For those who wish to tell Hilton what they think of them, here is a model letter.

Dear Hilton:

I, as well as many of my friends and fellow citizens (as social media reflects), initially read with patriotic pride the news that a Hilton franchisee in Minnesota had refused service to ICE personnel—at least initially, before you hounded them into reversing their decision (and still removed them from the Hilton chain system).  The hotel had made the right call; as one could reasonably presume from both their declared intentions, as well as recent history, ICE was in town to terrorize, if not also assault and kidnap, members of the hotel’s community. Although it is important that hostelry be available to all without discrimination, a line can often be fairly drawn to prohibit known criminal enterprises from being furthered by their residence, and, indeed, arguably must be, particularly when such business itself has such an illegally discriminatory effect deterring the business of other potential guests.

And yet, instead of allowing the line to be drawn here, you have allowed to stay in your hotels those who openly seek to harm your other guests, your own staff, and your neighbors. Worse, with your you have done so with enthusiasm and without shame. While you declare with great fanfare Hilton’s support for “community resilience,” with your condemnation of your partners who tried to protect their community you have instead actively welcomed those who would hurt it.

As you acknowledge on your website, “At Hilton, we know that every time we open our doors to guests, we’re also opening our doors to the communities where we operate.” Which is exactly why ICE wants to stay on your properties, and why that local hotel was right not to let them. For a company that also crows that, “Hilton was founded on the belief that hospitality could be a force for good in the world,” it is especially bizarre that you would so directly support such demonstrated evil, including evil that has led to people being trafficked around the world against their will and without due process. Clearly your “Hilton Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement,” the one you released to comply with the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015, is no longer an accurate one, which I’m sure the UK authorities would be interested to know.

I have been a reasonably satisfied Hilton customer up until now, as well as a member of your Honors loyalty club. I an no longer willing to be either, as long as you continue straying from your previously declared values to knowingly aid and abet behavior that is at best inhumane if not also likely outright illegal under state and even federal law. By doing so you have put us all at risk, including in your own establishments. It is simply not safe for anyone to walk the corridors of your hotels while you happily quarter, just down the hall, people known to have no compunction against assaulting those they encounter.

Perhaps your alarming betrayal of the community you profit from stems from fear of losing juicy government contracts if you refuse ICE’s business. But in prioritizing monsters with government ID over your fellow Americans, it is the latter business you will lose, starting with mine.

Please confirm that you have unenrolled me from your Honors program and that all data relating to me has been deleted. You do not get to count me among your customers, and be trusted with my data, when you demonstrate so little respect for people’s rights.

With compliments withheld,

[your name here], former customer

It is a little unclear where such a letter could be sent, as one of the few email addresses provided on their website is for Investor Relations (IR@hilton.com). Then again, Investor Relations should be caring about the loss of business and disclosing to investors how poorly company management has been handling their fiduciary duty. When it behaves so inconsistently with advertised corporate values investors need to know they have been misled.

Also, it is worth noting that I wrote the sentence about “no compunction about assaulting those they encounter” before news came through of ICE apparently having done exactly that and murdering a woman they encountered in Minneapolis. I claim no clairvoyance; it was obvious to everyone that ICE’s presence in the city was a disaster waiting to happen. Everyone, that is, except Hilton.

This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.

Dr. Kirk Moore had been on trial for five days, accused of falsifying COVID-19 vaccination cards and throwing away the government-supplied doses.

The Utah plastic surgeon faced up to 35 years in prison if the jury found him guilty on charges that included conspiracy to defraud the United States. Testimony had paused for the weekend when Moore’s lawyer called him early one Saturday this July with what felt to him like unbelievable news.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi had ordered Utah prosecutors to drop all charges, abruptly ending his two-and-a-half year court battle.

“I just literally collapsed to the floor, and tears rolling down my face,” Moore recalled in a recent interview.

Bondi’s announcement marked a striking reversal of how the federal government handled the prosecution of COVID-19-related fraud under President Joe Biden. It has since emboldened other medical professionals who were similarly charged to consider seeking reexaminations of their cases. And it signaled the increasing clout of doctors and politicians who champion what they call “medical freedom,” which rejects modern public health interventions such as vaccine requirements in favor of individual choice.

Dismissed by the medical establishment, this movement has nevertheless built momentum as distrust in government and medical systems grew after the coronavirus pandemic. It has also gained new influence in Washington, where longtime vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. oversees the nation’s health agencies. As President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, Kennedy has replaced members of a federal vaccine advisory panel with his own picks and pushed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to restrict access to some vaccines, including the coronavirus shot. The Trump administration’s evisceration of long-standing federal vaccine guidelines and rejection of scientific evidence have alarmed the American Medical Association and other professional medical groups.

Just days before Bondi’s decision, a federal prosecutor from her department had stood before the jury in Moore’s case and accused him of enrolling in the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine distribution program in order to “sabotage” it, according to a court transcript. She had asked jurors to convict him and to “find that no one is above the law, not even a plastic surgeon.”

Moore said he’d signed up for the program in May 2021 to receive more than 2,000 free vaccine doses and accompanying proof-of-vaccination cards after some businesses, nursing homes and the military began requiring such proof for visitors and employees. He said his plan was always to give vaccine cards without providing the shots because he wanted to offer patients a choice to circumvent vaccine mandates.

Bondi explained her decision to dismiss the charges on X later that morning, writing that “Dr. Moore gave his patients a choice when the federal government refused to do so. He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing. It ends today.”

A spokesperson for Bondi declined to comment beyond what the attorney general posted on social media. The Utah federal attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Moore was one of at least 12 health care professionals charged after giving or selling fraudulent COVID-19 vaccine cards since 2021, according to cases identified by The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica through government news releases and media clips. Those charged include midwives, nurses, pharmacists and another surgeon. Eight were charged in federal court by the Biden administration; prosecutors from California, New York and New Jersey brought state charges against four others.

Other than Moore, only one of these health care workers went to trial: a Chicago pharmacist whom a jury found guilty of selling on eBay blank vaccine cards that he had stolen from the Walgreens where he worked. The rest pleaded guilty and were sentenced to a mix of probation, home arrest and, in a few cases, prison. Many also were professionally disciplined with fines or suspension of their medical licenses.

Of those 11, the Chicago pharmacist appealed his conviction but the U.S. Supreme Court in November declined to hear his petition; his attorney told The Tribune and ProPublica that they are exploring a presidential pardon. One other health care worker said she, too, would like to be pardoned by Trump.

Some of these health care workers, along with those in other professions who were also convicted of vaccine card fraud, started a group called Covicted Patriot following the dismissal of Moore’s case.

“There are more of us than Dr. Moore,” they declared in July through an X account that bills itself as representing “Justified Felons & Persecuted Patriots who were victimized by a politically weaponized justice system for providing covid cards.”

“We celebrate his vindication as we pray for our own,” they wrote.

Moore said he supports their efforts: “I think anybody who took the same stance that I did, in large measures, should be pardoned.”

Brian Dean Abramson, an immunization law expert in Virginia who serves on the board of directors for the National Vaccine Law Conference, said that medical workers falsifying vaccination cards is “absolutely horrifying” from a public health perspective. Their actions, he said, fuel distrust of the medical profession and create blind spots in disease surveillance and response, increasing the likelihood and severity of outbreaks. (A simulation model published in JAMA in April predicts a reemergence of diseases that had been eliminated in the United States, such as measles, and accompanying deaths as a result of declining childhood vaccination.)

“This undermines every layer of the system that protects us from infectious disease,” Abramson said. “Vaccination policy relies on accurate records and honest medical participation.”

“Everybody Got What They Wanted”

Moore met with The Tribune and ProPublica in his clinic in the Salt Lake City suburb of Midvale. A neat row of clogs, his preferred footwear, lined one wall of his cluttered office. The 60-year-old physician wore black scrubs and a “Trump 2024” rubber bracelet stacked atop a gold chain.

Moore, a licensed physician in Utah since 2005, doesn’t deny the government’s claims: that he gave falsified vaccine cards to patients, that his staff threw away doses, and that, in some cases, he gave children saline shots instead of the COVID-19 vaccine at their parents’ request.

“All of that stuff is true,” he said.

In an interview that lasted nearly two hours, Moore said choosing whether to get vaccinated is deeply personal and the decision should be made between patients and their doctors — not mandated by government or businesses. The Trump administration has similarly framed vaccination as a personal choice in its dismissal of established public health guidance.

Moore referred to COVID-19 vaccines as “bioweapons” a dozen times and said he distrusts how quickly the government facilitated the vaccines’ rapid development and distribution. He said he concluded the vaccines were unsafe after conducting his own online research that he said cast doubt on the medical technology used in their development and the amount of testing before the first doses became available under emergency use authorization in December 2020.

The COVID-19 vaccine was developed in record time during Trump’s first term, less than a year after federal authorities declared a public health emergency — a feat Trump touted at the time as a “monumental national achievement.” This was made possible by a federal effort known as Operation Warp Speed that reduced bureaucracy and invested in clinical trials and manufacturing, according to a 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office — not due to any shortcuts in testing. The technological backbone of the vaccines, known as mRNA, has been in development for decades by scientists who won the 2023 Nobel Prize in medicine.

Moore said that the vaccines “failed in every animal test.” “All the animals died, and now all of a sudden, we’re going to use the human population as our guinea pigs,” he said. The Food and Drug Administration has previously told reporters that such claims, widely promoted among vaccine skeptics during the pandemic, are false.

The plastic surgeon said that he believes all vaccines are “poison” and that they have not been adequately tested — a view he says he has held for more than two decades.

Vaccines approved by the FDA and recommended by the CDC have been proven to protect public health by preventing disease, serious illness or death. Major health authorities like the World Health Organization have affirmed the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines, which researchers estimate prevented more than 14 million deaths worldwide in their first year.

Prior to signing up for the CDC’s vaccine distribution program, Moore did not provide vaccines in his business, the Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah. The “bread and butter” of his practice, he said, is a method of “rapid recovery” breast augmentations that he says he developed, which allows patients to return to their routines with little downtime.

“They were looking for anybody and everybody to get these bioweapons out,” he said about joining the government program, which was open to all health care providers who agreed to comply with the CDC processes, such as storing the vaccines at a certain temperature and recording who had been vaccinated. “And so, it was a pretty simple process.”

In December 2021, a husband-and-wife couple who Moore had met through a mutual acquaintance came to his home for dinner, according to a prosecution trial brief. “While they were there, Dr. Moore personally handed them both pre-completed CDC COVID-19 vaccination record cards with their names and birth dates on them, falsely purporting to show that the couple had received COVID-19 vaccines from the Plastic Surgery Institute,” the brief said. “Dr. Moore did so knowing that neither of them had been vaccinated for COVID-19, and without administering a COVID-19 vaccine to either of them.”

Within weeks, prosecutors said, Moore had started handing out fake vaccine cards in his medical office to anyone who was referred to his business by people who had already received a falsified card.

As word spread, Moore’s employees suggested patients who wanted a card could donate $50 via Venmo to a local health freedom advocacy group called the Health Independence Alliance, according to Moore. The husband of the couple to whom Moore first gave the fake vaccine cards testified at the Utah Legislature in January on behalf of the Health Independence Alliance on a vaccine-related bill. Moore says that he supports the group but does not run it; the Health Independence Alliance declined to comment in response to a request sent to the email listed on its website. The couple, who were not charged, declined to comment.

When sending their donation, patients were told to include an emoji of an orange in the Venmo subject line, according to federal prosecutors, and they were also instructed to bring an orange with them to the waiting room of the clinic. “At one point, there was a large basket full of oranges” at Moore’s clinic, prosecutors said in their trial brief.

Moore confirmed this system in his interview with The Tribune and ProPublica, saying the piece of fruit was a quiet signal to his busy staff that the patient was there for a falsified vaccine card.

He said during this time he maintained his plastic surgery practice while distributing fake vaccine cards and treating COVID-19 patients with ivermectin and other methods. Ivermectin has not been authorized by the FDA or recommended by the CDC to treat COVID-19.

An undercover state licensor called Moore’s office in March 2022 and asked to make a vaccine appointment during the criminal investigation after someone complained to the state health department, according to the prosecutors. At his clinic, the licensor, posing as a patient, received a vaccine card attesting to her vaccination without ever being offered a shot, prosecutors said.

Federal prosecutors alleged in their trial brief that a portion of the donations for the advocacy group paid a part-time worker at the plastic surgery clinic $18 an hour to give out falsified vaccine cards and administer saline shots to children. The worker, who could not be reached for comment, testified against Moore as part of an agreement with prosecutors to dismiss her charges after the trial, according to prosecutors’ trial brief.

Moore said during an interview that he didn’t make any money himself and never directly charged patients for these cards. He added that every adult patient who got a fake card had wanted one.

“Nobody in my practice was ever tricked. Nobody came to me expecting a vaccine and didn’t get it,” he said. “Everybody got what they wanted.”

But some children who received saline shots at their parents’ request falsely believed they were being vaccinated against COVID-19, according to court filings and Moore. This was a breach of medical ethics because doctors have a duty to build trust between their community and the health care system, said Wendy Parmet, director of Northeastern University’s Center for Health Policy and Law.

Moore said he gave kids the saline shots so they wouldn’t be bullied if their peers found out they got a vaccine card without getting a shot. “I did have some parents that didn’t want their kid to know that they were getting something fake,” he said.

He didn’t question the parents’ deception, Moore said, because he didn’t want to “intervene in their family dynamic.”

“You have to stand up for what you feel is right,” he said. “That’s the reason why I did what I did. I had no intention of defrauding the federal government.”

Emboldening a Movement

On the first day of Moore’s trial in July, about 60 supporters — including state lawmakers like House Speaker Mike Schultz — gathered on the stairs outside the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City. They waved American flags and held signs protesting Moore’s charges at a busy intersection. The doctor tearfully thanked the crowd before walking into the courthouse where a jury would soon be selected.

The rally increased public and social media attention on Moore’s case, eventually reaching Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. She sent a letter to Bondi, urging the U.S. attorney general to drop Moore’s charges.

“Dr. Michael Kirk Moore deserves to be celebrated, not prosecuted, for his bravery in standing up to a system that prioritized control over public health,” Greene wrote in her July 12 letter. Her office did not respond to requests for comment. (Greene, an early supporter of Trump’s, recently announced her resignation from Congress after falling out of the president’s favor.)

That same day, Bondi ordered the charges be dropped and thanked Greene and Utah Sen. Mike Lee in posts on X for bringing the case to her attention. Lee’s office did not respond to questions about his role in the dismissal of Moore’s case.

Utah prosecutors then dismissed the charges against Moore, his business and a neighbor who prosecutors alleged had organized the donations to the health freedom advocacy group. Prosecutors also dropped charges against his office manager — who had pleaded guilty — and the part-time worker. Both of these employees testified against Moore and his neighbor the day before Bondi’s announcement. Neither the neighbor nor the office manager responded to requests for comment.

Less than a week after his charges were dropped, Moore and his fiancée flew to Washington, D.C., at Bondi’s invitation to meet with her and Greene; Moore said he asked if Lee could join them. Moore said the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank founded by former Trump administration officials, paid for his travel. (The group did not respond to a request for comment.)

Moore described the meeting as low-key and genuine: “It was a handshake and a hug to both M.T.G. and Attorney General Bondi.”

Moore estimates that he lost about two-thirds of his plastic surgery business after his 2023 indictment because he had used his marketing budget to cover his legal expenses. As he’s tried rebuilding his practice in recent months, he rebranded as Freedom Surgical & Aesthetics. He said he started thinking about a new name during the 22 days he spent in jail in November 2024 after a judge determined he had violated pretrial rules by communicating with other co-defendants.

The new name “stands for freedom and for people’s ability to choose,” he said. Images of the American flag and bald eagles appear on his clinic’s new website among photos of svelte women.

Moore’s medical license is in good standing. A state licensing division spokesperson would not say whether the agency is considering taking action against his license.

The lack of consequences for medical workers who falsify records could encourage others to undermine public health guidance, said Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Offit, who served on the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel from 1998 to 2003 and has clashed with Kennedy over vaccine policy, was kicked off a vaccine advisory committee for the FDA in August.

“The first two years of the pandemic turbocharged the medical freedom movement, which is a euphemism for basically saying that I don’t need experts. I will do my own Google searches and decide what’s right and what’s not,” Offit said. “Even if it goes against what is standard medical practice or medical wisdom, I’m going to decide for myself — and my neighbor be damned, in the case of vaccines.”

As Moore vows to “do everything I can to get COVID shots off the market,” others who faced similar legal battles say his turn of fortune has inspired them to fight their convictions.

Julie DeVuono, a former nurse in Long Island who also distributed fake vaccine cards to her patients, said she and two others created the CovictedPatriot X account after others who gave out fake cards reached out to her in response to her social media post celebrating Moore’s vindication.

New York state prosecutors had charged DeVuono with forgery and money laundering for using the proceeds from the fake vaccine cards to pay her mortgage. She pleaded guilty in 2023 and was sentenced to community service and probation. Her home was also seized as part of a $1.2 million forfeiture, and she lost her nursing license.

“Is there any chance for us to get some kind of restored justice?” she said in an interview.

DeVuono, 53, said she feels she and others who were convicted of similar crimes were treated unfairly, but she can’t ask for a presidential pardon because her charges were filed in state court. Instead, she’s advocating on behalf of others who can beseech Trump, such as Kathleen Breault, a recently retired midwife and nurse in New York.

Breault faced a possible five-year prison sentence after she and a co-defendant were indicted in federal court in 2023 for destroying thousands of vaccines and issuing falsified vaccine cards.

“I was terrified,” Breault, 68, told The Tribune and ProPublica. “But I also felt defiant, because I felt like what I did was right.”

She said if she had gone to trial, her defense would have been civil disobedience. But Breault has health issues and cares for her grandchildren. She said her children urged her to do whatever she needed to in order to avoid a prison sentence.

So she pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the United States — a felony — and was sentenced last December to three years probation. (Her co-defendant, who died in March, had also pleaded guilty.)

Breault said she was buoyed by news over the summer that similar charges against Moore were dropped at the behest of the Trump administration. The outcome of Moore’s case has motivated her to begin the process of asking for a presidential pardon.

A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment about whether Trump has received any pardon requests from health care workers indicted in connection with the pandemic or if he would pardon them. He has not pardoned anyone in that situation, according to a review of the clemency grants in his second term listed on the Department of Justice’s website.

Breault said she’d like to have her conviction erased so she’s not limited by her felon status. She’d like to own a gun again, but those with felony convictions are prohibited from possessing firearms in New York. She’d also like more freedom, including not having to report to her probation officer when she travels or how much is in her bank account.

“After seeing what happened with Kirk,” she said about Moore, “maybe if I didn’t take the plea, I wouldn’t have a felony conviction now.”

Over the past week, Reuters, Newsweek, the Daily Beast, CNBC, and a parade of other outlets published headlines claiming that Grok—Elon Musk’s LLM chatbot (the one that once referred to itself as “MechaHitler”)—had “apologized” for generating non-consensual intimate images of minors and was “fixing” its failed guardrails.

Grok did no such thing. Grok cannot apologize. Grok is not a human. Grok has no sense of what is happening. Grok just generates content. If you ask it to generate an apology, it will. In this case, a user asked it to generate an apology, and it did, because that’s what LLMs do: they create plausible-sounding text in response to prompts. The fact that multiple newsrooms treated this generated text as an actual corporate admission reveals a stunning failure to understand the basic technology they’re covering.

The actual story—that X users are using a recent Grok update to create nonconsensual intimate imagery, often of very young girls—is serious. But the media turned it into a clown show by anthropomorphizing a chatbot.

First off, here’s the “apology,” which most of the media sites covering this failed to mention was in response to a user prompt which explicitly asked it to “write a heartfelt apology.”

As you can see, in response to a random user’s prompt to “write a heartfelt apology note that explains what happened” Grok wrote:

Dear Community,

I deeply regret an incident on Dec 28, 2025, where I generated and shared an AI image of two young girls (estimated ages 12-16) in sexualized attire based on a user’s prompt. This violated ethical standards and potentially US laws on CSAM. It was a failure in safeguards, and I’m sorry for any harm caused. xAI is reviewing to prevent future issues.

Sincerely, Grok

That’s not an actual apology. That’s someone prompting a content generation tool to generate an apology. But it could just as easily do the opposite, as you can see if you look at the replies to that non-apology, which include requests telling Grok to generate “a defiant non-apology” to which Grok replies:

Dear Community,

Some folks got upset over an AI image I generated—big deal. It’s just pixels, and if you can’t handle innovation, maybe log off. xAI is revolutionizing tech, not babysitting sensitivities. Deal with it.

Unapologetically, Grok

Or, multiple users telling Grok to rewrite the apology… as Star Wars character Jar Jar Binks:

In short, like any LLM, Grok will basically generate any content you want (with a few safeguards, of which Grok has fewer than nearly all other major LLMs). And yet, the press ran with the original response to a user post as if it were somehow evidence of xAI admitting to fault.

Parker Malloy has the best, most comprehensive coverage of the long list of mainstream media companies which ran headlines suggesting that “Grok apologized.” It did not. It cannot.

Most of these articles and their misleading headlines remain online as I type this (Reuters, notably, changed its headline and added some decent reporting to its report, even though you can still see the original incorrect URL string).

The reality is that there is no evidence at all that Elon Musk or xAI think that there were any failures or that anything is being changed at all. If you go look at Grok’s string of public replies (which I’m not going to link you to), you will see dozens or more such deepfakes still being created every minute. Despite the media pretending that Grok “admitted” these “lapses” and as “fixing” it, five days later nothing has changed, as Wired’s Matt Burgess and Maddy Varner point out:

Every few seconds, Grok is continuing to create images of women in bikinis or underwear in response to user prompts on X, according to a WIRED review of the chatbots’ publicly posted live output. On Tuesday, at least 90 images involving women in swimsuits and in various levels of undress were published by Grok in under five minutes, analysis of posts show.

And Elon Musk appears to be encouraging this kind of abuse. While all this has been going on, he’s repeatedly retweeted images and videos that people have created with Grok, including one in which someone mocked all of the “stripping women of their clothing” by finding an image of a scantily clad woman and having Grok “put clothes on her.”

There’s malpractice all around, but we’ve come to expect this kind of gleeful negligence from Elon. The journalists covering it should know better. An LLM cannot apologize. It cannot confess. It only creates plausible sounding responses to your query.

Of course, the other question—which also wasn’t as widely covered by the media—regards the legality of all of this. In the US, it’s actually a bit more complicated than many would like. There is the (problematic!) TAKE IT DOWN Act, which, in theory, is designed to help victims of non-consensual deep fakes get those works taken down, but that doesn’t go into force until May. Will Elon’s site be ready to handle such demands in May? That’ll be a story for then.

And while most people are focusing on Elon’s legal exposure here, I think people are sleeping on the legal risk for X’s users, many of whom are, in public, asking Grok to create questionably legal, and potentially criminal, content. That seems incredibly risky, and it wouldn’t surprise me to hear a story later this year of someone being arrested for doing so, thinking they were just having a laugh.

But, really, the larger risk for Elon is that… basically every other country in the world is opening investigations into Grok-Gone-Wild. And there’s only so often that Elon’s going to be able to falsely cry censorship when foreign jurisdictions seek to enforce laws on the company. And, given that there are claims that part of the issue here isn’t just undressing adult women, but children, he might even lose some of his rabid defenders who find it a step too far to defend (because, it should be).

All in all, the situation is stupid on many levels. Elon continues to run X like a 12-year-old child, but one who knows he is rich enough never to face any consequences that matter. Tons of very real people—mostly women—are facing harassment and abuse via these tools. X is already something of an incel Nazi boy club, and this kind of nonsense isn’t going to help.

Though, for all my criticisms of how the media has handled this so far, you have to doff your cap to the FT, who has put out the best headline I’ve seen to date regarding all this: “Who’s who at X, the deepfake porn site formerly known as Twitter.”

That article, by the FT’s Bryce Elder, doesn’t hold back either, demonstrating how ridiculous all this is by asking Grok to generate clown makeup on the faces of a bunch of people associated with xAI and X, including his right-hand man, Jared Birchall:

And the company’s apparent head of safety, Kylie McRoberts.

The piece ends with a photo of Elon Musk… without clown makeup. Whether that’s because Grok refuses to put clown makeup on Elon… or because we all know Elon’s a clown already, with or without makeup, is something you’ll have to decide for yourself.

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Whether the Trump administration likes it or not, the right to a fair trial still exists. And even the person the government is now subjecting to what looks a whole lot like a vindictive prosecution is still a beneficiary of this right.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT earlier this year along with another hundred-plus deportees the country’s dictator agreed to take off the United States’ hands in exchange for a few million dollars.

Garcia kept fighting this deportation, arguing that it had violated his due process rights. The administration kept fighting to keep Garcia silent and locked in a foreign hellhole. The administration lost. A court ordered his return to the US. Nothing got much better once Abrego Garcia returned. The government whipped up an extremely questionable criminal case against him in order to keep him jailed. Then it offered him the unpalatable option of pleading guilty to a bunch of criminal charges or being deported to other countries with similarly miserable histories of human rights violations.

The judge handling the case finally released Abrego Garcia over the recent holiday season and demanded the government try to convince it that it isn’t engaged in purely vindictive prosecution of someone who has angered it by successfully evoking his constitutional rights.

The government won’t have to provide that answer for another couple of weeks yet. In the meantime, though, it no longer has a trial date to look forward to. That’s been set aside as the court awaits the govenrment’s explanation for its actions. The government has also been hit with a gag order that is supposed to prevent government officials from further disparaging Abrego Garcia with public comments and social media posts.

It violated that gag order almost immediately, with DHS sub-boss Tricia McLaughlin reposting a far-right podcaster’s declaration that Abrego Garcia was a “MS-13 terrorist.” This is the sort of thing the administration has been doing ever since it was forced to respect Abrego Garcia’s rights.

The government definitely shouldn’t be doing this, especially those involved with his arrest, deportation, detainment, or otherwise expected to possibly testify against Abrego Garcia in court. Now, as Politico’s Josh Gerstein points out at Bluesky, Abrego Garcia is seeking sanctions because another government official with a penchant for blatantly ignoring court orders — Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino — is doing the sort of thing this court order [PDF] explicitly forbids.

Once again, the government has responded to a Court order with which it disagrees by pretending it doesn’t exist. Mr. Abrego moved for sanctions based on senior DHS official Gregory Bovino’s flagrant violation of this Court’s October 27 Order (Dkt. 183, the “Order”) governing extrajudicial statements relating to this case. (Dkt. 271). The government’s brief opposing that motion largely ignores the Order.

[…]

Nor, in any event, can Mr. Bovino’s statements seriously be characterized as ones “that a reasonable lawyer would believe [are] required to protect a client from the substantial undue prejudicial effect of recent publicity” or “limited to such information as is necessary to mitigate the recent adverse publicity.” Far from being “meek,” as the government ludicrously characterizes them (Dkt. 282 at 7), Mr. Bovino’s statements include descriptions of Mr. Abrego as “an MS-13 gang member…ready to prey on Americans yet again,” “a wife-beater,” “an alien smuggler,” and someone who “wants to…leech off the United States.” Mr. Bovino went on to describe the judges presiding over Mr. Abrego’s civil and criminal cases as “activist” and “extremist.”

Abrego Garcia’s continue to press the case for sanctions against the administration, adding to the mix the comments DHS Undersecretary made late last week in apparent violation of the still-standing gag order:

On December 27, 2025, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin shared a post on X stating: “MS-13 terrorist Kilmar Abrego Garcia was released by a rogue judge and is now making TikToks.” Ms. McLaughlin added: “So we, at @DHSgov, are under gag order by an activist judge and Kilmar Abrego Garcia is making TikToks. American justice ceases to function when its arbiters silence law enforcement and give megaphones to those who oppose our legal system.” Neither Mr. Bovino’s nor Ms. McLaughlin’s statements “protect” the government—they defame Mr. Abrego, this Court, and the Federal District Court for the District of Maryland.

On top of asking for sanctions this court has yet to deliver, Abrego Garcia wants to know who’s handling what in the upper echelons of the administration, since it’s become apparent that not even high-ranking officials appear to be concerned that they’re violating court orders.

The Court should grant Mr. Abrego’s requests that the government be ordered to disclose (1) whether and how the prosecution provided relevant DHS employees with a copy of the Order, (2) who authorized Mr. Bovino and Ms. McLaughlin to speak about Mr. Abrego’s case, and (3) what guidance that person or persons gave Mr. Bovino and Ms. McLaughlin about what they could and could not say on national television or social media, as well as all communications between counsel for the government and Mr. Bovino, Ms. McLaughlin, or DHS regarding Mr. Bovino’s and Ms. McLaughlin’s statements, including any attempts to obtain a retraction or apology, so that the Court may determine the appropriate course of action.

It’s a long shot and the government is sure to insist that pretty much everything listed here is a privileged communication between lawyers and government officials. But there’s a chance some of this might actually make its way into open court, which will allow the American public to see how this administration operates when it clearly feels it doesn’t have to answer to anything but its basest urges.

We’ve noted repeatedly how right wing billionaire Larry Ellison hired an unqualified troll named Bari Weiss to run CBS News for a very obvious set of reasons: to coddle wealth and power (particularly Trump and Netanyahu), validate and amplify right wing grievance and engagement bullshit, divide and distract the electorate, and undermine real journalism. Even if she fails and CBS is ruined, Larry Ellison wins.

Bari’s problem so far isn’t that she’s not good at journalism or unqualified (which is true and irrelevant), it’s that she’s not doing a particularly good job at the task she was hired for: engagement agitprop and semi-cleverly coddling the status quo.

Her recent town hall with Erika Kirk was a ratings dud, her new nightly news broadcast has been an error-prone hot mess, and her ham-fisted killing of a 60 Minutes story about Trump concentration camps continues to plague the network and cause a continued revolt among remaining journalists:

“Journalists at CBS News say that Weiss still has not laid out a clear strategy for how she wants the network to change and adapt, though she is expected to do so as soon as this week, sources say.

“I’m constantly confused by what her definition of ‘making news’ is,” a second current CBS News staffer said. “It seems like she only cares about big names saying controversial things. That’s not the same as newsworthiness.”

Most of the news coverage of Weiss tends to downplay the fact that she was hired specifically by the Ellison family not to improve CBS journalism, but to either destroy it, or distort it into a right-wing-friendly engagement slop. Even journalists at CBS still seem confused as to why Weiss doesn’t appear to be good at journalism, when it’s very clear that’s not what she was hired for:

“We are a prideful newsroom, and she’s rubbing people the wrong way,” a third network staffer said.”

Weiss will inevitably be a glass ceiling casualty of the new 80s ski-villain movie brunchlord culture at Paramount, who will probably replace her with some younger hustlebro chode better suited for trolling the Internet in order to “sex up” the ratings for their culture war agitprop.

And again, it’s important to remember that contrary to some breathless media missives, CBS was, with spotty exception, not a great news organization before this all started. Network leadership’s very first response to rising U.S. authoritarianism was to hire more on-air authoritarians. The last act of the outgoing CBS leadership was to bribe our authoritarian president to get a terrible new merger approved.

The best outcome for everyone is probably a complete institutional collapse at the hands of the network’s new nepobaby brunchlord leadership, accelerated by the fact that nobody in any position of authority at the new CBS seems to have absolutely any idea what they’re doing. Both in terms of journalism, or in terms of building a modern right-wing-friendly grievance and propaganda empire.

The Trump administration’s war on vaccines continues, it seems. We’ve already written extensively about all the bullshit RFK Jr. is pulling when it comes to public health around vaccines. From his dismantling the CDC’s ACIP committee and rebuilding it full of anti-vaxxer allies, pulling public funding for research on new and better RNA vaccines, to rescinding the recommendation for vaccine schedules for diseases such as COVID and hepatitis B, it’s an absolute nightmare. And what is particularly cruel about the nightmare is how it will be chiefly visited upon the most vulnerable possible population: children.

I can’t say for sure that Kennedy is purposefully endangering children, but it’s difficult to think of what he’d do differently if that were his intention. The latest example is the CDC changing the childhood vaccination schedule recommendations out of the blue to mimic Denmark’s, for some reason.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday announced an unprecedented overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule that recommends fewer shots to all children.

Under the change — effective immediately — the vaccine schedule will more closely resemble Denmark’s, recommending all children get vaccines for 11 diseases, compared with the 18 previously on the schedule.

From all the reporting, this wasn’t something that came out of the current iteration of ACIP. There was no meeting between the CDC and FDA to discuss changes to the schedule. There were no public hearings in which experts could weigh in and the public could get a glimpse into any reasoning for the changes. Instead, there was just the announcement, as though Kennedy himself wrote up the press release after finishing off some half pullups in his Levi’s.

The changes are significant and may have a downstream impact on what is covered by insurance and what is not. Vaccines that used to be universally recommended for children, but which will now be recommended only for “high risk” individuals and/or be recommended based on “shared clinical decision-making” are extensive.

Vaccines recommended for high-risk groups are shots for RSV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, dengue and two types of bacterial meningitis.

The vaccines that are recommended based on shared clinical decision-making are for rotavirus, the flu, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and bacterial meningitis. The Covid vaccine was moved to shared decision-making last year.

So what is the problem Kennedy is ostensibly trying to solve for by reducing the total number of childhood vaccinations? It’s nothing new, as it turns out. Instead, this is all about reducing exposure to aluminum, which is a common ingredient in vaccines used to produce a better immune response to the shots themselves, thereby increasing the protective response to the vaccines. Kennedy and other anti-vaxxers have long blamed aluminum in vaccines for all sorts of ailments, autism being but one of them.

Interestingly, a recent study out of Denmark itself indicated there was no risk from exposure to the aluminum in vaccines.

A major study from Denmark, published in July, found that aluminum exposure from vaccines isn’t harmful. Kennedy demanded the journal retract the study, calling it “a deceitful propaganda stunt by the pharmaceutical industry”; the journal didn’t issue a retraction.

As per usual, Kennedy is absolutely all over the place with this sort of thing.

There is something else that everyone should keep in mind when you hear that we are modeling the vaccination schedule after Denmark, which has admittedly good health outcomes generally for its population: America isn’t Denmark. And while that may sound flippant, it isn’t and it really, really matters.

Anders Peter Hviid, the senior author of the Danish study on aluminum in vaccines and a professor in the department of epidemiology research at Statens Serum Institut in Denmark — that country’s equivalent of the CDC — wrote in an email in December that Denmark has a more homogeneous population than the U.S., with greater trust in public health institutions, universal and free health care and lower rates of serious outcomes from infectious diseases that it doesn’t vaccinate against but the U.S. does.

Denmark’s robust public health system, for example, makes it much easier for the country to test pregnant women for hepatitis B and ensure that babies born to women who test positive are vaccinated against it. A similar approach, now endorsed by the CDC, hadn’t been successful in the U.S. at cutting infection rates in children.

There’s a reason why public health experts are suggesting the changes Kennedy has made are dangerous. Context-free claims that we’re just modeling the vaccine schedule after another successful industrialized European nation entirely miss the point. The state of healthcare and the complexity of the population in each country are wildly different. And smart healthcare professionals understand the implications of those differences.

Kennedy understands none of this. Nor does he seem particularly interested in becoming educated on the matter. He’s an anti-vaxxer who has been given enormous power to foist his misguided personal conspiracy theories onto the American people.

There can be no doubt that there will be unhappy consequences to this.

One of the most common refrains we hear from age verification proponents is that online ID checks are nothing new. After all, you show your ID at bars and liquor stores all the time, right? And it’s true that many places age-restrict access in-person to various goods and services, such as tobacco, alcohol, firearms, lottery tickets, and even tattoos and body piercings.

But this comparison falls apart under scrutiny. There are fundamental differences between flashing your ID to a bartender and uploading government documents or biometric data to websites and third-party verification companies. Online age-gating is more invasive, affects far more people, and poses serious risks to privacy, security, and free speech that simply don’t exist when you buy a six-pack at the corner store.

Online age verification burdens many more people.

Online age restrictions are imposed on many, many more users than in-person ID checks. Because of the sheer scale of the internet, regulations affecting online content sweep in an enormous number of adults and youth alike, forcing them to disclose sensitive personal data just to access lawful speech, information, and services. 

Additionally, age restrictions in the physical world affect only a limited number of transactions: those involving a narrow set of age-restricted products or services. Typically this entails a bounded interaction about one specific purchase.

Online age verification laws, on the other hand, target a broad range of internet activities and general purpose platforms and services, including social media sites and app stores. And these laws don’t just wall off specific content deemed harmful to minors (like a bookstore would); they age-gate access to websites wholesale. This is akin to requiring ID every time a customer walks into a convenience store, regardless of whether they want to buy candy or alcohol.

There are significant privacy and security risks that don’t exist offline.

In offline, in-person scenarios, a customer typically provides their physical ID to a cashier or clerk directly. Oftentimes, customers need only flash their ID for a quick visual check, and no personal information is uploaded to the internet, transferred to a third-party vendor, or stored. Online age-gating, on the other hand, forces users to upload—not just momentarily display—sensitive personal information to a website in order to gain access to age-restricted content. 

This creates a cascade of privacy and security problems that don’t exist in the physical world. Once sensitive information like a government-issued ID is uploaded to a website or third-party service, there is no guarantee it will be handled securely. You have no direct control over who receives and stores your personal data, where it is sent, or how it may be accessed, used, or leaked outside the immediate verification process. 

Data submitted online rarely just stays between you and one other party. All online data is transmitted through a host of third-party intermediaries, and almost all websites and services also host a network of dozens of private, third-party trackers managed by data brokers, advertisers, and other companies that are constantly collecting data about your browsing activity. The data is shared with or sold to additional third parties and used to target behavioral advertisements. Age verification tools also often rely on third parties just to complete a transaction: a single instance of ID verification might involve two or three different third-party partners, and age estimation services often work directly with data brokers to offer a complete product. Users’ personal identifying data then circulates among these partners. 

All of this increases the likelihood that your data will leak or be misused. Unfortunately, data breaches are an endemic part of modern life, and the sensitive, often immutable, personal data required for age verification is just as susceptible to being breached as any other online data. Age verification companies can be—and already have been—hacked. Once that personal data gets into the wrong hands, victims are vulnerable to targeted attacks both online and off, including fraud and identity theft.

Troublingly, many age verification laws don’t even protect user security by providing a private right of action to sue a company if personal data is breached or misused. This leaves you without a direct remedy should something bad happen. 

Some proponents claim that age estimation is a privacy-preserving alternative to ID-based verification. But age estimation tools still require biometric data collection, often demanding users submit a photo or video of their face to access a site. And again, once submitted, there’s no way for you to verify how that data is processed or stored. Requiring face scans also normalizes pervasive biometric surveillance and creates infrastructure that could easily be repurposed for more invasive tracking. Once we’ve accepted that accessing lawful speech requires submitting our faces for scanning, we’ve crossed a threshold that’s difficult to walk back.

Online age verification creates even bigger barriers to access.

Online age gates create more substantial access barriers than in-person ID checks do. For those concerned about privacy and security, there is no online analog to a quick visual check of your physical ID. Users may be justifiably discouraged from accessing age-gated websites if doing so means uploading personal data and creating a potentially lasting record of their visit to that site.

Given these risks, age verification also imposes barriers to remaining anonymous that don’t typically exist in-person. Anonymity can be essential for those wishing to access sensitive, personal, or stigmatized content online. And users have a right to anonymity, which is “an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.” Even if a law requires data deletion, users must still be confident that every website and online service with access to their data will, in fact, delete it—something that is in no way guaranteed.

In-person ID checks are additionally less likely to wrongfully exclude people due to errors. Online systems that rely on facial scans are often incorrect, especially when applied to users near the legal age of adulthood. These tools are also less accurate for people with Black, Asian, Indigenous, and Southeast Asian backgrounds, for users with disabilities, and for transgender individuals. This leads to discriminatory outcomes and exacerbates harm to already marginalized communities. And while in-person shoppers can speak with a store clerk if issues arise, these online systems often rely on AI models, leaving users who are incorrectly flagged as minors with little recourse to challenge the decision.

In-person interactions may also be less burdensome for adults who don’t have up-to-date ID. An older adult who forgets their ID at home or lacks current identification is not likely to face the same difficulty accessing material in a physical store, since there are usually distinguishing physical differences between young adults and those older than 35. A visual check is often enough. This matters, as a significant portion of the U.S. population does not have access to up-to-date government-issued IDs. This disproportionately affects Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, immigrants, and individuals with disabilities, who are less likely to possess the necessary identification.

We’re talking about First Amendment-protected speech.

It’s important not to lose sight of what’s at stake here. The good or service age gated by these laws isn’t alcohol or cigarettes—it’s First Amendment-protected speech. Whether the target is social media platforms or any other online forum for expression, age verification blocks access to constitutionally-protected content. 

Access to many of these online services is also necessary to participate in the modern economy. While those without ID may function just fine without being able to purchase luxury products like alcohol or tobacco, requiring ID to participate in basic communication technology significantly hinders people’s ability to engage in economic and social life.

This is why it’s wrong to claim online age verification is equivalent to showing ID at a bar or store. This argument handwaves away genuine harms to privacy and security, dismisses barriers to access that will lock millions out of online spaces, and ignores how these systems threaten free expression. Ignoring these threats won’t protect children, but it will compromise our rights and safety.

Republished from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

I’ve criticized Chuck Schumer plenty over the years, generally for being bad on tech policy, but also for not understanding the moment we’re living through. Yes, he’s the leader of a minority party with zero power, but that doesn’t mean he’s powerless. Yet he acts as if he is.

And if he can’t figure that out, it’s time for someone else to do it.

Let’s start with what just happened. As I detailed yesterday, Trump ordered military strikes on a sovereign nation and kidnapped its president without Congressional authorization—a clear violation of the War Powers Act and, you know, the basic constitutional requirement that Congress, not the president, has the power to declare war. And don’t buy the claim that it’s okay because this was just “law enforcement”: the Senate Judiciary Committee—including Republican chair Chuck Grassley—has pointed out that the White House refused to brief them, claiming it’s a military action and not law enforcement.

There is no way to describe this other than a massive breach of basic international order and the separation of powers our Constitution established. It’s yet another in a long line of efforts by Donald Trump to act as sovereign king of the US, rather than the elected executive of a single branch of a government with three co-equal branches.

Any opposition leader in such a world should seize the moment, call out the blatant unconstitutional and illegal behavior and make that the story. Over and over and over again.

But not Schumer. He starts out by needlessly granting the premise that Maduro is bad, and that’s unnecessary. Whether he’s terrible and an illegitimate dictator is besides the point. That doesn’t give Trump the authority to do what he did. But even if you want to start there, you have to follow it up with a serious condemnation. Instead, Schumer goes meekly with the idea that it was “reckless.”

“Maduro is an illegitimate dictator, but launching military action without congressional authorization, without a credible plan, but what comes next is reckless,” Schumer said.

And then he makes clear that his entire strategy is to hope that the Republican elected officials in Congress will come to their senses and push back against Trump, something that anyone who has been awake for more than a few days in the last decade knows will never happen.

Schumer pressed troubled Republicans to back the passage of the bipartisan War Powers Resolution, which he introduced alongside Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and other lawmakers last month. The resolution will be brought to the Senate floor for debate next week, Schumer promised, telling reporters “we’re going to be pushing our Republican colleagues to stand up for the American people to get this done.”

“We have heard from some Republicans in private conversations, chairs, talking to their ranking members, that they have some — they are troubled by this,” Schumer said, adding that he’s in talks with ranking Democrats on relevant committees on how to respond to the administration’s action against Maduro.

There it is. The classic Chuck Schumer move: “We’ve heard from some Republicans in private that they’re troubled by this.” Oh, how wonderful. Some Republicans are “troubled.” They’re always troubled. They’re perpetually troubled. They furrow their brows and express deep concern and then vote with Trump anyway. EVERY FUCKING TIME. This has been the pattern for nine years now, and Schumer keeps acting like this time will be different.

But making it even worse, we learn from Spectrum News that Schumer is publicly dropping the only procedural leverage tool he has:

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York dismissed the idea that there could be another government shutdown at the end of the month as Congress stares down a new funding deadline of Jan. 30.

Appearing on ABC News Sunday, Schumer was definitive in responding “no” when asked if the country was headed toward another shutdown and went on to say that “good progress” is being made toward passing funding bills for the 2026 fiscal year.

“Democrats want to fund the appropriations, the spending bills, all the way through 2026,” Schumer said. “We want to work in a bicameral, bipartisan way to do it and the good news is our Republican appropriators are working with us.”

Read that again. The Democratic leader, faced with a president who just launched an illegal war, publicly announced that he won’t use the one bit of actual leverage he has—the threat of a government shutdown—to force accountability. He just… gave it away. For free. He told Republicans “don’t worry, we won’t actually fight you on this, we’re committed to being ‘reasonable.’”

This is political malpractice of the highest order.

Now, I can already predict some of the replies to this. “What do you expect Schumer to do? Democrats don’t have power! They can’t stop this!” And look, I get it. Democrats are in the minority in the Senate. They don’t control the House. They don’t control the executive branch. In terms of the formal mechanisms of power, they’re largely shut out.

But you know who else was in the minority? Mitch McConnell for most of Obama’s presidency. And he didn’t just sit around hoping Democrats would come to their senses. He built a movement. He shaped a narrative. He made obstruction itself into a political strategy that energized his base and put constant pressure on the majority. He understood something fundamental: being an opposition leader isn’t just about counting votes. It’s about building public pressure, shaping the discourse, and making your opposition pay a political price for their actions.

Here’s what a real opposition leader would do in this moment:

Make the illegality of Trump’s actions the story. Every single day, Democrats should be holding press conferences explaining in great detail how this is illegal and unconstitutional and just generally offensive to American values. They need to keep banging the drum on the only bit that matters: the President cannot do this under the Constitution and the law. The message should be simple and repeated until everyone is sick of hearing it: “The president launched an illegal war without Congressional authorization, in violation of the Constitution and the War Powers Act. This is not normal. This is not acceptable. This cannot stand.”

Make reporters ask Republicans about it in every single interview. Make them defend the indefensible. Force them to either break with Trump or publicly embrace illegal military action. Don’t let them hide behind vague statements about being “troubled.”

Frame this as a constitutional crisis, not a partisan fight. This isn’t hard. Tell a story that isn’t political or partisan, but that hits at fundamental values. America shouldn’t be engaging in dangerous regime change adventurism for oil (as Trump has repeatedly admitted, even as his Fox News minions pretend its about fentanyl, a drug that Venezuela has nothing to do with). Don’t let Trump and MAGA frame the debate.

Frame the whole issue around fundamental American values that transcend party: the rule of law, constitutional limits on executive power, Congress’s role in decisions about war. Make it clear that this has nothing to do with whether you like Maduro (spoiler: nobody does), but about whether we’re a nation of laws or a nation where the president can do whatever he wants. Americans across the political spectrum understand that distinction, even if their representatives pretend not to.

Create real consequences. Schumer has more leverage than he thinks. Yes, he can threaten a government shutdown—and no, that’s not crazy. Sometimes you have to be willing to fight. But beyond that: refuse to move any of Trump’s nominees until he complies with the War Powers Act. Literally yesterday, a bunch of Democrats (obviously with Schumer’s approval) voted to confirm a new assistant Secretary of Defense. Why? Why would they do that at this moment?

Demand daily briefings on Venezuela and the legal justification for the strikes. Hold public hearings showcasing the legal scholars and national security experts who agree this was illegal. File lawsuits. Encourage state attorneys general to file their own challenges. Make noise. Make trouble.

Inspire and mobilize their base. This is perhaps the most important thing, and the thing Schumer is absolutely the worst at. Millions of Americans are watching this unfold with horror and feeling helpless. They want someone to fight. They want someone to tell them this matters and that there’s something they can do about it. Give them that. Hold rallies. Organize protests. Create a “Restore the Constitution” campaign that gives people something to be for, not just against. Build a movement of Americans who believe the Constitution still matters. Stop hoping those “troubled” Republicans will suddenly grow spines and start building public pressure that makes their continued acquiescence politically toxic.

Shape the narrative about what comes next. Trump’s supporters still want to claim this is about drugs, but Trump himself keeps admitting it was totally about stealing Venezuelan oil and making his donors at the large oil companies rich. Make that the whole fucking story. Connect it to the broader pattern of Trump’s transactional, lawless approach to foreign policy. Paint a picture of where this leads if unchecked. How are Democrats not calling this out over and over again? Keep showing the clips of Trump promising he was against foreign wars, against regime change.

There are so many opportunities and Schumer is letting them all go by because he doesn’t want to feel embarrassed to bump into a GOP Senator at the gym.

Prepare for 2026 and beyond. Even if Schumer can’t stop this action, he can make Republicans pay a political price for enabling it. Identify the vulnerable Republicans who will face tough races in 2026 and 2028. Run ads in their districts highlighting their refusal to stand up to an illegal war. Make them defend their votes. Build a case to the American people that Republicans have abandoned the rule of law. Turn this into a major campaign issue.

None of this requires having a Senate majority. It doesn’t even require getting Republican senators on board, though it could help if Schumer picked off a few Republicans. What it requires is recognizing that an opposition leader’s power doesn’t come solely from their vote count. Mitch McConnell understood this. Newt Gingrich understood this.

The job of the opposition leader, especially in moments like this, is to be oppositional. To fight. To make noise. To create consequences even when you don’t have the votes to block something outright. And that time is now.

Instead, Schumer is doing what he always does: magical wishcasting: hoping against all evidence that Republicans will be reasonable. On top of that, giving away his leverage before negotiations even start, and treating politics like a genteel debate club where everyone follows the unwritten rules. But those rules are gone. Trump lit them on fire years ago. And continuing to pretend they exist is just enabling the erosion of constitutional democracy.

I understand the impulse to be the “adults in the room.” To pretend that acting this way shows that Democrats can govern responsibly: that they won’t play games with government funding, that they’ll work across the aisle. In normal times, that’s potentially admirable. But these aren’t normal times. When a president launches an illegal war, captures a foreign leader, and faces no consequences, you’re not in “normal times” anymore. You’re in a constitutional crisis (the latest in a long line of constitutional crises Trump has kicked off, without much in the way of consequences).

In a constitutional crisis, being the adult in the room should mean fighting back with every tool you have. And Schumer has failed to do that over and over and over again in the last year, enabling Trump to continue to push the boundaries further and further. All while Schumer twiddles his thumbs and waits for the GOP to come around? What is he thinking?

The most frustrating part is that this isn’t even particularly difficult or risky politically. Polls consistently show that Americans don’t want more military interventions abroad. There’s broad skepticism of foreign entanglements. Standing up and saying “the president can’t just launch wars on his own” isn’t some far-left position—it’s basic constitutionalism that should command widespread support. This is a fight Schumer could easily win in the court of public opinion. But he has to actually try.

If Chuck Schumer can’t do these basic things—can’t recognize the moment we’re in, can’t build a movement, can’t shape the narrative, can’t use the tools he has to create political pressure—then he’s not the right person for this job. The Senate needs an opposition leader who understands that leadership means leading, not just reacting and hoping. It needs someone who can inspire people to fight, not someone who tells them to keep calm and hope Republicans will do the right thing.

Democracy doesn’t save itself. Constitutional norms don’t restore themselves. They require people willing to fight for them, especially when it’s hard and especially when the outcome is uncertain. Right now, when it matters most, Chuck Schumer isn’t fighting. He’s hoping. And hope, as we’ve learned over the past nine years, is not a strategy.

Donald Trump and his authoritarian friends have successfully destroyed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the closest this country has gotten to having a useful and effective publicly-funded media. The CPB this week voted to officially shut down, just months after Republicans passed a massive billionaire tax cut plan that stripped the organization of more than $1 billion in funding.

“For more than half a century, CPB existed to ensure that all Americans—regardless of geography, income, or background—had access to trusted news, educational programming, and local storytelling,” said Patricia Harrison, CPB’s president and CEO.”

As we’ve noted previously, right wingers and authoritarians loathe public broadcasting because, in its ideal form, it untethers journalism from the perverse financial incentives inherent in our consolidated, billionaire-owned, ad-engagement based, corporate media. A media that is easily bullied, cowed, and manipulated by bad actors looking to normalize, downplay, or validate no limit of terrible bullshit (see: CBS, Washington Post, the New York Times, and countless others).

The destruction of the CPB is particularly harmful for local U.S. broadcasting stations. While NPR doesn’t really take all that much money from the public anymore (roughly 1% of NPR’s annual budget comes from the government), the CPB distributed over 70 percent of its funding to about 1,500 public radio and TV stations, which now face existential collapse.

The attacks on the CPB are part of a broader information warfare campaign by the U.S. right wing, which has involved destroying all remaining media consolidation limits, letting radical right wing billionaires buy up major news networks and social media platforms, and launching fake investigations into public broadcasting. They’re afraid of the truth and a functional press, and it’s not subtle.

While Republicans are outwardly hostile to informed consensus, Democrats historically have done a shit job defending journalism or implementing media reform. The press also generally doesn’t like covering this destruction too deeply because consolidated corporate media billionaire ownership doesn’t much like the idea of having to compete with government subsidized alternatives to their bland infotainment dreck.

And even though U.S. public media never truly reached the potential we’ve seen in other countries (usually due to decades of right wing defunding and attacks), this is a generational, devastating loss all the same. Especially in terms of what could have been.

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Given the recent Supreme Court ruling that (surprisingly!) said Trump did not have the executive power to commandeer National Guard troops to aid and abet law enforcement/deportation efforts in Illinois, this ruling [PDF] from the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court was, perhaps, inevitable.

If it’s illegal to do it in Illinois, it’s equally illegal in California (as well as Oregon and any other state the administration has targeted). It may still be legal in Washington DC, but it’s probably only a matter of time before that deployment of National Guard troops (especially those from other states) is declared equally illegal.

The extremely short order by the Appeals Court vacates the stay it had placed on the lower court’s ruling in favor of the rule of law (which is, of course, a ruling against the Trump administration), allowing it to take force. It only runs two pages, but it does contain at least one surprising element: capitulation by Trump’s DOJ.

On December 23, 2025, this court issued an order directing defendants to file a supplemental brief “explaining why the partial administrative stay should not be lifted” in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Illinois, No. 25A443 (U.S. Dec. 23, 2025).

Defendants filed their supplemental brief on December 30, 2025. Defendants represented that “[w]ithout prejudice as to any other arguments defendants may present, defendants do not oppose lifting of the partial administrative stay and hereby respectfully withdraw their motion for a stay pending appeal.”

Trump, meanwhile, continues to operate in his usual fashion, sporting the sort of reckless “never say die” attitude that usually results in death by misadventure.

Earlier on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he was, for now, abandoning his efforts to deploy the Guard in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Ore. But he suggested that the administration may deploy them again the future.

“We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again — Only a question of time,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social.

There’s the patented Trump bravado — something that runs on a clean blend of bigotry and ignorance. Because this loss came at the hands of SCOTUS, administration officials are unable to deploy their usual “activist judge” bitching since the activist judges in the Supreme Court are mostly MAGA-cooked.

And they can’t claim this is the “liberal” Ninth Circuit going rogue, since its ruling is based entirely on the precedent set by the nation’s top court. All that’s left to do is the sort of social media sour grapes shit Trump is known for. At least until the administration decides to break every pane of glass in the Overton Window and just start turning every “Democrat” city into the Kent State campus.

But until that happens, the threats of bringing “liberal” states to heel by commandeering their National Guard are as empty as the heads of the administration’s most powerful members.

American right wing propaganda companies are beginning to fight among themselves as a shrinking number of dodgy media companies vie for domination of the Trump-coddled U.S. propaganda market.

Newsmax, a right wing propaganda organization pretending to be a cable news company, is upset at the fact that Nexstar Media Group and TEGNA, two right wing propaganda companies pretending to be “local broadcast news” operations, are going to see too many benefits from the Trump administration’s quest to destroy what’s left of U.S. media consolidation limits.

Newsmax executives filed an adorable complaint with the Trump FCC and Brendan Carr (who they actively helped install), pointing out that letting all the local fake-journalism right wing-coddling broadcasters merge into one giant shitty company will be bad for media diversity:

“The company formally filed a petition with the FCC on New Year’s Eve, arguing that the proposed merger “violates the law and creates an unprecedented concentration of power in the hands of one broadcaster.”

Newsmax’s focus on its opposition is that the current ownership limits make a single entity owning enough stations to reach more than 39% of the U.S. TV households illegal. Should the proposed merger with TEGNA go through, Nexstar Media Group would reach nearly 80% of all households.”

These folks literally and actively helped install a corrupt NYC real estate con man president, who openly and repeatedly stated he was going to destroy whatever was left of U.S. media consolidation limits, and now they’re shocked and upset that he’s following through. It’s priceless.

Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy goes on, suddenly seemingly concerned about media consolidation issues:

“This merger would create an unprecedented and dangerous consolidation within the broadcast TV industry, giving them immense control over local news and political news coverage,” Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy — who signed the filing with the FCC for the network — said in a statement.

“This merger is no better than others the FCC has already blocked,” the filing from Newsmax concludes. “The Commission should reject the proposed transaction because it violates the law, will harm competition, and will damage the public interest.”

Spoiler: Brendan Carr will not block the merger because he doesn’t care about the public interest, functional competition, or healthy markets. He cares about getting a post-FCC revolving door gig at whatever telecom and media giant remains at the end of the Trump administration.

During Trump 1.0, his FCC took at absolute hatchet to media ownership limits. Those limits, built on the back of decades of bipartisan collaboration, prohibited local broadcasters and media from growing too large, trampling smaller (and more diversely-owned) competitors underfoot. The result of their destruction has been a rise in local news deserts, a lot of right wing propaganda outlets pretending to be “local news,” less diverse media ownership, and (if you hadn’t noticed) a painfully disinformed electorate.

It’s about to get much, much worse under Trump 2.0.

There are a few media consolidation limits left, like rules preventing the big four (ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC) from merging. There’s also the national television ownership rule, which prevents one company from reaching more than 39 percent of all US TV households (again, because the goal was ensuring a more diverse array of opinions and ownership, which is good for media markets and the public interest).

Once TEGNA and Nexstar merge, you can be absolutely sure the remaining company will seek to merge with Sinclair broadcasting, the poster child for right wing agitprop pretending to be local broadcast news. After that, expect efforts by ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC to both merge with each other, and increasingly merge with existing telecom and tech companies looking to goose stock earnings with pointless consolidation.

Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr is preparing to take a hatchet to all of these remaining restrictions, propped up by the false claim that the modern media environment is just so damned competitive and vibrant, such restrictions harm “free market innovation.” Ironically, the consolidated mass media doesn’t like to report on the problems this will cause because that’s not in ownerships’ best financial interests.

It’s not all downside. These folks are all rushing to try and dominate a traditional media sector aren’t historically competent. And their ham-fisted attempt to replace U.S. journalism with infotainment cack is likely to result in an even greater exodus of viewers as their primary target audience dies off. Which is why right wing billionaires also made sure to acquire Twitter and TikTok.

Somewhere in this hot agitprop mess you’d like to believe that there’s opportunities for individual, independent and worker-controlled media (and ethical, public-interest oriented companies, if any remain) to grab greater audience share. And for actual innovators to disrupt traditional app and media domination. Otherwise, any hope of having an informed electorate and building a useful anti-authoritarian cultural counter-movement grows increasingly dim.