American Doom

I’ll have more on this over the weekend but for now I wanted to share a rundown of the completely nonsensical claims about the Epstein files that are being made by the White House, as well as Donald Trump’s 40-year history with Epstein himself. Check the video above for all that. And if you want to support my work, you can subscribe or support American Doom here. I’ll be honest: things have been a little tight lately and it’d be nice to have a few new paid subscribers to give me a boost. For those who haven’t been paying attention to every minute development in this growing saga, Trump and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt are claiming some impossible things. Mainly, they say that the Epstein files were created by Democrats — ostensibly to make Trump look bad — but also that those Democrats didn’t “do a dang thing” with the Epstein investigation.To put a finer point on this theory: Under President Joe Biden, Democrats who hate Trump and were facing off against him in last year’s election had compiled a dossier filled with extremely damaging information — all false — about Trump and Epstein. These same Democrats then “didn’t do a dang thing” with this intel, as Leavitt said yesterday in the White House press room. Does that make any sense? I didn’t think so. Regrettably, I don’t see a press conference scheduled for today at the White House. That’s a shame, because I was really looking forward to hearing how Leavitt explained the bizarre letter that the Wall Street Journal reported last night that Trump had written to Epstein on his 50th birthday.The letter included a tantalizing line about how Trump wished for Epstein that “every day be another wonderful secret.”Lots of secrets these days, it seems. More coming. - jg***Please follow AD on our social media for a little more doom to your scroll. That’s what we all need, right?* Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social* TikTok - @americandoom_* YouTube - @americandoom_* Instagram - @americandoom_* X - @americandoom_* Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

Want to support efforts to push back against authoritarian threats to democracy? I humbly submit that supporting independent journalist like myself is a great addition to the fight. You can do so by choosing a paid subscription to American Doom or contributing a few dollars to our coffee fund. Through July I’m running a 20 percent discount on subscriptions — so you can support my work for as little as $4.80 a month. - jg***A California judge has confirmed what any reasonable person has known for weeks now: the immigration raids being carried out by Donald Trump’s masked agents are unconstitutional. In a functioning democracy, society can simply not abide by what are effectively secret police running around and detaining and arresting undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.The judge, a Biden appointee named Maame Ewusi-Mensaah Frimpong, which the right is up in arms about, noted the obvious: what has been happening in Los Angeles and elsewhere is a clear violation of Americans’ rights against improper search and seizure. Frimpong found that there was no “official” policy when it came to these “roving patrols.” In other words, in a legal sense this is all exactly what it has looked like all along: an unconstitutional, race-based operation by a paramilitary organization that has acted with impunity for the better part of two months now. The U.S. government, through its immigration agents on the streets, has effectively been engaged in widespread racial profiling.The 52-page ruling came down on Friday night and requires the government to stop conducting these raids as they’re currently being carried out. That means that agents have to have an actual reason for stopping someone — other than that they look Mexican, speak Spanish or with a Spanish accent, or are sitting in a certain location — for immigration enforcement operations. Frimpong’s temporary injunctive order (TRO) also requires the government to provide detainees being held in poor conditions in the basement of the federal building in downtown LA better access to attorneys.Frimpong granted the TRO based on a “fairly modest request” made by immigrant advocacy and workers’ rights organizations that filed a lawsuit against the government that Trump’s masked agents simply stop conducting an unconstitutional, racially discriminatory reign of terror.Some key findings from the ruling:* One man, a U.S, citizen, was improperly detained and had an immigration agent point a taser at his head — another instance of this troubling tactic, which I touched on in late June, which is not an approved use of force for any law enforcement agency I’ve ever reported on* Immigration agents took a U.S. citizen’s ID and did not return it* The government used protests and what they called “riots” as a pretext to deny detainees access to their attorneys, going so far to say that “if ‘riots’ resumed” and a TRO preventing the government from arbitrarily detaining whomever they liked was issued, immigration agencies at the federal building “would not be able to protect their employees and the detainees” there. Frimpong shot down this argument, saying that “granting access to counsel is not the same as granting unrestricted access to the public,” nor was “permitting confidential” phone calls between attorneys and detainees the same as letting protesters in the front door of the federal building.* The government had a week to present evidence to the court that it was basing its arrests and detention of people on something other than that they believed undocumented immigrants were present at certain locations ,but failed to do so.* The government also couldn’t explain why immigrants and citizens who ran away frightened by Trump’s secret police represented “reasonable suspicion.” “Defendants do not explain why fleeing upon seeing unidentified masked men with guns exiting from tinted cars without license plates raises suspicion,” Frimpong wrote.* The government also couldn’t explain how it was identifying possible undocumented immigrants to stop based on any factors other than where they were and what they looked like. “Defendants do not explain why being at a bus stop in Pasadena raises suspicion that [targets] may be undocumented immigrants.”* The government argued that it would have to retrain its agents if the TRO were issued — meaning that the agents are currently either not educated on the basics of constitutional rights against improper search and seizure. Or, what is obviously more likely the case, agents on the streets of LA and elsewhere simply do not care about these rights as they strive to reach immigrant arrest quotas that have been handed down from the White House.Towards the end of Frimpong’s order, the judge says something that should also be very obvious to Americans of any political persuasion with a love and appreciation for personal liberty: “Requiring law enforcement to comply with the Constitution does not prevent law enforcement from enforcing the law.”***Whether the Trump administration, DHS and its immigration agents on the ground will actually comply with Frimpong’s order is an open question. I’m guessing there’s a Trump rampage coming on this TRO pretty soon, probably to be accompanied by a screed from White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt on Monday decrying the order as a move by a “liberal activist” judge preventing immigration agents from doing their jobs. By Saturday afternoon, reliable Trump sycophant Rep. Andy Biggs had already begun the proselytizing on behalf of the administration’s unconstitutional behavior:Defiance of the order could — and in my mind, should — bring about a troubling but necessary scenario in which local law enforcement in Los Angeles and elsewhere begins to stop Trump’s masked immigration agents from violating the constitutional rights of citizens and immigrants under the purported protection and jurisdiction of agencies like the Los Angeles Police Department.This scenario is the stuff of autocratic regimes: provincial law enforcement in direct conflict with other law enforcement or military is something typically reserved for failing or failed states. But in the interest of trying to stop the United States from becoming the latter, that difficult choice between allowing the federal government to continue violating the rights of citizens and utilizing local law enforcement to enforce the law may become necessary. If Trump’s immigration agents ignore Frimpong’s order, I think it’s time for local law enforcement to step up and uphold their oaths to the constitution — because the Trump administration, DHS, ICE and agents on the ground clearly will not.Please follow AD on our social media for a little more doom to your scroll. That’s what we all need, right?* Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social* TikTok - @americandoom_* YouTube - @americandoom_* Instagram - @americandoom_* X - @americandoom_* Facebook*** This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

For anyone who may have missed it, you can watch my conversation with the Texas investigative journalist Steven Monacelli from Friday’s live Doom broadcast. I also wanted to flag a few things that I wasn’t able to get to during this very busy week. If you appreciate my work staying on top of all of the madness, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription or throwing a few bucks my way. I’m still running the Fighting Season discount, which gets you a 20 percent discount to Doom subscriptions. Your support keeps my work free for everyone who can’t afford to chip in, and helps fund my investigations and reporting trips to places like Los Angeles, which is still reeling from the violence that the Trump administration is inflicting on the city through immigration raids, and what I think can be fairly considered straight-up attacks on Americans. Now, some notes from the ongoing transition of American life into full-fledged authoritarianism…Trump’s Justice Department and FTC are infiltrating the relationship between parents, doctors and trans AmericansFrom the Times: The Justice Department has issued subpoenas demanding confidential patient information from more than 20 doctors and hospitals that provide gender-related treatments to minors, according to officials with knowledge of the move.The action marks a new turn in the Trump administration’s efforts to limit transgender medical care. Most of the subpoenas, issued through the consumer protection unit of the department’s civil division, attempt to pierce powerful federal confidentiality protections for patients and their medical providers.The FTC is also involved in the ideological battle against trans Americans. Check this illuminating thread on a meeting held Wednesday in which officials alleged that gender-affirming care involves “deceptive trade practices.”Meanwhile, a trans migrant from Mexico who was raped by cartel members there and fled the country to seek asylum remains in solitary confinement in a mens detention center thanks to a Trump executive order. I’ll have more on this very troubling story soon. The migrant was arrested by ICE when she showed up to her immigration court hearing. A Trump executive order that has forced trans women to be transferred to mens prisons — which a judge had put a temporary restraining order on — has forced the migrant woman to stay in solitary confinement for her own safety. This week, her lawyers alleged that ICE forced the woman to sign documents that she didn’t understand and that could expedite her removal from the country. Georgia’s Republican kingmaker accused of half-million Ponzi scheme — and the money went to big name GOP politiciansThe AJC has the scoop on an SEC investigation of Brant Frost, who along with his family is one of the most powerful figures in Georgia Republican politics. Frost was at the top of a Ponzi scheme that saw more than $500,000 laundered to GOP politicians like Ted Cruz, Chip Roy, Matt Gaetz, and more, as well as the House Freedom Caucus. Remember what I said the other day? A small authoritarian government is an inherently corrupt one? Yeah, that.Trump’s Justice Department lawyers purposefully lied about immigration flightsThe lawyers were texting in court about how one of them had just lied to a judge that the flights were no longer taking place when they were. Now, a former Justice Department lawyer who dutifully worked on Trump’s immigration agenda during the first Trump administration is blowing the whistle, as Lawrence O’Donnell explained Thursday night.Trump’s masked immigration agents vow to continue their occupation and attacks in Los Angeles“Better get used to us now, because this is going to be normal very soon.” Those were the words of Border Patrol’s Greg Bovino, who was responding to LA Mayor Karen Bass’ demands that Trump’s masked and violent immigration agents stop terrorizing her city. The threat is well understood, Mr. Bovino. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is working with local law enforcement agencies to criminalize many protest practices, Wired reports. If this were happening in another country we’d call it what it clearly is: an attempt by the federal government to crush opposition and stifle dissent. DHS is led, of course, by Secretary Kristi Noem. Noem dragged her feet when allocating resources to Kerr County, Texas for days as the missing and dead piled up. Meanwhile, Noem was busy posting to Instagram to ask her supporters which official portrait of her they liked the best. Maybe this one? I know it’s summer and folks are trying to take some time off but the authoritarians in charge of our federal government are plowing ahead. Please consider throwing a few dollars to Doom to help us stay on top of the madness. Until next time. - jg***Please follow AD on our social media for a little more doom to your scroll. That’s what we all need, right?* Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social* TikTok - @americandoom_* YouTube - @americandoom_* Instagram - @americandoom_* X - @americandoom_* Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

If you want to ante up to a paid subscription or drop a few dollars in the Doom Coffee Fund, I sure would appreciate it. There’s a lot of news lately — I know, it’s summer and we’re supposed to be relaxing — and I’m tracking a lot of things. Election denialism and rampant authoritarianism within the government are combining to present some very real threats to democracy that the seasons care not about. More on that later. Now, on to some news…***Republican lawmakers in Texas passed on providing more funding for the kind of emergency alert systems that might have saved some of the more than 100 lives that were lost at Camp Mystic in Kerr County. As usual, Republicans in the Lone Star state — goaded on by their largely conservative electorate — were worried about keeping their belts tightened. This, despite a $24 billion budget surplus that the state enjoys. But the failures don’t end there. Local officials allowed the camp to build a group of new cabins in a federally-designated flood zone — the exact type of thing that happens when anti-regulation Republicans are put in charge of local governments. This is what electing Republicans gets you. I say this with no pleasure: kids are dead, families are in mourning, tragedy abounds. Making matters worse, much of this tragic death and destruction looks like it could have been avoided if competent, well-meaning professionals who care about more than the money in their pockets had greater power in Texas. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. It’s helpful to think of what happened in Kerr County as a preview of the future for the rest of America, should Republicans continue to be allowed to carry out their minimal-government philosophy thanks to a majority in Congress, possession of the White House, and strong numbers across the judiciary. You get what you vote for — and in this case, Americans are getting a political party that sees the destruction of government as its biggest selling point and primary goal. Contrary to popular Republican belief, it’s not big government that is inherently corrupt, it’s small government, like the kind our federal bureaucracy is being made into under the second Trump administration. When everything has to go through the person at the top, nothing really gets done. That’s why Trump is effectively clueless as to what’s actually happening within his own administration, as Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out Wednesday night.When confronted by a reporter with the fact that Trump wasn’t aware that munitions shipments to Ukraine had been suspended, Trump lied — or bumbled, or more accurately, rambled his way through an answer that ended with saying that he’d “most likely give the order” if something like withholding weapons shipments to an ally were carried out. “I’d most likely give the order.” When a president and a government only have to answer to the feelings of less than one-third of Americans — the percentage of the population that voted for Trump — how can any of us expect that government to perform effectively? It cannot. A government run by the few will be inherently corrupt because it limits the amount of stakeholders from across society from contributing their expertise and manpower. A government run by an even more select few — like the coalition of hard-right authoritarians and unbelievably wealthy businessmen who populate the Trump administration — will be even more corrupt. It will only be effective in achieving things that benefit those people, which is to say, Trump’s government will never help out the average American — even if that American voted for Trump.Sadly, the people of Kerr County have learned this lesson in the most tragic way possible. Whether they, all of Texas, and the rest of America will learn that lesson, will begin to become more clear next year. ***Please follow AD on our social media for a little more doom to your scroll. That’s what we all need, right?* Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social* TikTok - @americandoom_* YouTube - @americandoom_* Instagram - @americandoom_* X - @americandoom_* Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

Do you believe Pam Bondi when she says it wasn’t the list she was talking about on Fox News in February, but the Epstein case in general? My bullshit detector started vibrating the whole house when I heard her fib the other day. I laughed. It is laughable! This is the type of stuff — bumbling and obvious lies over gussied-up claims that should have never been made — that you’d see a small town mayor make. (Speaking of, remember this one from the stacks?) Instead, it’s the Attorney General of the United States, getting crossed up by a reporter on live TV. Anyway, this was always coming because Epstein was just another crumb that Trump and his people handed to their supporters to get their votes. Now that they have the power granted to them by (our still somewhat functioning) elections, they don’t care to give them anymore crumbs.But don’t believe the hype that Trump’s MAGA base or his “coalition” of conservatives, fascists, and everyday Americans who very proudly don’t read the news is fading. Just because Alex Jones cried on Tik Tok doesn’t mean that any of these people are going anywhere. They’ll support him to the last man. Trump could come and take all of their belongings — leaving them with an empty bag of hopes and dreams — and they’d still believe he was doing it for them.This empty bag was supposed to contain all the secrets of Jeffrey Epstein that proved their suspicions about liberal pedophiles. Trump sold them that bad bill of goods and then bailed, like he always does. You get what you pay for — or in this case, what you vote for. *** This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

Note: Still got that Fighting Season discount going. Get 20 percent off subscriptions to American Doom so I can buy a steak this weekend. On to the news…***Good Wednesday morning. Hot as hell here in Savannah. I took a brief cruise through some sources yesterday and after only an hour or two I had enough material to reach an unsurprising conclusion: the Republican party is already hard at work trying to rig the midterm elections in their favor. I really wish I wasn’t already talking about elections again but the GOP just can’t keep their hands off the process. From the promise of politically-motivated prosecutions of election officials from Trump’s Justice Department to the current (and legally questionable) prosecution of voting rights groups in Texas, Republicans are laying the lawfare groundwork for suppressing the vote and silencing opponents who are, in most cases, simply competent public servants who believe in free and fair elections. As has been increasingly apparent over the last five years, Republicans do not believe in this tenet of representative democracy. Last week, the Times reported that the Justice Department is exploring criminal prosecutions of state and local election officials for failure to properly secure election infrastructure — a part of a sweeping strategy to suppress free and fair elections that harkens back to Project 2025. You might remember this from my story about the right’s plans to prosecute Democratic election officials at Rolling Stone in April.This is quite rich considering a few things. First, the only actual breaches of election equipment in recent history came at the hands of Republicans. In Coffee County, Trump-supporting members of the election board gave access to voting machines and other election equipment to the Trump campaign, its lawyers, and probably Mike Lindell, although his direct involvement has never been specifically proven. Also in Georgia, in Spalding County, lawyers from that same firm were in talks with Trump-supporting election officials there to access voting machines in their attempt to overturn the 2020 election.If all that weren’t enough to prove my point, since taking office for the second time, Trump has gutted the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA. CISA is responsible for helping state and local election officials secure their equipment against bad actors like Russian hackers. Trump has reduced CISA’s abilities to perform these tasks, which according to Democratic election officials like Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, have made our election systems less secure.As usual, Texas is leading the way in the GOP’s aggressive legal efforts to suppress voter turnout and stifle dissent. There, a politically-motivated prosecution of voting rights groups signals bad things ahead for free elections. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has indicted nine voting rights advocates for helping voters turn in their ballots — despite the fact that courts are up in the air whether these actions even constitute the “ballot-harvesting” crime that Paxton alleges. (Another way to think of their actions is that they were simply helping seniors navigate the complicated mail-in ballot process.)Paxton’s efforts to suppress voting are mirrored elsewhere, like in North Carolina where Republican legislators are trying to pass a bill that would prohibit election officials from “promoting voter turnout.” (That Republicans are explicitly against promoting voter turnout should tell you everything you need to know about their support for representative democracy.) The bill would also further entrench partisan politics in the electoral process by expanding the number of political appointments at the State Board of Elections. Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene is leading efforts to remove immigrants from the U.S. census count. This will result in fewer congressional seats for swing states with large immigrant populations like Georgia and North Carolina. Whether Republicans like it or not, undocumented immigrants live here — and they are actual human beings. By not counting them in the census, Republicans are essentially erasing our neighbors, the people who often cook our food, clean our homes, tend to our lawns. This is just another way to establish minority rule.And to wrap things up for now, Burt Jones is running for governor of Georgia. For those who might have forgotten, Jones is an avowed election denier who was deeply involved with the illegal scheme to have fake electoral college electors hand over their votes to Trump in 2020. Jones avoided legal consequences for his role in the fake electors scheme because the prosecutor who had charged him, Fani Willis, was deemed to have a conflict of interest because she once donated to the campaign of Jones’ political opponent. ***Please follow AD on our social media for a little more doom to your scroll. That’s what we all need, right?* Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social* TikTok - @americandoom_* YouTube - @americandoom_* Instagram - @americandoom_* X - @americandoom_* Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

Hey, I’m still running that Fighting Season discount where you can get 20 percent off subscriptions to American Doom. Also, you can throw a few bucks my way at the Doom Coffee Fund so I can stay hydrated while holding the authoritarian right accountable. Now, on to the news…Good Monday morning and welcome back to the show. I spent most of this weekend gloriously offline but pulled up my phone Sunday morning to see the latest from the craziest wing of the craziest political party in American history. Yes, the batshit brigade of the GOP is all over the flooding in Texas, working hard to right the wrong of the many young children who died there. Marjorie Taylor Greene and her fellow Georgian, a woman named Kandiss Taylor who you might remember running for governor under the campaign slogan “Jesus, Guns and Babies,” believe that cloud-seeding and geo-engineering are responsible for the deadly flooding in Texas.These are two woman who — along with the entirety of the Republican party — consistently lecture Americans who call for gun control in the wake of mass shootings. The aftermath of deadly gun violence is simply not the time to “politicize” a tragedy and restrict Americans’ access to weapons like military-grade assault rifles, they say. It’s interesting, then, to watch them spring into action in the wake of the deadly Texas floods. Taylor spend some time over the weekend writing about how she supports legislation in states other than the Georgia that would ban the practice of geo-engineering. (Just FYI: 10 states use cloud-seeding and other forms of geo-engineering on what the Government Accountability Office describes as a pretty limited basis to induce more rainfall and prevent hail.) Greene touted a bill she’s working on that would make geo-engineering a crime — despite the fact that it almost surely helps out a lot of farmers who she counts on for support.Anyway, Taylor is an up-and-coming Greene clone who has announced her bid for Georgia’s First Congressional District — my district, as it happens. She probably won’t win but… who knows? Donald Trump is president. As far as I know, no Georgia Democrat has announced their intention to run to replace Rep. Buddy Carter, who would like to replace Sen. Jon Ossoff.Hate to say it, but I’ll probably have to put my political reporter hat on pretty soon in order to start covering these races. Meantime, I’m keeping my eye on immigration matters and a whole lot else. If you have any tips on anything related to authoritarian rumblings — election denialism, improper use of the military, extremism in law enforcement, illegal immigration practices — I’m all ears. ***On a completely different note, I’m doing quite a bit more music these days now that all my time isn’t taken up by book work, elections, etc. (The constitutional crisis is slow-rolling so I figure I can justify spending some time not steeped in the news.) If you want to check out my band, the Savannah Morning Blues, you can access all our social channels and hear our music at this link. For those of you on YouTube, you can subscribe to SMB’s page there, as well as American Doom’s home on YouTube. ***Please follow AD on our social media for a little more doom to your scroll. That’s what we all need, right?* Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social* TikTok - @americandoom_* YouTube - @americandoom_* Instagram - @americandoom_* X - @americandoom_* Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

It takes a lot of work to put together all the pieces like this. Last March, Rachel Maddow praised my ability to “connect the dots” with my investigation of local election officials throughout the country who support Trump’s election lies. But all this work digging up clues to what’s coming next in our new age of American authoritarianism isn’t easy — and is very time consuming. If you support this work, please consider a paid subscription to American Doom or contributing a few dollars to our coffee fund. I’ve extended the Fighting Season discount through July, so you can get 20 percent off the regular subscription cost. Paid subscribers can also get discounts by referring a friend and giving gift subscriptions. Thank you all for your support. - jg***Donald Trump has made it clear that he would like to strip Americans of their citizenship — and his loyalists at the Justice Department have now been given new tools to do so.A June 11 memo to all employees of the Justice Department’s Civil Division advises attorneys and staff to begin prioritizing “denaturalization” proceedings for several categories of naturalized citizens, which is just a more complicated way of saying Americans. Most disturbingly, the memo provides the government with the ability to strip citizenship away from virtually anyone it feels like.While the directive currently only applies to immigrants who have become citizens through the naturalization process, it isn’t difficult to imagine how easily this can — and likely will — creep toward efforts to strip citizenship away from natural born Americans.This writing has been on the wall for years. For all of our history, a key plank of American conservatism has been to establish rules about who actually gets to call themselves Americans. You see this in the culture wars — “real” Americans are the folks sitting at diners in the Midwest, being interviewed during an election year on Fox & Friends. Everyone else — like people who live in large cities — are to be considered part of an un-American insurgency. Obviously, the biggest determining factor of who gets to be American has to do with the color of your skin. Second to that is your politics: liberalism is not just un-American but anti-American. Over my lifetime I’ve watched as Republican politicians and their media allies have achieved great success in making “liberal” a dirty word, and making “conservative” synonymous with patriotism.What the June 11 memo from the Justice Department’s Civil Division makes clear is that any pretense of Trump’s mass deportation operation being directed at “criminal illegal immigrants” is just that — a fake-out, an excuse to expand the practice of determining who gets to be here based not on criminality but on an entirely different set of parameters that are defined by people like Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, and whomever has the most highly-rated show on Fox News at any given moment.That’s because the memo gives wide leverage for Justice Department lawyers and staff to initiate denaturalization proceedings. There is of course some language about how the government should focus on stripping citizenship away from objectively bad people like terrorists, sex offenders and violent criminals. But the memo makes clear that the Justice Department has carte blanche to denaturalize virtually anyone it wants, for virtually any reason government lawyers can come up with.These reasons include stripping citizenship from anyone who poses a “potential” danger to national security or are somehow involved in a “nexus” to terrorism. You can see how quickly this can — and almost surely will — be abused by Trump loyalists within the Justice Department.The memo also orders the Justice Department to pursue denaturalization of anyone who has “acquired naturalization through fraud,” which could apply to transgendered people — a new piece of evidence in growing suspicions among trans Americans that the Trump administration is effectively trying to criminalize being trans.Your support keeps American Doom free for all our readers wanting to stay on top of authoritarian threats. Paid subscriptions make this possible.Beyond this already-vague language, the memo directs Justice Department attorneys to pursue denaturalization proceedings against anyone with “pending criminal charges,” even “if those charges do not fit” in categories of immigrants like those who have committed violent crimes. Government attorneys can also strip citizenship from anyone it “determines to be sufficiently important to pursue.”“These categories are intended to guide the Civil Division in prioritizing which cases to pursue; however, these categories do not limit the Civil Division from pursuing any particular case, nor are they listed in a particular order of importance,” the memo reads, in part. “Further, the Civil Division retains the discretion to pursue cases outside of these categories as it determines appropriate. The assignment of denaturalization cases may be made across sections or units based on experience, subject-matter expertise, and the overall needs of the Civil Division.”In other words: denaturalize anyone you want.***Stripping away citizenship of Trump criticsWith a vengeful strongman at the helm, this is going to get out of hand quickly. In fact it already has. We only need to look at the cases of Mahmoud Khalil and Reyna Ozturk, two university students who spoke out against the war in Gaza and who were subsequently black-bagged by immigration agents before being ordered released by judges.Marco Rubio’s State Department led those efforts, which were likely unconstitutional. Threats — both carried out and implied — to detain, deport or denaturalize anyone Donald Trump simply doesn’t like are right at home in the American right’s forever war of determining who is a loyal American and who is not (the constitution be damned). The difference now is, the president and those behind him wielding the logistical power of government agencies like the DOJ, people like Russell Vought and Stephen Miller, are actually putting policies in place that will bring Trump’s authoritarian dreams into the realm of reality.This includes masked cops on American streets, terrorizing immigrant communities and detaining them at will, as well as new facilities to hold scores of migrants as part of Trump’s mass deportation initiative. It also includes people like Rep. Andy Ogles asking the Justice Department to explore denaturalizing Zohran Mamdani. In just the last 24 hours, Trump has glommed onto this idea, rolling out a Trumpian classic of those ever-helpful but always-anonymous “people” who tell him things. In this case, those “people are saying he’s here illegally.”Trump’s vague threat to deport Mamdani came during a visit to a new immigration detention facility in Florida, where he once again mused about deporting Americans who have been convicted of crimes — just another group of citizens he would like to remove from the country. As of the June 11 DOJ memo, the Trump administration’s efforts to decide who is American and who is not also include the memo’s broad directive to strip citizenship away from pretty much anyone, for pretty much any reason. I imagine this includes criticizing Trump himself — an offense that several tourists and others traveling to the U.S. have said resulted in their detention and denial of entry.But for me, one of the most eye-raising parts of the memo comes in the ninth category of immigrants whose denaturalization should be prioritized by the government — those who have “acquired naturalization through government corruption, fraud, or material misrepresentation.” This broad language could be applied to lots of classes of naturalized citizens, including the trans community.***Targeting trans immigrantsFirst, “government corruption” is extremely broad. If I had to guess, I’d say that this will be applied to asylum-seekers who were granted temporary or other protective status during the Biden administration — which government lawyers under Trump will claim improperly granted asylum to immigrants as part of a “corrupt” scheme to import Democratic voters. (This argument has been made by Trump and many, many others for years now, but it’s not hard to imagine it being made in court in order to support the administration's efforts to continue removing asylum-seekers.)But what to make of immigrants who were naturalized through “fraud or material misrepresentation?” Thankfully, we have a State Department cable (above) from February to shed some light on what that could mean. Under the guise of transgendered people seeking to enter the country for sporting competitions, the cable provides direction on how to deny them entry.The cable says that any immigrant or traveler whose self-identified sex doesn’t match their sex at birth on government documents like passports is making a “misrepresentation,” and should therefore be denied entry into the United States. Trans advocates have told me they believe this is an important and troubling step toward charging trans immigrants and even trans citizens with fraud for “misrepresenting” their sex.If that’s the case, the June 11 Justice Department memo would allow government lawyers to strip citizenship away from trans people whose current sex does not match their sex at birth, as defined on government documents.Hanging over all of this is the Supreme Court’s decision on birthright citizenship, which allowed the Trump administration to continue to pursue undoing a law that provides citizenship for anyone born in the United States. If birthright citizenship is done away with, does that mean even those of us who were born here will have to go through some new, yet-to-be contrived naturalization process? If that’s the case, the June 11 Justice Department memo makes clear that the government has the discretion to deny citizenship — or take it away — from virtually anyone they like.***Please follow AD on our social media for a little more doom to your scroll. That’s what we all need, right?* Bluesky - @americandoom.bsky.social* TikTok - @americandoom_* YouTube - @americandoom_* Instagram - @americandoom_* X - @americandoom_* Facebook This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.american-doom.com/subscribe

The discussion dives into the unsettling rise of authoritarianism on American streets, spotlighting shocking incidents involving immigration agents and law enforcement. Videos reveal aggressive tactics, like agents tasering bystanders or detaining citizens, sparking outrage. The negligence of mainstream media in reporting these events is highlighted, emphasizing the need for independent journalism. Listeners are urged to document abuses and advocate for social accountability to combat these alarming trends.

The podcast dives deep into the struggles of contemporary journalism, revealing a world increasingly overshadowed by fatigue and disillusionment. It reflects on the evolving media landscape and the emotional toll on journalists facing relentless demands. Technology's paradox of connectivity versus cultural homogenization is also examined, highlighting how modern life disconnects us from meaningful experiences. Ultimately, there's a call for reimagining our engagement with media, advocating for a more thoughtful approach to navigate this complex reality.