Mostly Monday Reads: State Terrorism Straight out of the West Wing

“Rumor has it, caravans are amassing south of the border.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Steven Miller is the root of all evil these days. He’s the Rasputin behind the Golf Cart. He’s been ranting about “radical left” judges appointed by Democrats endlessly. You may remember that five years ago, Judge Esther Salas’ husband was wounded while her son was killed.  You may read a PBS interview with the Judge about her loss and the experience from this interview, which was published in May. I would like to highlight one bit of information from this article before I continue to the latest attack on a Judge and her family over the weekend.

Mr. Trump and members of his administration have been openly critical of some judges, calling them radical, lunatics or lawless, and suggesting some should be impeached. A recent report from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism found — quote — “Violent threats and calls for impeachment against judges have risen by an alarming 327 percent between May of 2024 and March of 2025

This should alarm every democracy-loving citizen in the country. I would like to share some analysis and statistics about the increased violence against the Judiciary prior to sharing the latest acts of violence perpetrated against  South Carolina Circuit Court judge Diane Goodstein over the weekend. Inciting violence against Judges is a policy feature written into the public discourse coming from Steven Miller and many others. It’s been even more difficult to wrap my head around the incitements to violence and terror by Trump appointees to the DOJ and Homeland Security.

This analysis is from today at The Nation. “Trump’s Minions Are Trying to Terrorize Judges Into Submission. Facing rebukes from the courts, Stephen Miller and Elon Musk are threatening the independence of the judiciary.” Jeet Heer provides the analysis and reporting.

Donald Trump’s second term has been marked by attacks on the Constitution so extreme that even judges Trump appointed in his first term are aghast. On Saturday, US District Judge Karin Immergut, nominated by Trump in 2019, blocked the president’s deployment of 200 National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon. Trump had claimed that Portland was “war-torn” and “under siege” by “Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” Judge Immergut brushed off Trump’s justification as “untethered to facts” and affirmed, “This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”

Responding to the ruling on Sunday, Trump justified the charge that he was “untethered to facts” by misgendering Judge Immergut. “I wasn’t served well by the people who pick judges,” Trump complained to reporters on Sunday. “If he made that decision, Portland is burning to the ground…. That judge ought to be ashamed of himself.”

More alarming were attacks on the judiciary made by two of Trump’s most important political associates, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and tech billionaire Elon Musk.

On Saturday, Miller posted on X (a social media site owned by Musk):

Legal insurrection. The President is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Oregon judge. Portland and Oregon law enforcement, at the direction of local leaders, have refused to aid ICE officers facing relentless terrorist assault and threats to life…. This is an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers, and the deployment of troops is an absolute necessity to defend our personnel, our laws, our government, public order and the Republic itself.

A White House official describing a judicial decision as “insurrection” is no small matter. But Musk took things further by calling on Trump to emulate Nayib Bukele, the authoritarian president of El Salvador who has destroyed his country’s independent judiciary. The right-wing pundit Eric Daugherty then quoted Bukele’s attack on the judiciary and insisted, “We need to Bukele our court system. WATCH how quickly this country is fixed.” Musk boosted Daughtery’s tweet and wrote, “essential.” He responded to another tweet critical of Judge Immergut by simply saying “treason.”

Former Obama adviser Tommy Vietor provided some essential context for Musk’s tweet, noting that “Bukele forced out independent judges, packed the courts with loyalists, then declared a state of emergency that allowed him to arrest and indefinitely detain people without any due process. When we say these guys are advocating for fascist ideas, it’s because they literally are.”

These incendiary attacks on the judiciary don’t just reflect anger at Judge Immergut, or the many other federal judges who have been ruling against Trump’s policies on immigration and other matters. They are also setting the stage for the series of looming battles that Trump faces at the Supreme Court.

While lower-level federal judges have been a major check on Trump’s policies, the Supreme Court is a different ballgame. It has granted Trump extraordinary (though supposedly temporary) power in a series of emergency rulings that have almost always favored the president. The Washington Post, citing the research of Georgetown legal scholar Irving L. Gornstein, notes, “The Trump administration has been overwhelmingly successful in these provisional cases, prevailing in 18, losing two and receiving mixed rulings in two others.” But the newspaper also points out that in the new term starting Monday, the court and Trump both face a “reckoning” because these provisional decisions will have to give way to “full, final verdicts.”

The court’s pro-Trump tilt would seem to make the president’s normal bullying tactics unnecessary. But why take chances? Miller and Musk could be trying to keep the court completely in line by making clear the full wrath of MAGA if judgments are made against Trump’s wishes.

This threat might even be literal. New York Times columnist David French, a Never Trump conservative, argues that Miller’s rhetoric is “incredibly dangerous” and could incite violence against Judge Immergut or any other judge who provokes Trump’s wrath. This claim is plausible given the history of MAGA violence, including the January 7, 2021, attack on the Capitol. (On Saturday, the home of Diane Goodstein, a South Carolina state judge, was burned to the ground. While it’s too early to say whether Goodstein was deliberately targeted or what any potential suspect’s motivation might have been, Goodstein had reportedly been receiving death threats after issuing a ruling against the Trump administration in September.)

The most optimistic reading of Miller’s words is that they come from a place of fear. Miller knows his window to establish enduring authoritarianism in America is small, and he has to act frantically now. This interpretation of events is given credibility by an unlikely source, the far-right thinker Curtis Yarvin, a writer much admired by tech lord Peter Thiel and vice president JD Vance. In a hysteria-laden Substack post, Yarvin worried that the Trump revolution was “failing” and is on the verge of producing a fierce political backlash:

Because the vengeance meted out after its failure will dwarf the vengeance after 2020—because the successes of the second revolution are so much greater than the first—I feel that I personally have to start thinking realistically about how to flee the country. Everyone else in a similar position should have a 2029 plan as well. And it is not even clear that it will wait until 2029: losing the Congress will instantly put the administration on the defensive.

Yarvin has to be read with care. He is unmoored from reality and mostly not a useful guide to events. But he does have a following on the far right because he is an accurate gauge of their mood. Further, there are ample reasons for Yarvin’s pessimism. Polls show that immigration, once a strong issue for Trump, is now one where a majority of the population disapprove of his policies. The New York Times reports that 51 percent of Americans feel Trump has gone “too far” with immigration enforcement. In cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago, the immigration crackdown has been met by fierce local protests. Coupled with the pushback from federal judges and the pending midterms, there is ample reason to think Miller’s war on immigrants is running out of time.

Dr. Paul Krugman had this to say in his SubStack today. “State Terror, American Style. Forget about “soft autocracy.”

Over the weekend I talked to a couple of people, people who generally try to keep abreast of the news, about the Chicago apartment raid last Tuesday — and discovered that they hadn’t heard about it. And that’s extremely worrying. It suggests that many people don’t realize how fast and aggressively the Trump administration is moving to end rule of law and convert America into a full-fledged autocracy.

So while I’d like to devote today’s post to economics — you have no idea how happy I felt while writing yesterday’s primer about agglomeration and productivity — I couldn’t in good conscience avoid writing about the terrible things happening in Chicago and elsewhere, and what they may portend.

About that raid: It was reported in mainstream media, but didn’t get the screaming banner headlines it deserved. Here’s what happened, according to Reuters:

U.S. Border Patrol agents deployed to Chicago led a late-night raid on an apartment building this week, rappelling from helicopters onto rooftops and breaking down doors in an operation authorities said targeted gang members but which swept up U.S. citizens and families.

…

As part of the raid, some U.S. citizens were temporarily detained and children pulled from their beds, according to interviews with residents and news reports. Building hallways were still littered with debris two days later.

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Hundreds of agents swarmed the apartment building during the raid on Tuesday, including some rappelling down to the roof from Black Hawk helicopters, according to NewsNation.

…

One resident, who asked not to be named, reported being made to lie down on the ground by agents during the raid and having his hands zip-tied.

ICE claimed that the building was targeted because it was “known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua (a Venezuelan gang) members and their associates” — that is, although ICE carried out the raid, it was supposedly about crime. And they arrested two suspected gang members, while also rounding up some undocumented immigrants. But they detained everyone in the building, smashed their doors, zip-tied their children, and ransacked their homes.

This was a wildly disproportionate and illegal response, even if the raid had actually had anything to do with crime.

But none of what the Trump administration is doing in Chicago has anything to do with fighting crime. Chicago has more violent crime than, say, New York or Los Angeles, but the post-Covid bump in crime has completely receded. City officials report that this past summer had the fewest homicides in 60 years. If we’d seen this kind of decline in crime after the Trump administration began flooding Chicago with ICE agents, rather than before, they’d be touting these results as complete vindication.

But as I said, this isn’t about crime. It’s about paranoid conspiracy theories and an attempt to dismantle democracy.

So, that incitment from  Miller was posted on Saturday.  Then, this happened as reported by Time Magazine. “House of South Carolina Judge Criticized by Trump Administration Burns Down.” Miranda Jeyaretnam is the reporter on the beat.

Police are investigating the cause of a fire that burned down the home of South Carolina Circuit Court judge Diane Goodstein, who had reportedly received death threats for weeks related to her work.

State law enforcement is investigating the house fire on Edisto Beach, which began at around 11:30 a.m. E.T. on Saturday, sources told local news outlet FITSNews. Goodstein was reportedly not at home at the time of the fire, but at least three members of her family, including her husband, former Democratic state senator Arnold Goodstein, and their son, have been hospitalized with serious injuries.

According to the St. Paul’s Fire District, which responded to the scene, the occupants had to be rescued via kayak. Law enforcement has not disclosed whether the fire is being investigated as an arson attack.

“At this time, we do not know whether the fire was accidental or arson. Until that determination is made, [State Law Enforcement Division Chief Mark Keel] has alerted local law enforcement to provide extra patrols and security,” South Caroline Chief Justice John Kittredge told FITSNews, adding that the fire appeared to have been caused by an “explosion.”

The 69-year-old judge had received death threats in the weeks leading up to the fire, multiple sources told FITSNews. Last month, Goodstein had temporarily blocked the state’s election commission from releasing its voter files to the Department of Justice, a decision that was openly criticized by Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon and later reversed by the state Supreme Court. The DOJ had sought the information, including names, addresses, driver’s license numbers, and social security numbers, of over three million registered voters as part of President Donald Trump’s March executive order restricting non-citizens from registering to vote. (Non-citizens are already not allowed to vote in federal and state elections.)

The Trump Administration has sought to drastically reshape the election system in the name of election integrity by requesting, and in some cases suing, states for voter registration data to compile a comprehensive centralized database. The administration has sought data from more than 30 states and has considered pursuing criminal investigations into state election officials. Critics have argued that the Administration’s efforts are an attempt at disenfranchising voters from marginalized communities and overstepping states’ constitutional authority to control election procedures.

If the fire at the judge’s house turns out to be targeted, it may mark the latest incident of a startling rise in political violence in the U.S. And while the Trump Administration has blamed the left’s rhetoric for inspiring violence such as the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, an attack on a judge would come as the Administration has increasingly vilified the judiciary, blasting judges that rule against it as “U.S.A-hating” insurrectionists.

An excellent analysis of the rise in political violence follows.

The AP reports that a “Federal judge temporarily blocks Trump administration from sending National Guard troops to Oregon.”

A federal judge late Sunday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deploying any National Guard units to Oregon at all, after a legal whirlwind that began hours earlier when the president mobilized California troops for Portland after the same judge blocked him from using Oregon’s National Guard the day before.

During a hastily called evening telephone hearing, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut granted a temporary restraining order sought by California and Oregon.

Immergut, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in his first term, seemed incredulous that the president moved to send National Guard troops to Oregon from neighboring California and then from Texas on Sunday, just hours after she had ruled the first time.

“How could bringing in federalized National Guard from California not be in direct contravention to the temporary restraining order I issued yesterday?” she questioned the federal government’s attorney, cutting him off.

“Aren’t defendants simply circumventing my order?” she said later. “Why is this appropriate?”

The White House did not immediately comment on the judge’s decision.

Illionis and Chicago have also sued the State Terrorist in Chief over the deployments there.

Also reported by the AP this morning is this little nugget.  “FBI cuts ties with Southern Poverty Law Center, Anti-Defamation League after conservative complaints.” Yup, that guy did it. The most incompetent FBI Director in the agency’s history. This is reported by Eric Tucker.

 FBI Director Kash Patel says the bureau is cutting ties with two organizations that for decades have tracked domestic extremism and racial and religious bias, a move that follows complaints about the groups from some conservatives and prominent allies of President Donald Trump.

Patel said Friday that the FBI would sever its relationship with the Southern Poverty Law Center, asserting that the organization had been turned into a “partisan smear machine” and criticizing it for its use of a “hate map” that documents alleged anti-government and hate groups inside the United States. A statement earlier in the week from Patel said the FBI would end ties with the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent Jewish advocacy organization that fights antisemitism.

The announcements amount to a dramatic rethinking of longstanding FBI partnerships with prominent civil rights groups at a time when Patel is moving rapidly to reshape the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency. The organizations over the years have provided research on hate crime and domestic extremism, law enforcement training and other services but have also been criticized by some conservatives for what they say is an unfair maligning of their viewpoints.

At least we have it on their own authority that today’s ‘conservatives’ are anti-semitic and racist.

I’m going to finish with a few nuggets about SCOTUS have been released. These can be found at Memeorandum.

• Lawrence Hurley / NBC News: Supreme Court rejects Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell’s appeal of her criminal conviction  —  Maxwell was convicted for her role in recruiting and grooming girls who were sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein.
• Associated Press: The Supreme Court will evaluate Trump’s expansive claims of presidential power in its new term  —  The Supreme Court is beginning a new term with a sharp focus on President Donald Trump’s robust assertion of executive power.  Pivotal cases on voting and the rights of LGBTQ people also are on the agenda.
• Sam Levin / The Guardian:  Christian group ‘deceived’ supreme court about LGBTQ+ research, cited scholars say  —  Exclusive: Experts say Alliance Defending Freedom, arguing to revive conversion therapy, ‘profoundly misrepresented’ their work in case threatening trans and queer youth  —  On Tuesday, a Christian legal group

One last thing that I absolutely cannot believe is a thing.  First they came for the Comedians.  Now, they’re after Latino performers. This is from MSNBC. “MAGA’s Bad Bunny Meltdown: DHS Secretary Noem vows to send ICE agents to Super Bowl.”

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem warned international visitors and immigrants against going to the 2026 Super Bowl as Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny is set to draw massive attention for his halftime performance. Deadline Hollywood Executive Editor Dominic Patten joins Alex Witt to discuss the backlash the National Football League is receiving from conservative spaces over its halftime show pick.

How could one, hot, sexy, Puerto Rican cause this much hate? I dunno but he had something to say about it on the SNL opener last night.

I cannot even begin to express how I feel about the daily horror of living in this country. There are at least some brave enough to take on the rash of State Terror  Now, we need to vote and take to the streets.

What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?