FACE OFF, LINES DRAWN, WISDOM FOR A PRISONER

Judging by many of the letter writers to local newspapers, it seems that many of our Santa Cruz Countians assume that the USA is still a democratic republic — a view taken for granted for too long. Those writers praising President Trump’s one-year accomplishments, including DOGE’s tidying up the ‘deep state’ by firing workers which then necessitated call-backs of employees to right the ship of state — hardly a cost-saving maneuver. Closing the border and arresting the “worst of the worst” is a joke as Proud Boys/ICE hooligans attack, arrest, and kill US citizens, never to be considered a proud moment in our history. Invading Democratic Party controlled states and cities with National Guard troops and large contingents of ICE goons purportedly to ‘control crime’ is only a cover for political harassment. ‘Drug boat strikes’ with no proof of criminality, and killing survivors struggling in the water is a violation of the ‘rules of war’!? What should we think about a deranged, senile, grifting, narcissistic dictator who is untrustworthy about keeping his finger away from the red button on the doomsday football if the Epstein files begin to become too incriminating?

Isaac Asimov once warned that one of the dangers of a democracy is that for some, ‘democracy’ translates to “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” If we persist in this direction we might one day wake up without a democracy, and finally realize that our persistent disregard for the careful and reasoned cultivation of the truth plays right into the hands of a dictator. Bertrand Russell is quoted as saying, “First, they fascinate the fools. Then, they muzzle the intelligent.” This brings up the farcical case(s) of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort being arrested for reporting on a Minneapolis church congregation’s protest against their pastor. The Trump administration has used the FACE Act in the charges, but the act itself was written, being passed in 1994, with a very specific purpose of protecting those who seek abortions without restricting First Amendment-protected speech. The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances resulted after a string of attacks on reproductive care facilities and providers across the country; but, Trump is twisting its purpose to chill dissent by prosecuting two independent journalists for the crime of reporting, even though the supposed crime was a start-to-finish livestream on the protest from an organizational meeting and its conclusion at the Cities Church in St. Paul.

Allegations by federal prosecutors is that Lemon and Fort approached the part-time pastor, whose day job is running the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, in ‘close proximity’ as they oppressed and intimidated him with questions. Shocking! What reporters won’t do to get to the truth! US Attorney Pam Bondi interprets their actions as violations of the FACE act, which has a provision focused on houses of worship, despite the fact that the act protects ‘expressive conduct (including peaceful picketing or other peaceful demonstration) from the jeopardy of prosecution. A federal magistrate and an appellate court, both refused to issue a warrant for arrests, interpreting the act as it was written, so Bondi’s Justice Department convinced a grand jury to indict the pair. In viewing the video of the protest, it’s plain that the two journalist were not interfering, obstructing, or intimidating attendees that would violate the FACE Act, regardless of the poignancy of their questioning — it’s what journalists do.

This is only one of the indicators which means a closer watch on the 2026 midterms is necessary, a Trump warning shot across the bow in which a sitting president is willing to use federal law enforcement as a secret weapon to silence his critics. This is the playbook of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Turkey’s Erdogan, and Russia’s Putin where they have arrested journalists, intimidated the opposition, and consolidated power — a line that separates democracy from autocracy. “The past weeks have seen an escalation in ICE enforcement that should terrify anyone who cares about due process,” says John Byrne of Raw America. “Reports emerged from multiple cities of immigration agents conducting questionable searches, agents entering homes without probable cause, detaining individuals based on nothing more that suspicion. This is not law enforcement — this is state-sanctioned intimidation.” Byrne goes on top say, “And where is the mainstream media in all this? Largely silent. Or worse: normalizing. Major networks don’t treat this as the incredibly damaging threat to our democracy that it is. It’s just part of their daily broadcasts, and some have stopped pushing back entirely. When autocracy creeps forward, it relies on a press that’s either too intimidated or too distracted to sound the alarm. Cruelty is the point. Punish the opposition and reward the loyal. This is governance by vendetta.”

So, using two dozen federal law enforcement officers to arrest a single journalist is not only apprehending a suspect — the message is that no journalist is safe from retribution in America, in which case we may as well crumple up the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and kick them to the curb along with Don Lemon. Trump has hated Lemon from his political beginnings, since Lemon was on his case from the start. And besides, a gay, Black, independent mainstream journalist with no corporate backing is the perfect victim for retribution. The absurdity in this whole episode is that the charges were announced by the Department of Homeland Security, and not the Justice Department. Important to note, as reported by NPR, two other reporters were arrested for covering the protest — Trahern Jean Crews and Jamael Lydell Lundy, both Black. A quote attributed to Nelson Mandela seems relevant for our time: “Minds that seek revenge destroy states, while those that seek reconciliation build nations. Walking out the door to my freedom, I knew that if I didn’t leave all the anger, hatred and resentment behind me, I would still be a prisoner.” Words of wisdom for Prisoner Trump?

Perfect for the occasion, satirist Andy Borowitz writes: “Hoping to calm nerves after his government arrested reporters Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, on Friday Donald J. Trump reassured the staff at Fox News Channel that he does not consider them journalists. ‘It’s true that I’m engaging in a systematic attack on the First Amendment rights of journalists,’ he told Fox employees. ‘But obviously none of that applies to you.’ Offering further comfort, Trump added, ‘I would never have hired Pete Hegseth if I thought he was a journalist.’ In a sentiment widely echoed by his colleagues, ‘Fox & Friends’ co-host Steve Doocy responded, ‘Mr. President, we weren’t really worried.’ At the White House, press secretary Karoline Leavitt revealed that Trump had sent a similar message of reassurance to CBS News chief Bari Weiss.”

Last week Trump launched yet another criminal investigation into the 2020 election by sending his FBI to search the Fulton County Georgia election center, confiscating boxes of envelopes, and raising another red flag as we look toward the midterms. The biggest red flag during the raid was the presence of Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard — not a ceremonial visit by any means. She was messaging that Trump’s political appointees are now embedded in law enforcement operations, personally overseeing investigations that align with the administration’s enemies list — political persecution with a federal badge, with justice in the rear view mirror. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told CNN’s Dana Bash he was unsure of the purpose of Gabbard’s visit to Fulton County, saying that, “She’s an expert.” Who knew that Trump University even offered a degree in election integrity to insure free and fair elections? Of course, Blanche said he believes Trump was not involved in the decision toward this action, though the president was quoted as saying, “Investigators got a signed judges order in Georgia and you’re going to see some interesting things happening.” Things like redactions?

Reuters photographer Elijah Nouvelage released a shot of Gabbard, clad in a dark jacket and a baseball cap, speaking on her phone outside the Fulton County election office, spurring Democrats to call for her to testify about the record search. The search was conducted pursuant to a warrant seeking 2020 election records authorized by US Magistrate Judge Catherine Salinas. The Deputy AG called it a “criminal investigation, tightly held under law. It’s a criminal investigation, and that’s how we’re proceeding,” Political activist Greg Palast says the real agenda behind the FBI raid is just a legal excuse for “storm trooping.” He writes, “This is NOT, as the media seems to think, about Trump’s attempt to prove he won the 2020 race, as if he’s some political Captain Ahab trying to chase the Moby Dick of 2020 revenge.” Palast believes that it’s all about 2026 and 2028, advising us to look at the map of Fulton County — the heart of ‘Blacklanta,’ with Atlanta being the electoral heart of Georgia.

Palast goes on to call Georgia “the swingiest of swing states,” and if the GOP fails to cut down on the Black vote in Atlanta, they lose the crucial seat now held by Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff — leading to a 2028 loss of the White House if they don’t suppress the vote in Fulton County. Fulton was the fulcrum of Trump’s loss in 2020, spelling a doomsday for MAGA in 2028, all because of voting drop-boxes. African-American voters are under such rigid rules, with fewer polling places which result in long lines on Election Day, that early voting has become the norm, with over one million ballots being cast in drop-boxes in the Fulton-Atlanta area in 2020. As a result, Governor Brian Kemp signed the infamous SB202 bill, his opening shot in the war against early voting — especially in secure drop-boxes which were reduced in number by 77%, and early voting days cut from 60 to only 7. To make matters worse, voters who can only vote after their workday were out of luck, as the boxes were sealed up at night in state office buildings.

In 2022 the new restrictions reduced mail-in ballots cast by 83%. Conspiracy theorists convinced MAGA — through their slippery documentary, ‘2000 Mules,’ that 2000 Black men were paid $10 each to stuff drop-boxes with tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots, targeting Fulton County. Lack of evidence didn’t sway the MAGA Mob, even though every drop-box had a video camera to prevent wrong-doing, with videos being available for public examination. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation proceeded to arrest alleged Black ballot box stuffers statewide, only to find that the accused were innocent, legal voters. The state of Georgia, in a recount failed to find any forged ballots! Joe Biden can claim that early voters were key to his 2020 election success, and voter suppression in 2024 led to Trump’s victory. After the 2020 election, over 20 Red States passed laws eliminating or restricting drop-boxes, citing the ‘evidence’ of the ‘2000 Mules’ documentary.

Palast feels that Democrats don’t get the importance of early drop-off votes, especially when it comes to Black and student communities, but the GOP certainly gets the message. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says that had he not gone to court to stop Houston from mailing out absentee ballots to voters, “Donald Trump would have lost Texas,” Houston’s population of Black voters being the largest in any American city. Palast sees Attorney General Bondi as saving her job by suppressing early voting, and saving the GOP from the wrath of an angry electorate, especially as she demands that Minnesota hand over its voter rolls. Bondi’s seizure of Minnesota voter files has to do with the restoration of more trickery — the return of ‘Interstate Crosscheck,’ a purging program that was once ruled illegal, but is now back in operation. ‘Crosscheck’ in 2016 was key to Trump’s first election, costing almost one million voters their registrations prior to the election according to Palast’s investigation as seen in Rolling Stone magazine.

Miles Taylor on his Defiance blog, writes that a few weeks ago Trump openly said he wished he had seized the ballots in the 2020 election, having “authority to do so.” Taylor says this is not the case, since he “helped write the executive order” to which the president referred in 2018 — Executive Order 13848. Trump and his cronies believe the president has the power to intervene in elections, even to the point of seizing voting machines or ballots. Taylor says, “I co-drafted the order alongside experts from DHS, DOJ, the Intelligence Community, and other agencies. The central idea was to make it easier for a president to impose real consequences on foreign actors who interfered in US elections. NOT to revisit vote counts. NOT to rummage through ballot boxes. And certainly NOT to allow a president to deploy the military against local election infrastructure because he didn’t like the outcome.” Taylor goes on to say that Trump was annoyed with being presented the executive order, not wanting to sign it, probably because he didn’t want to punish Russia for its help in his election success.

But now, Trump is conveniently reinterpreting the order as an “all-powerful election snooping tool.” Taylor wants us to understand that the order resulted from foreign interference in 2016 to make it easier for the executive to impose sanctions on foreign actors meddling in our elections — NOT to confer domestic law-enforcement authority; NOT to override state and local control of elections; NOT to authorize seizure of voting machines by the National Guard, or anyone else. The order stresses the need to “maintain an appropriate separation between intelligence functions and policy and legal judgements,” emphasizing insulation from political bias. It explicitly states that nothing creates new rights or benefits or alters existing legal authorities — certainly no new right for presidents to go rummaging about in ballot boxes. So the president wishing to do something like seize ballots is only an admission he wishes to make an illegal act and pretend the law would sanction doing so.

Senator Mark Warner is alarmed that Gabbard’s presence during the raid is either because she believes that some foreign intelligence nexus justifies her being there, or she’s dragging the intelligence community into a domestic political stunt to legitimize conspiracy theories. Miles Taylor believes her skulking about in a baseball cap means she didn’t wish to be seen, and that a Congressional oversight committee should announce an investigation immediately, calling Gabbard to explain her presence and under what directives she was acting. Since the Constitution places administration of elections with the states, the raid could be a violation of state law, and state and local prosecutors are responding by announcing action by Fight Against Federal Overreach, a national coalition of district attorneys seeking to hold federal officials accountable when they exceed their lawful authority.