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      US cities to resist Trump’s crackdown on dissent with No Kings protests: ‘We will not be bullied’

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      Donald Trump has promised to crack down on dissent and sent troops into US cities. His allies are claiming antifa, the decentralized antifascist movement, is behind plans to protest. He is looking for any pretext to go after his opponents.Still, this Saturday, even in cities with troops on the ground, millions of people are expected to march against the president as part of a second “No Kings” protest. The last No Kings protest in June drew several million people across more than 2,000 locations. This time, more than 2,500 cities and towns nationwide are hosting protests.Organizers expect this Saturday’s protests to draw more people than the June events as the American public sees the excesses of the Trump administration more clearly.“Their goal is to dissuade you from participating,” said Ezra Levin, a co-founder of Indivisible, the progressive movement organization with chapters around the US that is a main organizer of No Kings. “That doesn’t mean that everybody has the same threat level. It doesn’t mean that people should ignore what the threats are, but it does mean we’re going to need to see a lot of courage out there on Saturday.”More than 200 organizations are signed on as partners for the 18 October protests; none have dropped off for fear of a Trump backlash, Levin said. The American Civil Liberties Union, the civil rights group, is a partner, as is the advocacy group Public Citizen. Unions including the American Federation of Teachers and SEIU are in the coalition. The new protest movement 50501, which began earlier this year as a call for protests in all 50 states on a single day, is also a partner. Other partners include the Human Rights Campaign, MoveOn, United We Dream, the League of Conservation Voters, Common Defense and more.Resistance to Trump continues to grow. The Harvard Crowd Counting Consortium, which tracks political crowds, noted that 2025 had seen “far more protests” than during the same time period in 2017. The June No Kings protests were “probably the second-largest single day demonstration since Donald Trump first took office in January 2017”, second to the Women’s March in 2017, the consortium said.In June, on the same day a man shot and killed a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband, tens of thousands of people still turned out for No Kings in St Paul while the shooter was on the loose, with attenders saying they didn’t want to back down in the face of political violence.The messages behind the No Kings protests are simple: Trump is acting like a king, and the US rejects kings. The No Kings coalition has cited Trump’s “increasing authoritarian excesses and corruption” as motivation for the protests, including ramping up of deportations, gutting healthcare, gerrymandering maps and selling out families for billionaires.In the months since the first No Kings protests, Trump’s menace against the opposition has only grown, particularly after the far-right commentator Charlie Kirk was murdered. Trump declared antifa to be a terrorist organization and has promised to investigate and take action against any leftwing groups he deems support terrorism.Amid this backdrop, tens of thousands of people have joined calls in recent weeks to prepare safety plans, train on how to serve as marshals for the protests and learn de-escalation tactics.Still, some people may decide to stay home because the threats against them are too great, including the fear of deportation for participating in peaceful protest.“They’re making choices like that every day when they decide whether to go to school or whether to go to work or whether it’s safe to go grocery shopping,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen. “Unfortunately, that’s the climate that the Trump administration is engendering aside from this particular day of activation, so I assume that people will make that calculus on this day as well. But I also think that the fact that people have to make that calculus is part of the reason for our protest.”Cities under occupation prepare for protestsTrump has declared war on Chicago, one of the several Democratic-run cities that have seen infusions of federal forces and increasingly militarized immigration agents on the ground. A judge last week blocked the deployment of national guard troops to the Chicago area for at least two weeks, but ramped up immigration enforcement has continued and Chicago is one of several cities that will have protests on Saturday despite the federal presence on the ground.It’s not clear what posture federal agents and military troops will take for the event. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott said he will deploy national guard troops to Austin, the capital city, though there will be protests in cities and towns throughout the state.In response to questions about whether immigration enforcement officials will be at protest sites, the Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said: “As it does every day, DHS law enforcement will enforce the laws of our nation.”In Portland, Oregon, where Trump sought to send in national guard troops but was blocked by the courts, protesters in recent days have leaned into the absurd, showing up naked on bikes, or in inflatable costumes. The Washington Post declared “inflatable frog suits” the “protest fashion statement of the year”.Portland organizers are planning Saturday events they have called joyful and family-friendly, including music and speakers. “Trump is sending militarized agents into our cities, muzzling voters and showering billionaires with handouts. Hard-working American families are left behind,” Dannelle D Stevens, who helps run Miller Street Indivisible, said in a statement. “That’s not democracy. That’s tyranny. And we will not meet it with silence. We refuse to give up.”Chicago, too, is fighting back, both in the courts and on the streets. People have sought to run immigration agents out of their neighborhoods. Some are using whistles to warn their neighbors when agents are nearby. Protests at detention facilities are ongoing, and agents have used teargas and pepper balls to deter protesters.On Saturday, the city is one of several sites serving as anchor protests, expected to be some of the day’s most attended.In June, more than 70,000 people attended Chicago’s main protest, overflowing Daley Plaza, said Denise Poloyac of Indivisible Chicago. On Saturday, the protest will be in the larger Grant Park, with a march planned to begin and end at the park’s Butler Field. It’s hard to predict turnout for a protest, but Poloyac said there had been a surge of interest and engagement in the event.Trump is “using our tax dollars to attack and declare war on our city and on the people that live here,” and locals should make it clear in large numbers that they don’t agree with it, Poloyac said. “We’re asking people to lean into their courage.”Organizers will have more than 150 safety marshals along the route and in the rally location, she said. The idea is that “we keep us safe.” Marshals from Indivisible Chicago and other organizations helped serve at other events, like Mexican Independence Day parades, to protect their community, she noted.People are “already taking risks” just by going about their daily tasks in the city now, Poloyac said. There’s also a sense of strength in numbers at a protest; when there are tens of thousands of people, it’s harder to single someone out, she said.“We’re hoping that people who didn’t come out in June are really angry now and upset and see what’s happening,” Poloyac said. “Those of us who do have more privilege need to come out and especially use that privilege to make our voices heard and to make it clear how unacceptable this is, what Trump and his agents are doing.”Republicans seek to undermineTrump’s allies, including members of Trump’s cabinet, have pre-emptively blamed No Kings for the government shutdown and smeared them as anti-American or paid protests, a common refrain against street protests.The House speaker, Mike Johnson, said the protests would be filled with the “pro-Hamas wing” of the Democrats and the “antifa people”. Tom Emmer, a Minnesota congressman, called the protests the “hate America rally” and said Democrats were beholden to the “terrorist wing of their party”. By claiming the protesters are part of antifa, the Trump administration could seek to go after people as domestic terrorists because of Trump’s recent executive order.Pam Bondi, the attorney general, said: “You’re seeing people out there with thousands of signs that all match, pre-bought, pre-put together. They are organized, and someone is funding it. We are going to get to the funding of antifa. We are going to get to the root of antifa, and we are going to find and charge all of those people who are causing this chaos.”Levin, of Indivisible, said the Trump administration was nervous about demonstrations that threaten its power, “so, in a weird way, it’s a compliment of our relevance and power.” These mass days of protest were often filled with “moms and grandmas and kids and dogs” and a joyful atmosphere, he said.The No Kings coalition affirms a commitment to non-violent action on all of its marketing materials, and organizers emphasize that their groups are all trained in tactics that enforce non-violence.“The violence is coming from the administration through their militarized crackdowns and through masked agents roaming our streets terrorizing communities, not coming from protesters,” Gilbert said. “The president wants us to be scared, but we will not be bullied into fear and silence, and it’s incredibly important for people to remain peaceful, to stand proud and to say what they care about, and not to be cowed by that fear.”What comes nextMass distributed protests help show that opposition is large and growing, in all corners of the country. They can help people find organizations or like-minded neighbors to work with on future actions, and they let people know that they aren’t alone in their dissatisfaction.But street protests alone are just one tool to counter the presidency. Other non-cooperation tactics, like economic boycotts or pressure campaigns, can help protesters achieve policy changes or get companies and pillars of civil society to stiffen their spines instead of caving to Trump.Levin cited the recent Disney boycott campaign after the company temporarily took Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show off the air as a successful model. This year’s Tesla Takedown boycotts and protests led to lower stock prices and reputational damage for Elon Musk’s company.The president of the Communications Workers of America union, Claude Cummings Jr, called on protesters to use No Kings to spread the word about a boycott of T-Mobile for its alignment with Trump, calling the phone company “some of the worst union busters in America”.“We know boycotts can work,” Cummings wrote in email this week.“We need to keep showing these companies that there’s a cost for embracing Trump’s un-American actions.”Gilbert, of Public Citizen, said protesters should think about how to take it one step further: “If you’ve never called your senator before, you do that. If you’ve never thought to boycott because of political issues, you do that. If you’ve never thought to post on social media about how you feel about militarization of your city, you do that. It’s really asking everyone to activate just a little bit more and to stay engaged.” More

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      US non-profits ‘lock arms’ amid Trump’s menacing of George Soros: ‘We will not be intimidated’

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      When Donald Trump named leftwing billionaire George Soros as the next on his growing list of targets for retribution, he was also targeting the long list of progressive causes that Soros funds.Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF) network, now run by his son Alex, is a major funder of non-profits large and small, across sectors including democracy, voting rights, climate justice, racial justice, Palestinian rights and higher education. Public documentation of the group’s grant-making shows thousands of worldwide recipients receiving anywhere from small amounts to multimillion-dollar grants, and include major non-profit organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union.The US justice department has reportedly instructed US attorneys to come up with plans to investigate OSF as efforts to attack the left accelerate following the killing of rightwing commentator Charlie Kirk. In a presidential memo, Trump said the government needed to “investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence”, adding a comment that Soros was at “the top of everything”.“We have always and will continue to adhere to our rigorous compliance practices and operate within the bounds of the law while also refusing to surrender our legal and constitutional rights to free speech, association, due process, and the rule of law without challenge,” an OSF spokesperson said.The menacing of Soros comes as part of Trump’s wider agenda to defeat progressive non-profits. This month, sources told Reuters that the US president plans to deploy the nation’s counter-terrorism apparatus – including intelligence agencies, the justice department, the Internal Revenue Service and the treasury department – against some leftwing groups it claims are backing political violence.In May, Republican lawmakers also attempted to add language to Trump’s spending act, the so-called “big beautiful bill”, that could strip organizations deemed to be “terrorist-supporting” of their non-profit status. And in July Ted Cruz, a senator of Texas, introduced the Stop Financial Underwriting of Nefarious Demonstrations and Extremist Riots (Stop Funders) act, which would empower the justice department to prosecute groups that officials have deemed to be coordinating or supporting violent riots.Last month, Trump announced that he was designating “antifa” – the decentralized, leaderless antifascist movement – a “terrorist organization”.In its statement, OSF also said it “unequivocally” condemns terrorism and does not fund it, noting that its grantees “are expected to abide by human rights principles and comply with the law”. In the US, the organization noted, it funds work to strengthen democracy and uphold constitutional freedoms.View image in fullscreen“These accusations are politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the first amendment right to free speech,” the statement said. “When power is abused to take away the rights of some people, it puts the rights of all people at risk.”Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that Soros’s money aids “leftwing terrorism” provided more specificity to a threat that liberal non-profits have been planning for since his election victory last year: a crackdown on their organizations and major Democratic funders designed to intimidate them from carrying out their work, waste their time with investigations and ultimately hobble the opposition.“When the White House or other government agencies, like the IRS, target non-profits for political reasons, it forces these orgs to spend their resources – staff focus, time, money – responding to attacks, instead of working towards their missions, and it threatens all the work they do,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits.Soros has long been a shared foe for rightwing leaders worldwide, who often draw on antisemitic stereotypes in their attacks that paint him as a shadowy, foreign billionaire seeking to undermine western civilization by supporting liberal causes and minority rights.“For years, George Soros has been attacked by people who oppose open society values,” OSF’s spokesperson said. “They do not want to see a world where the human rights of all are respected, where democracies hold governments accountable, where there is free expression to promote pluralism and debate.”The Guardian talked with non-profits across sectors that Trump has deemed dangerous, and which OSF has funded, to understand how activism could be affected as attacks on Soros intensify and to see how they are reacting. Some groups have been directly named by rightwing Trump allies; others have not yet been targeted directly but are bracing for impact.PalestineThe justice department’s instructions to US attorneys to investigate OSF reportedly cited as evidence a report by Capital Research Center, a rightwing group monitoring the funding of liberal non-profits. The group’s head admitted to the New York Times this month that the paper does not include evidence that the Soros network had committed any crime.The 72-page report, which claims Open Society Foundations gave more than $80m to what it calls “pro-terror” groups, lists dozens of organizations, including some of the most prominent Palestinian-rights groups in the US and abroad.The report accuses the groups of “assisting domestic terrorism and criminality” by supporting US protest movements, of “endorsing” the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks, or of working with “pro-terrorism” groups and activists. It lists some of the leading groups in the Palestine solidarity movement in the US, like Jewish Voice for Peace, the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and the Center for Constitutional Rights. It also lists Palestinian human rights groups in Palestine and US groups working on other issues that have expressed solidarity with Palestinians, like the Movement for Black Lives and the Sunrise Movement.The OSF spokesperson called the Capital Research Center report “fundamentally flawed”.“It relies on incomplete data, guilt by association and irresponsibly equates protected political speech with terrorism,” they said. “The authors never contacted us for verification, and have quietly changed their inflammatory title accusing us of funding terrorist groups – effectively admitting their accusation was false. Open Society has rigorous compliance processes and only funds peaceful and lawful work advancing human rights, democracy, and justice. Our grantees are obliged to follow the law.”Stefanie Fox, Jewish Voice for Peace’s executive director, called the Capital Research Center report “paranoid, outlandish, baseless”.“The hyper focus on Soros plays on antisemitic conspiracy theories that suggest that a shadowy cabal of wealthy Jews are controlling politics and are responsible for society’s ills,” she added. The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights did not respond to a request for comment.View image in fullscreenWhile the accusations at the core of the report are largely baseless, the report does capture the landscape of civil society groups most prominent in the movement for Palestinian rights.“OSF has been funding a range of organizations working on Palestine solidarity. They’ve always been one of the big sources of funding for this group,” said Rebecca Vilkomerson, a former executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace and author of two reports about philanthropy and the Palestinian freedom movement.Vilkomerson noted that the movement has always been “hard to fund” – particularly in the US, due to its stigmatization and fear on the part of donors.Attacks on the funding of Palestinian solidarity groups preceded the Trump administration, said Leena Barakat, president and CEO of Women Donors Network. In 2024, Barakat, who is Palestinian American, launched the Block and Build Funder Coalition, a network of nearly 175 funders, after Republican legislators called on the treasury department to investigate the funders of a series of groups involved in what they described as “pro-Hamas, antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American protests”.She also noted that while OSF has traditionally been one of the most significant institutional funders backing Palestine solidarity groups, the movement has never received much institutional backing, forcing it to diversify its funding streams.“So attacking that funding plays a big role, but does not significantly shift the capacity for the movement to do the work that the movement has always done,” she said.Still, Barakat cautioned: “The Palestinian movement – they are our canaries. What they test on the Palestinian movement are strategies that will eventually impact all other movements.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDemocracy and resistanceOSF funds a long list of non-profits focused on democracy issues, voting rights and civic engagement around the globe. In the US, these grants also include policy advocacy and electoral goals; some ballot measure campaigns have gotten support, as have political action committees.Some groups that have received funding from OSF are signed on as partners of a mass day of protest set for 18 October , dubbed No Kings, the second iteration of a mass demonstration across the US under that name. Of the more than 200 organizations who are part of the action, none has dropped out, despite Trump promising to crack down on peaceful opposition, said Ezra Levin, the co-founder of Indivisible, the progressive resistance group. Making these actions as big as possible shows that non-profits and the people they serve won’t be intimidated by Trump’s threats.Indivisible, which started in 2017, has received OSF funds over the years, and the group hasn’t shied away from talking about it – they’ve been called “Soros-funded Astroturf” by many on the right since their inception, Levin said. Levin said it wouldn’t surprise him if Republican leaders tried to “make up some bogus shit” to go after the group.“I will say because I believe we are squeaky clean, and we believe that we’re under a microscope for our entire existence, we do basically everything we do out in the open,” he said. What worries him more is the potential for violence if they’re targeted.These threats of investigations or criminal charges take their toll, though – mostly in the form of wasting the time and money responding to them, which distracts from the organizations’ missions, part of Trump’s goal of hobbling the opposition. Many of the organizations are specifically tasked with protecting the people being targeted by Trump, including immigrants and LGBTQ+ people. Others are well-versed in the playbooks of autocratic leaders, so they haven’t been surprised by Trump’s threats against civic groups.View image in fullscreenThe Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive thinktank that has received funding from OSF, said the Trump administration’s attacks on the funder are “the tip of the spear” and part of a systematic attempt to silence those who disagree with the president so he can consolidate power.“We’ve seen time and time again over the past nine months that the best way to stop Trump is to speak out and fight back,” said Ben Olinksy, CAP senior vice-president of structural reform and governance. “CAP is locking arms with a broad group of foundations and non-profits around the country who stand for the same principles we do around building a stronger and more democratic America.”Groups have learned lessons from watching other sectors – like higher education, media and the legal industry – capitulate to Trump, so they’ve been having conversations for months about how to band together and speak deliberately as a collective, the leader of one non-profit working in the democracy space said. Smaller organizations with fewer resources to handle legal challenges will be able to draw upon the legal network of the bigger organizations, said the leader, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about these attacks.“Because Soros has a very strong posture in fighting, that makes everybody else stiffen their spine who’s connected to them in any way,” they said.The groups have also learned that being quiet will not serve them, multiple leaders said. They have set their posture more as, if he goes after one of us, treat it like an attack on all and respond accordingly.“I think you’re in many ways safer the more out there you are,” Levin said. “Because if they can quietly come after you, they absolutely will.”Climate justiceSince re-taking the White House, Trump has often intimidated climate-focused groups. Around Earth Day in April, rumors swirled that he would revoke the tax-exempt status of green non-profits. Now, green organizations are concerned the targeting of Soros could put their budgets at risk.OSF last year committed $400m over eight years to sustainably grow global south economies and allotted additional funds to green infrastructure in the US. The foundations have also donated millions to climate and environmental non-profits with a wide range of political views and beliefs. They range from big green-policy organizations, to groups focused on uniting labor and environmental causes, to groups connecting survivors of climate disasters.The Trump administration’s crackdown will not deter OSF from working to promote “economic and climate prosperity”, the OSF spokesperson said.One beneficiary of OSF funding has been the progressive youth-led climate justice group Sunrise Movement, which was named in the Capital Research Center’s September report for its support of a legal defense fund associated with the decentralized movement to stop the controversial “Cop City” police-training facility in Atlanta. In 2018, Sunrise popularized calls for a Green New Deal. From 2019 to 2023, the group received $2.1m from OSF. Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, called Trump’s threats “textbook authoritarianism”.View image in fullscreen“Trump is targeting grassroots orgs in an attempt to silence peaceful dissent against his dangerous and unpopular agenda, whether it’s TV hosts or non-profit organizations like ours,” she said, referring to Trump’s attacks on late-night TV talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel.While the report baselessly refers to the Stop Cop City protesters as “terrorists”, most of the charges against them were dropped last month.The report is “misguided and dangerous”, Shiney-Ajay said.“Sunrise has always been a movement of young people that engages exclusively in peaceful, nonviolent activism advocating to stop the climate crisis and secure a livable future,” she said. “This so-called report from Capital Research Center is filled with baseless claims clearly designed to give the administration pretext to silence progressive organizations they view as threats to their agenda.”This month, Sunrise announced it will expand its focus from climate-justice efforts to broader actions to fend off authoritarianism.“Sunrise will not be intimidated into silence,” said Shiney -jay. “We will raise our voices against this authoritarian abuse of power and continue building our nonviolent movement to stop the climate crisis and win a Green New Deal.” More

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      Donald Trump: King of the world? – podcast

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      Archive: CBS News, ABC News, CBS Chicago, Global News, NBC News
      Buy Jonathan Freedland’s new book, The Traitor’s Circle, here
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      John Bolton indicted on charges of mishandling and transmitting classified information – US politics live

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      A federal grand jury has indicted John Bolton, the former national security adviser in Donald Trump’s first term, on charges of mishandling and transmitting classified information.The indictment, filed in Maryland, appears to ultimately have had sign off from career prosecutors in the US attorney’s office there despite initial reluctance to bring a case before the end of the year.The 18-count indictment against Bolton involves 8 counts of unlawfully transmitting national defense information and ten counts of retaining classified information under the Espionage Act, according to the 26-page indictment.A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected the Trump administration’s request to lift a lower court’s order that temporarily blocks the deployment of National Guard troops in Illinois during its appeal.The ruling allows a temporary restraining order against the deployment issued by US District judge April Perry in Chicago last week to remain in place.A three-judge panel of the Chicago-based 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals, made up of judges nominated by George HW Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, concluded that that “the facts do not justify the President’s actions.”Trump had asserted the power to deploy National Guard troops in Illinois after claiming federal immigration enforcement officer had faced violent protests as they attempted to arrest people.“Immigration arrests and deportations have proceeded apace in Illinois over the past year, and the administration has been proclaiming the success of its current efforts to enforce immigration laws in the Chicago area,” the court said.The court said there had likely been a violation of Illinois’ constitutional right to sovereignty, made worse by the fact that Texas National Guard troops were sent into the state.The court did pause a portion of Perry’s order that had barred the federalization of Illinois National Guard troops, allowing the troops to remain under federal control.The Trump administration announced Thursday that it is urging US employers to create new fertility benefit options to cover in vitro fertilization and other infertility treatments.In an announcement from the Oval Office, Donald Trump also said his administration had cut a deal with the drug manufacturer EMD Serono to lower the cost of one of its fertility drugs and list the drug on the government website TrumpRx.The justice department says that Donald Trump’s former national security advisor, John Bolton, has been charged with 10 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information and eight counts of transmission of that information.The indictment alleges that Bolton used personal email and messaging app accounts to send documents classified as high as Top Secret.The documents contained intelligence about what the government terms “future attacks, foreign adversaries, and foreign-policy relations.”The indictment also alleges that Bolton, like Trump after he left office in 2021, kept secret documents in his home. The documents Bolton kept included “intelligence on an adversary’s leaders as well as information revealing sources and collections used to obtain statements on a foreign adversary,” the government alleges.“Anyone who abuses a position of power and jeopardizes our national security will be held accountable,” Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, said. “No one is above the law.”When Donald Trump was indicted for the same crime by special counsel Jack Smith in 2023, in an indictment that cited evidence that Trump showed a ghostwriter working for his former chief of staff Mark Meadows “a four-page report” detailing US plans for striking Iran.According to audio of the conversation obtained by CNN, Trump even acknowledged that the document he showed the writer was “highly confidential, secret information” he could not make public because it was “still a secret”.A federal grand jury has indicted John Bolton, the former national security adviser in Donald Trump’s first term, on charges of mishandling and transmitting classified information.The indictment, filed in Maryland, appears to ultimately have had sign off from career prosecutors in the US attorney’s office there despite initial reluctance to bring a case before the end of the year.The 18-count indictment against Bolton involves 8 counts of unlawfully transmitting national defense information and ten counts of retaining classified information under the Espionage Act, according to the 26-page indictment.John Bolton, who served as Donald Trump’s national security advisor during his first term, but turned into a fierce Trump critic, has reportedly been indicted on federal charges by a grand jury in Maryland, officials tell MSNBC and CNN.At the White House a reporter asked Trump for his reaction to the news that Bolton was just indicted by a grand jury in Maryland.The president said: “I didn’t know that. You’re telling me for the first time, but I think he’s a bad person. I think he’s a bad guy.”“That’s the way it goes, right? That’s the way it goes,” said the president who vowed retribution on his political enemies while campaigning to be restored to office last year.Bolton becomes the third Trump critic to be indicted by his justice department in the past month, along with James Comey, the former FBI director, and Letitia James, the New York attorney general.Bolton has reportedly been under investigation for retaining classified information after leaving office, and showing it to associates.The United States is “on a trajectory” toward authoritarian rule, according to a stark new intelligence-style assessment by former US intelligence and national security officials, who warn that democratic backsliding is accelerating under the Trump administration – and may soon become entrenched without organized resistance.The report, titled Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline, was released on Thursday by the Steady State, a network of more than 340 former officers of the CIA, NSA, state department, and other national-security agencies.“These are people who have seen these indicators develop in countries that shifted dramatically away from democracy towards authoritarianism,” Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior intelligence official who spent two decades at the NSA, told reporters on Thursday. “And we’re seeing those things happening in our country today.”The analysts conclude with “moderate to high confidence” that the US is moving toward what scholars call “competitive authoritarianism”, a system in which elections and courts continue to function, but are “systematically manipulated” to consolidate executive power and weaken checks and balances. According to the assessment, these trends are increasingly visible in the US, as part of a broader effort by Donald Trump in his second term to “ensure loyalty and ideological conformity” across the federal government.Amid escalating tensions with Venezuela, and US military strikes on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, the US admiral who commands military forces in Latin America will step down at the end of this year, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth announced on social media.The admiral, Alvin Holsey, just took over the US military’s Southern Command late last year for a position that normally lasts three years.A source told Reuters that there had been tension between him and Hegseth and questions about whether he would be fired in the days leading up to the announcement.The New York Times reports that an unnamed US official said that Holsey “had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats.”Hegseth, in his social media post, did not disclose the reason for Holsey’s plan “to retire at year’s end.”Hegseth’s post noted that Holsey began his career “through the NROTC program at Morehouse College in 1988.” Morehouse is a private, historically black college in Atlanta.In February, Donald Trump abruptly fired the air force general CQ Brown Jr as chair of the joint chiefs of staff, sidelining a history-making Black fighter pilot and respected officer as part of a campaign to purge the military of leaders who support diversity and equity in the ranks.In 2021, Holsey recorded a public service announcement urging Black Americans to take the covid-19 vaccine.Trump on his social media site said he’s “outraged” by a vote planned on Friday by the International Maritime Organization to impose a global fee on the carbon emissions produced by container ships.“The United States will NOT stand for this Global Green New Scam Tax on Shipping, and will not adhere to it in any way, shape, or form,” the president wrote on Truth Social.He added: “We will not tolerate increased prices on American Consumers OR, the creation of a Green New Scam Bureaucracy to spend YOUR money on their Green dreams. Stand with the United States, and vote NO in London tomorrow!”The US Chamber of Commerce is suing the Trump administration over the $100,000 fee imposed on H-1B visa petitions.The country’s biggest business lobbying group argues that the new fee is unlawful because it overrides provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that govern the H-1B program, including the requirement that fees be based on the costs incurred by the government in processing visas.Neil Bradley, the Chamber’s chief policy officer, said in a statement:“The new $100,000 visa fee will make it cost-prohibitive for US employers, especially start-ups and small and midsize businesses, to utilize the H-1B program, which was created by Congress expressly to ensure that American businesses of all sizes can access the global talent they need to grow their operations here in the U.S.”The University of Pennsylvania has become the latest educational institution to reject the White House’s proposed preferential funding compact, according to an email to the University community.“Earlier today, I informed the US Department of Education that Penn respectfully declines to sign the proposed Compact,” President J Larry Jameson wrote in a message to the Penn community Thursday, adding that his university did provide feedback to the department on the proposal.The “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” is a proposed agreement from the Trump administration that would impose restrictions on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and limits on international student enrolment.Penn’s refusal makes it the third of the nine institutions that had initially been offered the deal to publicly turn it down. No institution has agreed to sign the compact so far.Brown University announced it had rejected the offer Wednesday, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) did the same last Friday. After MIT’s rejection, the Trump administration said the compact was open to all colleges and universities that want to sign it.Senate Democrats blocked debate on a defense appropriations bill on the floor earlier this afternoon, which was seen as a test for whether regular individual bipartisan funding bills can gain any traction despite the shutdown, now dragging into its third week.The bill, which passed out of committee with strong bipartisan support earlier this year, needed 60 votes to advance, but the final vote was 50 to 44. Several Democrats including Jeanne Shaheen voted to advance the bill.Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer objected to considering the bill without also voting on the annual labor, health and human services appropriations bill.“Right now, the only thing that is on the floor is just the defense bill. [John] Thune needs unanimous consent to add anything else to it. We don’t even know if he’ll get that,” Schumer told reporters earlier ahead of the vote.
      It’s always been unacceptable to Democrats to do the defense bill without other bills that have so many things that are important to the American people, in terms of healthcare, in terms of housing, in terms of safety.
      Senate majority leader John Thune expressed frustration that they couldn’t take that first step and said the optics were bad for the Democrats.
      If they want to stop the defense bill, I don’t think it’s very good optics for them. Particularly since this is just getting on it, and they would have multiple opportunities after this to block it if they want to.
      “I believe it is critical that the Senate and Congress return to a bipartisan appropriations approach and try to begin rebuilding trust,” Shaheen said in a statement after voting. “This vote would allow us to consider Senate appropriations bills which were passed out of committee with overwhelming bipartisan support.”The other Democratic senators who voted with Republicans were Catherine Cortez Masto and John Fetterman. Majority leader John Thune changed his vote to “no” so that procedurally he can bring the bill up for consideration again.Cortez Masto and Fetterman have previously voted for the GOP’s House-passed bill to reopen the government while Shaheen has been at the heart of talks with GOP colleagues about finding a way to end the shutdown.Vladimir Putin told Donald Trump in their phone call today that supplying US Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine would harm the peace process and damage US-Russia ties, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters.As I said earlier, this comes a day before Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting with Trump at the White House tomorrow in which he is set to push for more US military support, including the crucial long-range offensive missiles.Ushakov said the planned new summit between the two presidents will be preceded by a phone call between US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in the coming days.The Putin-Trump call took place at Russia’s initiative, Ushakov added.In a post on Truth Social, Donald Trump has just said:
      If Hamas continues to kill people in Gaza, which was not the Deal, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them.
      It comes after Hamas fighters have been captured on video in recent days ramping up their presence and reasserting the group’s authority by executing members of rival groups on the streets of Gaza.This is Trump’s clearest indication on the matter yet, after giving mixed messages in recent days, initially saying the violence “didn’t bother me much” as Hamas was clearing up “gangs”. Yesterday he appeared to concede that it could be “gangs plus” when asked if there was a possibility that Hamas was killing innocent civilians.“They will disarm, and if they don’t do so, we will disarm them, and it’ll happen quickly and perhaps violently,” Trump also said yesterday, though, as with the statement today, he hasn’t specified how he would follow through on his threat.A reminder that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is heading to the White House tomorrow to push for more US military support, including potential long-range offensive missiles. He will no doubt be nervous by Trump’s positive tone following his call with Putin.Trump has said he could supply the long-range weapons to Ukraine if Putin fails to come to the negotiating table. In its latest barrage, Russia launched more than 300 drones and 37 missiles to target infrastructure across Ukraine in overnight attacks, Zelenskyy said. Kyiv has ramped up its own attacks on Russian targets, including an oil refinery in the Saratov region today.Russia has been hitting Ukraine’s energy and power facilities for consecutive winters as the war drags into its fourth year.In the latest warnings to Russia, Trump said yesterday that Indian PM Narendra Modi had pledged to stop buying oil from Russia, and that the administration would push China to do the same. India has not confirmed any such commitment, though Reuters reported some Indian refiners are preparing to cut Russian oil imports, with expectations of a gradual reduction.US defense secretary Pete Hegseth said yesterday that Washington would “impose costs on Russia for its continued aggression” unless the war ends. More

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      Trump moves to push employers on IVF coverage and lower fertility drug costs

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      The Trump administration announced Thursday that it is urging US employers to create new fertility benefit options to cover in vitro fertilization and other infertility treatments.In an announcement from the Oval Office, Donald Trump also said his administration had cut a deal with the drug manufacturer EMD Serono to lower the cost of one of its fertility drugs and list the drug on the government website TrumpRx.These moves, Trump said, would lead to “many more beautiful American children”.“In the Trump administration, we want to make it easier for all couple to have babies, raise children and have the families they’ve always dreamed about,” Trump said.Employers are encouraged to offer the fertility benefit option separately from their medical coverage, similar to how dental and vision coverage is usually offered to employees. The labor department, the treasury and the health department will on Thursday also release guidance on how employers can legally create the option.However, Republicans who spoke at Trump’s announcement framed the benefit as a “recommendation”, indicating that employers will not be required to offer the coverage nor receive government subsidies for doing so. They also stressed that the benefit will be structured to give employers immense flexibility to determine what will or will not be covered.Without new incentives to offer IVF coverage, it is unclear how many employers will ultimately support it.Trump, who has called himself the “fertilization president”, made support for infertility treatments a major part of his re-election campaign, especially after the nation erupted in outrage when the Alabama supreme court deemed embryos “extrauterine children”. Because IVF can lead to the creation of unused or discarded embryos, that decision temporarily forced many Alabama IVF providers to stop working.Yet in the months since taking office, the Trump administration has remained quiet on the issue. In February, he signed an executive order directing the administration’s domestic policy council to make recommendations to “aggressively” reduce the price tag of IVF, which often costs tens of thousands of dollars and is frequently not covered by insurance.A detailed report on the recommendations was supposed to be made public by May. No report ever emerged.While IVF is extremely popular among Americans, the GOP’s deep ties to the anti-abortion movement have made it something of a political landmine among elected Republicans. The movement has long opposed IVF, as advocates believe that embryos are people.White House officials have in recent months discussed the possibility of supporting restorative reproductive medicine (RRM), a constellation of therapies that purport to restore people’s “natural” fertility.Although RRM is popular among anti-abortion advocates and adherents of the “make America healthy again” movement, several major medical organizations say there is little quality evidence that RRM is more effective at helping people have babies than mainstream fertility medicine.Trump did not mention RRM in his Thursday address. When a reporter asked if he had any thoughts on anti-abortion activists’ opposition to IVF, Trump said: “I think this is very pro-life.”Pronatalist rhetoric, which holds that having children is important to a county’s wellbeing and that the state should incentivize people to procreate, dominated the press conference that followed Trump’s address. Robert F Kennedy, the health and human services secretary, highlighted the falling US birthrate, while Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, claimed that Kennedy and Trump are “great leaders” because they have big families.People who want more children but can’t have them, Oz added, are “under-babied”.“There’s gonna be a lot of Trump babies,” Oz said. “It turns out the fundamental creative force in society is about making babies.” More

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      Former Trump adviser John Bolton indicted by justice department

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      A federal grand jury has indicted John Bolton, the former national security adviser in Donald Trump’s first term, on charges of mishandling and transmitting classified information.The indictment, filed in Maryland, appears to ultimately have been signed off on from career prosecutors in the US attorney’s office there despite initial reluctance to bring a case before the end of the year.The 18-count indictment against Bolton involves eight counts of unlawfully transmitting national defense information and 10 counts of retaining classified information under the Espionage Act, according to the 26-page indictment.The charges nonetheless come at a fraught moment for the justice department, which has been rocked by extraordinary pressure from Trump to expand a vendetta campaign to pursue criminal cases against his political enemies.In recent weeks, Lindsey Halligan, Trump’s handpicked US attorney in Virginia, obtained indictments against James Comey, the former FBI director, and the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, over the objections of career prosecutors.Bolton has been a thorn in Trump’s side for years since he departed the president’s first administration, criticizing him on cable news and assailing him for his own mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club.Part of the criminal investigation into Bolton has focused on what resembled diary entries and private notes he made for himself on an AOL email account – and whether they contained classified information, according to people familiar with the matter.Bolton’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has said the former national security adviser did nothing inappropriate with classified records. and documents with classified markings retrieved from his phone by the FBI were decades old.Bolton, a longtime federal government official with a top secret clearance who was UN ambassador before serving as Trump’s national security adviser from 2018 to 2019, is widely known as a diligent note-taker.After he left the administration in Trump’s first term, Bolton continued to work in Washington and the investigation has examined whether his assistants had access to those notes, the people said.Bolton’s AOL email account was also hacked by a foreign adversary, according to a redacted US intelligence assessment that was included in the search warrant affidavit from the search of Bolton’s house.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe potential for disclosures of classified information are relevant in Espionage Act cases, because the justice department looks at so-called “aggregating factors” when deciding whether to mount such a prosecution.Broadly, the department pursues cases that have a combination of four factors: willful mishandling of classified information, vast quantities of classified information to support an inference of misconduct, disloyalty to the US and obstruction. More

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      US ‘on a trajectory’ toward authoritarian rule, ex-officials warn

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      The United States is “on a trajectory” toward authoritarian rule, according to a sobering new intelligence-style assessment by former US intelligence and national security officials, who warn that democratic backsliding is accelerating under the Trump administration – and may soon become entrenched without organized resistance.The report, titled Accelerating Authoritarian Dynamics: Assessment of Democratic Decline, was released on Thursday by the Steady State, a network of more than 340 former officers of the CIA, the NSA, the state department and other national security agencies.To conduct the assessment, the authors applied the same analytic methods used by US intelligence agencies to assess the fragility of democracies abroad but turned them inward for what the group called a “first-of-its-kind” analysis of domestic democratic decline.“We wrote it because the same tools we once used to assess foreign risks now show unmistakable warning signs at home,” the group said in a statement upon its release.The authors conclude with “moderate to high confidence” that the US is moving toward what scholars call “competitive authoritarianism”, a system in which elections and courts continue to function, but are “systematically manipulated” to consolidate executive power and weaken checks and balances. According to the assessment, these trends are increasingly visible in the US, as part of a broader effort by Donald Trump in his second presidential term to “ensure loyalty and ideological conformity” across the federal government.“The speed with which we have devolved away from a fully functioning democracy is startling to me,” Gail Helt, a former CIA analyst and a member of the Steady State, said on a call with reporters after the assessment was published on Thursday. “In most cases, it takes longer than nine months to get where we are.”Since returning to the White House, the president has pardoned January 6 rioters who assaulted police, fired independent watchdogs, purged career officials viewed as disloyal, publicly urged his attorney general to prosecute political opponents, deployed troops to US cities, attacked judges who ruled against him, threatened universities and restricted press freedom – all while testing the boundaries of executive power in ways federal courts have repeatedly deemed to be unlawful and unconstitutional.Just last week, Trump’s justice department indicted Letitia James, the New York attorney general who successfully sued him for fraud, and separately charged the former FBI director James Comey, a longtime political adversary. He has also called for jailing the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, and the Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, both Democrats who opposed his deployment of federal troops there.The speed at which the administration was moving made it difficult to complete the assessment, Steven Cash, executive director of the Steady State, told reporters. “We would finish a draft and then five things would happen,” he said, adding that the document was published as a “baseline” that could be updated with new developments.While the report mirrors the “finished intelligence” model used by the US intelligence community, the assessment was prepared by former analysts who no longer work in government and relied entirely on open-source material such as news reports, public statements and independent watchdog analyses, as opposed to classified intelligence. Its authors also emphasize that they were not driven by politics, but by what they saw as a need for a “cold, analytic look” at how the indicators of democratic backsliding applied to the US.“These are people who have seen these indicators develop in countries that shifted dramatically away from democracy towards authoritarianism,” Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior intelligence official who spent two decades at the NSA, told reporters on Thursday. “And we’re seeing those things happening in our country today.”Among the key indicators of democratic decline identified in the report: the expansion of executive power through unilateral decrees and emergency authorities; the politicization of the civil service and federal law enforcement; attempts to erode judicial independence through strategic appointments and “noncompliance” with court rulings or investigations; a weakened and increasingly ineffective Congress; partisan manipulation of electoral systems and administration; and the deliberate undermining of civil society, the press and public trust.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We judge that the primary driver of the US’s increasing authoritarianism is the increased frequency of executive branch overreach,” the assessment states. It also cites a “worrying” shift in public opinion among Americans, pointing to surveys that show a growing share who think “having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament or elections” is a “very good or fairly good system”.Political scientists and human rights activists have increasingly drawn comparisons between the US and countries like Hungary or Turkey, where elected leaders retained power by weakening institutional checks while preserving a democratic facade. Helt also drew a comparison to Italy under Benito Mussolini “because of the relationship between organized religion and the state”.The Steady State assessment is echoed by democracy scholars and other analyses. A September Bright Line Watch survey found that expert and public assessments of US democracy have dropped to their lowest levels since 2017. On a 0–100 scale, the public rated American democracy at just 49; experts rated it 54.“Absent organized resistance by institutions, civil society and the public, the United States is likely to continue along a path of accelerating democratic erosion, risking further consolidation of executive dominance and a loss of credibility as a model of democracy abroad,” the assessment concludes.On the call, several speakers pointed to the upcoming No Kings protest as a potentially meaningful show of public resistance to the Trump administration. More

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      Who are the rightwing influencers filling Trump’s head with visions of antifa?

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      Last week’s White House roundtable on antifa was an odd affair, mainly because the supposed experts who briefed Donald Trump on antifascism were rightwing influencers who make a living filming themselves confronting leftwing protesters.Videos of protests in Portland and Chicago produced by these conservative content creators have long shaped the president’s distorted view of reality.Although the influencers all describe themselves as “independent journalists”, they all frame leftwing protesters as nefarious or ridiculous in their videos, and eight of the 11 are current or former employees of Turning Point USA, the conservative advocacy organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk.None presented evidence to support the administration’s claim that antifascists, who disrupt white supremacist rallies or oppose the mass deportation of their neighbors, are “terrorists”. Instead, they shared personal stories of having been victimized by leftwing protesters.“Their job”, the extremism researcher Jared Holt said on his podcast, “is to make these viral clips that they can show on Fox News and scare your grandpa into thinking antifa is on the verge of a mass slaughter, and that Mr Trump is the only man who can put an end to this by sending the military to go crack some skulls”.Here is a guide to the conservative media activists whose work fills the president’s head with visions of antifa.Andy NgoNgo is a video journalist turned pundit with 1.7 million followers on X. View image in fullscreenSince Donald Trump first shouted the word “antifa” at a rally in 2017, a week after he accused antifascists of “violently attacking” white supremacists at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, no one has done more than Andy Ngo to promote the myth that black-clad protesters around the nation are part of a secret terrorist network.Ngo, the son of Vietnamese refugees in Portland, made his name on Twitter by posting video clips, often misleadingly edited or captioned, of street battles that broke out when far-right groups from surrounding counties descended on the liberal city to provoke antifascists.His willingness to selectively edit his reports to blame antifascists for the violence was revealed in 2019, when video recorded by an antifascist mole in a rightwing group Ngo had embedded with, Patriot Prayer, showed that Ngo had witnessed, and chosen not to report, the Christian nationalists planning to instigate violence at a leftwing gathering.A month later, Ngo was attacked by antifascists while filming their efforts to counter a Proud Boys rally in Portland. He was punched, kicked and doused with silly string and a milkshake he later claimed had been laced with quick-drying cement. (That accusation appears to have been a false rumor shared with the police by a rightwing activist who was caught on camera the same day dousing antifascists with grey powder.)That assault instantly made him a sought-after guest on Fox News. Two years later, he published Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, a best-selling book filled with exaggerated or inaccurate claims about leftwing protesters.Ngo’s use of the term “domestic terrorists” to describe antifa, now amplified in official US government statements, is not just inaccurate, it can be dangerous. In 2022, a Portland resident who followed Ngo on YouTube went to the site of a planned racial justice march Ngo had railed against, screamed that antifascist volunteers protecting the marchers were “terrorists” and opened fire. The rightwing gunman shot four traffic safety volunteers and a protest medic. One woman died at the scene, another succumbed to her injuries later.Katie DaviscourtDaviscourt is a video correspondent for the Post Millennial with 260,000 followers on X.View image in fullscreenKatie Daviscourt, a former Turning Point USA activist, is a correspondent for Post Millennial, a far-right Canadian website where Andy Ngo is an editor. A Portland police sergeant recently described her in an internal report as one of the “counter-protesters” filming protests outside a Portland Immigration and Customs Enforcement office who “constantly return and antagonize the protesters until they are assaulted or pepper sprayed”. A week later, Daviscourt was struck by a protester who tried to block her from filming by swinging a Palestinian flag in her face.The next night, she appeared on Fox News with a black eye to accuse Portland police officers who spent 2020 battling with antifascists of being part of antifa. “The Trump administration needs to start treating antifa like Isis, the terrorists that they are, and put an end to them for good,” she told Jesse Watters.Nick SortorSortor is an influencer who confronts protesters and Democrats for his 1.2 million X followers.View image in fullscreenNick Sortor, a former real estate agent from Kentucky, made his name during the Biden administration by going to the scenes of disasters, in East Palestine, Ohio, and Lahaina, Maui, to scream at officials and push conspiracy theories in interviews with Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon.In February, he claimed that Elizabeth Warren, the 76-year-old Massachusetts senator, has “assaulted” him as she pushed past him to get into her car while he was peppering her with questions based on viral misinformation.Sortor has been involved in multiple physical altercations with protesters in Portland this month, some of which he clearly initiated. Video shot by a Fox News correspondent one night showed Sortor ripping a burning American flag from the hands of an elderly protester he later described as an “Antifa thug”. Later that night, Sortor was arrested after exchanging blows with protesters, who reportedly objected to him filming closeup images of a teenage girl who had just been maced by a federal officer.The charges against Sortor were later dropped by a local prosecutor after his arrest prompted an outcry in the conservative media. Sortor received a sympathetic text from Trump and a phone call from the attorney general, Pam Bondi, who ordered the head of the justice department’s civil rights division, Harmeet Dhillon, to open an investigation of the Portland police bureau over supposed anti-conservative bias. Dhillon was previously Andy Ngo’s lawyer.Julio RosasRosas is a correspondent for Glenn Beck’s Blaze TV with 230,000 followers on X.View image in fullscreenJulio Rosas got his start working for Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, writing last month that meeting the conservative activist “is THE reason why I have my career in politics today”.The marine reservist spent much of 2020 filming undercover video of racial justice protests, highlighting rare instances of violence in clips that helped Fox News and the Trump White House frame demonstrations that were about 94% entirely peaceful as anarchic.Rosas’s openly partisan approach to covering protests was reflected in his comment to Trump that the “sustained political violence that we’re seeing in this country is not a ‘both sides’ issue”.Rosas did not tell the president that, in previous years, he had filmed two infamous acts of rightwing political violence: Kyle Rittenhouse shooting two people, one fatally, in 2020; and Trump supporters hurling a metal barricade into the doors of the Capitol, striking police officers, and attacking journalists on 6 January 2021.Savanah HernandezHernandez is a contributor to Turning Point USA and a former Infowars host with 700,000 followers on X.View image in fullscreenSavanah Hernandez, a former host for the far-right, conspiracy theory outlet Infowars now creating videos in Portland for Turning Point USA, was celebrated on Fox News in the summer of 2020 for a stunt in which she had herself filmed holding up a sign that read “Police Lives Matter” during a Black Lives Matter protest that followed the murder of George Floyd.At the White House roundtable, she directed her rage at reporters from the White House pool covering the roundtable. “The same media that’s sitting in this room with us, has declared all of us at this table Nazis and fascists, and they’ve been doing this for years,” Hernandez said. “This is why Antifa feels emboldened to attack us.”What Hernandez was apparently not aware of is that, since the Trump administration now selects members of the press pool to be admitted to events with the president, many of the people she was yelling at actually worked for pro-Trump outlets.Cam HigbyHigby is a Turning Point USA media activist with 190,000 followers on X.View image in fullscreenCam Higby is a Turning Point USA activist who got his start creating videos for PragerU, a rightwing media outlet that promotes climate-crisis denialism and soft-pedals the brutal reality of American slavery in educational films now approved for use in K-12 schools in 10 states.In recent weeks, Higby has spent time in Portland, but has also been emulating Turning Point’s murdered founder Charlie Kirk, by setting up tables on college campuses and challenging students to debate him.At the White House roundtable, however, Higby cast himself as a reporter unfairly targeted by antifa. “I’m attacked every time I do my job. When I leave my house to go to work, I’m violently assaulted. I’ve had guns pulled on me. I’ve been bear-sprayed. I’ve been beaten down. I’ve been almost killed,” he said.Nick ShirleyShirley is a YouTube influencer with 880,000 subscribers.View image in fullscreenNick Shirley, 23, started out making prank videos during his high school years in Utah but last year he began to make YouTube videos aimed at boosting Donald Trump.In February 2024, Shirley recorded himself asking migrants if they supported Joe Biden and shared video on X of several saying they did with the caption: “Confirmed: Migrants for Biden 2024”. Three months later, Shirley hired Latino day laborers at a Home Depot parking lot and paid them $20 each to appear in a video holding signs outside the White House with the slogans: “I Love Biden” and “I Need Work Permit for My Family.”Last month, he produced a friendly profile of the English racist organizer Tommy Robinson, and called a protest he attended in Paris an “antifa riot”.Shirley has been in Portland in recent weeks, making a video he titled, “Portland has Fallen… ANTIFA Take Control of City”, and telling Fox News that Oregon’s governor, who refused to give him an interview during a protest march, had “sided with antifa”.Jonathan ChoeChoe is a Turning Point USA correspondent with 180,000 followers on X.View image in fullscreenJonathan Choe, now a Turning Point USA correspondent, was fired from his job as a reporter for the ABC affiliate in Seattle in 2022 for producing what looked like a promotional video for the Proud Boys, set to a song by a white supremacist, in his spare time.In addition to reporting on leftwing protests for rightwing outlets, he covers homelessness in Seattle as a fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Christian conservative thinktank .In May, Choe was filmed striking a protester in the face with a baton and then insisting to police that he was the victim. “He assaulted me,” Choe shouted, in video recorded by Daviscourt.Last week in Portland, Choe filmed a man he identified as “Maga patriot Thomas Allen” punching a protester and knocking them to the ground during a skirmish initiated by Sortor. When Allen was then arrested by the police, Choe suggested it was unjust because “antifa militants” had earlier in the night briefly seized Allen’s red Maga cap.Allen was arraigned last week for misdemeanor assault.James KlugKlug is a Turning Point USA ambassador with 617,000 YouTube subscribers.View image in fullscreenJames Klug is affiliated with Turning Point USA and known for videos in which he argues with and mocks liberals.On inauguration day 2021, Klug offered his followers a behind-the-scenes look at how influencers like Rosas go undercover to capture violence at leftwing protests in the city and then appear on Fox News to put all the blame on antifa.The violence in that case was from a small group of anarchists who smashed windows at the Oregon Democratic party’s headquarters in Portland, as Joe Biden was sworn in as president.Rosas told Laura Ingraham on Fox it was the work of antifa, although Rose City Antifa, the Portland group that helped revive the Nazi-era concept of antifascist organizing, said in a statement this was an anarchist action antifascists played no part in.Brandi KruseKruse is a former local TV reporter from Seattle who has 165,000 followers on X.View image in fullscreenBrandi Kruse, a Republican podcaster who quit her job as a reporter for Seattle’s local Fox affiliate in 2021, recently spent 48 hours in Portland for her podcast, a city she subsequently described as a “shithole”. She told Trump that she was a former critic who now endorsed him.Kruse also claimed the president’s antifascist rhetoric had already had an effect. “I genuinely believe there would be people at these tables who would be dead today, and would have been killed in Portland, had you not called them a terror organization and said we’re going to bring the full weight of the federal government to bear.”Jack PosobiecPosobiec, who has 3.2 million followers, hosts a podcast sponsored by Turning Point USAView image in fullscreenJack Posobiec, a former One America News host who left the fringe cable channel to start a show on the far-right network Real America’s Voice sponsored by Turning Point USA, is best known for promoting the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. More