the voters’ voices can actually be heard. “
The National Guard troops deployed to Washington, D.C., will begin carrying firearms tonight.
But Trump appears angry that he is not being given enough scope for his desires. Tonight he posted on social media that the tradition of blue slips, which enables senators to stop the appointment of objectionable federal judges in their own states, has made it impossible for him to appoint the judges he wants. He wrote: “I have a Consultational [sic] Right to appoint Judges and U.S. Attorneys, but that RIGHT has been completely taken away from me…. [T]he only candidates that I can get confirmed for these most important positions are, believe it or not, Democrats! [Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee] Chuck Grassley should allow strong Republican candidates to ascend to these very vital and powerful roles, and tell the Democrats, as they often tell us, to go to HELL!”
Trump is likely reacting to his inability to keep his attorney Alina Habba in the position of U.S. attorney for New Jersey after New Jersey senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim used blue slips to keep her from getting a Senate vote for confirmation. Trump appointed Habba acting U.S. attorney but after her 120-day interim period expired, a panel of judges skipped over her to appoint her assistant, Desiree Leigh Grace, to the job. Attorney general Pam Bondi then fired Grace, and Trump reappointed Habba. Last week, U.S. district judge Matthew Brann ruled that Habba was not holding the post lawfully.
There seems to be some tension in the White House tonight. As Trump’s poll numbers are in the low 40s on his job performance and underwater on every one of his policies, tonight he wrote: “Except what is written and broadcast in the Fake News, I now have the highest poll numbers I’ve ever had, some in the 60’s and even 70’s. Thank you. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
Trump followed that post up with another. “Despite a very high popularity and, according to many, among the greatest 8 months in Presidential History, ABC & NBC FAKE NEWS, two of the worst and most biased networks in history, give me 97% BAD STORIES. IF THAT IS THE CASE, THEY ARE SIMPLY AN ARM OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND SHOULD, ACCORDING TO MANY, HAVE THEIR LICENSES REVOKED BY THE FCC. I would be totally in favor of that because they are so biased and untruthful, an actual threat to our Democracy!!! MAGA”
—
Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/08/23/dc-federal-takeover-police-extend/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/08/23/trump-chicago-military-national-guard/
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5467900-trump-criticizes-maryland-governor/
https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/data
Donald J. Trump, Truth Social post, August 24, 2025, 9:46 PM.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/24/alina-habba-slams-senate-blue-slips-00522501
YouTube:
X:
iamwesmoore/status/1959732998477168965
iamwesmoore/status/1959640110216978832
grok/status/1959745492293915035
GavinNewsom/status/1959686752161157259
GavinNewsom/status/1959674599676989523
Bluesky:
patriottakes.bsky.social/post/3lx5s4c27c22i
civictracker.us/post/3lx6s6qe6ez2b
governor.ca.gov/post/3lx6vtxhuw22z
August 23, 2025
August 23, 2025
“It is my Great Honor to report that the United States of America now fully owns and controls 10% of INTEL, a Great American Company that has an even more incredible future,” President Donald Trump wrote yesterday afternoon on social media. He took the stake in the company after calling on August 7 for its chief executive officer, Lip-Bu Tan, to step down. When Tan met with Trump on August 11, the president says, he told Tan the U.S. “should be given 10% of Intel.” Tan agreed. Announcing the deal, Trump referred to Tan as “the Highly Respected Chief Executive Officer of the Company.”
It is wild to see Republicans cheering on a president who publicly threatened a CEO and stated openly that he shook the man down for a major share in his company.
It is even wilder to see Republicans, who since 1980 have held so fervently to the idea of free markets that they have denounced even the most basic regulations as socialism, celebrate the government takeover of a private company.
The story of that shift is a larger story about how the Republicans came to put party over country and, now, how they have put power over everything.
It was not always this way.
After World War II, leaders of both major political parties agreed that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, protect civil rights, and shore up a rules-based international order to try to prevent another world war. Republicans and Democrats contended, sometimes bitterly, over policies, but members of both parties recognized that they shared with the other a loyalty to the country and a general set of beliefs about what was best for it that encouraged them to seek common ground.
As recently as 1974, Republican senators went to the White House to tell a member of their own party that the House of Representatives would vote to impeach him for covering up a break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic Party and that they would vote to convict him. After their visit, President Richard M. Nixon resigned.
But 1980 saw the takeover of the Republican Party by an extremist faction known as the “Movement Conservatives.” Their roots lay in 1937, when men who hated the New Deal legislation being put in place by the Democrats came together to destroy it. Businessmen who hated business regulations and taxes joined with southern racists who hated Black rights and with religious traditionalists who hated women’s rights and wanted the churches to control welfare programs so they could police behavior.
Calling themselves “conservatives” because they wanted to dismantle the laws and recreate the 1920s, the Movement Conservatives produced a list of demands. They called for deregulation, tax cuts, an end to social welfare spending, and an end to government support for workers, maintaining that those principles would protect the bedrock of the economy: private enterprise. They also called for states’ rights, home rule, and local self-government, by which they meant that southern states could maintain discriminatory laws against their citizens, no matter what the Fourteenth Amendment said.
Their goal was not to compromise with Democrats or Republicans who believed in an active government; their goal was to destroy that government. They insisted that government regulations and taxes were creeping socialism; they said that social welfare sapped American individualism; they said that civil rights laws destroyed democracy by overruling state voters. Most Americans wanted little to do with this faction until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that protected Black and Brown voting enabled the businessmen who hated regulation and taxes to mobilize racists.
Ronald Reagan tapped into the Movement Conservatives in 1964, when he backed Arizona senator Barry Goldwater for the presidency. When he ran for the presidency in 1980, his promises focused on economic freedom, but the racism and sexism in the radical faction was always present; he deliberately appealed to racists with a promise to defend states’ rights and to the sexists trying to combat the women’s liberation movement with an appeal to religious traditionalists. Reagan promised to put businessmen in the driver’s seat, but he depended on the votes of racists and sexists to win the White House.
Reagan’s tax cuts tripled the federal debt and left his successor, George H.W. Bush, facing a $171 billion deficit in 1990, along with the threat of automatic cuts of 40% across the board if the deficit wasn’t reduced. Bush reneged on his promise not to raise taxes. Movement Conservatives signed on in private, but in public they attacked the deal as a betrayal of Reaganism and common people. Georgia Republican Newt Gingrich used the opportunity to purge the Republican Party of its traditional base: those who believed in an active government. He accused anyone who stood against him of being a “Republican In Name Only,” or “RINO.”
In 1994, Gingrich managed to flip the House of Representatives to the Republicans for the first time since 1954, and he set out to reshape the Republican Party into an instrument for destroying the modern government. That effort would require destroying the Democratic Party by referring to its members as “corrupt,” “intolerant,” “sick,” “traitors”; by launching investigations of what he insisted—without evidence—was “voter fraud,” and by investigating and then impeaching Democratic president Bill Clinton.
By the end of the 1990s, leading Republicans no longer saw party differences as differences of policy. Party trumped country because they believed they were in a fight for the soul of America, and they were on the side of the angels.
If keeping Democrats out of power meant it was necessary to skew the system, surely that was justified. Republicans began to talk of purifying the voter rolls in the 1990s, and in 1998 the Florida legislature passed a law that purged from the system as many as 100,000 Black voters presumed to be Democrats. This purge paid off in 2000, when Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million votes but was four votes short of a win in the Electoral College. The contest came down to Florida, where a confusing ballot had siphoned about 10,000 votes intended for Gore off to far-right candidate Pat Buchanan.
A hand recount had reduced Republican candidate George W. Bush’s lead from 1,784 to 537 when Republican operatives attacked the recount venue in Miami-Dade County to stop the recount, claiming there was “voter fraud.” The Supreme Court—led by five Republican-appointed justices—stepped in to give the victory to Bush.
When voters elected Democrat Barack Obama in 2008, Republicans declared war. On the night of Obama’s inauguration, Republican senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and other Republican leaders agreed over dinner to oppose anything that the new president proposed, regardless of whether they agreed with it. “For the next two years, we can’t let you succeed in anything. That’s our ticket to coming back,” Republican senators told incoming vice president Joe Biden.
They also worked to make it easier for Republicans to win. In 2010 the Supreme Court overturned a century of campaign finance laws to permit unlimited corporate and other outside money to flow into elections.
At the same time, Republican operatives launched Operation REDMAP, or Redistricting Majority Project, to take over statehouses before the redistricting after the 2010 census. They won the statehouses of Florida, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Ohio, and Michigan, as well as other, smaller states, and they redrew congressional maps using precise computer models. In the 2012 election, Democrats won the White House decisively, the Senate easily, and a majority of 1.4 million votes for House candidates. And yet Republicans came away with a 33-seat majority in the House of Representatives.
Three years later, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act by ending the requirement that states with a history of racial discrimination in voting preclear changes to their voting rules with the Department of Justice. Republican-dominated state legislatures immediately began to restrict voting rights.
But the Republican economic program of slashing regulations and taxes was never popular, and the Republicans stayed in power by doubling down on the racism and sexism of their voting base. After 1987, talk radio fed the rhetoric that racial minorities and women were ushering socialism into the United States, and after 1994 the Fox News Channel amplified it.
In 2016, Donald Trump rode to the White House by playing directly to that racism and sexism and asserting that white men should dominate women and people of color. Establishment leaders backed him for the tax cuts he promised, but they no longer called the shots. The racist and sexist MAGA base did. Trump and his loyalists took the idea that they had a right to rule to its logical extreme. When voters elected Democrat Joe Biden to the presidency, they tried to overturn that election with violence.
Now, back in office, Trump is dismantling the government as Movement Conservatives have wanted for decades. But he has abandoned the small-government principles Movement Conservatives claimed to champion and is using state power to terrorize citizens. He has abandoned the due process of the law and states’ rights and is working to rig the system permanently in his favor. And now he has abandoned the free-market principles around which the Movement Conservatives organized in the first place.
From the beginning, “Movement Conservatism” was anything but conservative. Its supporters embraced the radical goal of dismantling a practical system that stabilized the country after the Great Depression and a devastating world war, a system that was based in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But now they are embracing something altogether different.
Right-wing activist Christopher Rufo explained yesterday on social media that “a new conservatism has emerged. We are leading a rebellion against the establishment and dismantling the elements of the left-wing ideological regime—not for the purpose of nihilism, but for the purpose of rebirth, or restoration, of our republic.”
Rufo’s statement is, as one commenter noted, “just textbook 1930s fascism.”
—
Notes:
https://www.usccr.gov/files/pubs/vote2000/report/exesum.htm
Michael Grunwald, The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era (Simon & Schuster, 2012). Also Jonathan Capehart, “Republicans had it in for Obama before Day 1,” Washington Post, August 10, 2012; Greg Sargent, “Biden: McConnell decided to deny us cooperation before we took office,” Washington Post, August 10, 2012.
Bluesky:
atrupar.com/post/3lwyzd6jwqq2x
kairyssdal.bsky.social/post/3lwzeyztuas2y
justinwolfers.bsky.social/post/3lx33uyntm72v
August 22, 2025
August 22, 2025
In these last days of August, with Congress on hiatus and the Epstein files looming, the Trump White House appears to be making a big move to consolidate power over the federal government, weaponize it against Trump’s opponents, and keep him in power indefinitely.
At around 7:00 this morning, FBI agents searched the home and office of Trump’s former national security advisor John Bolton, who has been a fierce critic of Trump since leaving his first administration. Officials told reporters the search was part of an investigation into whether Bolton illegally retained classified information or leaked it to news media. But as J.V. Last of The Bulwark noted, an investigation into classified documents from several years ago—as opposed to a search of, say, a drug dealer—would normally mean the government officials would have a conversation with Bolton’s lawyers and arrange for a routine search to which Bolton agreed. Instead, agents stormed his house and office in an early morning raid.
The raid seems a pretty clear warning to those Trump perceives as enemies that he will bring the full weight of the United States government to harass them. Bolton has been a thorn in Trump's side for years because he is a well-known right-wing figure who has not been shy about speaking out against Trump. As recently as last week, Bolton told CNN that Trump had “achieved very little” by meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Alaska, and that “Putin clearly won.” He also noted that Trump “looked tired.”
Earlier this month, when ABC’s Jonathan Karl asked Bolton if he was worried Trump would come after him as part of the president’s “retribution campaign” being waged through the FBI and the Department of Justice. Bolton pointed out that Trump had already come after him by removing his Secret Service protection despite specific Iranian threats against his life. Bolton added: “I think it is a retribution presidency.”
Targeting Bolton has been a goal of FBI director Kash Patel, whom Trump appointed after Patel made it clear he intended to use the power of government against Trump’s opponents. “We’re going to come after you whether it’s criminally or civilly,” Patel said in 2023 on Trump associate Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast.
Indeed, Trump loyalist Attorney General Pam Bondi has launched criminal investigations into Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA), who led the House Intelligence Committee that broke the story of Trump’s phone call to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky asking him to smear Trump’s 2020 political opponent Joe Biden; New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully sued Trump and the Trump Organization for fraud; and now Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, who suggested on August 6 that the revision of the last few months’ jobs numbers might signal a turning point in the economy.
Those investigations come after another Trump loyalist, William Pulte, who heads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, alleged that the three committed mortgage fraud years ago. All three have denied the allegations, and Allan Smith, Steve Kopack, and Dareh Gregorian of NBC News note that accusation of mortgage fraud “has long been a common tactic in opposition research on political campaigns. James’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, pointed out that the administration does not appear to be investigating Trump loyalist Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who, divorce filings released this July show, claimed three different properties as his primary residence, thus securing lower-interest mortgages on them.
Earlier this week, bodycam footage released from a court filing by Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), whom the administration has charged with assaulting federal agents during the chaotic arrest of Newark, New Jersey, mayor Ras Baraka on May 9, shows that the Justice Department’s deputy attorney general Todd Blanche personally ordered Baraka’s arrest. The case was later dismissed.
And yet Trump loyalists are not just targeting people in order to intimidate opponents. They seem determined to rewrite history to suit Trump.
In July the Department of Justice launched investigations of former FBI director James Comey and former CIA director John Brennan, alleging they had made false statements to Congress about the investigation into the attempt by Russian operatives to help Trump’s 2016 candidacy. After all these years, Trump continues to come back to the scandal that he calls “Russia, Russia, Russia.”
Yesterday, Russia bombed a U.S. factory in Ukraine, wounding at least 15 people, and today, Russian officials made it clear they would not even entertain the bilateral summit with Ukraine Trump called for. Nonetheless, today in a bizarre session in the Oval Office, at what was supposed to be an announcement about next year’s FIFA World Cup, wearing a cap with the words “Trump Was Right About Everything,” Trump showed reporters a photograph of himself and Putin that Putin had sent him from their meeting in Alaska last week, and expressed sadness that Putin, who has murdered more than a million people and is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, can’t attend the FIFA games. Trump said he planned to sign the photograph as a gift for Putin.
The administration’s crusade against the U.S. intelligence agencies that uncovered the relationship between Russian operatives and Trump’s 2016 campaign is continuing as part of the administration’s power grab. On Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced she will cut 40% of her office, with cuts coming from the Foreign Malign Influence Center, which, as Maggie Miller and Dana Nickel of Politico note, “collects and analyzes data on foreign influence operations seeking to undermine U.S. democracy.”
Today Hegseth fired the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, U.S. Air Force Lt. General Jeffrey Kruse. The Defense Intelligence Agency provides intelligence to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to U.S. military personnel in the field.
The crackdown in Washington, D.C., seems to have far less to do with combating crime in a city where crime rates are at a 30-year low than it does with demonstrating that the administration controls the capital, the seat of the U.S. government. As conservative lawyer George Conway, who helpfully videoed the FBI raid on John Bolton’s house this morning, put it: “If you want to have a coup against the constitutional order, you want to control the capital city. And if he has control of the policing in the city of Washington,... how do you stop him? Who's gonna tell him to leave the White House?"
Trump has rewarded those who fought to steal the 2020 election for him, pardoning or commuting the sentences of more than 1,500 people convicted or charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 riot designed to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would make Biden president, and yesterday he demanded that Colorado officials release former election officer Tina Peters, whom a jury found guilty of four felonies for breaching election equipment to supporte Trump’s lies about election fraud after that election. Trump posted on social media: “She did nothing wrong, except catching the Democrats cheat in the Election [sic]…. If she is not released, I am going to take harsh measures!!!”
Now Trump and his allies appear to be cementing control of the capital. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a statement today from the Pentagon that the 2,000 National Guard members stationed in Washington, D.C., will begin to carry weapons. More National Guard personnel are on the way. At the same time, FBI Director Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino appear to be turning the FBI into a national police force: dropping the requirement for a college degree, reducing training hours, and focusing on street crime rather than the bureau’s traditional expertise in white collar crime, corruption, and so on.
Trump said yesterday he wants to extend the deployment for more than the 30-day limit the law allows, and today he warned that he would take over the city “with the federal government.” Today, in the Oval Office, Trump told reporters that his administration would invade Chicago, which he called a “mess,” next. He said that “African American ladies, beautiful ladies, are saying, ‘Please, President Trump, come to Chicago, please.’”
On August 18, Democracy Docket’s Marc Elias warned that Trump is “stationing the military and other federal law enforcement in blue areas so—when the time comes—he can pivot their mission to suppressing voting rights and undermining free and fair elections.” On Tuesday, Trump ally Steve Bannon said on his webcast War Room: “They're petrified over at MSNBC and CNN that, hey, since we’re taking control of the cities, there's going to be ICE officers near polling places. You damn right.”
Last March, scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder wrote that those who fantasize about a strongman make the terrible mistake of thinking “that a strongman will be your strongman. He won't,” Snyder wrote. “In a democracy, elected representatives listen to constituents. We take this for granted, and imagine that a dictator would owe us something.” But he doesn’t, Snyder explains: your support makes you irrelevant.
Those who supported Trump from a belief that he would protect American business from state interference received yet another example of Snyder’s point today when Trump boasted that the government has taken a 10% stake in Intel, which builds semiconductors and chips. Trump says he intends to take similar stakes in other companies.
In the midst of the day’s firestorm of news, the administration released several pieces of the transcripts of Todd Blanche’s interview with Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. In them, she is recorded as saying, among other things: “[A]s far as I'm concerned, President Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me. And I just want to say that I…admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now. And I like him, and I've always liked him.”
Trump apologist lawyer Jonathan Turley suggested the Maxwell interviews would lay the story of the Epstein files to rest. But the interviews were always a distraction from the Epstein files themselves. Prosecutors at the Department of Justice itself called Maxwell a serial liar, and as Erica Orden, Josh Gerstein, and Kyle Cheney of Politico note, she is now angling for a pardon after her conviction on sex trafficking charges.
In Illinois today, Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson called Trump’s threat to take over the city an illegal abuse of power.
On X, Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker posted: “Things People are Begging for: 1. Cheaper groceries 2. No Medicaid and SNAP cuts 3. Release of the Epstein Files.” He added: “Things People are NOT begging for: 1. An authoritarian power grab of major cities.”
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Notes:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/08/22/bolton-home-fbi-search-trump/
The BulwarkAbout Courage1. John Bolton and Tina Peters…Read more21 hours ago · 1122 likes · 514 comments · Jonathan V. Lasthttps://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-8-10-25-nato-secretary-general/story?id=124514011
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/federal-reserve-lisa-cook-jobs-report-concerning-economy-turning-point/
https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/ken-angela-paxton-mortgage-primary-residence-homestead-exemption/
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/09/politics/comey-brennan-ratcliffe-fbi-cia-referral
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y7l47xrpko
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4914462-colorado-county-clerk-sentenced-election-breach/
Trump, Truth Social post, August 21, 2025, 8:07 AM.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/06/07/proud-boys-lawsuit-100-million/84086933007/
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2025/08/22/trump-chicago-crackdown/
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/18/newark-mayor-arrest-bodycam-footage-todd-blanche-00513734
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/23/gabbard-russia-2016-election-declassification-00471289
https://www.npr.org/2025/08/21/g-s1-84146/russia-ukraine-american-factory
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/20/gabbard-odni-cuts-00517232
https://newrepublic.com/article/199465/trump-fbi-raid-john-bolton-home
https://newsletters.democracydocket.com/trumps-militarization-of-u.s.-cities-grows-more-dangerous
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/us/politics/fbi-agent-recruitment-requirements-trump.html
Thinking about...The Strongman Fantasy (updated)(Note to readers: this is a text I wrote in March, looking ahead. Given where we are now in the US, I thought it deserved an update. Please share it…Read morea year ago · 2985 likes · 188 comments · Timothy Snyderhttps://www.cnn.com/2025/08/22/tech/trump-intel-10-percent-stake
https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/14/tech/intel-trump-us-government-investment
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-shows-off-photograph-putin-alaska-summit/story?id=124892306
X:
BulwarkOnline/status/1958906288487739681
JBPritzker/status/1958965961815392342
Bluesky:
acyn.bsky.social/post/3lwzm62b5kc23
ronfilipkowski.bsky.social/post/3lwz76hrfu22z
did:plc:kjjhbsc3pp3vkqjsivk6z2yd/post/3lwzgaducck2q
atrupar.com/post/3lwyylh4esu2a
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