I shuddered when I read this article from Hannah Natanson in real time, in December, which was the first I really took notice of the name behind a flood of important reporting on Trump’s attack on the government. A chronicle of the hell Trump had subjected government workers to, it was a great article.

Signal message sent Feb. 23

I think about jumping off a bridge a couple times a day.

Signal message sent March 21

I want to die. It’s never been like this.

Signal message sent May 21

I have been looking at how much I am worth alive, as opposed to dead.

But in telling that story, Natanson told how she protected the anonymity of her sources.

Colleagues told me to join our internal tip-sharing Slack channel #federal-workers, then talk to Washington economics editor Mike Madden, who was coordinating our DOGE coverage. I started copying and pasting tips there as fast as I could, scraping out identifying details. Then, phone buzzing every few seconds, I speed-walked around the building until I found Mike. Skipping with grace over the fact we’d never met (and I didn’t work for him), he ferried me to every corner of the seventh floor: Meet the team covering technology. The team covering national security. The White House editors. Eventually, The Washington Post created a beat for me covering Trump’s transformation of government, and fielding Signal tips became nearly my whole working life.

[snip]

After consulting Post lawyers, I developed what we felt was the safest possible sourcing system. If I planned to use someone in a story, I asked them to send me a picture of their government ID, then tried to forget it. I kept notes from reporting conversations in an encrypted drive, never writing down anyone’s name. To Google-check facts and identities, I used a private browser with no search history. I retitled every Signal chat by agency — “Transportation Employee,” “FDA Reviewer,” “EPA Scientist” — until the app, unable to keep up, stopped accepting new nicknames. (Then I started moving contacts into two-person group chats, which I could still rename.)

Three weeks later, FBI seized the phone on which all those contacts were labeled with aliases. When they searched her home, she was logged into the Slack on which she had shared all those leads with colleagues. They seized the encrypted drive on which she had her notes.

In short, she publicly revealed where to look for everything else, and three weeks later, Trump agents came and took it all.

(For the record, this is not the only time I’ve shuddered about publicly disclosed operational security lately; far too many profiles on anti-ICE activism describe how their Signal trees are structured and what tools the central dispatcher uses to keep everything flowing.)

And that’s one of many reasons the unusual openness of the indictment against Aurelio Perez-Lugones — the pretext FBI used for raiding Natanson — terrifies me.

As I laid out here, I find it exceedingly unusual that DOJ laid out precisely what information got leaked and its classification level, described to be the following stories to which Natanson contributed.

• This October 31, 2025 story about Venezuela asking Russia and China for security assistance included Top Secret/SCI/NOFORN information.
• This November 11, 2025 story about potential targets in a US attack included Secret/NOFORN information.
• This December 8, 2025 story about Maduro’s plans includes Confidential information.
• This January 6, 2026 story tallying 75 dead in Trump’s invasion includes Secret information.
• This January 9, 2026 story about an unsuccessful attempt to find an escape for Maduro includes Secret/NOFORN information.

Even as a legal issue, identifying the specific information that got leaked and how sensitive it is only serves to further compromise the information. It undermines prosecutors’ ability to prove that DOD (which is obscured in the indictment but which Pam Bondi freely identified) was trying to protect this information, a necessary element of the offense.

Seizing two MacBook Pros, an iPhone, a portable hard drive, her Garmin running watch, and a voice recorder from a journalist (while also sending WaPo a subpoena) when you already had proof that Perez-Lugones sent her classified information is more than overkill.

It’s the Garmin that really gets me. According to the declaration Natanson submitted in a bid to get her stuff back, she only communicated with Perez-Lugones via Signal or phone. The FBI is trying to obtain evidence about other people she met with, face-to-face.

So I want to consider what else DOJ might be looking for.

Did Perez-Lugones obtain proof of what Trump is really pursuing in Venezuela?

First, Garmin watch aside, it’s possible that Perez-Lugones took things that did not show up in Natanson’s reporting, yet, that DOJ is attempting to remove from her custody. The only thing classified at TS/SCI that Perez-Lugones is accused of leaking is a report based on an intercept of a letter Nicolás Maduro sent to Putin.

In mid-October, [Ramón Celestino] Velásquez, the transportation minister, traveled to Moscow for a meeting with his Russian counterpart, according to Russia’s Transport Ministry. According to documents obtained by The Post, he was also meant to deliver the letter from Maduro to Putin.

In the letter, Maduro requested that the Russians help boost his country’s air defenses, including restoring several Russian Sukhoi Su-30MK2 aircraft previously purchased by Venezuela. Maduro also asked for assistance overhauling eight engines and five radars in Russia, acquiring 14 sets of what were believed to be Russian missiles, as well as unspecified “logistical support,” according to the documents.

Maduro emphasized that Russian-made Sukhoi fighters “represented the most important deterrent the Venezuelan National Government had when facing the threat of war,” according to the U.S. records.

Maduro asked Russia for a “medium-term financing plan of three years” through Rostec, the Russian state-owned defense conglomerate. The documents did not specify an amount.

The documents also indicate that Velásquez was slated to meet with and deliver a second letter to Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov. They do not state whether or how the Russian government responded to Maduro’s outreach or whether the trip took place.

Nevertheless, DOJ successfully defeated an initial release order by citing all the TS/SCI information in Perez-Lugones’ brain.

Perez-Lugones is similarly positioned as the defendants in these cases: he has had decades of access to TS/SCI systems and, like these other defendants, what he knows is not erased simply because his access to the information ended. Further, like these defendants, because Perez-Lugones has “transcribed” and “photographed” highly classified information, it is likely he can recall it. Therefore, as the Government argued at the detention hearing, Perez-Lugones will be able to disseminate this information if released.

There is one document, classified Secret/Rel to NATO and identified as Document E, which Perez-Lugones allegedly photographed and sent to Natanson, that the indictment does not describe to be incorporated in this story including an account of an effort by the Pope to arrange an off-ramp for Maduro, the last of Natanson’s stories before his arrest.

On Christmas Eve, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, second-in-command to the pope and a longtime diplomatic mediator, urgently summoned Brian Burch, the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, to press for details on America’s plans in Venezuela, according to government documents obtained by The Washington Post.

[snip]

For days, the influential Italian cardinal had been seeking access to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the documents show, desperate to head off bloodshed and destabilization in Venezuela. In his conversation with Burch, a Trump ally, Parolin said Russia was ready to grant asylum to Maduro and pleaded with the Americans for patience in nudging the strongman toward that offer.

[snip]

In his Dec. 24 meeting with Burch, according to the documents obtained by The Post, Parolin said Russia was prepared to receive Maduro. He also shared what is described in the documents as a “rumor”: that Venezuela had become a “set piece” in Russia-Ukraine negotiations, and that “Moscow would give up Venezuela if it were satisfied on Ukraine.”

The materials Perez-Lugones shared are consistent with Trump having a quid pro quo with Russia, a swap of Venezuela for Ukraine. If he had obtained proof that he may or may not have shared, it might explain the need to seize any shred that he shared; but if so, the raid has nothing to do with national security, but instead with covering up Trump’s secret alliance with Russia.

A potentially related story describes that State was going to blow $50 million protecting Greenland’s polar bears, basically slush in support of Trump’s bid to conquer the entire hemisphere.

Is DOJ targeting specific whistleblowers, including Chuck Borges?

Remember how I noted that the new disclosures about DOGE’s unlawful access to Social Security data referenced an ongoing investigation?

“SSA first learned about this agreement during a review unrelated to this case in November 2025.”

WaPo was not the first outlet to report on Borges’ allegations of grave compromise of Social Security data, allegations that were partly confirmed by these recent disclosures; NYT was.

But WaPo, including Natanson, was the first outlet to interview Borges after he quit in October.

“Prove me wrong,” Borges told The Washington Post last week in his first media interview since his disclosure. “The only way I feel like we’re going to get to that point is with continued public interest, continued public pressure, and I’m willing to lend my name.”

Although he had until now avoided talking to the media, Borges told Post reporters that he had decided to go public to draw attention to his concerns about the safety of Americans’ data and his hope that the agency will share documentation to prove that the data wasn’t put at risk. At his Maryland home — decorated with photos of his family, his prolific board game collection and Navy paraphernalia — the self-described “data geek” said his fears while working at Social Security had kept him up at night.

And that interview linked several earlier WaPo articles, including an earlier Natanson one.

At the same time, the agency was exploring plans to lay off workers, and others were getting reassigned to jobs they were unfamiliar with or choosing to voluntarily leave. In those especially taxing days, Borges said, he saw co-workers breaking down in meetings or while sitting at their desks.

“I cannot count how many employees I saw cry, and that is at all levels of the agency, from executives downward,” Borges said.

In the summer, Borges first heard from colleagues that DOGE had transferred sensitive data to a cloud environment. He began to ask questions but got little information in response.

In Natanson’s Christmas Eve piece, she cited both a Social Security employee (the interview with Borges cites multiple others who back Borges’ claims, one of whom is Leland Dudek) and an IRS official who sent data to DOGE.

A Social Security employee: “Every piece of our data may be at the mercy of unscrupulous people.”

An IRS staffer: There is “a team figuring out how to get … data sent to Doge,” referring to the U.S. DOGE Service, Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team.

In short, DOJ may have raided Natanson in attempt to target a different whistleblower, one who went through formal channels to reveal an unprecedented assault on US person privacy.

Natanson’s sustained reporting of Trump’s dragnet

But it’s not just the Social Security data.

An earlier Natanson story described DOGE’s effort to effectively merge a bunch of massive government databases.

The U.S. DOGE Service is racing to build a single centralized database with vast troves of personal information about millions of U.S. citizens and residents, a campaign that often violates or disregards core privacy and security protections meant to keep such information safe, government workers say.

The team overseen by Elon Musk is collecting data from across the government, sometimes at the urging of low-level aides, according to multiple federal employees and a former DOGE staffer, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The intensifying effort to unify systems into one central hub aims to advance multiple Trump administration priorities, including finding and deporting undocumented immigrants and rooting out fraud in government payments. And it follows a March executive order to eliminate “information silos” as DOGE tries to streamline operations and cut spending.

At several agencies, DOGE officials have sought to merge databases that had long been kept separate, federal workers said. For example, longtime Musk lieutenant Steve Davis told staffers at the Social Security Administration that they would soon start linking various sources of Social Security data for access and analysis, according to a person briefed on the conversations, with a goal of “joining all data across government.” Davis did not respond to a request for comment.

Natanson was part of a story revealing the Postal Service is involved in the migrant dragnet.

The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has quietly begun cooperating with federal immigration officials to locate people suspected of being in the country illegally, according to two people familiar with the matter and documents obtained by The Washington Post — dramatically broadening the scope of the Trump administration’s government-wide mass deportation campaign.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service, a little-known police and investigative force for the mail agency, recently joined a Department of Homeland Security task force geared toward finding, detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional reprisals.

She revealed the effort to use Medicare data to target immigrants.

Trump immigration officials and the U.S. DOGE Service are seeking to use a sensitive Medicare database as part of their crackdown on undocumented immigrants, according to a person familiar with the matter and records obtained by The Washington Post.

And another describing how DOGE was using HUD data for a similar purpose.

At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, for example, officials are working on a rule that would ban mixed-status households — in which some family members have legal status and others don’t — from public housing, according to multiple staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution.

These are some of Trump’s most egregious privacy violations, potentially the cornerstone of vast new data mining on Americans, including both immigrants (the ostensible focus) and citizens (clearly implicated in Borges’ allegations). If the Trump Administration believes Natanson has details about the real purpose of these data grabs, it might explain their raid of her devices: to prevent her from building on this reporting.

Relatedly, a Natanson story that should have generated more attention described how Trump is effectively trying to usurp DC’s policing sovereignty by boosting the numbers of Park Police.

The U.S. Park Police is seeking to double its ranks in D.C. over the next six months, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post detailing plans of an expansion that would bolster the federal agency’s role in the Trump administration’s crime crackdown in the nation’s capital.

[snip]

The Park Police website now boasts of a $70,000 hiring bonus, promotion potential and a “streamlined, virtual hiring process with quick turnaround.”

This was a one-off story. But it felt to me when I read it like a parallel to Stephen Miller’s creation of a national paramilitary force at ICE (the expansion of which has also been featured in Natanson reporting).

Like Natanson’s reporting on Trump’s data violations, this could reveal underlying plans for authoritarian power grabs.

Elon Musk’s corruption

Or maybe DOJ is after Natanson’s more general reporting on DOGE.

A number of her stories last year described how DOGE served to benefit Elon Musk and implant Musk’s businesses even more centrally in the Federal government.

One story last year (also relying on court filings and interviews) described all the agencies that Musk gained access while overseeing DOGE.

The Post reviewed court documents and interviewed dozens of current and former U.S. government officials to determine which records DOGE aides were able to examine while Musk led the unit. Reporters also spoke with experts and business competitors about how that information, if improperly shared with Musk’s companies, could give them a competitive advantage.

DOGE aides, for example, were given near-blanket access to records at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, court records show. The agency holds proprietary information about algorithms used by payment apps similar to ones that Musk has said he wants to incorporate into his social media platform, X.

NASA employees told The Post that DOGE aides were able to review internal assessments of thousands of contracts, including those awarded to rivals of Musk’s SpaceX rocket company, which has already won billions of dollars of government work and is competing for more. (Among SpaceX’s competitors is Blue Origin, a company owned by Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post. Blue Origin and its executives did not respond to requests for comment.)

And Labor Department employees said in court filings that DOGE aides were allowed to examine any record at the agency, which holds files detailing dozens of sensitive workplace investigations into Tesla and other Musk companies as well as their competitors.

Another broke the story of how State was pushing foreign countries to adopt Starlink (which would put Musk at the center of a global surveillance network).

Less than two weeks after President Donald Trump announced 50 percent tariffs on goods from the tiny African nation of Lesotho, the country’s communications regulator held a meeting with representatives of Starlink.

The satellite business, owned by billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, had been seeking access to customers in Lesotho. But it was not until Trump unveiled the tariffs and called for negotiations over trade deals that leaders of the country of roughly 2 million people awarded Musk’s firm the nation’s first-ever satellite internet service license, slated to last for 10 years.

[snip]

A series of internal government messages obtained by The Post reveal how U.S. embassies and the State Department have pushed nations to clear hurdles for U.S. satellite companies, often mentioning Starlink by name. The documents do not show that the Trump team has explicitly demanded favors for Starlink in exchange for lower tariffs. But they do indicate that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has increasingly instructed officials to push for regulatory approvals for Musk’s satellite firm at a moment when the White House is calling for wide-ranging talks on trade.

She was part of a series of stories on Starlink’s bid to replace an existing FAA contract.

So some of her many sources on DOGE last year exposed the corruption at the core of DOGE.

Obviously, DOJ could have targeted Natanson for no other reason than they want to go after all 1200 Signal contacts she had.

But whatever the reason, or reasons, the Aurelio Perez-Lugones seems like a pretext, a convenient national security case DOJ can invoke to try to identify thousands of whistleblowers, including whistleblowers who have firsthand evidence about the increasing authoritarianism of the Trump power grab.

Listen on Spotify (transcripts available)

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DOJ has indicted Aurelio Perez-Lugones, the government contractor accused of leaking classified information to the WaPo journalist whose house it searched after arrested Perez-Lugones, Hannah Natanson.

The indictment is written in a way that may harm the case, and that should make it easier for WaPo to demonstrate the overkill of the searches — which include 2 MacBook Pros, an iPhone, a portable hard drive, her Garmin running watch, and her voice recorder — targeting Natanson.

After all, DOJ has screen shots of Perez-Lugones allegedly sending Natanson photographs of classified documents. They don’t need anything from her.

Plus, they do something I’ve never seen in a classified leak case: identify all the stories in which the purportedly still-classified information appears. The indictment reveals:

• This October 31, 2025 story about Venezuela asking Russia and China for security assistance included Top Secret/SCI/NOFORN information.
• This November 11, 2025 story about potential targets in a US attack included Secret/NOFORN information.
• This December 8, 2025 story about Maduro’s plans includes Confidential information.
• This January 6, 2026 story tallying 75 dead in Trump’s invasion includes Secret information.
• This January 9, 2026 story about an unsuccessful attempt to find an escape for Maduro includes Secret/NOFORN information.

Prosecutors won’t have a hard time proving that Perez-Lugones accessed and shared classified information.

They may well have a problem proving that it is defense information — something always left to the jury to decide. After all, none of this is about protecting the United States. Rather, it’s about invading a foreign country, one whose riches Trump has already starting awarding to his closest buddies and campaign donors.

They certainly will have a problem proving that they were keeping it secret, because they just told us what the classified information is, which informs everyone a great deal of how it was collected.

Just this week, DOJ refused a series of offers by WaPo to limit what DOJ accessed to stuff included in a subpoena DOJ also served on WaPo, though Magistrate Judge William Porter granted WaPo’s request to halt any searches of the material until after he weighs the newspaper’s bid to get everything back.

11. On January 16, 2026, the parties conferred twice regarding the seized data. I proposed a process that would involve the government’s preservation of the seized data, returning the seized property, and reviewing only the identified responsive material, if any, identified by counsel for The Post and Natanson.

12. After conferring with the unnamed, more senior officials, the government called back that same day and rejected this proposal, but agreed that it would not begin a substantive review of the seized data pending further discussion on Tuesday, January 20, 2026. The government asked us to provide a list of attorney names on January 20 to assist in a privilege review. I explained that a list of attorney names would be an inadequate basis to screen privileged information because editors at The Post, as opposed to reporters, generally request and receive legal advice from attorneys and then disseminate that advice to reporters.

13. I also explained that a list of attorney names would not address the significant First Amendment privilege issues and asked for further time to discuss these complex issues before the government commenced its review. The government expressed doubt that the unnamed, senior officials would agree to a proposal designed to protect the significant First Amendment interests at stake.

14. On January 20, 2026, I explained that we were still concerned about the First Amendment and attorney-client privilege issues and proposed that the government return the seized property and that we would treat the devices as covered by the grand jury subpoena served on The Post.

And all the while they had a clear proof of Perez-Lugones sharing information.

I’ve been struggling all morning (in truth, for the last several days) to describe the kaleidoscope of ways Trump is destroying rule of law.

It perhaps is best conveyed by a contrast between all the shit going on in Minnesota and what happened in Chicago yesterday.

Pam Bondi personally went to Minnesota to secure arrests of people who protested the Southern Baptist Church whose minister, David Easterwood, also runs the local ICE department. When the FBI went to arrest one of them, Nekima Levy Armstrong, they arrested the wrong Black woman at first. Then the White House posted a meme of her, slopped up to make it look like she was crying, and falsely accusing her of rioting.

The AI slop will make it far easier for Levy to argue this is vindictive.

DOJ had tried to charge Don Lemon, but a Magistrate Judge refused to charge someone who was legitimately covering a protest. And now Lemon, who is represented by the omnipresent Abbe Lowell, is taunting Bondi.

The Magistrate also refused to approve FACE charges against those already arrested.

The arrest of the wrong Black woman was not the only case of mistaken identity in Trump’s invasion of Minnesota this week. It turns out that the out-of-state ICE goon who shot Venezuelan Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis thought he was chasing one guy, Joffre Barrera, who is 5’2″ and 128 pounds, but was instead chasing Alfredo Alejandro Aljorna, who is 5’7″ and 172 pounds.

Both have short brown hair.

Sosa-Celis and Aljorna might have a decent argument that they had no way of being sure the ICE goon they’re accused of assaulting was actually ICE. According to the arrest affidavit, the ICE goon who shot Sosa-Celis was not wearing anything that identified him as Police — his badge and gun were on a tactical belt. His buddy, who was wearing a tactical vest identifying him as police, was not yet present when the assault and shooting happened. And they were driving an unmarked vehicle. Except both defendants talked to the cops without an attorney and confessed to knowing the goons were ICE.

Meanwhile, the backlash surrounding the snatching and use as bait of five year old Liam Conejo Ramos has gotten so bad that Stephen Miller is openly defensive.

The problem for Miller is that, at least according to the attorney for Ramos’ family, they are in the US legally, seeking asylum.

Marc Prokosch, the family’s attorney, said they came to the U.S. in 2024 from Ecuador, had an active asylum case and the preschooler should never have been detained. He said the family was properly following immigration rules and [his father, Adrian] Conejo Arias had no criminal history.

The Ramoses are not the only ones. The local Fox affiliate describes that there have been more habeas petitions filed this year than the entirety of last year.

Immigration attorneys say they are filing habeas corpus petitions to secure the release of detainees at a “dizzying pace.”

The petitions are constitutionally protected challenges to the government’s arrest of an individual. However, the Trump Administration previously suggested suspending those rights.

In the context of immigration enforcement operations, the petitions ask federal judges to either release individuals from custody or grant them a bond hearing in immigration court.

By the numbers: According to case data reviewed by the FOX 9 Investigators, 312 immigrant detainees had sought habeas relief through Jan. 21.

The number of petitions filed in the district court of Minnesota in the first three weeks of the year has already surpassed the 260 filed in the entirety of 2025.

Meanwhile, Minnesota Public Radio tracked down the people on one of DHS’ “worst of the worst” lists — the people DHS falsely claimed to have snatched during this invasion. Most had been released into ICE custody before the recent invasion.

[M]ost of the people on the list had been immediately transferred to ICE custody at the end of time served in Minnesota prisons.

All of those transfers happened before ICE began its surge of operations in Minnesota on Dec. 1, 2025, with some even happening years before.

[snip]

[F]ive of those individuals were transferred from prison custody to ICE custody between August and late November. Three others were handed over to ICE custody by DOC during previous presidential administrations.

And one person was offered to be released to ICE custody more than a decade ago and ICE declined, according to the DOC.

[snip]

[O]ne was put on probation for 30 years and was never in DOC custody, and two were only ever in the custody of county jails and never in DOC custody.

One person on the list was convicted of crimes in Ohio, where it is unclear if they had an ICE detainer, which is a request to hold a prisoner for another agency. The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction did not respond for a request for information on the matter.

Click through for the list, including the guy released to ICE in 2012 — and share this widely.

Relatedly, Bulwark and a local ABC affiliate reports that the guy DHS claimed they were looking for when they snatched a senior Hmong-American in his underwear was already in prison.

Sometimes, the “worst of the worst” — the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s catchphrase for undocumented immigrants with violent criminal records — are exactly where one would expect: prison.

That was the case for Lue Moua, a 52-year-old Laotian man who DHS officials say they were looking for when they instead arrested an elderly U.S. citizen last weekend.

The images of ChongLy Thao’s arrest by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in St. Paul sparked outrage in Minnesota and across the internet.

Several videos show Thao, a U.S. citizen, led out of his home in freezing weather, wearing nothing but his boxers, sandals and a blanket draped around him. Thao’s family alleges the agents did not present a warrant, nor did they ask Thao for identification. He was released shortly afterward.

In a statement explaining Thao’s detention, ICE officials say they were looking for two undocumented Laotian men with criminal records, Moua and Kongmeng Vang, who they say lived with Thao. They also said Thao matched the description of those men.

Family members said they had no knowledge of either and that Thao lived with his son, daughter-in-law and his young grandson.

So where are these men?

Moua, who has felony convictions dating back to 1992 of fifth-degree criminal sexual conduct, kidnapping, and violating a parental custody order, has been incarcerated at Minnesota Corrections Facility-Faribault since Sept. 4, 2024. His expected release date is Jan. 7, 2027.

It’s all bullshit, all the way down.

Contrast that effort to criminalize dissent in Minnesota and claim five year old boys are scary criminals with the most spectacular faceplant yet in Trump’s attempt to gin up criminal cases to justify Stephen Miller’s dragnet, the acquittal of Juan Espinoza Martinez, who was accused of attempting to pay for a hit on Greg Bovino. Jon Seidel describes how the case collapsed after DOJ conceded they could not prove that Martinez had ties to the Latin Kings.

The original criminal complaint cited a “source of information,” now known to be 44-year-old Adrian Jimenez, who called Espinoza Martinez a “ranking member of the Latin Kings.” A Homeland Security press release also called Espinoza Martinez a “Latin Kings gang member.”

But earlier this month, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Yonan and Assistant U.S. Attorney Minje Shin acknowledged they would not try to prove Espinoza Martinez’s gang membership at trial.

That prompted Lefkow to bar gang evidence from the case. She wrote in an order that, “without evidence showing that [Espinoza Martinez] is a member of the Latin Kings or that the Latin Kings instructed [Espinoza Martinez] to send the alleged murder-for-hire information, the prejudicial nature of such testimony outweighs any probative value.”

In an emergency hearing hours after that ruling last week, Yonan told [Judge Joan] Lefkow that “nearly every piece of evidence in this case touches, in some fashion, on the Latin Kings.”

But the trial still kicked off. The feds called only three witnesses Wednesday, who testified over the course of nearly three hours, combined. Then, in closing arguments Thursday, Yonan told jurors that Espinoza Martinez was “angry” about immigration enforcement last fall in Little Village, where he lived.

“He was fixated, and obsessed, with Gregory Bovino,” Yonan told the jury.

Prosecutors told jurors about a message Espinoza Martinez sent over Snapchat to Jimenez in early October. It followed a picture of Bovino and read, “2k on info cuando lo agarren,” “10k if u take him down,” and “LK … on him.”

Jimenez testified that he understood that to mean “$2,000 when they grab him … $10,000 if you kill him … Latin Kings are on him.”

Martinez’ brother explained one piece of evidence DOJ attempted to use against him: a gun that the brother (who has a concealed carry permit) was seeking for himself. And his attorneys emphasized that there was no evidence of an actual hit.

[Dena] Singer told the jury, “the government has failed to prove their case. You know it.”

No money exchanged hands, she said. No weapons were purchased. Social media, she said, “is riddled with things that aren’t true. … with people sending and sharing things.” There was no evidence that Espinoza Martinez intended for the murder to happen, or that he took a “substantial step,” she said.

Ultimately, live coverage of the trial made it sound like Martinez was passing on the chatter from his neighborhood, not plotting a hit himself (and it probably helped frame the case that the informant was seeking immigration protection himself).

As Seidel notes, this marks the 15th case, of 31, that have collapsed in Chicago since the invasion (I tracked the collapse of all the cases from just one day, September 27, here).

Espinoza Martinez is one of 31 known defendants charged in Chicago’s federal court with non-immigration crimes tied to the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation campaign last fall. With Thursday’s acquittal of Espinoza Martinez, 15 of them have now been cleared.

DOJ has pointed to this case, over and over, to claim there’s a real threat against Stephen Miller’s goons, including in their failed bid to get SCOTUS to bless Miller’s deployment of the National Guard to invade Chicago.

An alleged leader of the Latin Kings gang in Chicago is being prosecuted for placing a bounty of $10,000 on the murder of a Border Patrol Chief. Hott Decl. ¶¶ 24; Parra Decl. ¶ 17. These activities substantially interfere with DHS’s ability to enforce federal immigration laws in the Chicago area. See, e.g., Hott Decl. ¶¶ 43-47, 63. And it was clearly erroneous for the district court to discredit or minimize the unrebutted sworn testimony that those acts of violence and threats of violence in fact occurred.

There may well be; the actual Latin Kings may well be seeking to target Bovino (one of the people arrested for ransacking an FBI vehicle in Minnesota is more credibly claimed to be a Latin King). But if they are, then FBI wouldn’t learn of it because they are doing showboat arrests, not investigations.

Which is one of the many points in this compilation of quotes about how Kash Patel is destroying the FBI. Many of these anecdotes have been told anonymously in past reporting, but they are more powerful laid out like this; set aside some time to read this in full. FBI is not chasing complex crime anymore; they’re creating photo ops that please Donald Trump.

Patel directed the F.B.I., which has no immigration-enforcement authority, to support Immigration and Customs Enforcement in conducting raids and making arrests. Field offices began assigning F.B.I. agents and analysts to work immigration shifts, pulling them away from other priorities like counterterrorism, public corruption and white-collar crime.

John Sullivan, former section chief in the intelligence division: We’d been told that when Trump watched footage or saw a picture of a raid, he got mad that he didn’t see F.B.I. raid jackets.

ICE was saying they wanted their teams to commingle with our teams. Tactically, you don’t commingle units that haven’t trained together. My bosses said, If we work on immigration, we use our teams and our case info. They put together a list of people already in F.B.I. files we had concerns about, so we’re not just targeting people over their citizenship status.

They also had to juggle Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, who wanted to ride in our tactical vehicle to do her TV stuff. That makes all the operators uneasy, and it makes them less safe.

And that makes it harder for FBI to do the complex investigations only they can do.

Midwest case agent: I was a grunt agent. I enjoyed trying to take apart large criminal organizations piece by piece.

They relabeled task forces from drugs to immigration and pushed us toward focusing on deportation versus convictions for actual drug offenses.

Unfortunately, what used to be our focus, long-term investigations, are now short-term hits. You hit the guy carrying the bag, not the guy who made the call, because that’s how you drive up the arrest and prosecution numbers. But the guy carrying the bag, you can’t flip anymore, because he’s getting deported.

Because F.B.I. agents are posting up with Homeland Security, citizens think we’re part of ICE, which disrupts other investigations. It used to be that you could sit in front of a house, watching another house, and a lot of the time, people were OK with that. They might help you. Now they’re scared.

All this was unrolling against the background of Jack Smith’s testimony. While there were moments of interest — Smith forcefully explained why Stan Woodward’s attack on Jay Bratt was bullshit, for example — mostly I feel the same way Phil Bump does. Everyone was just performing for the cameras.

There wasn’t much use to the hearing. There’s no actual question to adjudicate. No serious and unbiased observer questions Smith’s objectivity or credibility and no serious observer questions that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election, triggering the riot that overwhelmed the building on Jan. 6, 2021. In effect, then, the existence of the hearing necessarily served to reinforce the falsehood that there was a debate in the first place.

Smith summarized the importance of recognizing reality in his opening remarks.

“The rule of law is not self-executing,” he said. That is, the bounds of the law are real only to the extent that they are respected. Smith, better than most, understands what it looks like when that respect evaporates.

The product of the hearing wasn’t a studious consideration of the validity of his work since, as stipulated above, there was nothing serious to mull over. Instead, the primary output of the hearing was probably a tidy stream of social-media-friendly video snippets. Members of the House (nearly all of whom will soon face primaries or reelection) saw an opportunity to make news and most of them tried.

What this means, in effect, is that the hearing not only didn’t resolve any tension between reality and surreality, it simply dug each side in a little deeper.

Perhaps the most effective moment in the hearing was Jared Moskowitz’ soliloquy, which combined a reminder of all the times the very same Republicans who performed Donald Trump’s assault on Smith’s investigation expressed terror during January 6 itself.

The AI slop the White House released yesterday really embodies what Pam Bondi’s DOJ has become.

Bullshit all the way down.

I have long suspected that one reason Stephen Miller has so much control over Donald Trump right now is he played a big part of getting Trump back on his feet after the Butler shooting, which really (and unsurprisingly) rattled him for weeks. Trump’s return coincided with a particular turn to the fascist.

That’s one reason I find this exchange from NYT’s “interview” with Donald Trump interesting.

He directly tied the security of the bunker-ballroom to some trauma (he had earlier raised it, and sent a valet to get all his ballroom models).  Then they spoke off the record (one of perhaps four times they do so, aside from the call with Colombian President Gustavo Petro).

President Trump

This is a much more important thing to do. So, this is the ballroom right here. It’s beautiful. People love it. It’ll hold — it’s being designed with bulletproof glass, 4 to 5 inches thick. Can take just about any weapon that we know of. I wish I was in it about a little while ago. [Mr. Trump laughs.]

[Mr. Trump speaks briefly off the record.]

Tyler Pager

Mr. President, on the record, you haven’t even been here a year yet, and you’ve made many renovations. Are there other plans for you to make changes?

They came back on the record with a slightly different topic: renovations generally.

From there, Trump discussed a plan to add a second floor to the West Wing, because the roof that’s there now is not used given that long range rifles could hit them.

Tyler Pager

What about at the White House complex?

President Trump

I may do an upper West Wing. This area. Cover it with one floor because it needs more space. It would be —

David E. Sanger

Including the Oval? Or Oval would be separate?

President Trump

No, less. Short of the Oval. If you take the L [shape] —

David E. Sanger

So you’d put it up — there’s a second floor. It’s sort of in the attic.

President Trump

Well there’s a second floor now that was, that was meant to be a park. People don’t use it as a park. Now with long-range rifles, you tend not to use it.

[snip]

Katie Rogers

The L. Is that why you were on the roof that day?

President Trump

Exactly.

Katie Rogers

What were you doing?

President Trump

I was looking at doing office space.

Grandpa Sundown took a diversion to show a picture of Don Jr holding a rattlesnake while wearing flip-flops.

Then Trump brought out one after another model of the ballroom. When David Sanger asked him about its cost, he distinguished between the aboveground portion — the ballroom — from the stuff below ground (which has not been discussed on the record) — the bunker.

The current $400 million cost does not include the bunker.

President Trump

But I said, “Ultimately, they win.” You better be careful. So ready? Don’t take any pictures of this ’cause you’ll scare people. So I started off with a building half of the seats —

[Mr. Trump puts a model for a new White House ballroom on the table.]

— and then it just kept growing and growing, and the money kept pouring in and pouring in. No, no, please. So I started with that — started with this.

[Mr. Trump puts a model of what he said was the smaller, original planned ballroom on the table.]

And I said: “Wow, I’ve got all this beautiful land. I don’t want to waste it.” So I said: “All right. I’ll go a little bit larger.” This would have seat — seated 450 people. So I said, “Let’s go a little bit larger.” So then I said, “Let’s do this.”

[Mr. Trump removes the smaller model and puts another model for the new ballroom on the table.]

Zolan Kanno-Youngs

What’s the updated price tag on all this?

President Trump

Well, every time I make it larger it goes — but I’ll do it for — I’m under budget and ahead of schedule. You know, I’m — I’d build it larger.

David E. Sanger

Are you at about $400 million now?

President Trump

I’ll bring it in for less than — it’s, it’s ahead of schedule and under budget so far.

David E. Sanger

What’s the budget?

President Trump

Under $400 million.

David E. Sanger

And that’s just the aboveground, not —

President Trump

That’s the aboveground.

According to CNN a White House official acknowledged the security enhancements going on underground.

During a recent meeting of the National Capital Planning Commission where the ballroom was discussed, White House director of management and administration Joshua Fisher said broadly that the overall ballroom project will “(enhance) mission critical functionality,” “make necessary security enhancements” and “(deliver) resilient, adaptive infrastructure aligned with future mission needs.”

Fisher was pressed on why the project broke with precedent by starting the demolition process without the commission’s approval — and he indicated that the “top-secret” work taking place underground was the motivation.

“There are some things regarding this project that are, frankly, of top-secret nature that we are currently working on. That does not preclude us from changing the above-grade structure, but that work needed to be considered when doing this project, which was not part of the NCPC process,” he said.

And to the NYT, Donald Trump tied the bunker-ballroom to his own sense of vulnerability.

The most important line in a court filing filed last week that disclosed DOGE was doing far more with Social Security data than then Social Security Administrator Leland Dudek claimed they were in a declaration submitted last March 24 reads, “SSA first learned about this agreement during a review unrelated to this case in November 2025.” (Docket) That, plus this discussion in the opening paragraph, is the only explanation for why the Social Security Administration (SSA) is just finding all this data now.

Based on its review of records obtained during or after October 2025, SSA identified communications, use of data, and other actions by the then-SSA DOGE Team that were potentially outside of SSA policy and/or noncompliant with the District Court’s March 20, 2025, temporary restraining order (“TRO”) (ECF 48). SSA notified the undersigned Department of Justice (“DOJ”) attorneys on December 10, 2025, of its concerns.

Something else led SSA to review DOGE access in October.

And while Debra Katz, the attorney for Social Security whistleblower Chuck Borges, claimed vindication from the disclosure, it’s not entirely clear whether Borges’ disclosures precipitated the discovery. He first came forward in August, two months before SSA appears to have started doing a real assessment of access violations, though he filed a retaliation supplement to his complaint in November.

Importantly, while Borges’ disclosures covered the revelations in last week’s filing, the most horrific of his disclosures pertained to actions that long post-date what is described in the filing, which all happened in March.

Last week’s declaration revealed the following:

On March 3, 2025, a DOGE boy sent an email with an encrypted file to DHS, copying Steven Davis (who then was the operational leader of DOGE) and a DOGE boy formally assigned to Department of Labor. SSA has not been able to break the encryption and so don’t know which 1,000 people the emailed records exposed.

The email attached an encrypted and password-protected file that SSA believes contained SSA data. Despite ongoing efforts by SSA’s Chief Information Office, SSA has been unable to access the file to determine exactly what it contained. From the explanation of the attached file in the email body and based on what SSA had approved to be released to DHS, SSA believes that the encrypted attachment contained PII derived from SSA systems of record, including names and addresses of approximately 1,000 people.

From March 7 through 17, the DOGE boys were sending links through Cloudflare, and SSA has not bothered to ask Cloudflare what got sent or whether it still has the data.

[B]eginning March 7, 2025, and continuing until March 17 (approximately one week before the TRO was entered), members of SSA’s DOGE Team were using links to share data through the third-party server “Cloudflare.” Cloudflare is not approved for storing SSA data and when used in this manner is outside SSA’s security protocols. SSA did not know, until its recent review, that DOGE Team members were using Cloudflare during this period. Because Cloudflare is a third-party entity, SSA has not been able to determine exactly what data were shared to Cloudflare or whether the data still exist on the server.

Contrary to a declaration submitted by Mike Russo on March 12, the DOGE boys had more access than he disclosed at the time.

a. Three DOGE Team members were granted access to a system containing SSA employee records for agency personnel for workforce initiatives.

b. Two DOGE Team members were granted access to a system containing personnel access information to ensure terminated employees were unable to badge into the building or to access IT systems with their PIVs.

c. Six DOGE Team members were granted access to shared workspace that would have allowed DOGE Team members to share data to which the employees had separately been granted access for fraud or analytics reviews.

d. Two DOGE Team members had access to a data visualization tool that could connect to other data sources, which could provide access to PII.

e. Two DOGE Team members had access to additional EDW schemas beyond those reported as of March 12, 2025.

On March 24 (after Russo’s declaration claimed all DOGE was doing was pursuing waste, fraud, and abuse), a DOGE boy signed a Data Agreement with a partisan group attempting to overturn some elections.

[A] political advocacy group contacted two members of SSA’s DOGE Team with a request to analyze state voter rolls that the advocacy group had acquired. The advocacy group’s stated aim was to find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States.1 In connection with these communications, one of the DOGE team members signed a “Voter Data Agreement,” in his capacity as an SSA employee, with the advocacy group. He sent the executed agreement to the advocacy group on March 24, 2025 … but SSA has not yet seen evidence that SSA data were shared with the advocacy group.

From March 26 (two days after the Temporary Restraining Order in question) until April 2, a DOGE boy had access to “ten EDW schema containing” Personally Identifiable Information, but the DOGE boy never used it.

Contrary to some reporting and even more responses to the reporting on this, these abuses are not the most alarming things Borges disclosed, though they are consistent with parts of his whistleblower complaint. In truth, they provide details that make Borges’ earlier disclosures more concerning, such as that in the period when DOGE was sending data through Cloudflare, certain DOGE boys had just asked for and gotten access to the analytical warehouse, EDW.

First, around March 14, 2025, DOGE members requested access to PSNAP and SNAP MI databases for Payton Rehling and Aram Moghaddassi. Information reported to Mr. Borges indicates that proper approval through the Systems Access Management (SAM) system was bypassed for this request, which resulted in four user profiles.35 The Security Access Management process requires a written request for data access that is then either approved or disapproved by a supervisor who provides a written justification for their decision. This process is necessary for oversight of database access approvals.

Additionally, these profiles concerningly included equipment pin access and write access. 36 Equipment pin access means that instead of a user accessing data through a personal pin identifier, which would make the accessor’s actions traceable to a user, an equipment pin is used to verify the identity of a device or piece of equipment before it is granted access to a network or sensitive resources, potentially avoiding the creation of a record tied to a specific user. Giving a user “write access” means that the user will have the ability to edit data.

Granting access to databases that exceed authorized permissions violates the principle of least privilege, which holds that users should have the least amount of access necessary to do their job.37 Information provided to Mr. Borges indicates that on Monday March 17, 2025, the EDW team discovered that users had been given access to data that was reportedly not authorized through normal approval channels.38

34 An Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) is a central, secure system that integrates data from various sources across an organization to support informed decision-making and strategic analysis. It acts as a single source of truth, providing a consistent and reliable view of data for reporting, analytics, and business intelligence.

35 Exhibit 1, p. 5

36 Exhibit 1, p. 5

But these disclosures are entirely separate from Borges’ disclosures about what DOGE did after SCOTUS lifted the TRO in June, which is that in August — so five months after the abuses disclosed last week — SSA DOGE boys including Ed “Big Balls” Coristine with his ties to criminal hackers, created an entire copy of the SSA database and moved it onto a cloud not protected by government infrastructure.

The fact that DOGE was sending things via Cloudflare before that (and that SSA claims to be helpless to determine what got sent) demonstrates the danger of this. But it does not, remotely, address the danger.

As I said in August, when SCOTUS overturned Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander’s TRO in June, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson warned about the skewed harm analysis SCOTUS was adopting.

Just last week, I wrote about the requirements for granting stay applications and, in particular, how this Court’s emergency-docket practices were decoupling from the traditional harm-reduction justification for equitable stays. See Noem, 605 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 5). With today’s decision, it seems as if the Court has truly lost its moorings. It interferes with the lower courts’ informed and equitable assessment of how the SSA’s data is best accessed during the course of this litigation, and it does so without any showing by the Government that it will actually suffer concrete or irreparable harm from having to comply with the District Court’s order.

[snip]

Stepping back to take a birds-eye view of the stay request before us, the Government’s failure to demonstrate harm should mean that the general equity balance tips decisively against granting a stay. See Noem, 605 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 4). On the one hand, there is a repository of millions of Americans’ legally protected, highly sensitive information that—if improperly handled or disseminated—risks causing significant harm, as Congress has already recognized. On the other, there is the Government’s desire to ditch the usual protocols for accessing that data, before the courts have even determined whether DOGE’s access is lawful. In the first bucket, there is also the state of federal law, which enshrines privacy protections, and the President’s constitutional obligation to faithfully execute the laws Congress has passed. This makes it not at all clear that it is in the public’s interest for the SSA to give DOGE staffers unfettered access to all Americans’ non-anonymized data before its entitlement to such access has been established, especially when the SSA’s own employees have long been subject to restrictions meant to protect the American people.

We’re only finding out about these earlier, less abusive violations, because lawyers and long-replaced SSA officials made declarations that have been debunked.

We’re not finding out why SSA launched the review in October or November (though the notice reveals, “A review of the SSA DOGE Team’s actions is ongoing”), and we’re not finding out what they have learned about the more serious violations.

Yesterday, the anniversary of Trump’s second inauguration, may be forever measured in two speeches. Trump gave a long, racist grievance-fest full of false claims denying that he is actively destroying the country.

And Mark Carney gave a speech where he declared the end of American Exceptionalism.

He didn’t describe it that way. Instead, he pitched alliances of “middle powers” that continue to live by the values purportedly enshrined in the Western order, even as superpowers operate nakedly eschewing such limits.

Now, Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture. Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumptions that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security, that assumption is no longer valid. And our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland, has termed value-based realism.

Or, to put it another way, we aim to be both principled and pragmatic. Principled in our commitment to fundamental values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter and respect for human rights.

And pragmatic in recognizing that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner will share all of our values.

So we’re engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be.

We are calibrating our relationships so their depth reflects our values, and we’re prioritizing broad engagement to maximize our influence, given the fluidity of the world at the moment, the risks that this poses and the stakes for what comes next.

And we are no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength.

[snip]

Our view is the middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.

But I’d also say that great powers can afford, for now, to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not. But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what’s offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.

This is not sovereignty. It’s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.

Much of that speech was the speech of a two-time central banker describing how to pursue national gain; indeed, he boasted of how much he had achieved in the last year, a year when Trump has rolled out one after another framework of a deal that served as nothing more than a point of leverage.

But Carney bookended that discussion with an explicit nod to Václav Havel’s Power of the Powerless, an essay that — in 1978, over a decade before the demise of communism — envisioned combatting an ideologically driven empire by simply refusing to affirmatively perform blind obedience to the ideology anymore.

And I’m fascinated by that frame, and not even just because I was once an expert on the essay and the dissident movement from which it arose.

Havel’s essay arose from a debate about how one can be a dissident, a heated debate about the relationship between leader and led (my dissertation argued that Havel was actually on the wrong side of that debate, even while he won the mantle of leadership). But it envisioned that simple non-participation — the ethical act of refusing to affirmatively play the role assigned by ideology anymore — might build power for the powerless.

The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: “Workers of the world, unite! Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moments thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean?

[snip]

This, of course, does not mean that his action has no motive or significance at all, or that the slogan communicates nothing to anyone. The slogan is really a sign, and as such it contains a subliminal but very definite message. Verbally, it might be expressed this way: “I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.” This message, of course, has an addressee: it is directed above, to the greengrocers superior, and at the same time it is a shield that protects the greengrocer from potential informers. The slogans. real meaning, therefore, is rooted firmly in the greengrocers existence. It reflects his vital interests. But what are those vital interests?

Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan “I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient; he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, “Whats wrong with the workers of the world uniting?” Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology.

Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position and their inglorious modus vivendi, both from the world and from themselves. It is a very pragmatic but, at the same time, an apparently dignified way of legitimizing what is above, below, and on either side.

Carney’s speech — the speech of the two-time central banker — barely scratches at what this ideology is, without which his reliance on Havel makes little sense.

It might be generally described as the fiction within the UN and World Trade system that permanent Security Council members ever adhered to the rules-based order.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

Carney’s statement about this fiction certainly included China…

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

But this is obviously (in the paragraph following from the rules-based order one) directed at Donald Trump and the security he has destroyed in the last year.

This fiction was useful, and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

In truth, I’m not sure the frame borrowed by Havel — at least as adopted in this speech by the two-time central banker — entirely works. Carney is not so much newly asserting that the world order no longer works. Trump, and especially, Stephen Miller already asserted that. As such, Carney’s assertion of a rupture is of little value; what matters are the strategy discussions of a two-time central banker on how to respond.

Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships. Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. They’ll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty, sovereignty that was once grounded in rules but will increasingly be anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.

But the reason why Canada and the other middle powers put up with the US in the last two decades — the period he addresses, the period I addressed here — is that the US broke the rules a lot, with invasions, with torture, abusing its hegemonic financial position to avoid consequences for the crash, but rarely got called on it, because the US also kept shipping lanes secure, security guarantees it now refuses to abide by itself.

I’m not sure whether Carney envisioned more, envisioned costs Trump will pay for having disavowed American Exceptionalism. Those costs may be primarily born, internalized, by Americans who have yet to understand.

Thanks to NYT’s sane washing, most people didn’t notice how nutso Trump was about Greenland until he sent his batshit note to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre the other day.

Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT

But Trump said more about his own fragile psyche in the interview that NYT sane washed. Donald Trump didn’t just describe his aspiration to own Greenland as necessary for his own personal psychology.

David E. Sanger

Why is ownership important here?

President Trump

Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document, that you can have a base.

David E. Sanger

So you’re going to ask them to buy it?

Katie Rogers

Psychologically important to you or to the United States?

President Trump

Psychologically important for me. Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I’ve been right about everything. [my emphasis]

He also described — while explaining why he no longer had a good relationship with Zohran Mamdani — his Venezuelan invasion as a psychological success.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs

Do you still have a good relationship with Mamdani?

President Trump

Well, I did, but [Mamdani] hit me sooner than I thought. I thought it would take him at least a month. I mean, he hit me on Venezuela.

Tyler Pager

What did he — what did you say to him?

President Trump

He didn’t. We didn’t talk about it. Oh, yeah, we did. He called and said: “I just want to let you know. I’m going to come out against —”

Zolan Kanno-Youngs

He called you beforehand?

President Trump

Uh, he called me after it was done, after this incredible military, financial and psychological success. He called me to say that, respectfully, I disagree with what you did. And I said, “Give me a reason why.” And I didn’t feel he had a reason, but he disagreed nevertheless. I would say it was politics more than anything else. Although I think it’s bad politics.

I think it’s been one of the very successful — it’s been one of the greatest military success — nobody’s ever seen anything like it. We attacked a fort with thousands of people and soldiers in that fort. You know, that was built there. It was built as a safe house with sealed doors and everything else. [Mr. Trump makes a sound like an explosion.] It was like they were paper. [my emphasis]

And he viewed it as a psychological success against the background of Jimmy Carter’s failed attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages, Operation Eagle Claw, a failure that became the impetus for modernizing US Special Forces.

Trump explicitly raised the Carter failure in response to Katie Rogers’ question about what he was thinking as he watched the operation.

David E. Sanger

Did you watch either by video —

President Trump

I did. I was, I saw it.

David E. Sanger

What — what did that feel like? You were down at Mar-a-Lago?

President Trump

It’s like watching a movie, except you’re — it’s a little bit, you know — look, you don’t know if —

Katie Rogers

Are you worried when this is happening, while you’re watching? Or what is going through your mind?

President Trump

Yeah, I’m worried that it ends up being Jimmy Carter disaster that destroyed his entire administration.

And then — after an extensive discussion with Sanger about whether the Eagle Claw failure caused Carter’s election loss that year (neither mentioned Ronald Reagan’s interventions with Iran) — Trump returned to Eagle Claw in response to a Sanger attempt to understand Trump’s “Remote Control” occupation of Venezuela. This came in a passage where Sanger, suffering from normalcy bias, attempted to probe how Trump planned to impose order on Venezuela (Trump had earlier responded to a Tyler Pager question, in one of the very few pieces of real news in the interview, that he would be running Venezuela “much longer” than a year).

Trump didn’t want to talk about occupation; he wanted to talk about which of his quick strikes was the most important.

David E. Sanger

Each one of those, sir, was a one-off, you know, attack, where you could attack and then retreat. You are now in the middle of an occupation —

President Trump

But let me ask you a question: Of the four things that we talked about —

David E. Sanger

A remote control.

President Trump

— and I did other stuff — which is the most important? Al-Baghdadi, Suleimani, this one or the Iran nuclear attack?

David E. Sanger

I think people would probably disagree on that, but I think a lot of people would argue that anything that set back Iran from getting a nuclear weapon may have been the most important.

President Trump

I would say. And yet this seems to get more — more interest in this one than the other three.

Sanger attempted to return to the question of occupation, but Trump didn’t realize at first that Sanger is talking about the occupation, not just the quick strike.

David E. Sanger

But this has got more complication for you —

President Trump

Very complicated.

David E. Sanger

Because you’re going to have years —

President Trump

Oh, I see, you mean future complication.

David E. Sanger

— future — you’re going to have years in which you’re going to have to —

Tyler Pager

You said it’s going to be more than a year.

David E. Sanger

Yeah, you’re going to have to decide: Am I sending in troops?

[Mr. Trump speaks briefly off the record.]

Tyler Pager

Mr. President, on the record, just the —

[There is cross-talk.]

Whatever got said off the record, it distracted from Sanger’s focus on the occupation, and Pager returned to issues better understood as Trump’s psyche: his confidence, his boasts (repeated elsewhere in the interview, including to explain the huge budget deficits he caused with tax cuts) that he single-handedly rebuilt the military in his first term.

Tyler Pager

On the success of the Maduro operation. Does it mean — give you confidence? Or does it mean you’re going to pursue future military action against Mexico or Colombia or other countries in the Caribbean?

President Trump

No, but it — I didn’t need confidence. I have a lot of confidence in my people, in my military. I built the military. Remember this: Our military, when I took over in my first term, was a mess. I rebuilt the entire military, and now I’m doing it even more so. So, our military’s great. And more importantly, we’re the best soldiers.

Sanger persisted, imagining that Trump, who has never studied a day in his life, studied other occupations before deciding to do his Venezuela occupation on the cheap.

David E. Sanger

Did you study some other occupations? Japan, Iraq, others?

President Trump

Yes, yes. I studied, I studied —

David E. Sanger

And what — what lesson did you draw from that, that we should know —

President Trump

That it’s highly risky.

David E. Sanger

— for Venezuela?

President Trump

That’s what I do.

David E. Sanger

OK, so —

President Trump

I looked at — I looked at some of the attacks. I studied the Carter attack. It was a disaster. I would have never done it that way.

It took Sanger some time before he figured out Trump can’t even conceive of the occupation. Trump was still talking about the quick strike attack and contemplating how it could have ended like it did for Jimmy Carter, in ignominy.

David E. Sanger

You were talking about the attack. I was asking about the occupations that followed —

President Trump

You know, they had — they had a — they had a sandstorm. Did you know that? And they decided to go forward. We would go back, and let’s hit it three days later. They wanted to go forward, and they said, keep going. Helicopters don’t work well in the sand.

Karoline Leavitt

Sir, do you want to show them the renovations?

And that’s when Karoline Leavitt, who had been trying to end the entire interview, instead distracted Trump, like one would a toddler, with a topic she knows he loves, his renovations.

Here’s your binky, Donald.

NYT did a grave disservice by sane washing this interview; indeed, Trump betrayed his fundamental vulnerability elsewhere in the interview.

Because what it shows is that Trump is literally like a toddler knocking over the Monopoly board because he’s frustrated with the rules. No matter how Sanger attempts to normalize it, Trump’s foreign policy is not (as Sanger fancies) a normal second term investment in legacy.

Rather, Donald Trump is invading sovereign foreign countries, without even the ability to consider the years-long aftermath, out of a psychological need.

Mr. EW and I are closing on our 25th wedding anniversary in a few months.

Yeah, us!

I raise that not because I’m expecting you all to start shopping silver (that’s what I’m supposed to buy anyway, right? Mr. EW insists it’s power tool anniversary again anyway).

I say that as a way of conveying that, in a literal sense, I have been married to Europe for (effectively) the entirety of this century.

Sure, I had an affinity before that. In a Czech class in Prague in 1997 , for example, on a day when the other American was absent, the entire class told me I seemed like a European and why didn’t I just move. Without a beat, one of them said, “But you stay there and fix it for the rest of us.” I can’t tell you how deeply I felt (and feel) an obligation to fulfill that order.

And so I think of where we go from here, both in the larger effort to defeat Trumpism, but more specifically in a week when Europe contemplates what to do about the Greenland crisis, I’m cognizant what a shitty hegemon the US has been in this century.

Three of the four things that gave Trump a foothold, in my opinion, were failures in this century (the fourth is the legacy of slavery and the organized political violence that replaced it).

The other three, though, are the War on Terror, the financial crisis, and social media. (COVID was the final catalyst, I think; having moved during the height of COVID, I can’t express how much worse the US dealt with it than much of the EU, and now Trump is using the aftermath of his own jerry-rigged system — COVID fraud — as his excuse to invade Minnesota.)

I had been thinking this anyway. As we optimistically imagine things we would need to do recover from Trump, I think the US should simply reset the computer to 2000 (preferably before Bush v. Gore), and start over again. Don’t spend 20 years creating new terrorists in response to a terrorist attack. Don’t expand emergency and executive power beyond all recognition, in the process foreswearing America’s rickety Cold War claim to be an exceptional nation. Don’t bail out bankers who destroyed the global economy and, especially, wiped out the wealth of broad swaths of the population. And sure as hell don’t demand austerity in response, a betrayal of the post-war consensus that staved off the kind of malaise we’re seeing drive extremism. And whatever you do, do not grant the banksters’ counterpart, the techbros, their own chance to remake the world, mainstreaming far right extremists in the process. I feel like the coming AI collapse may be social media’s crisis point, and sadly, the techbros have prepared for it by implanting David Sacks in the White House.

Thinking in these terms does not provide immediate solutions. Reminding EU ministers how much of today’s economic malaise and immigration scapegoating arose from American failures doesn’t provide a solution. But it does provide one possible frame, one that can exploit increasing global animosity towards Trump, as a scapegoat.

Mark Carney got elected on a wave of animosity to Trump and he is not the only one.

There was a Defense One report on the National Security Strategy — not matched by any other outlet and therefore of uncertain provenance — that nevertheless haunts me. It disavows the inexpensive power projection of hegemony by imagining American hegemony as nothing more than American domination.

The full NSS also spends some time discussing the “failure” of American hegemony, a term that isn’t mentioned in the publicly released version.

“Hegemony is the wrong thing to want and it wasn’t achievable,” according to the document.

In this context, hegemony refers to the leadership by one country of the world, using soft power to encourage other countries to consent to being led.

“After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country,” the NSS states. “Yet the affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests.”

I don’t think that’s right at all. Whoever wrote this, for example, seems to misunderstand how fragile an invasion of Venezuela without regime change can be — and importantly, how much worse Venezuela will be if, instead of attempting to reign in Maduro’s mafia state, instead blesses it. (In reality, America’s failures started before my designated reset date, when the US believed Shock Doctrine was a good way to cure communism rather than foster mafia states.) I don’t think the person who wrote that “Hegemony is the wrong thing to want” has considered how many advantages the dollar exchange has given the US. I don’t think the person who wrote, “Hegemony is the wrong thing to want” has thought through all the ways that coercion is more likely to backfire.

America was a piss poor global policeman, but the alternative we’re facing down now is worse for the US and worse for much of the world.

And if Donald Trump wants to embody those failures, providing a ready political response, well then, he asked for it.

Donald Trump has abdicated America’s role as a hegemon.

Well, okay then.

However else the rest of the world responds, they (we) should keep in mind that we can reject the underlying choices that created Trump as a symptom.

Listen on Spotify (transcripts available)

Listen on Apple (transcripts available)