Millions of people across the country are set to attend No Kings rallies this weekend, and it appears to have Trump and his allies alarmed. In recent days, they’ve tried to paint the planned peaceful protests as anti-American and equivalent to terrorism.
Millions of people are set to attend No Kings demonstrations this Saturday, Oct. 18, to push back against President Donald Trump’s autocratic power grab. And MAGA is afraid. They are rushing to recast the planned day of peaceful protest as anti-American and tantamount to terrorism.
Also this week: where Trump’s retribution campaign and his domestic military deployments stand.
Jacob Knutson, reporter
We report what others won’t. As millions prepare to protest at No Kings this Saturday, MAGA is working overtime to silence them. We’re exposing the truth about Trump’s power grabs, retribution campaign, and more. Support Democracy Docket.
Trump’s cabinet officials and congressional allies in recent days have attempted to get in front of the nationwide No Kings day of protest by painting it as a “hate America rally,” in the words of House Speaker Mike Johnson, and attendees as terrorists.
The alarming rhetoric comes as multiple law enforcement agencies, on Trump’s orders, are preparing to investigate and prosecute people or left-leaning groups holding views disfavored by the president. Groups under potential investigation include Indivisible, a progressive nonprofit that’s a core organizer of No Kings events, Reuters reported.
Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible, told me in a statement this week that the GOP’s recent comments on No Kings have been “designed to intimidate, distract and divide, but they will fail.”
“The American people see through these authoritarian tactics,” Greenberg said. “That is why they are coming out for the largest peaceful protest in modern American history on October 18th — the best way to defend our rights is to exercise them.”
Trump’s DOJ indicts Letitia James, has sights set on John Bolton
In its latest political prosecution, the Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) on two trumped-up fraud charges. James forcefully denied the charges and vowed to aggressively fight them.
The indictment, which was signed by Lindsey Halligan, one of Trump’s former personal lawyers turned acting U.S. attorney of the Eastern District of Virginia, accuses James of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution about a home purchase in Norfolk, Virginia.
If convicted, she could face up to 30 years in prison and a maximum fine of $1 million on both counts. However, legal experts have found the indictment lacking clear evidence of wrongdoing and have noted that James has ample evidence to back a dismissal based on selective or vindictive prosecution.
In addition to James, Halligan last month also brought charges against former FBI Director James Comey. In a court filing this week, Comey’s counsel said it plans to file a motion challenging the lawfulness of Halligan’s appointment as interim U.S. Attorney of the Eastern District of Virginia.
John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, could be the next prominent critic of the president to face charges. The U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland may soon seek an indictment against Bolton stemming from a classified records probe, according to MSNBC.
Where things stand on Trump’s Portland and Chicago power grabs
For now, appeals courts have halted Trump’s attempted deployments in Portland, Oregon, and Chicago, Illinois.
Judicial panels for the Ninth and Seventh Circuit Courts of Appeals last week partially stayed lower court rulings by letting Trump federalize members of the Oregon and Illinois National Guard, but barring him from deploying troops in either state.
The panels asserted that allowing federalizations but prohibiting deployments was the best way to maintain the status quo in those states’ legal challenges to Trump’s deployments.
However, the panels gave the federal government a lopsided advantage over the states by greenlighting Trump’s federalizations, as U.S. Northern Command is still organizing and training troops for future deployments in Chicago and Portland.
In response to court orders against Guard deployments, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intensified its aggressive immigration operations in Chicago and its crackdown on protests outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland. The escalations appear intended to provoke and rile up residents already unsettled by the federal government’s actions in their cities.
In a hearing last week, DOJ attorneys did not disagree with a judge’s assessment that the president could deliberately provoke unrest and chaos in a city and then use that turmoil as justification for deploying the military.
Dive Deeper: Trump’s terminally online DOJ could be killing its cases
Senior DOJ officials’ outspoken public remarks on social media and media appearances could jeopardize ongoing litigation by giving defendants legal ammunition to challenge charges, my colleague Jim Saksa reports.
Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights who tweets or shares upwards of 100 posts a day, has been a key example of the DOJ’s slipshod approach to extrajudicial statements.
Through her posts, Dhillon has repeatedly commented on active cases and attacked the judiciary by accusing federal judges of lying and conducting “lawless” legal assaults on the U.S. government.
Former DOJ attorneys and legal experts described Dhillon’s public comments as highly unusual and said she’s likely in violation of the rules of professional responsibility that govern the conduct of all lawyers.
Already, lawyers are using extrajudicial statements from top DOJ attorneys and senior Trump officials against the government, including in serious criminal matters like Luigi Mangione’s murder trial.
No Kings day is here. Thousands of communities will mobilize en masse this Saturday, Oct. 18, for the second national day of protest since the start of Trump’s second term. More than 2,500 events are planned across all 50 states. Find one near you with this map. And after you attend, please send us your pictures!
Odds and ends
Another judge says government violated court orders: A GOP-appointed federal judge ruled that the Trump administration violated a court order prohibiting FEMA from withholding funds from states that do not comply with Trump's immigration policies.
Bondi pressures Facebook: Attorney General Pam Bondi said that after “outreach” from the DOJ, Facebook removed a page used by Chicagoans to report sightings of federal immigration agents in their city. Bondi's announcement came after years of Trump and his allies accusing the Biden administration of violating the First Amendment by coercing platforms into censoring content.
Los Angeles declares emergency over Trump raids: Los Angeles County declared a state of emergency over the Trump administration’s immigration operations. The declaration allows the county to financially assist residents affected by the raids.
Quote of the week
This week’s quote comes from George Packer’s latest Atlantic piece on the struggle to love one’s country — or even find it worthy of redemption — when it has failed to live up to its own ideals and when American patriotism has been so corrupted by the MAGA movement.
“I don’t want to stop believing in my country’s essential decency. I don’t want to conflate America with one president, one party, or both parties. I want to feel, as [Walt] Whitman did, that America and democracy are inextricable; and, as [John] Dewey did, that democracy makes us agents who can always act to better our country and affirm our self-respect.”
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