The Dictatorship

NEXT: MAGA VOWS TO SILENCE FOES

Published

9 months ago

September 18, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is escalating threats to crack down on what he describes as the “radical left” following Charlie Kirk’s assassinationstirring fears that his administration is trying to harness outrage over the killing to suppress political opposition.

Without establishing any link to last week’s shooting, the Republican president and members of his administration have discussed classifying some groups as domestic terrorists, ordering racketeering investigations and revoking tax-exempt status for progressive nonprofits. The White House pointed to Indivisible, a progressive activist network, and the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, as potential subjects of scrutiny.

Although administration officials insist that their focus is preventing violence, critics see an extension of Trump’s campaign of retribution against his political enemies and an erosion of free speech rights. Any moves to weaken liberal groups could also shift the political landscape ahead of next year’s midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress and statehouses across the country.

“The radical left has done tremendous damage to the country,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday morning when leaving for a state visit to the United Kingdom. “But we’re fixing it.”

Trump has sometimes made similar threats without following through. But now there’s renewed interest fueled by anger over the killing of Kirk, a conservative activist who was a prominent supporter of Trump and friends with many of his advisers.

More than 100 nonprofit leaders, representing organizations including the Ford Foundation, the Omidyar Network and the MacArthur Foundation, released a joint letter saying “we reject attempts to exploit political violence to mischaracterize our good work or restrict our fundamental freedoms.”

“Attempts to silence speech, criminalize opposing viewpoints, and misrepresent and limit charitable giving undermine our democracy and harm all Americans,” they wrote.

White House blames ‘terrorist networks’

Authorities said they believe the suspect in Kirk’s assassination acted alone, and they charged him with murder on Tuesday.

However, administration officials have repeatedly made sweeping statements about the need for broader investigations and punishments related to Kirk’s death.

Attorney General Pam Bondi blamed “left-wing radicals” for the shooting and said “they will be held accountable.” Stephen Miller, a top policy adviser, said there was an “organized campaign that led to this assassination.”

Miller’s comments came during a conversation with Vice President JD Vance, who was guest-hosting Kirk’s talk show from his ceremonial office in the White House on Monday.

Miller said he was feeling “focused, righteous anger,” and “we are going to channel all of the anger” as they work to “uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks” by using “every resource we have.”

Vance blamed “crazies on the far left” for saying the White House would “go after constitutionally protected speech.” Instead, he said, “We’re going to go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence.”

Asked for examples, the White House pointed to demonstrations where police officers and federal agents have been injured, as well as the distribution of goggles and face masks during protests over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.

There was also a report that Indivisible offered to reimburse people who gathered at Tesla dealerships to oppose Elon Musk’s leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency. Sometimes cars were later vandalized.

Indivisible’s leadership has said “political violence is a cancer on democracy” and said that their own organization has “been threatened by right-wingers all year.”

Nonprofits brace for impact

Trump’s executive actions have rattled nonprofit groups with attempts to limit their work or freeze federal funding, but more aggressive proposals to revoke tax-exempt status never materialized.

Now the mood has darkened as nonprofits recruit lawyers and bolster the security of their offices and staff.

“It’s a heightened atmosphere in the wake of political violence, and organizations who fear they might be unjustly targeted in its wake are making sure that they are ready,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the government watchdog group Public Citizen.

Trump made retribution against political enemies a cornerstone of his comeback campaign, and he’s mobilized the federal government to reshape law firms, universities and other traditionally independent institutions. He also ordered an investigation into ActBluean online liberal fundraising platform.

Some nonprofits expect the administration to focus on prominent funders like Soros, a liberal billionaire who has been a conservative target for years, to send a chill through the donor community.

Trump recently said Soros should face a racketeering investigation, though he didn’t make any specific allegations. The Open Society Foundations condemned violence and Kirk’s assassination in a statement and said “it is disgraceful to use this tragedy for political ends to dangerously divide Americans and attack the First Amendment.”

Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, wrote on social media that “the murder of Charlie Kirk could have united Americans to confront political violence” but “Trump and his anti-democratic radicals look to be readying a campaign to destroy dissent.”

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said “it is disingenuous and false for Democrats to say administration actions are about political speech.” She said the goal is to “target those committing criminal acts and hold them accountable.”

Republicans back Trump’s calls for investigations

Trump’s concerns about political violence are noticeably partisan. He described people who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as “hostages” and “patriots,” and he pardoned 1,500 of them on his first day back in the Oval Office. He also mocked House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi after an attack on her husband.

When Trump condemned Kirk’s killing in a video message last week, he mentioned several examples of “radical left political violence” but ignored attacks on Democrats.

Asked on Monday about the killing of Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman over the summer, Trump said “I’m not familiar” with the case.

“Trump shrugs at right-wing political violence,” said Ezra Levin, the co-executive director of Indivisible, in a newsletter.

Some conservative commentators have cheered on a potential crackdown. Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist with a long record of bigoted comments, said “let’s shut the left down.” She also said that she wants Trump “to be the ‘dictator’ the left thinks he is.”

Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller and a former administration spokeswoman, asked Bondi whether there would be “more law enforcement going after these groups” and “putting cuffs on people.”

“We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” Bondi said. “And that’s across the aisle.”

Her comments sparked a backlash from across the political spectrum, since even hate speech is generally considered to be protected under the First Amendment. Bondi was more circumspect on social media on Tuesday morning, saying they would focus on “hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence.”

Trump is getting more support from Republicans in Congress. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and others proposed legislation that would enable the Justice Department to use racketeering laws, originally envisioned to combat organized crime, to prosecute violent protesters and the groups that support them.

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas wants the House to create a special committee to investigate the nonprofit groups, saying “we must follow the money to identify the perpetrators of the coordinated anti-American assaults being carried out against us.”

___

Associated Press writer Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.

The Dictatorship

Rep. Julia Letlow wins Louisiana GOP Senate primary runoff

Published

4 hours ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Julia Letlow wins Louisiana GOP Senate primary runoff

Jun. 27, 2026, 9:51 PM EDT

Rep. Julia Letlow won Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary runoff Saturday, defeating former Rep. John Fleming.

Her win comes as a victory for President Donald Trump, who has endorsed her repeatedly throughout the race — including before she was even officially running.

Letlow made history in 2021 when she became the first Republican woman to represent Louisiana in Congress. In that special election, she won the seat that her late husband, Luke Letlow, had won prior to dying of complications related to Covid-19 in December 2020.

Letlow had no political experience prior to running for her late husband’s seat. She holds a doctorate in communication from the University of South Florida and worked as an administrator for Tulane University and the University of Louisiana, according to her LinkedIn page. Nonetheless, she won the special election House race with nearly 65% of the vote.

In Congress, she has served on the appropriations and education committees, and has been a reliably MAGA Republican.

Letlow’s win also comes as a rebuke to Fleming, who loaned himself more than $11 million, according to the Federal Election Commission, and tried running for the same seat in 2016 only to finish in fifth place in the nonpartisan primary. (Letlow did not loan her campaign any money, and took in more than $5.35 million compared to Fleming’s more than $12.1 million, FEC filings show.)

Trump has played a key role in the race. In addition to backing Letlow early on, the president also helped tank Republican incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy’s re-election campaign in last month’s primary, based on the senator’s record of bucking his party and voting in favor of Trump’s second impeachment. In the primaryLetlow earned nearly 45% of the vote, giving her a healthy lead over both Fleming, who received about 28% of the vote, and Cassidy, who earned nearly 25%.

Ahead of Saturday’s runoff, polling showed Letlow and Fleming in a close race, with Letlow retaining a small lead in several polls.

Letlow will now proceed to the November general election to face off against the Democratic nominee, farmer Jamie Davis, who came out on top in tonight’s Democratic primary runoff.

The state has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2008, when Mary Landrieu won her last term in office.

Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.

The Dictatorship

‘Horrifying’: Pulte’s choice for top spy aide stokes fears of Trump vote tampering

Published

4 hours ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

‘Horrifying’: Pulte’s choice for top spy aide stokes fears of Trump vote tampering

Jun. 28, 2026, 1:36 PM EDT

Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligencehas stirred fear by choosing as his chief of staff a GOP election lawyer who oversaw a poll watching program that included Jack Posobiec and other conservative conspiracy theorists. The lawyer, Christina Norton, also appears to have no experience working in the intelligence community.

“It is horrifying,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW Saturday. “Not only does Norton have absolutely no background, experience or expertise in national security or intelligence, but her principal qualifications appear to be loyalty to Pulte and an embrace of absurd election-interference conspiracies.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who has been a vocal critic of Pulte, also raised concerns about election integrity on Sunday while taking shots at the director of national intelligence and the office itself.

“We should eliminate the DNI, and we should eliminate Pulte from the DNI until that happens,” he said on BLN, adding, “I am concerned that we’re gonna continue to cast doubt on elections in November and erode what has been a 250-year tradition of a peaceful transition of power.”

Pulte’s choice of Norton is also likely to increase concerns among Democrats that President Donald Trump intends to use the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to interfere in the midterm elections. Pulte, a loyalist with no intelligence experience, has used his current position as head of federal mortgage agencies to refer political rivals of the president for federal criminal prosecution.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told MS NOW on Sunday that the choice “just confirms” that the “only job qualification is absolute political loyalty and devotion to Donald Trump.” But he expressed faith in the judicial system during an appearance on “The Weekend,” noting that “right now we have federal courts across the land that are rejecting their various attempts to take over the election process. Nine different federal courts have rejected the claim that the president, by executive order, can compel the states in the union to turn over all of their voter lists to Donald Trump and to the White House.”

The New York Times first reported Norton’s appointment.

The former senior intelligence official, who requested anonymity due to concerns of retaliation, told MS NOW the choice also “signals as clearly as could be that Pulte has been put at ODNI to misuse the awesome power of the U.S. intelligence community to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections.”

Norton, reached by MS NOW by telephone, declined to comment and referred questions to an ODNI spokesperson. The spokesperson declined to comment on Norton but defended Pulte’s tenure.

“Acting Director Pulte and his team are focused on carrying out President Trump’s national security priorities while faithfully executing ODNI’s statutory mission,” the spokesperson told MS NOW. “We are leading the Intelligence Community to provide President Trump with elite, apolitical intelligence that keeps America safe.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., appearing on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, said his objection to Pulte is “that he used personal information to target a political enemy of the president,” a reference to New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“You should not be using the force of government to crash upon somebody just because the person in charge does not like them or finds them inconvenient. The fact that Bill did that is disqualifying for someone to be the director of national intelligence,” Cassidy said.

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Friday that Congress would ensure that the ODNI under Pulte will “report on legitimate foreign threats to elections, not Donald Trump’s imaginary ones.”

Himes warned that, “Trump was explicit when he appointed Bill Pulte to a job he had no qualifications for that he had elections in mind.”

Trump has said in interviews with the news media that he would like to see Pulte shrink the size of the ODNI and investigate election fraud. Pulte’s predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, participated in investigations in Georgia and Puerto Rico to find proof of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Democrats and some former intelligence officials say they worry that Pulte may try to falsely claim that his office has found evidence that foreign governments are secretly funding Democratic candidates in the midterms.

Pulte could falsely claim foreign actors have hacked U.S. voting machines, they say, and altered vote totals in favor of Democrats during the midterms. Or Trump could instruct Pulte to be present if FBI agents seize ballots and election records in November as they did earlier this year in Fulton County, Georgia.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned in a statement on Friday that Pulte should not use his position to spread Trump’s false election conspiracy theories.

“The mission of ODNI is to identify and counter foreign threats, not to import election denialism into the Intelligence Community,” Warner said. “Americans have every reason to fear that this administration is once again eroding the wall between our intelligence agencies and domestic elections.”

David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.

The Dictatorship

In Springfield, Ohio, Trump’s rhetoric becomes a grim reality

Published

4 hours ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

In Springfield, Ohio, Trump’s rhetoric becomes a grim reality

Jun. 27, 2026, 4:07 PM EDT

Having lived with Donald Trump’s infamous and baseless insult against them — “they’re eating the dogs … they’re eating the cats” — Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are bracing for a far bigger injury.

More than 10,000 Haitians across Ohio and hundreds of thousands more around the country who had Temporary Protected Status now face the imminent prospect of deportation. The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration can halt those legal protections for Haitians and Syrians and resume forcing them to leave.

Justice Samuel Alito’s opinionfor the court’s Republican-appointed majority curbed the power of courts to review government decisions to terminate protections under the TPS program.

“They side with him on everything that he says or everything that he does, which means there is no check and balance,” said Viles Dorsainvil, a Haitian TPS holder and executive director of the Haitian Support Center in Springfield, a town Trump catapulted into a maelstrom of misinformation about immigrants when he was running to retake the White House in 2024.

“The president has that freeway in front of him to do whatever he wants to do, unfortunately, and most of the time to a minority group of people,” added Dorsainvil, who has lived in the United States since 2020.

In a country rife with political and economic instability, Haitians returning from the U.S. are in danger of being killed or kidnapped, said Dorsainvil’s colleague at the Haitian Support Center, Rose Thamar Joseph.

“There is this perception in Haiti that if you are living here in the United States, you have money, so you are living your good life, so sending people back to Haiti will put them in real danger,” Joseph said.

Staying in the U.S. without legal status creates a different crisis.

“We received calls this morning from people saying that, unfortunately, starting on July 1, they won’t be able to go to work anymore,” Joseph said Friday.

Joseph predicted that families would be separated during the deportation process.

“We know that there will be separation,” she said. “A lot of those parents with TPS … they have kids who were born in the United States, so we know that it will happen, not for everybody, not for all the families, but it will happen,” she said.

The oncoming nightmare for the Haitian community in Springfield was, in many ways, predictable after Trump notoriously targeted them on the debate stage against then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the fall of 2024.

“They are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said without a shred of evidence, greatly amplifying an unfounded rumor that had been confined to smaller corners of social media.

That rhetoric continued Trump’s track record of racist languageparticularly when it comes to immigration, including during his first White House stint when he referred during his first to Haiti and other majority non-white nations as “shithole” countries.

Dorsainvil argued that the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday proved his beliefs are institutionalized, calling it “a validation of all those bad rhetorics of the president against us.”

Asked by MS NOW if those with TPS should expect to be deported, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said, “Well, of course. If you no longer have status in this country, then you’re supposed to be deported.”

Miller, the architect of the administration’s immigration policy, went on to single out the Haitian population by name.

But the outcry against the court’s ruling blurs party lines in Ohio.

“Changing the immigration status of these individuals is not in the best interest of the United States nor Ohio,” Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said.

Springfield’s Republican mayorRob Rue, has denounced Trump’s misinformation about his community as dangerous from the start.

“Many of the individuals affected by this decision are our neighbors, coworkers, business owners, taxpayers, and parents,” Rue said in a statement after the ruling came down. “They contribute to our local economy, support our schools, strengthen our neighborhoods, and have become part of the fabric of Springfield.”

Alex Tabet is a reporter for MS NOW.