Mary Trump

Concentration camps.

Trump's Plans

A concentration camp is a concentration camp is a concentration camp.

Trump confirms plans to use military for mass deportations

President-elect Trump confirmed Monday that he is planning to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to carry out mass deportations.

Why it matters:

Trump made his promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants one of the cornerstones of his 2024 campaign, and his team has already begun strategizing how to carry its plan out.

Driving the news:

Tom Fitton, the president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, posted on Truth Social earlier this month that Trump was "prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program."

Trump reposted Fitton's comment Monday with the caption, "TRUE!!"

The big picture:

There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Trump's mass deportations are expected to impact roughly 20 million families across the country.

Immigration advocates and lawyers are preparing to counter the plan in court.

The president-elect's team is aiming to craft executive orders that can withstand legal challenges to avoid a similar defeat that befell Trump's Muslim ban in his first term, Politico reported.

Their plans also include ending the parole program for undocumented immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, per Politico.

Zoom out:

Trump has also already begun filling out his Cabinet positions with immigration hardliners.

This includes tapping Tom Homan, the former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to serve as his "border czar."

In addition, Trump nominated South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as his secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Today's Vic

Two great points:

1. If I flake off, it means the bad guys will have more goons to send after you
2. My obligation as a citizen doesn't end just because my side lost an election

Timothy Snyder's "On Tyranny" - here's the outline:

1. Do not obey in advance. Much of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then start to do it without being asked. You've already done this, haven't you? Stop. Anticipatory obedience teaches authorities what is possible and accelerates unfreedom.
2. Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don't protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.
3. Recall professional ethics. When the leaders of state set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become much more important. It is hard to break a rule-of-law state without lawyers, and it is hard to have show trials without judges.
4. When listening to politicians, distinguish certain words. Look out for the expansive use of “terrorism” and “extremism.” Be alive to the fatal notions of “exception” and “emergency.” Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.
5. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that all authoritarians at all times either await or plan such events in order to consolidate power. Think of the Reichstag fire. The sudden disaster that requires the end of the balance of power, the end of opposition parties, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Don't fall for it.
6. Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. (Don't use the Internet before bed. Charge your gadgets away from your bedroom, and read.) What to read? Perhaps The Power of the Powerless by Václav Havel, 1984 by George Orwell, The Captive Mind by Czesław Milosz, The Rebel by Albert Camus, The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, or Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev.
7. Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy, in words and deeds, to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. And the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.
8. Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
9. Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on your screen is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate foreign propaganda pushes.
10. Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.
11. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down unnecessary social barriers, and come to understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.
12. Take responsibility for the face of the world. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.
13. Hinder the one-party state. The parties that took over states were once something else. They exploited a historical moment to make political life impossible for their rivals. Vote in local and state elections while you can.
14. Give regularly to good causes, if you can. Pick a charity and set up autopay. Then you will know that you have made a free choice that is supporting civil society helping others doing something good.
15. Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the Internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble. Authoritarianism works as a blackmail state, looking for the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have too many hooks.
16. Learn from others in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends abroad. The present difficulties here are an element of a general trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.
17. Watch out for the paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching around with torches and pictures of a Leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-Leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the game is over.
18. Be reflective if you must be armed. If you carry a weapon in public service, God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no. (If you do not know what this means, contact the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and ask about training in professional ethics.)
19. Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die in unfreedom.
20. Be a patriot. President Trump is not. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.

Today's Keith

If this isn't Peak Daddy State, then my suspicions are validated - there's no bottom they can't get under, and no top they won't tear down to get over.

ie: Voters don't believe Trump will do the shitty things he's said he'll do because they don't believe he has the core principles he needs to make good on his promises.

So, it's his untrustworthiness that makes him trustworthy.

And don't say things like "Make it make sense", and then shrug and go back to watching your shows.

Stop that shit.

It doesn't make sense because it's not supposed to make sense.

These Prison Stocks Soar Again On Trump's Hardline Border Move

Geo Group (GEO) and CoreCivic (CXW) surged again on Monday after a huge rally last week spurred by earnings and elections. CoreCivic stock and Geo stock extended gains after President-elect Donald Trump picked immigration hardliner Tom Homan as his top border official.

Border Pick Homan A Hardline Immigration Official

Homan previously was head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during Trump's first term. Trump said Sunday that Homan would lead the "deportation of illegal aliens" in his new administration starting Jan. 20, after vowing a mass deportation of undocumented migrants on the campaign trail.

"I've known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our borders," Trump said on the Trump Media majority-owned social media platform TruthSocial.

Geo stock and CoreCivic also surged after Trump's first U.S. presidential election win. They broke out to highs last week after his second victory, scoring one of their best weekly gains since November 2016.

Investors seemed to bet — again – that a Trump-led White House would detain more undocumented migrants in the company's facilities.

Solid earnings last week also helped the prison operators.

Shares of Geo Group and CoreCivic surged 8% and 10%, respectively, in Monday's stock market action.

CoreCivic stock scored a 29% election and earnings breakaway gap last Wednesday. It jumped above a 16.54 buy point in the biggest volume since shares began to consolidate in June, MarketSurge shows. The prison stock soared nearly 88% last week before paring the weekly gain to 69%.

Last Wednesday, Geo shares broke out in sympathy. Geo stock extended gains from the 16.47 cup-with-handle entry amid its own earnings report on Thursday. It skyrocketed almost 76% last week.

Geo Group Earnings, CoreCivic Earnings

Last week, prison and detention operators GEO Group and CoreCivic diverged on outlook after reporting strong third-quarter earnings.

CoreCivic revealed last Wednesday that it earned 19 cents per share, more than double estimates for 9 cents. The company hiked its full-year 2024 guidance for adjusted funds from operations for 2024 to $1.59-$1.65 per share — from $1.48-$1.56 — after Q3 occupancy grew from 72% to 75%. Analysts expected adjusted funds from operations of $1.49 a share, according to FactSet.

Geo Group last Thursday posted its first earnings gain after eight quarters of declines, FactSet shows. But the company missed views. Geo said it is now targeting full-year 2024 adjusted EBITDA of $470 million-$480 million, down from $485 million-$505 million previously. Analysts expect $488.2 million.

Prison Stocks Soared After 2016 Trump Win

In 2016, private prison stocks galloped ahead after Trump's first presidential election win.

Geo Group, which owns, leases and manages correctional facilities, advanced 107% in the three months after the election. Rival CoreCivic rose 149% in the same three-month period.

Many investors credited Trump's win for the initial rally in the prison stocks. Trump vowed to crack down on crime and illegal immigration, and private prisons and detention centers were seemingly one answer to overcrowding.

This was a sharp reversal from former President Barack Obama's order to phase out private prisons. In February 2017, then Attorney General Jeff Sessions turned the green light back on for private prisons.

Much has changed since then. The two main prison stocks quickly saw gains from the first Trump victory evaporate.

Both Geo stock and CoreCivic languished for much of the past year before breaking out to highs this week amid the elections and earnings.

The Trump Way

"Improve your morale or the beatings will continue."

Go to California, and shit-talk the whole place - and then:

• Tell the auto workers you're going to ship their jobs to Michigan
• Threaten FEMA money for wildfires if the governor doesn't kiss Trump's ass
• etc

This is typical of how "conservatives" have been trying to do things for a very long time.

• Kick people until they fall down
• Once people are down, tell them it's their own fault, and kick them some more
• If they're still down after a generation or two, kick them harder

Today's Daddy State Thing

Daddy State Awareness Guide, Rule #3:

Every prediction of some dire consequence is a veiled threat.

Whatever terrible thing they're "warning" us about is something they intend to make happen (often in an attempt to coerce us into doing something they want), or to signal and motivate their mob.

"If she wins this election, we're not gonna have a country anymore."

Whoa Nelly

So Trump watches Harris and Walz dominate the coverage for 4 or 5 days, and he can't stand it, because it's not all about him. So he springs a "news conference" on everybody (including his own staff) that has (as usual) no substance at all, except that he has to point out that everything should always be all about him.

And he's bound and determined to make Walz out to be the bad guy during the 2020 George Floyd riots, but he can't - not for normal people anyway - because he spent a lot of time on the phone and elsewhere praising Gov Walz for doing what he did.

But of course that doesn't matter, because Trump has to pretend he never did what he did - he never said what he said: "What you saw and what you heard is not what you saw and what you heard."

Daddy State Awareness Guide, Rules 4 and 5:

4. They change the meaning of words to suit their needs.

a) if it's false but it works in my favor, then it's true

b) if it's true but it works against me, then it's false

5. They change the historical record.

“you didn’t see what you saw"

"what you saw happen isn’t what happened"

“you didn't hear me say what you heard me say”

It Is And It Ain't

... at the same time.

It's Schrodinger's GOP Platform.

Trump has repeatedly made statements very similar to what the Project 2025 playbook says.

But the Daddy State lies - all the time about everything - so when he feels the need, he claims he knows nothing about it at all.

Trump seeks to disavow 'Project 2025' despite ties to conservative group

July 5 (Reuters) - Former President Donald Trump tried to distance himself on Friday from a conservative group's sweeping plans for the next Republican presidency, days after its leader claimed a second American Revolution was underway that would "remain bloodless if the left allows it to be."

(Emphasis added)

The Republican presidential candidate renounced any connection with Project 2025, a plan Democrats have been attacking to highlight what they say is Trump's extreme policy agenda for a second term should he beat President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 election.

Many people involved in the project lead by the Heritage Foundation, America's top conservative think tank, worked in the Trump White House and would likely help fill out his administration if he wins in November.

But Trump said on his Truth Social platform he had nothing to do with the plan.

"I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it," he wrote.

"I disagree with some of the things they're saying," he continued, adding some of their assertions were "absolutely ridiculous and abysmal."

Trump's post came three days after Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts' comments on Steve Bannon's "War Room" podcast about a second American Revolution. Democrats and others criticized what they viewed as a veiled threat of violence.

In a statement provided by a Project 2025 spokesperson on Friday, Roberts repeated his claim that Americans were carrying out a revolution "to take power back from the elites and despotic bureaucrats" and said it was the political left that had a history of political violence.

The spokesperson said that while Project 2025 provided recommendations for the next Republican president, it would be up to Trump, should he win, to decide whether to implement them.

Trump's move to create distance with Project 2025 could in part reflect an effort to moderate his message in the final months of the race, especially with Biden's campaign faltering after the Democratic candidate's June 27 debate, said James Wallner, a political science professor at Clemson University.

"Trump is basically now seeking to appeal to a broader audience," Wallner said.

The Biden campaign has stepped up its efforts to tie Trump's campaign to Project 2025.
“Project 2025 is the extreme policy and personnel playbook for Trump’s second term that should scare the hell out of the American people," campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement.

The 900-page blueprint calls for drastic reform of the federal government, including a gutting of some federal agencies and a vast expansion of presidential power. Trump's statements and policy positions suggest he is aligned with some but not all of the project's agenda.

The plans have been drawn up by the Heritage Foundation in coordination with a collection of other like-minded groups.

A number of people who worked on Project 2025 have close ties to the former president. Russ Vought, who was Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget and is heading up a key committee at the Republican National Convention, authored one of the project's chapters.

Stephen Miller, a former senior adviser to Trump who is widely expected to be tapped for a top job in a second Trump administration, heads up a legal group on Project 2025's advisory board.

Today's Exercise

Present certain thoughts or objects

possessing no value or relevance at all.

Toss one of these to the masses,

and as you watch them tear it

and each other to pieces

trying to find some hidden meaning,

then you know its purpose is fulfilled.

You Knew It Had T Be

It doesn't matter what the "issue" is - or the details - or the circumstances - or the players. Whatever the outcome, MAGA is going to twist it and spin it and wring it out, until it's something totally unrecognizable by any normal human with a living thinking brain.

So we're back to Coach Asbury and the lesson of the short pass.

Today's Beau

It just kinda drifted by a few days ago, and I didn't make much of it - not like I should've done.

But let's make a note of it. Even though it won't make much difference to the rubes, this is something we should make sure the "independents" are aware of.

It's another example of the Daddy State strategy of keeping people in thrall to the point where they can scream about the total terribleness of something one day, and make a u-turn the next day, claiming exactly the opposite.

Welcome To My Swamp

Daddy State Awareness

• The Daddy State lies as a means of demonstrating power.
• The lies have practically nothing to do with the subject of the lies.
• Lying about everything creates chaos, which helps condition us to stop thinking, and look to them for "guidance".
• Once we're totally dependent on them, we'll accept the premise that they can do anything they want.

The goal is to dictate reality to us.

In true Daddy State fashion, Trump has reversed course, and is now calling on the faithful to do all that Fraudulent Voting Stuff he's been railing against for nearly a decade.

What we should be especially alert to is Trump (prob'ly at the direction of Mike Flynn) pulling the standard School Of The Americas shit they taught Noriega to do.

1. Fuck up the election
2. Point at the fucked up election
3. Say, "Oh look - the election is fucked up"
4. Look for and capitalize on whatever opportunity arises from the chaos

Today's TweeXt

Trump has already told us on numerous occasions, in numerous ways, that if he gets back into the White House, he'll take steps to make sure there's nobody there to "talk him out of it - to talk sense to him."

Q: Did Trump call for the execution of people who opposed him when he was president?

Trump Attorney General Bill Barr: Trump lost his temper and said things like that pic.twitter.com/Qoo9NdAVmk

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 27, 2024

Today's Beau

Because he's your ruler. He'll tell you what to believe - what to think.

Daddy State Awareness

• The Daddy State lies as a means of demonstrating power.
• The lies have practically nothing to do with the subject of the lies.
• Lying about everything creates chaos, which helps condition us to stop thinking, and look to them for "guidance".
• Once we're totally dependent on them, we'll accept the premise that they can do anything they want.

The goal is to dictate reality to us.

It's A Long One

So Trump makes it onto the cover of Time, and of course, people have to fuck with it.

The one on the left is the actual cover, and on the right is what I imagine some MAGA freak thinks is a better rendition - because (and I think it should be obvious by now) they have to pretend Trump is "bigger than the fake news liberal media" etc.

But what I actually like about it is that it puts devil horns on that prick - as it should be.

Or maybe they're kitty cat ears. I dunno.

Eric Cortellessa - with reporting by Leslie Dickstein, Simmone Shah, and Julia Zorthian

Donald Trump thinks he’s identified a crucial mistake of his first term: He was too nice.

We’ve been talking for more than an hour on April 12 at his fever-dream palace in Palm Beach. Aides lurk around the perimeter of a gilded dining room overlooking the manicured lawn. When one nudges me to wrap up the interview, I bring up the many former Cabinet officials who refuse to endorse Trump this time. Some have publicly warned that he poses a danger to the Republic. Why should voters trust you, I ask, when some of the people who observed you most closely do not?

As always, Trump punches back, denigrating his former top advisers. But beneath the typical torrent of invective, there is a larger lesson he has taken away. “I let them quit because I have a heart. I don’t want to embarrass anybody,” Trump says. “I don’t think I’ll do that again. From now on, I’ll fire.”

Six months from the 2024 presidential election, Trump is better positioned to win the White House than at any point in either of his previous campaigns. He leads Joe Biden by slim margins in most polls, including in several of the seven swing states likely to determine the outcome. But I had not come to ask about the election, the disgrace that followed the last one, or how he has become the first former—and perhaps future—American President to face a criminal trial. I wanted to know what Trump would do if he wins a second term, to hear his vision for the nation, in his own words.

What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world.

• To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland.
• He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans.
• He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers.
• He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding.
• He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury.
• He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense.
• He would gut the U.S. civil service.
• He would deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit.
• He would close the White House pandemic-preparedness office.
• He would staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.

Trump remains the same guy, with the same goals and grievances. But in person, if anything, he appears more assertive and confident. “When I first got to Washington, I knew very few people,” he says. “I had to rely on people.” Now he is in charge. The arranged marriage with the timorous Republican Party stalwarts is over; the old guard is vanquished, and the people who remain are his people. Trump would enter a second term backed by a slew of policy shops staffed by loyalists who have drawn up detailed plans in service of his agenda, which would concentrate the powers of the state in the hands of a man whose appetite for power appears all but insatiable. “I don’t think it’s a big mystery what his agenda would be,” says his close adviser Kellyanne Conway. “But I think people will be surprised at the alacrity with which he will take action.”

And here comes some of the worst naive drivel any Press Poodle ever put in print.

The courts, the Constitution, and a Congress of unknown composition would all have a say in whether Trump’s objectives come to pass. The machinery of Washington has a range of defenses: leaks to a free press, whistle-blower protections, the oversight of inspectors general. The same deficiencies of temperament and judgment that hindered him in the past remain present. If he wins, Trump would be a lame duck—contrary to the suggestions of some supporters, he tells TIME he would not seek to overturn or ignore the Constitution’s prohibition on a third term. Public opinion would also be a powerful check. Amid a popular outcry, Trump was forced to scale back some of his most draconian first-term initiatives, including the policy of separating migrant families. As George Orwell wrote in 1945, the ability of governments to carry out their designs “depends on the general temper in the country.”

Did these idiots miss the part of their own article (a couple paragraphs up) where Trump all but says very clearly he'll sic the US Attorneys on whoever crosses him?

He's not fuckin' around. Under the "new plan", anybody trying to maintain roadblocks or guardrails to keep Trump in line will be bashed into pulp by a DOJ that he intends to use like a blackjack.

Every election is billed as a national turning point. This time that rings true. To supporters, the prospect of Trump 2.0, unconstrained and backed by a disciplined movement of true believers, offers revolutionary promise. To much of the rest of the nation and the world, it represents an alarming risk. A second Trump term could bring “the end of our democracy,” says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “and the birth of a new kind of authoritarian presidential order.”

Trump steps onto the patio at Mar-a-Lago near dusk. The well-heeled crowd eating Wagyu steaks and grilled branzino pauses to applaud as he takes his seat. On this gorgeous evening, the club is a MAGA mecca. Billionaire donor Steve Wynn is here. So is Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who is dining with the former President after a joint press conference proposing legislation to prevent noncitizens from voting. Their voting in federal elections is already illegal, and extremely rare, but remains a Trumpian fixation that the embattled Speaker appeared happy to co-sign in exchange for the political cover that standing with Trump provides.

At the moment, though, Trump’s attention is elsewhere. With an index finger, he swipes through an iPad on the table to curate the restaurant’s soundtrack. The playlist veers from Sinead O’Connor to James Brown to The Phantom of the Opera. And there’s a uniquely Trump choice: a rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung by a choir of defendants imprisoned for attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, interspersed with a recording of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. This has become a staple of his rallies, converting the ultimate symbol of national unity into a weapon of factional devotion.

The spectacle picks up where his first term left off. The events of Jan. 6, during which a pro-Trump mob attacked the center of American democracy in an effort to subvert the peaceful transfer of power, was a profound stain on his legacy. Trump has sought to recast an insurrectionist riot as an act of patriotism. “I call them the J-6 patriots,” he says. When I ask whether he would consider pardoning every one of them, he says, “Yes, absolutely.” As Trump faces dozens of felony charges, including for election interference, conspiracy to defraud the United States, willful retention of national-security secrets, and falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments, he has tried to turn legal peril into a badge of honor.

Jan. 6th 2021

The Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol is a profound stain on Trump’s legacy, one that he has sought to recast as an act of patriotism.Victor J. Blue

In a second term, Trump’s influence on American democracy would extend far beyond pardoning powers. Allies are laying the groundwork to restructure the presidency in line with a doctrine called the unitary executive theory, which holds that many of the constraints imposed on the White House by legislators and the courts should be swept away in favor of a more powerful Commander in Chief.

Nowhere would that power be more momentous than at the Department of Justice. Since the nation’s earliest days, Presidents have generally kept a respectful distance from Senate-confirmed law-enforcement officials to avoid exploiting for personal ends their enormous ability to curtail Americans’ freedoms. But Trump, burned in his first term by multiple investigations directed by his own appointees, is ever more vocal about imposing his will directly on the department and its far-flung investigators and prosecutors.

In our Mar-a-Lago interview, Trump says he might fire U.S. Attorneys who refuse his orders to prosecute someone: “It would depend on the situation.” He’s told supporters he would seek retribution against his enemies in a second term. Would that include Fani Willis, the Atlanta-area district attorney who charged him with election interference, or Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA in the Stormy Daniels case, who Trump has previously said should be prosecuted? Trump demurs but offers no promises. “No, I don’t want to do that,” he says, before adding, “We’re gonna look at a lot of things. What they’ve done is a terrible thing.”

Trump has also vowed to appoint a “real special prosecutor” to go after Biden. “I wouldn’t want to hurt Biden,” he tells me. “I have too much respect for the office.” Seconds later, though, he suggests Biden’s fate may be tied to an upcoming Supreme Court ruling on whether Presidents can face criminal prosecution for acts committed in office. “If they said that a President doesn’t get immunity,” says Trump, “then Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes.” (Biden has not been charged with any, and a House Republican effort to impeach him has failed to unearth evidence of any crimes or misdemeanors, high or low.)

Such moves would be potentially catastrophic for the credibility of American law enforcement, scholars and former Justice Department leaders from both parties say. “If he ordered an improper prosecution, I would expect any respectable U.S. Attorney to say no,” says Michael McConnell, a former U.S. appellate judge appointed by President George W. Bush. “If the President fired the U.S. Attorney, it would be an enormous firestorm.” McConnell, now a Stanford law professor, says the dismissal could have a cascading effect similar to the Saturday Night Massacre, when President Richard Nixon ordered top DOJ officials to remove the special counsel investigating Watergate. Presidents have the constitutional right to fire U.S. Attorneys, and typically replace their predecessors’ appointees upon taking office. But discharging one specifically for refusing a President’s order would be all but unprecedented.

Trump’s radical designs for presidential power would be felt throughout the country. A main focus is the southern border. Trump says he plans to sign orders to reinstall many of the same policies from his first term, such as the Remain in Mexico program, which requires that non-Mexican asylum seekers be sent south of the border until their court dates, and Title 42, which allows border officials to expel migrants without letting them apply for asylum. Advisers say he plans to cite record border crossings and fentanyl- and child-trafficking as justification for reimposing the emergency measures. He would direct federal funding to resume construction of the border wall, likely by allocating money from the military budget without congressional approval. The capstone of this program, advisers say, would be a massive deportation operation that would target millions of people. Trump made similar pledges in his first term, but says he plans to be more aggressive in a second. “People need to be deported,” says Tom Homan, a top Trump adviser and former acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “No one should be off the table.”

For an operation of that scale, Trump says he would rely mostly on the National Guard to round up and remove undocumented migrants throughout the country. “If they weren’t able to, then I’d use [other parts of] the military,” he says. When I ask if that means he would override the Posse Comitatus Act—an 1878 law that prohibits the use of military force on civilians—Trump seems unmoved by the weight of the statute. “Well, these aren’t civilians,” he says. “These are people that aren’t legally in our country.” He would also seek help from local police and says he would deny funding for jurisdictions that decline to adopt his policies. “There’s a possibility that some won’t want to participate,” Trump says, “and they won’t partake in the riches.”

As President, Trump nominated three Supreme Court Justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and he claims credit for his role in ending a constitutional right to an abortion. At the same time, he has sought to defuse a potent campaign issue for the Democrats by saying he wouldn’t sign a federal ban. In our interview at Mar-a-Lago, he declines to commit to vetoing any additional federal restrictions if they came to his desk. More than 20 states now have full or partial abortion bans, and Trump says those policies should be left to the states to do what they want, including monitoring women’s pregnancies. “I think they might do that,” he says. When I ask whether he would be comfortable with states prosecuting women for having abortions beyond the point the laws permit, he says, “It’s irrelevant whether I’m comfortable or not. It’s totally irrelevant, because the states are going to make those decisions.” President Biden has said he would fight state anti-abortion measures in court and with regulation.

Trump’s allies don’t plan to be passive on abortion if he returns to power. The Heritage Foundation has called for enforcement of a 19th century statute that would outlaw the mailing of abortion pills. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), which includes more than 80% of the House GOP conference, included in its 2025 budget proposal the Life at Conception Act, which says the right to life extends to “the moment of fertilization.” I ask Trump if he would veto that bill if it came to his desk. “I don’t have to do anything about vetoes,” Trump says, “because we now have it back in the states.”

Presidents typically have a narrow window to pass major legislation. Trump’s team is eyeing two bills to kick off a second term: a border-security and immigration package, and an extension of his 2017 tax cuts. Many of the latter’s provisions expire early in 2025: the tax cuts on individual income brackets, 100% business expensing, the doubling of the estate-tax deduction. Trump is planning to intensify his protectionist agenda, telling me he’s considering a tariff of more than 10% on all imports, and perhaps even a 100% tariff on some Chinese goods. Trump says the tariffs will liberate the U.S. economy from being at the mercy of foreign manufacturing and spur an industrial renaissance in the U.S. When I point out that independent analysts estimate Trump’s first term tariffs on thousands of products, including steel and aluminum, solar panels, and washing machines, may have cost the U.S. $316 billion and more than 300,000 jobs, by one account, he dismisses these experts out of hand. His advisers argue that the average yearly inflation rate in his first term—under 2%—is evidence that his tariffs won’t raise prices.

Since leaving office, Trump has tried to engineer a caucus of the compliant, clearing primary fields in Senate and House races. His hope is that GOP majorities replete with MAGA diehards could rubber-stamp his legislative agenda and nominees. Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, a former RSC chairman and the GOP nominee for the state’s open Senate seat, recalls an August 2022 RSC planning meeting with Trump at his residence in Bedminster, N.J. As the group arrived, Banks recalls, news broke that Mar-a-Lago had been raided by the FBI. Banks was sure the meeting would be canceled. Moments later, Trump walked through the doors, defiant and pledging to run again. “I need allies there when I’m elected,” Banks recalls Trump saying. The difference in a second Trump term, Banks says now, “is he’s going to have the backup in Congress that he didn’t have before.”

Trump’s intention to remake America’s relations abroad may be just as consequential. Since its founding, the U.S. has sought to build and sustain alliances based on the shared values of political and economic freedom. Trump takes a much more transactional approach to international relations than his predecessors, expressing disdain for what he views as free-riding friends and appreciation for authoritarian leaders like President Xi Jinping of China, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, or former President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.

That’s one reason America’s traditional allies were horrified when Trump recently said at a campaign rally that Russia could “do whatever the hell they want” to a NATO country he believes doesn’t spend enough on collective defense. That wasn’t idle bluster, Trump tells me. “If you’re not going to pay, then you’re on your own,” he says. Trump has long said the alliance is ripping the U.S. off. Former NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg credited Trump’s first-term threat to pull out of the alliance with spurring other members to add more than $100 billion to their defense budgets.

But an insecure NATO is as likely to accrue to Russia’s benefit as it is to America’s. President Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine looks to many in Europe and the U.S. like a test of his broader vision to reconstruct the Soviet empire. Under Biden and a bipartisan Congress, the U.S. has sent more than $100 billion to Ukraine to defend itself. It’s unlikely Trump would extend the same support to Kyiv. After Orban visited Mar-a-Lago in March, he said Trump “wouldn’t give a penny” to Ukraine. “I wouldn’t give unless Europe starts equalizing,” Trump hedges in our interview. “If Europe is not going to pay, why should we pay? They’re much more greatly affected. We have an ocean in between us. They don’t.” (E.U. nations have given more than $100 billion in aid to Ukraine as well.)

Trump has historically been reluctant to criticize or confront Putin. He sided with the Russian autocrat over his own intelligence community when it asserted that Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Even now, Trump uses Putin as a foil for his own political purposes. When I asked Trump why he has not called for the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been unjustly held on spurious charges in a Moscow prison for a year, Trump says, “I guess because I have so many other things I’m working on.” Gershkovich should be freed, he adds, but he doubts it will happen before the election. “The reporter should be released and he will be released,” Trump tells me. “I don’t know if he’s going to be released under Biden. I would get him released.”

America’s Asian allies, like its European ones, may be on their own under Trump. Taiwan’s Foreign Minister recently said aid to Ukraine was critical in deterring Xi from invading the island. Communist China’s leaders “have to understand that things like that can’t come easy,” Trump says, but he declines to say whether he would come to Taiwan’s defense.

Trump is less cryptic on current U.S. troop deployments in Asia. If South Korea doesn’t pay more to support U.S. troops there to deter Kim Jong Un’s increasingly belligerent regime to the north, Trump suggests the U.S. could withdraw its forces. “We have 40,000 troops that are in a precarious position,” he tells TIME. (The number is actually 28,500.) “Which doesn’t make any sense. Why would we defend somebody? And we’re talking about a very wealthy country.”

Transactional isolationism may be the main strain of Trump’s foreign policy, but there are limits. Trump says he would join Israel’s side in a confrontation with Iran. “If they attack Israel, yes, we would be there,” he tells me. He says he has come around to the now widespread belief in Israel that a Palestinian state existing side by side in peace is increasingly unlikely. “There was a time when I thought two-state could work,” he says. “Now I think two-state is going to be very, very tough.”

Yet even his support for Israel is not absolute. He’s criticized Israel’s handling of its war against Hamas, which has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and has called for the nation to “get it over with.” When I ask whether he would consider withholding U.S. military aid to Israel to push it toward winding down the war, he doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t rule it out, either. He is sharply critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, once a close ally. “I had a bad experience with Bibi,” Trump says. In his telling, a January 2020 U.S. operation to assassinate a top Iranian general was supposed to be a joint attack until Netanyahu backed out at the last moment. “That was something I never forgot,” he says. He blames Netanyahu for failing to prevent the Oct. 7 attack, when Hamas militants infiltrated southern Israel and killed nearly 1,200 people amid acts of brutality including burning entire families alive and raping women and girls. “It happened on his watch,” Trump says.

On the second day of Trump’s New York trial on April 17, I stand behind the packed counter of the Sanaa Convenience Store on 139th Street and Broadway, waiting for Trump to drop in for a postcourt campaign stop. He chose the bodega for its history. In 2022, one of the store’s clerks fatally stabbed a customer who attacked him. Bragg, the Manhattan DA, charged the clerk with second-degree murder. (The charges were later dropped amid public outrage over video footage that appeared to show the clerk acting in self-defense.) A baseball bat behind the counter alludes to lingering security concerns. When Trump arrives, he asks the store’s co-owner, Maad Ahmed, a Yemeni immigrant, about safety. “You should be allowed to have a gun,” Trump tells Ahmed. “If you had a gun, you’d never get robbed.”

On the campaign trail, Trump uses crime as a cudgel, painting urban America as a savage hell-scape even though violent crime has declined in recent years, with homicides sinking 6% in 2022 and 13% in 2023, according to the FBI. When I point this out, Trump tells me he thinks the data, which is collected by state and local police departments, is rigged. “It’s a lie,” he says. He has pledged to send the National Guard into cities struggling with crime in a second term—possibly without the request of governors—and plans to approve Justice Department grants only to cities that adopt his preferred policing methods like stop-and-frisk.

To critics, Trump’s preoccupation with crime is a racial dog whistle. In polls, large numbers of his supporters have expressed the view that antiwhite racism now represents a greater problem in the U.S. than the systemic racism that has long afflicted Black Americans. When I ask if he agrees, Trump does not dispute this position. “There is a definite antiwhite feeling in the country,” he tells TIME, “and that can’t be allowed either.” In a second term, advisers say, a Trump Administration would rescind Biden’s Executive Orders designed to boost diversity and racial equity.

Trump’s ability to campaign for the White House in the midst of an unprecedented criminal trial is the product of a more professional campaign operation that has avoided the infighting that plagued past versions. “He has a very disciplined team around him,” says Representative Elise Stefanik of New York. “That is an indicator of how disciplined and focused a second term will be.” That control now extends to the party writ large. In 2016, the GOP establishment, having failed to derail Trump’s campaign, surrounded him with staff who sought to temper him. Today the party’s permanent class have either devoted themselves to the gospel of MAGA or given up. Trump has cleaned house at the Republican National Committee, installing handpicked leaders—including his daughter-in-law—who have reportedly imposed loyalty tests on prospective job applicants, asking whether they believe the false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen. (The RNC has denied there is a litmus test.) Trump tells me he would have trouble hiring anyone who admits Biden won: “I wouldn’t feel good about it.”

Policy groups are creating a government-in-waiting full of true believers. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 has drawn up plans for legislation and Executive Orders as it trains prospective personnel for a second Trump term. The Center for Renewing America, led by Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, is dedicated to disempowering the so-called administrative state, the collection of bureaucrats with the power to control everything from drug-safety determinations to the contents of school lunches. The America First Policy Institute is a research haven of pro-Trump right-wing populists. America First Legal, led by Trump’s immigration adviser Stephen Miller, is mounting court battles against the Biden Administration.

The goal of these groups is to put Trump’s vision into action on day one. “The President never had a policy process that was designed to give him what he actually wanted and campaigned on,” says Vought. “[We are] sorting through the legal authorities, the mechanics, and providing the momentum for a future Administration.” That includes a litany of boundary-pushing right-wing policies, including slashing Department of Justice funding and cutting climate and environmental regulations.

Trump’s campaign says he would be the final decision-maker on which policies suggested by these organizations would get implemented. But at the least, these advisers could form the front lines of a planned march against what Trump dubs the Deep State, marrying bureaucratic savvy to their leader’s anti-bureaucratic zeal. One weapon in Trump’s second-term “War on Washington” is a wonky one: restoring the power of impoundment, which allowed Presidents to withhold congressionally appropriated funds. Impoundment was a favorite maneuver of Nixon, who used his authority to freeze funding for subsidized housing and the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump and his allies plan to challenge a 1974 law that prohibits use of the measure, according to campaign policy advisers.

Right about here, I started to get a little nauseous, and I had to stop.

Trump gets elected again and we're fucked.

Another inside move is the enforcement of Schedule F, which allows the President to fire nonpolitical government officials and which Trump says he would embrace. “You have some people that are protected that shouldn’t be protected,” he says. A senior U.S. judge offers an example of how consequential such a move could be. Suppose there’s another pandemic, and President Trump wants to push the use of an untested drug, much as he did with hydroxychloroquine during COVID-19. Under Schedule F, if the drug’s medical reviewer at the Food and Drug Administration refuses to sign off on its use, Trump could fire them, and anyone else who doesn’t approve it. The Trump team says the President needs the power to hold bureaucrats accountable to voters. “The mere mention of Schedule F,” says Vought, “ensures that the bureaucracy moves in your direction.”

It can be hard at times to discern Trump’s true intentions. In his interviews with TIME, he often sidestepped questions or answered them in contradictory ways. There’s no telling how his ego and self-destructive behavior might hinder his objectives. And for all his norm-breaking, there are lines he says he won’t cross. When asked if he would comply with all orders upheld by the Supreme Court, Trump says he would.

But his policy preoccupations are clear and consistent. If Trump is able to carry out a fraction of his goals, the impact could prove as transformative as any presidency in more than a century. “He’s in full war mode,” says his former adviser and occasional confidant Stephen Bannon. Trump’s sense of the state of the country is “quite apocalyptic,” Bannon says. “That’s where Trump’s heart is. That’s where his obsession is.”

These obsessions could once again push the nation to the brink of crisis. Trump does not dismiss the possibility of political violence around the election. “If we don’t win, you know, it depends,” he tells TIME. “It always depends on the fairness of the election.” When I ask what he meant when he baselessly claimed on Truth Social that a stolen election “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump responded by denying he had said it. He then complained about the “Biden-inspired” court case he faces in New York and suggested that the “fascists” in America’s government were its greatest threat. “I think the enemy from within, in many cases, is much more dangerous for our country than the outside enemies of China, Russia, and various others,” he tells me.

Toward the end of our conversation at Mar-a-Lago, I ask Trump to explain another troubling comment he made: that he wants to be dictator for a day. It came during a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity, who gave Trump an opportunity to allay concerns that he would abuse power in office or seek retribution against political opponents. Trump said he would not be a dictator—“except for day one,” he added. “I want to close the border, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”

Trump says that the remark “was said in fun, in jest, sarcastically.” He compares it to an infamous moment from the 2016 campaign, when he encouraged the Russians to hack and leak Hillary Clinton’s emails. In Trump’s mind, the media sensationalized those remarks too. But the Russians weren’t joking: among many other efforts to influence the core exercise of American democracy that year, they hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers and disseminated its emails through WikiLeaks.

Whether or not he was kidding about bringing a tyrannical end to our 248-year experiment in democracy, I ask him, "Don’t you see why many Americans see such talk of dictatorship as contrary to our most cherished principles?"

Trump says no. Quite the opposite, he insists. “I think a lot of people like it.”

Oy

Another perfect example of the glaring hypocrisy of the GOP - the "party of free speech" clutches its pearls and staggers backwards groping for the fainting couch as people exercise their rights under 1A.

And the obvious implication is that Trump would, of course, quell the protests by turning out the military to bust a few skulls and send some protesters to prison for a few years to make sure everybody gets the message and blah blah blah.

That said, I think it would be good to get straight with the protocols of protest and civil disobedience.

• You do your thing
• You get yourself arrested
• You stand for the consequences
• You go back and do it again

You don't throw rocks and then hide your hands.

Because, yes - there are rules about how you break the rules. That's how we need to do things in a civilized and democratized society.

Sick to death of this wingnut crap, and just as sick of Press Poodles who continue to make like GOP stenographers, giving endless oxygen to authoritarian assholes, and doing nothing to clarify and contextualize the events.

Democracy dies in the darkness that WaPo refuses to lift.

Trump, GOP seize on campus protests to depict chaos under Biden

Republicans highlight images of turmoil, though most of the pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been peaceful

Former president Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans are seizing on the eruption of campus protests across the country to depict the United States as out of control under President Biden, seeking to use the mostly peaceful demonstrations as a political cudgel against the Democrats.

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The pro-Palestinian protests at numerous colleges — including Columbia, Yale, Emory, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin and others — include encampments and barricades intended to highlight protesters’ denunciation of Israel’s military onslaught in Gaza, as well as to push universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel.

Beyond the disruption to campus life, top Republicans have highlighted the antisemitic chants that have occurred at some of the protests. The issue is complicated by a debate over what constitutes antisemitism — and when criticism of Israel crosses that line — while some student organizers have denounced the chants or said they are coming from outside activists.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has cited the protests to accuse Biden and Democrats of being unable to maintain order or quash lawlessness, an accusation he has leveled at the president on other hot-button political issues. He has also highlighted the protests as a way to air his own political grievances, including the lack of similar demonstrations around his current criminal trial.

On Monday morning, Trump posted on Truth Social, “STOP THE PROTESTS NOW!!!”

As the protests have mushroomed in recent days, numerous Republicans have sought ways to highlight them as an example of the country’s slide into chaos. Several Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), have visited the campus of Columbia University, the site of some of the most sweeping protests, to call for its president to resign for purportedly failing to contain the demonstrations.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, dispatched more than 100 state troopers to the University of Texas at Austin to clear out pro-Palestinian protesters, resulting in dozens of arrests. All of the charges against the protesters were later dropped for lack of probable cause.

The campus protests present conservatives with some of their favorite targets: elite universities, progressive activists, “woke” culture and civil rights leaders. In addition, attacking the protests allows Republicans to change the subject from less friendly political terrain, such as abortion rights and the war in Ukraine.

Their rhetoric is harsh in many cases. Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) have demanded that Biden mobilize the National Guard to protect Jewish Americans on campus. Hawley compared the standoff to the battle over segregation in 1957, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower summoned the National Guard to force the integration of Central High School in Little Rock.

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) suggested that the college protesters were mentally unstable. “You don’t get to turn our public places into a garbage dump. No civilization should tolerate these encampments. Get rid of them,” Vance posted on X. “If you want to protest peacefully fine. It’s your right. But go home and take a shower at the end of the day. These encampments are just gross. Wanting to participate in this is a mental illness.”

The GOP rhetoric has not been limited to campus protests, sometimes covering pro-Palestinian actions more broadly, including those that have shut down roads and bridges in some cities. Cotton, in a post on X, urged those who get stuck behind “pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic” to “take matters into your own hands.” Following criticism that some might read that as a call to violence, Cotton amended his post to say “take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way.”

Supporters of the campus protests say they are peaceful, and that accusations of antisemitism are often a pretext to shut down dissenting voices. Many of the Republicans criticizing the protests, they say, condoned or excused the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, which was far more violent.

The students are “peacefully protesting for an end of the Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” the group Jewish Voices for Peace, which supports a cease-fire in Gaza, said of the Columbia protests. “ … We condemn any and all hateful or violent comments targeting Jewish students; however, in shutting down public protest and suspending students, the actions of the University of Columbia are not ensuring safety for Jewish students — or any students — on campus.”

The Israel-Gaza war has deeply fractured the Democratic Party, posing significant political challenges to Biden months ahead of November’s presidential contest. Biden pledged steadfast support of Israel after Hamas militants stormed through the Israel-Gaza border on Oct. 7 and killed 1,200 people, many of them civilians, and took 253 hostage, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel responded with a punishing military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, imposing a siege that has created a humanitarian catastrophe as Gaza’s health system has collapsed and the population faces a looming famine. The resulting protest movement has electrified many younger voters and progressives, as well as others in the Democratic coalition that Biden needs to repeat his 2020 win, who have called for the United States to impose conditions for aid to Israel or suspend it altogether.

Democrats have voiced a range of views on the legitimacy of the protests, and Biden has sought a balance between condemning antisemitism and supporting students’ right to protest. Republicans, in contrast, are largely unified in casting the demonstrations as a disgrace, echoing conservative denunciations of the anti-Vietnam War protests of the 1960s.

Trump this week called a 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville — which he said at the time had “very fine people on both sides,” prompting a bipartisan backlash — a “peanut” compared with the current protests on campuses. Speaking to reporters after attending his criminal trial in New York on Thursday, Trump repeated the comments he wrote on social media and went further. He called the Charlottesville gathering, where a counterprotester was killed, “a little peanut” and added, “it was nothing compared — the hate wasn’t the kind of hate that you have here.”

Trump has contrasted the pro-Palestinian demonstrations with the lack of protests outside the Manhattan courthouse where he is on trial for an alleged hush money scheme. In seeking to blame Biden for the campus protests, Trump has accused the president of hating Israel, Jews and Palestinians, and accused Jewish Democrats of hating their religion. Many of the protesters are Jewish students, and progressive Jewish organizations have helped lead a number of protest movements since the war began in October.

“The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday. “If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

The tone of the criticism is not new; since Biden took office, Trump and other Republicans have pushed the notion that America is descending into chaos and lawlessness on his watch. From illegal immigration to soaring inflation to violent crime, they have regularly painted a picture of a country out of control.

These assertions have often been exaggerated or without context, but Trump has seized on them to promise a fierce crackdown should he return to power.

And during his 2020 reelection campaign, Trump tweeted in response to the large-scale protests over the police killing of George Floyd, which were mostly peaceful but occasionally turned to looting, writing, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The post was widely criticized for potentially encouraging private citizens, or police officers, to take deadly aim at looters.

Trump’s own position on Israel has often been hard to pin down. He has tried to position himself as a firm defender of Israel, but he has also criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the war and sought to exploit the fissures in Biden’s coalition over U.S. support of Israel.

After the Oct. 7 attack, Trump insulted Israel’s leaders while praising the intelligence of the Hezbollah militant group. Faced with a backlash to that comment, the former president proposed harsh policies against Muslim migrants, saying he would reimpose his ban on travel from Muslim-majority countries and deport students involved in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

In the weeks after the Hamas massacre, Trump said his administration would revoke student visas of “radical, anti-American and antisemitic foreigners.” Other Republicans still running for president at the time — including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.) — and GOP members of Congress similarly called for the visas of “pro-Hamas” foreign students to be revoked.

The spread of the college protests has ignited a renewed Republican response. When word circulated last Wednesday that pro-Palestinian protesters were planning to occupy a lawn at the University of Texas, Gov. Abbott sought to show that his Republican-dominated state would not tolerate a repeat of the encampment at Columbia University, dispatching state troopers.

The Texas Department of Public Safety said it responded to the campus “at the direction of” Abbott, who applauded the crackdown on social media. He said the protesters “belong in jail” and that any student participating in “hate-filled, antisemitic protests” at public colleges should be expelled.

Incidents at some universities have fed the criticisms, though pro-Palestinian activists say they are isolated incidents. Video re-emerged this week of a Columbia student who has taken part in the pro-Palestinian protest encampments declaring that “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” The student, Khymani James, made the comments in a video posted in January, although he has since stated that they were wrong. Columbia said it had barred the student from campus, but it was unclear whether he was suspended or expelled.

In Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp (R), following protests in several cities including Chicago and San Francisco, stressed that he would not tolerate anything similar in his state. Recounting a conversation with Georgia’s public safety commissioner, he said: “You know how I feel about people blocking bridges, airports and other things like we’re seeing around the country. I said, ‘If they do that, lock their ass up.’ ”

In New York City, Speaker Johnson and a group of GOP lawmakers visited Columbia’s campus on Wednesday, where they demanded that the university’s president, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, resign for failing to quickly dismantle the pro-Palestine encampments and, in their view, for not doing enough to ensure that Jewish people on campus felt safe.

Their visit appeared to raise tensions, as Johnson was met with boos and pro-Palestinian chants. One student yelled at Johnson to “get off our campus,” while another shouted, “go back to Louisiana, Mike!”

And on Capitol Hill, Republicans last week urged the Biden administration to intervene in the demonstrations. Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), a top-ranking House Republican, sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick Garland, calling on them to deport students who she said “are brazenly endorsing Hamas and other terrorist organizations” by participating in demonstrations and related events on campus.

Separately, a group of 27 Senate Republicans, including every member of the Senate GOP leadership team, signed onto a letter to Cardona and Garland calling on the administration “to take action to restore order and protect Jewish students on our college campuses.”

“The Department of Education and federal law enforcement must act immediately to restore order, prosecute the mobs who have perpetuated violence and threats against Jewish students, revoke the visas of all foreign nationals (such as exchange students) who have taken part in promoting terrorism, and hold accountable school administrators who have stood by instead of protecting their students,” the letter said.

Divide-n-Conquer, boys and girls.

It used to be we had a "generation gap" that politicians and pundits fretted over. Now we have several generation gaps that can be exploited by cynical manipulators in order to gain political advantage for some vaguely defined "they".

The Daddy State is tickled pink whenever one group is set against another group. And when several groups are all set against each other, the power of the people diminishes considerably, and we're that much closer to Rule By Minority.