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Trump's Ban On 'Enemy' Law Firms Advances A More Efficient Fascism

Donald Trump is in the process of issuing a series of executive orders targeting law firms he doesn’t like. The orders strip partners and employees of the firms of their top-secret security clearances, bar the firms from doing business with the federal government, ban employees of the firms from federal office buildings, ban federal contractors from doing business with the firms, and initiate federal investigations of the firms for hiring and promoting people on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation.

Trump’s first order was against Covington & Burling, a firm that had done legal work for Jack Smith, the Special Counsel assigned to investigate Trump for his theft of top-secret national security documents and attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He then went after the Perkins Coie law firm, which the New York Times identifies as being “aligned with Democrats.”

Trump then turned his attention to Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, signing an executive order with the same restrictions on the firm, saying that one of the lawyers for the firm had worked as a prosecutor in New York on the indictment of Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush money case, and that another lawyer had been involved in a lawsuit against January 6 insurrectionists. The order against Paul Weiss similarly forbade the firm from doing business with the federal government, barred any of its clients from federal contracts, and stripped the firm’s access to federal facilities.

The most egregious paragraph in the executive orders against the law firms was the one entitled “Personnel:”

“The heads of all agencies shall, to the extent permitted by law, provide guidance limiting official access from [sic] Federal Government buildings to employees of Perkins Coie when such access would threaten the national security of or otherwise be inconsistent with the interests of the United States. In addition, the heads of all agencies shall provide guidance limiting Government employees acting in their official capacity from engaging with Perkins Coie employees to ensure consistency with the national security and other interests of the United States.”

In essence, what this paragraph does is accuse the law firms’ leadership and employees of disloyalty to the United States, because everything they're being banned from belongs to the United States government. That's where the words “national security” come from. The nation's security is defended by the government. The implication is that if any of the law firms’ employees come in contact with government buildings or personnel, that contact would be a threat to national security, so it must be forbidden.

No evidence is cited for this outrageous allegation. There is nothing in the rest of the language of the executive orders to support why any of the law firms or their employees would be such a threat. Lacking that evidence, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the disloyalty of the law firms and their employees is to Donald Trump, not to the nation. This is just rank unsupported prejudice.

Perkins Coie did not take the ban lying down, immediately suing in federal court on the basis that the executive order was unconstitutional. Judge Beryl Howell issued a temporary restraining order forbidding the enforcement of the executive order. The Trump DOJ then moved in the D.C. Court of Appeals to get the judge disqualified. This was after the Trump administration had filed another appeal trying to disqualify Judge James Boasberg from hearing the case involving the deportation of more than 100 Venezuelan migrants on the basis that they belong to a drug gang.

So not only is Trump banning entire law firms from going into court against the administration, he is attempting to convince the D.C. Court of Appeals to get two well regarded federal judges with long experience banned from hearing cases against Trump and his administration.

What Trump has done is to make it impossible for these law firms to do business with the federal government, to file lawsuits against the federal government, or take clients who had business with the federal government. They must be able to do research, interview witnesses, and gather evidence if they're going to sue the federal government or defend anyone against charges brought by the Department of Justice. So, if you represent, say, Lockheed Martin, you wouldn't have any access to the Pentagon where the company's contracts for the F-35 fighter were written. If you represent a contractor who worked on a naval vessel like an aircraft carrier or a submarine, you wouldn't be able to enter a naval base where those ships are located, or interview anyone involved in the building or contracting for naval vessels.

This is the meat and potatoes of what lawyers do. Take away the right of employees from these law firms to walk into federal buildings, access federal documents, and review documents or interview anyone on any subject involving secrets and national security, and you're taking away the lifeblood of their business.

The Paul Weiss firm quickly made a deal with Trump promising to do $40 million worth of pro bono work for the White House. The White House issued a statement saying that the firm had “acknowledged the wrongdoing of its former partner Mark Pomerantz,” and had committed to ending its program of diversity, equity, and inclusion in hiring and promotion.

In other words, the Paul Weiss law firm caved into Trump's demands so that security clearances held by its employees could be retained and the business the firm and its clients do with the federal government would not be damaged.

What Trump is doing with his assault on major law firms by executive order smacks of what Adolf Hitler did in the 1930s when he brought the entire legal profession and judicial system of Germany to heel by barring Jewish lawyers and judges from the German courts and forbidding Jewish lawyers from doing business with the German government.

This is from an article published by the Federal Bar Association titled “Lawyers and Bar Associations Play a Vital Role in Preserving the Rule of Law: A Study of How Hitler Perverted Germany’s Judicial System Highlights the Importance of Lawyers.”

“Hitler’s early decree stripping Jewish lawyers and judges of their professional capacities marked an early step in the decline from liberty to dictatorship. According to research conducted by the German Federal Bar and documented in its exhibit, “Lawyers without Rights: Jewish Lawyers under the Third Reich,” Hitler’s 1933 decree barring Jewish lawyers and judges from German courts did not trigger any formal protests or objections from non-Jewish lawyers or judges. There were many respected bar associations in Germany, but they did not oppose this action.”

The only difference here is that Trump is not starting with a religious minority, but with a minority of law firms and a minority of judges handling cases against the Trump administration. He knows that if he can knock down one or two big time law firms and manage to bar several of the judges hearing lawsuits against his administration from hearing the cases before them, he will have the entire legal profession and judiciary intimidated into falling in line.

This is the way fascism starts, with the few not the many, but the many are next. Today it's law firms barred from government buildings and judges barred from hearing lawsuits. Tomorrow it could be individual citizens barred from appealing decisions about their taxes or Social Security because Trump doesn't like the political party they belong to or the demonstration they attended or the club they joined in college. Today it's alleged drug dealers rounded up without charges and banned from the country.

Tomorrow it could be you and me.

Lucian K. Truscott IV, a graduate of West Point, has had a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has covered Watergate, the Stonewall riots, and wars in Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five bestselling novels. He writes every day at luciantruscott.substack.com and you can follow him on Bluesky @lktiv.bsky.social and on Facebook at Lucian K. Truscott IV. Please consider subscribing to his Substack.

Reprinted with permission from Lucian Truscott Newsletter

Heart Of Darkness II: A Trump Appointee's Deleted Racist Tweets

This story was originally published in COURIER's American Freakshow newsletter

Racist pseudoscience and flirtation with fascism were always in the water around Trump. But the influential online eugenicists and neo-Nazis of 2025 are not your grandad’s German Nazis, nor are they David Duke or even Richard Spencer (tiki torches, khakis, and gaiters are so 2017).

The Trump 2.0 white pride influencers often have academic cred. Their erudite snark appeals to the self-regard of Silicon Valley oligarchs and their fanboys who think being in a computer lab when the sum of all human knowledge initiated the digital era makes them superior DNA-bearing geniuses.

Last week’s featured Freakshow freak Geoff Martin and many of his fellow online racist anons, like Texas race pseudoscientist Jordan Lasker (who Elon Musk has engaged with dozens of times), prefer to lurk behind pseudonyms.

But some out-and-proud white nationalist/race scientists don’t mind putting their real names to tweets about sterilizing “low IQ trash” – the white supremacist online pseudo-scientists’ current favorite insult. Trump’s acting Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs is Darren Beattie, and his white nationalist affiliations were too much for Trump 1.0. The White House sent him packing, and he went on to found a right-wing media outfit called Revolver News.

But in the new Trump regime, publicly declared racist views that might once have gotten pretty much anyone fired are now job qualifications. Beattie, like the rest of the creeps* who make up the MAGA Heart of Darkness, has academic bonafides. He wrote his PhD thesis on Nazi Martin Heidegger.

A typical Beattie tweet would be one in 2023, when he went on a tear about online street fight videos online, apparently unaware that Trump was getting cozy with UFC cage match tycoon Dana White, king of fight videos.

Many of Beattie’s Tweets about sterilizing “low IQ trash” – always understood to be people of color and not MAGA-white rabble – are still online. But his deleted tweets reveal another, sicker layer of sentiment, more familiar to movie-going Americans perhaps in the character Leo DiCaprio played in Django. Pure, deplorable, antebellum and Jim Crow racism.

The January 6 insurrection provoked Beattie to a frothing frenzy of anti-Black rage that he vented on Twitter for hours and then deleted. He was clearly more upset about what he might consider uppity Blacks on TV than the White horde that had just smashed, grabbed, and defecated on the walls of the capital.

He spent the afternoon and evening of that day calling for Black public commentators during the televised violence to get back to their “proper place” in the under-class. Some examples of now deleted Beattie tweets on January 6th:

“Ibram Kendi needs to learn his place and take a knee to MAGA. Learn his proper role in our society.”

“Kay Cole James of Heritage Foundation needs to learn her natural place and take a KNEE to MAGA.”

Beattie even took swings at Trump loyalist Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina:

“Tim Scott needs to learn his place and take a KNEE to MAGA.” (Scott is still a Trump-supporting Republican Senator. Whether he’s “learned his place” is not for us to judge.)

By midnight, Beattie had completely lost it, demanding that pretty much every Black person in America get to the back of the bus, with this tweet:

CNN unearthed some other deleted Beattie bon mots this week. In one tweet that was removed for violating Twitter’s terms of service, on the day Roe v. Wade was overturned, Beattie’s Revolver News posted about the decision maybe permitting shooting at women who get abortions.

He has also accused his now-boss (in name only, apparently), Secretary of State Marco Rubio, of being “low IQ” and closeted, referencing a high school curfew violation at a park:

He followed that up with: “What happens in the Cabana stays in the Cabana #Rubio.”

When reporters asked Rubio about Beattie’s new position as his State Department’s “public diplomat” (before the latest round of personally insulting Tweets was revealed), Rubio kicked the can: “He went through the process that the transition office went through,” Rubio told a press briefing. “He’ll be acting in that capacity, and he’ll largely be focused – as that department will be – on not wanting this Department of State to be involved in censorship.”

In other words, Beattie is on board to make public racism great again.

Obviously, putting this man in this position is just a big troll. One can easily imagine Team Trump elves smirking as they added his name to their vetted list. Think Stephen “Goebbels” Miller or Donald Trump Jr., who hosted Beattie at least seven times on his Triggered podcast in the last two years, possibly a record for him for one single guest.

Junior used to close every rally speech in support of his father with the sign-off: “We will make liberals cry again!”So, haha, you, dear reader, are supposed to be crying as an out and proud racist serves as the face of American public diplomacy for the next year (although he will not be permanent – the regime doesn’t really need his services, just his presence as a billboard insult).

These people aren’t new among us, but Trump has empowered them. The mainstreaming of eugenics was already in full sway during the campaign last summer. The Atlantic ran an article headlined “The Far Right is Becoming Obsessed with Race and IQ: Race Science has returned.” Ali Breland pointed out that the eugenics clan (Klan?) uses a kind of code to know and amplify each other. They call their observations about racially-based inferiority “noticing.”

The pathology that infects these men is eloquently explained in Sven Lindquist’s “Exterminate All The Brutes.” The title comes from the supposed last words of Captain Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s novel about Europeans in the Congo, Heart of Darkness. Lindquist traces how European racial superiority ideology has led to countless massacres and genocides throughout history, from the indigenous Americans to the people of the Congo to the Jews of Europe.

The offensiveness of this ideology is only exceeded in vileness by the passivity and toadying of the political and corporate leaders in America right now who are not objecting to the mainstreaming of the sickness.

STAY TUNED: In part three of our MAGA’s Heart of Darkness series, I’ll introduce the popular MAGA fanboy who has published a recipe for Hitler’s ice cream. Take your anti-nausea medicine.

Nina Burleigh is a a journalist, author, documentary producer and adjunct professor at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written eight books including her recently published novel, Zero Visibility Possible.

Will The Senate Save Us From Trump's Cabinet Of Horrors?

Among the sharpest conservative opponents of fascism is George T. Conway III. During a Nov. 14 appearance on CNN, the attorney and activist offered this pithy description of Tulsi Gabbard, Matt Gaetz and Bobby Kennedy, the worst nominees (so far) to Donald Trump's cabinet:

"If you were seeking to destroy the country, the Gabbard, Gaetz, and RFK Jr. picks were exactly the ones you'd make. And that's not surprising. Because Trump is a malignant narcissist, and malignant narcissists, subconsciously or consciously, do seek to destroy." (I should note here that Conway is a friend who wrote the foreword to my most recent book, The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.)

There may be even more sinister explanations for what Trump is doing — he appears subservient to a hostile foreign power — but Conway's warning about the potential impact of his bizarre choices is no exaggeration. Many Americans, probably including the ignorant and arrogant Trump, have little idea what the major federal agencies do or why maintaining their operations is so essential to protecting our families, livelihoods, and security. They may be about to find out the very hardest way.

As many observers have noted, it is difficult to imagine a more absurd appointee than Gaetz to head the Department of Justice, which has jurisdiction over the FBI as well. He has no relevant experience whatsoever, except as an investigative target.

Like his master Trump, former Florida Rep. Gaetz publicly vowed vengeance on the FBI for daring to probe his alleged crimes, which ranged from drug offenses and theft of campaign funds to the sexual trafficking of teenage girls. But the nation's premier law enforcement agency has responsibilities that range far beyond probing the misconduct of a sleazy congressman. While Gaetz, Trump and many of their cronies may be perfectly content to disrupt the FBI's probes of public corruption, thus leaving them unmolested, the rest of us would surely suffer if it is no longer able to investigate violent gangs, prevent terrorist bombings and cyberattacks, and maintain a counterintelligence cordon against enemy spies (although that would surely gratify those Trump fans in the Kremlin).

The thugs, traffickers, and spies apprehended by the FBI are prosecuted by DOJ attorneys, either in Washington or by U.S. attorneys around the country, whose operations certainly need no interference from the likes of Gaetz or anyone whom he might choose as his underlings.

So when Gaetz proclaims his desire to dismantle the FBI and DOJ, he may have his own petty reasons — but the impact of this clown on the rule of law, public order and Americans' ability to conduct our lives in peace and security could be devastating.

In certain ways Gabbard resembles Gaetz. She too is a peculiar and discredited figure with no discernible ability to perform the role assigned her by Trump, overseeing the world's largest and most vital intelligence network. That network includes the CIA, the National Security Agency, the intelligence divisions of the armed forces, and the FBI (which she can assist Gaetz in wrecking). She is a veteran and a former member of Congress, but perhaps just as important is her pedigree as an acolyte of a destructive cult that spun off from the Hare Krishna organization.

Worse still, she has repeatedly demonstrated her allegiance to some of this era's bloodiest dictators — not just Vladimir Putin, whose propaganda about Ukraine she tried to spread, but Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian despot, mass murderer, and Russian client, to whom she provided similar assistance. Russian state television, which has often garlanded Gabbard with favorable coverage, is celebrating her appointment — but allied intelligence agencies around the world are being forced to reconsider their ties with American counterparts, potentially crippling our capacity to obtain information vital to U.S. national security.

Kennedy, the conspiracy monger and anti-vax profiteer, presents a different kind of menace to our future. He is a proved and inveterate liar, who now claims he isn't an opponent of vaccination when there are hours of video and other indisputable records confirming that fact. More than once he has sat stone-faced while someone played that proof in his presence, and then continued to lie.

Should he actually be confirmed as secretary of Health and Human Services, with jurisdiction over such agencies as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Institutes of Health, the likely damage he will inflict on our health and safety is incalculable. We know what he is capable of doing — what he yearns to do — because he has left a legacy of human wreckage over the past two decades. His campaign against vaccinations during the COVID-19 pandemic helped to foster the fears that left millions vulnerable and eventually dead. Although Kennedy alone cannot be held accountable for those excess deaths, as statisticians call them, he definitely did his worst.

We may somehow avoid another pandemic, despite the imminent threat from bird flu, but Kennedy's anti-science ideology could soon bring on an epidemic of measles, if he can get the vaccination rate low enough. He and his anti-vax cronies achieved that deadly goal in Samoa several years ago — with lethal consequences for dozens of little children. If he can scale that campaign here, the toll could be in the tens of thousands.

Bobby also seemingly aims to increase tooth decay among children by doing away with water fluoridation. He plans to undermine our decades-long effort to cure cancer and other modern plagues with a mad eight-year "moratorium" on scientific research. He has a roster of likeminded kooks he wants to name to top positions in the federal health agencies — and it's mostly comprised of far-right quacks, discredited academics and supplement grifters, with a couple of neo-Nazis sprinkled among them. If he is confirmed, he will bring this rogue's gallery with him.

What stands between our country and the national wreckage portended by these abominable Trump appointees is the U.S. Senate. There is no more important function outlined in the Constitution for that deliberative body, and there has never been a more urgent need for senators to stand up and protect the nation. There are only a handful of Republicans with the courage, integrity and wisdom to stop this catastrophic process — but only a handful need to act. Nothing less than the fate of the nation is at stake.

Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Fascism Lite? Trump Regime May Use 'Bureaucratic Bullying' Against Critics

In aThis American Life report aired on National Public Radio (NPR) stations in June, some prominent Donald Trump critics — including former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham and the Lincoln Project's Fred Wellman — revealed that they have been looking at possible countries to move to if Trump wins the 2024 presidential election and returns to the White House in January 2025. Grisham and Wellman both said they fear the possibility of retaliation during a second Trump Administration.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his wife Rachel Vindman were also interviewed for that segment. Rachel Vindman, fearing retaliation as well, has been urging her husband to consider relocating to another country if Trump wins the election, but he told "This American Life" that he is determined to stay in the U.S. regardless of the election's outcome.

In an in-depth article published on September 12, The New Republic's Greg Sargent examines the possible shape that retaliation against critics could take in a second Trump administration — and how those critics are "bracing to be victimized."

Trump's critics have been debating whether Trump 2.0 would resemble the full-fledged fascism of Chile under Gen. Augusto Pinochet and Paraguay under the Alberto Stroessner dictatorship or the so-called "illiberal democracy" of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

"One set of oft-floated worst-case scenarios looks something like this: Trump orders his pliant pick for attorney general to prosecute Liz Cheney and other high-profile critics and frog-march them before the cameras," Sargent explains. "Trump invokes the Insurrection Act to dispatch the military into cities to crush mass protests. Trump unshackles deportation forces to drag millions of undocumented immigrants from homes and workplaces. Trump purges our nation's intelligence services, stocks them with loyal foot soldiers, and unleashes them as a domestic spying force to gather information on designated enemies of the MAGA movement."

Sargent continues, "It would be folly to dismiss these possibilities, since Trump has repeatedly threatened to carry out something resembling every one of those things. He has vowed to prosecute his political opponents without cause. He has loudly called for the indictment of members of the congressional committee that investigated his January 6, 2021, insurrection attempt. He has mused aloud that he might send the military into Democratic-run cities."

But Sargent emphasizes that a second Trump administration could also bring a "less garish scenario" with a "lower-profile, slow-burn authoritarianism" that "unfolds much more quietly and largely behind the scenes."

Trump critics, according to Sargent, has been consulting lawyers who "are advising them to gird for low-grade bureaucratic bullying."

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) told Sargent, "We are organizing to win this election, but if, God forbid, an authoritarian MAGA clampdown comes, it may not be tanks in the streets and midnight disappearances. It may be more akin to a corrosive long-term campaign of constant official and vigilante harassment against perceived political adversaries of the president-king."

Washington, D.C. attorney Mark Zaid is sounding the alarm as well.

Zaid told Sargent, "A second Trump administration will not hesitate to exercise every executive branch weapon it can against those it considers enemies, real or otherwise. We expect a very targeted approach designed to drain the financial resources of perceived adversaries, designed to leave them neutralized and isolated."

Zaid, according to Sargent, "has been advising clients who are high-profile critics of Trump" to "prepare for IRS audits directed at their personal finances" or deal with "the threat of revoked passports."

One of Zaid's clients is former Mike Pence aide Olivia Troye, a conservative Republican who endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris when she spoke at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Troye told Sargent, "Nothing is off the table for what they could do to me. I'm looking at other countries where I could potentially reside."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

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Smart. Sharp. Funny. Fearless

Trump's Ban On 'Enemy' Law Firms Advances A More Efficient Fascism

Heart Of Darkness II: A Trump Appointee's Deleted Racist Tweets

Will The Senate Save Us From Trump's Cabinet Of Horrors?

Fascism Lite? Trump Regime May Use 'Bureaucratic Bullying' Against Critics

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