American Doom

Big story last week in Rolling Stone that exposed the genesis of what we now know is the largest single immigration raid in the history of the Department of Homeland Security. Long story short: a Republican congressional candidate and her union-worker helper called ICE on the Hyundai Metaplant outside of Savannah, GA. If you appreciate my reporting on this story — which you won’t find anywhere else — please pay for it. The Trump administration violated two landmark laws that have been in place for over 200 years that codify the military’s presence in everyday American life — and in doing so has laid the groundwork for military interference in the 2026 mid-term elections.Donald Trump, the Justice Department, Homeland Security and the military will face no concrete consequences for violating the Posse Comitatus Act and the Alien Enemies Act, as determined by two federal courts last week. In fact, Trump and his backers throughout the federal government, federal law enforcement, and the National Guard and the military, have signaled they’ll continue to violate laws created to prevent the executive branch from establishing martial law, or otherwise using men with guns to enforce their policies and protect their rule.That includes using the military to “impact” elections, as one of the judge’s who handed down last week’s rulings wrote.If it weren’t for the typical firehouse of news and scandal that has become a hallmark of Trump presidencies, the decisions last week from four federal judges that the president violated both the Posse Comitatus Act and the Alien Enemies Act would be massive, impeachment-level developments. Instead, the judges’ decisions landed like a feather in a nation that is increasingly hurtling toward open authoritarianism even as daily life continues relatively normally.In the days following the decisions — which came from Judge Charles Breyer in the Northern District of California and a three-judge panel in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals — the Trump administration oversaw a military execution in the south Caribbean, while the president himself has continued to threaten Democratic cities with military occupation and infiltration from the federal immigration agencies that have effectively become Trump’s personal law enforcement forces.While all of this is obviously very troubling, the National Guard presence in Washington DC — complete with scenes of Guard members picking up trash and mostly just standing around — belies the seriousness of the precedent that the White House is setting.The grave consequences of accepting Trump’s military and law enforcement occupations of Democratic cities as normal was alluded to in Breyer’s decision, which laid out some of the scenarios with which Trump could use the military toward anti-democratic ends. Those scenarios are made more feasible thanks to a June decision from the Ninth Circuit, which determined that Trump can deploy the National Guard if “his ability to execute federal law has been ‘significantly impeded.’”Breyer compares the legal threshold granted by the Ninth Circuit givingTrump wide leeway to deploy the National Guard or the military to “the stricter statutory requirement that he be ‘unable with the regular forces to execute the laws’” in order to send in the troops, as Trump is so fond of doing.Breyer then lays out several theoretical instances in which, under this broad interpretation of executive power over domestic military deployment by the Ninth Circuit, Trump could use the military. One scenario is simply to halt elections."The President, relying upon anecdotes from state election officials that voting machines are glitching, or that fraud exists, could claim that he is unable to execute the election laws."In fact, we are already seeing this argument being laid out by the Trump administration. Through the Justice Department’s pressure on states for access to sweeping and detailed voter data, in addition to Trump’s executive orders on election rules, plus his statements about completely doing away with mail-in ballots and voting machines, the White House is preparing for a takeover of elections.One way Trump could do this is by claiming some sort of national emergency that would allow him to employ the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation of domestic use of the military.“For instance, the Ninth Circuit’s test would likely enable a President to use federal law enforcement agents to stoke tensions and then use any resistance as justification to call forth the National Guard,” Breyer wrote. “As long as the President actually believed that the resistance significantly impeded his ability to execute federal law, it is hard to see how a court could find that he acted in bad faith, especially under the Ninth Circuit’s deferential standard of review.”In other words, Trump can say crime is really bad in a Democratic city — or that election officials in a blue state are corrupt and elections are rigged — and send in the National Guard to get the situation under control.“Could the President, for instance, assert that he is unable to enforce obscure tax or drug laws and then use the federalized National Guard to execute the election laws?”Yes and yes. This is where we’re headed.On the same day of Breyer’s decision, the Fifth Circuit determined that the Trump administration “improperly invoked” the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) by claiming that the presence of Tren de Aragua gang members inside the United States amounted to an “invasion.”Using this tortured legal rationale, the Trump administration then renditioned undocumented immigrants to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador and elsewhere.The same day that the Trump administration was deemed guilty of violating the AEA, it announced that it had blown a boat to smithereens in the waters of the south Caribbean. The boat contained 11 people — either drug runners or migrants trying to make it to the United States, depending on who you believe.Now, military assets are gathering off the Venezuelan coast ostensibly to take out drug cartels, meaning Trump is fighting illegal wars both at home and abroad.***It has become fashionable in recent years to compare current events in the United States to those in pre-war Germany — and for good reason. This isn’t because it’s simply easy or lazy on the part of writers, historians, journalists and others, but because it’s so applicable to what we’re currently witnessing.William Shirer’s doorstop of a book, the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, provides, in excruciating detail, the tale of the tape of how Adolf Hitler consolidated absolute power in an otherwise democratic society. The first third of Shirer’s book shows how a nation can vote itself into authoritarianism, dictatorship, and far worse.Fear and violence played a major role in that consolidation of power. Germans of all political, religious and socioeconomic stripes thought they could appease Hitler and his Nationalist Socialists through compromise or cooperation. One after another, each of these groups was crushed by the Nazi party as it ruthlessly continued upon its authoritarian path.Some of our friends and neighbors on the American right — be they pocketbook Republicans, Reagan conservatives, Bush-ian neo-conservatives or whatever other non-authoritarian factions remain of the GOP — think these comparisons to Nazi-era are ridiculous.What these Americans fail to recognize is that the Republican Party as a non-authoritarian institution fails to exist. From the top down, anyone who calls themselves a Republican is either fully supportive of the party’s anti-democratic efforts toward something like total authority or competitive authoritarianism, or they falsely believe that all of this is overblown.Either way, like the Germans who thought the same, they’ll get run over by the authoritarian rumble just the same.The best way to do this is to first convince your party that there is an existential threat that must be eliminated, and only you and your people can do it. Then you have to actually start eliminating the threat — or at least making it look like you are.The deployment of the National Guard and robust Homeland Security forces to Los Angeles in June was called Operation Excalibur. (Breyer alludes to the fact that this is probably no coincidence, writing that “Excalibur is, of course, a reference to the legendary sword of King Arthur, which symbolizes his divine sovereignty as king.”)The goal of Operation Excalibur was “to demonstrate, through a show of presence, the capacity and freedom of maneuver of federal law enforcement within the Los Angeles Joint Operations Area,” according to Breyer.In other words: we can do whatever we want, whenever we want, to you, and there’s nothing you can do to stop us.Further, anyone who does try to stop Trump’s forceful incursions into the territories of his political enemies — either through protest or legal argument — will be accused of crime and disloyalty.When National Guard Major General Sherman told DHS officials that his troops were prevented from performing certain law enforcement tasks by the Posse Comitatus Act, they began “questioning Sherman’s loyalty to the country,” according to Breyer.The questioning of Sherman’s “loyalty” to the United States came from Gregory Bovino, who as DHS chief for the Los Angeles region has emerged as a steadfast authoritarian voice. Bovino was the DHS face of the immigration raid carried out last month at a fundraising event held by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.Bovino’s comment “is relevant because Chief Bovino’s accusations of disloyalty go to the state of mind of decision makers who are tasked with ensuring that the Posse Comitatus Act is followed,” Breyer wrote.Again, in other words, they don’t care about following the laws that prevent military incursion into everyday American life — one of the very things that prompted the founders to declare independence from England.Among the reasons listed in the Declaration of Independence for our separation from Great Britain — many of which could easily apply to Trump — is the issue of troops in our lives.“He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.”All of this comes down to elections — the only thing preventing us from Trump and Republicans obtaining absolute rule. By succeeding in getting the courts to agree with the White House on domestic use of the military, we’re getting closer and closer to free and fair elections being a thing of the past, according to Richard Bernstein, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and a charter member of the Rule of Law Society. If courts continue, as the Ninth Circuit did in June, to accept the Trump administration’s arguments for domestic use of the military, “ […] such a decision would neuter the federal criminal prohibitions on the use of the military, including National Guard units in federal service, to interfere with elections,” Bernstein wrote last week. “These arguments are thus a dagger pointed at elections — the heart of our Republic.”***Here are some other examples of our growing acceptance of martial law.* The Trump administration is using drones to monitor protests and releasing the footage — with no apparent relation to any crime being committed. * The Trump administration is immigration judges and replacing them with inexperienced ones, including military judges.* Deportation training is now the sole priority for federal law enforcement, meaning that the occupation of majority-minority American cities will grow. Even without sending in the National Guard, Americans in large cities will become more and more accustomed to the sight of Trump’s masked agents on the streets. * A small company with no experience in large projects won a bid to build a detention camp in the Texas desert, part of rapidly increasing detention capacity for immigrants. This is an example of powerful and growing incentives for people, companies and communities to participate in the enforcement of Trump’s authoritarian policies on immigration and other issues. * Federal law enforcement continues aggressive behavior towards the press, furthering an attitude of lack of accountability to the public and loyalty to the president alone. *** 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’s 2:06 a.m. and I’m wrapping up a story at Rolling Stone that details how a Republican candidate for congress in Georgia was partly behind yesterday’s ICE raid at a Hyundai plant here. Like, as basically an informant. Pretty wild stuff! I wish I had more time and energy to lay out more about that story below but I’m pretty tired, so the following will have to suffice. You can read more here. FYI this was not at all what I planned to spend the last 12-plus hours on but when the dystopian stuff happens right down the road from your house, you just sort of have to go. Anyway, if you appreciate this journalism please pay for it.Oh, something cool: Here’s the cover of my first book, which will be published by the University of Georgia Press next year.Cool, right? Anyway, on to the news…On the drive to a massive Hyundai plant outside Savannah, I passed entire neighborhoods that have been built to house the workers there. The plant, which opened in March, was lauded as the biggest economic development project in Georgia history by elected officials like Gov. Brian Kemp. Thanks to Hyundai’s decision to build the plant on the side of the interstate in Bryan County, there are more than 7,000 new jobs there, county officials said last year. The plant and its offshoots have resulted in more than $2 billion in investments in the county.I drove past the new neighborhoods and pulled off the interstate, passing a handful of brand new gas stations that weren’t there last year, and driving through new roundabouts on the outskirts of the plant. Then I drove around the plant for a while until I found the Georgia State Patrol cars blocking an entrance. Overhead, a helicopter hovered. Somewhere past the state troopers were the masked agents from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), who arrested as many as 400 undocumented immigrants there on Thursday.I came home to check on the dogs and the wife and checked online to see what folks were saying about the raid. That’s when I found Tori Branum, a Georgia woman who is running as a Republican for the 12th congressional district. Branum claimed credit for alerting ICE to the presence of undocumented immigrants working in and around the plant that the agency raided on Thursday.“For months, folks have whispered about what’s going on behind those gates now the truth is finally catching up (sic)” she wrote on Facebook. “I reported this site to ICE a few months ago and was on the phone with an agent.”I called Branum up to learn more about how she helped ICE in its investigation and operation today in Georgia. She told me she simply contacted the agency on its website at first. At some point, she came into contact with a local union worker who spoke Spanish. That person had access to the facility, apparently spoke to some employees there, and reported to Branum that undocumented immigrants were on site. She then put the union worker in touch with ICE.Barnum said she’s been getting “a lot of hate” but isn’t really bothered by it. She said she feels good about what she did. After all, she said, busting “illegal immigrants” and getting them out of the country is why she voted for Donald Trump in the first place. That, and cracking down on crime, among I’m sure many other things that we didn’t get a chance to talk about.She told me that, if it were up to her, everyone not born in the United States should have to leave, more or less.“Every person that wasn’t born here would go back to the country they came from and come back the right way,” she said. “And we’d have a whole reset of this whole debacle.”Anyway, you can hear some of her comments as well as some videos from the raid above. More at Rolling Stone today and more here next week on election denier stuff.*** 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

Today’s post contains a checklist for progressive Americans to use in fighting back against the authoritarian actions coming from the Trump administration. These tasks are the result of my two decades reporting on American violence, decline and extremism. If you support this work and insight, please consider a paid subscription or contribution to help fund my reporting.After a few days last week digging back into the epidemic of election denialism that has roiled the nation over the last four years, I was struck by just how difficult the task that lies ahead seems.And I’m not just talking about how to combat the scourge of efforts to interfere with — or completely suspend — next year’s mid-term elections and maybe even elections after that.I’m talking about the bigger task, the one that begs the question, How do we get out of this? The path forward seems impossible at times. After all, Republicans have it easy: completely detached from fact and truth, all they have to do is convince what appears to be an increasingly uneducated electorate that the scandalous lies they tell about liberals and Democrats are somehow true.I’ll provide some evidence of what this demonization of non-authoritarian Americans looks like, then offer an initial checklist of things we can do to protect our values and communities. That checklist is based on my reporting on myriad issues related to American decline over the course of my career, from everyday street crime, to police brutality, online radicalization, immigration, right-wing extremism and election denialism.You can skip straight to the checklist or keep reading to learn a bit about how we got here. This checklist is incomplete, but can be considered a partial antidote to the authoritarian checklist that Trump and Republicans have had great success in working on these last eight months.To skip straight to this list, scroll down. But first, some evidence of how challenging this will be.***As I combed through election data for Pennsylvania’s 67 counties last week, Doug Burgum was on CNN, repeating what the White House clearly believes is a winning talking point — one of those salacious lies the Trump administration constantly tells. Burgum told CNN’s Kaitlin Collins that he just couldn’t understand why any Democratic mayor or governor wouldn’t welcome Trump’s twisted “offer” to send National Guard troops into the nation’s largest cities. Considering that such deployments would virtually eliminate crime in the country, Burgum concluded that Democrats must simply be “pro-crime.”Now, any reasonable person would understand this is not true. The only people who are “pro-crime” are criminals. But just in case there was any ambiguity in Burgum’s messaging, senior White House advisor Stephen Miller helpfully offered his take on why Democratic leaders don’t want troops on their streets.The entirety of the Democratic Party — including everyday Americans who don’t support the president — are “domestic extremists,” Miller said last week. I’m not sure what’s more depressing: the fact that grown adults have resorted to this pathetic behavior in service of their party’s leader, or that something like one-third of Americans actually believe such obvious nonsense.But the number of Americans who apparently support straight-up authoritarianism is stunning.Ten months after the election, I finally took some time this week to go through county-level election results from important states like Pennsylvania, Nevada, and North Carolina. The data is troubling, to say the least. I’ll have more on my findings in a future post, but for now I’ll just say that the data shows that these three supposedly “swing” states are becoming redder. Perhaps worse: blue counties have voted less and less for Democrats over the last 16 years. Meantime, stable Republican counties have voted at higher and higher percentages for their candidates.The bottom line is, I found no evidence that even progressive areas of the small sample of states I analyzed were becoming more progressive. I did, however, find substantial evidence that the Republican areas of those states are becoming more Republican. This means that — having seen exactly who Trump is, knowing full well what the plans were for his second term — Americans have voted in greater numbers for Republicans.I saw someone the other day posit that the reason that Democrats largely can’t combat Trump’s increasing authoritarianism is that, as relatively well-educated people, they simply can’t believe it’s actually happening. That time is well past. Y’all better start believing it, or we’re double-fucked.Democrats and progressive Americans must start coming to terms with the fact that many of their friends and neighbors — either through ignorance or abject support — back a political party that cannot be thought of as anything but mostly-authoritarian. In the starkest terms, this means that Americans who don’t want to live in an authoritarian society must prepare for the worst. Whatever bad thing you can imagine happening, it probably will.The upside here is that if you prepare for the worst and it doesn’t happen, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.I think that part of this inability or unwillingness to accept the simple fact that our government is now led by an openly authoritarian political party lies in the widespread belief that the United States was sort of post-history. At least, that’s the perception that I had growing up. All that bad shit was behind us — fascism, racism, sexism, tyrannical government oppression. We had figured it out. America wasn’t perfect; there were disagreements, but we had evolved beyond the extremism, the wars, and the ignorance of societies that preceded us. We had a messy but functioning democracy that, through the long arc of history, always seemed to get better. Until it didn’t. That time is now.Part of the reason this can feel so hopeless is because all of us who aren’t on the side of authoritarianism simply cannot compete with the lies. By the time journalists publish their stories fact-checking the false claims and lies, they’ve already rocketed around the Internet, flooding the minds of millions, thanks to an army not of right-wing journalists, but full-on propagandists. People who have come of age as young adults in the last 10 years don’t remember a time when, between the hours of 9-5, Fox News was a relatively normal news network. Now, even as news breaks, the personalities on Fox run cover for Trump and Republicans, credulously sharing their claims as objective fact. This is the most watched news apparatus in the nation. The speed of this cycle has become faster over the last decade, making it so that news no longer holds attention in the way that it once did. As a result, we quickly forget things that have already happened — hastening what I think is a growing perception among younger generations that what is now is what has always been.But those of us who haven’t been swindled by the false promises of authoritarianism remember the lessons of the past. It’s incumbent upon us, then, to ensure that each of our little portions of this society reflect our values.As such, here are some suggested areas of focus for progressive Americans to consider when organizing in their communities. I hope to expand on these more in future coverage here at Doom, in addition to my ongoing investigations of the election denial movement, and other adversarial reporting on the authoritarianism that is increasingly surrounding us.***GovernmentSchool boards, boards of elections, county commissions, city councils, state legislative offices, metropolitan planning organizations, sheriffs, prosecutors, and judgeships should all be the focus of progressive organizing and get-out-the-vote efforts. The American right has made incredible progress over the course of the last decade in taking over these government bodies, while the left has fallen short.Healthcare and social servicesProgressive communities should partner with hospital systems and universities to continue providing research for and access to vaccines, as well as general healthcare, elder care, and access to abortion and gender-affirming care throughout communities. Local governments should work with allies in business and activist communities to ensure that social services are properly funded as the federal government reduces funding and perverts the missions of agencies like FEMA, HHS, HUD, the FHFA and more.Law enforcementProgressive communities should work with local law enforcement agencies to institute a broad variety of policies that reflect progressive values. At the top of the list is ensuring that local law enforcement in our communities do not participate with ICE on immigration enforcement. Further, cities and states can and should pass rules and laws that prohibit the hiring of ex-ICE agents as police, as well require more robust education qualifications to become a member of law enforcement. Cities and states should create citizen review boards to hold law enforcement agencies accountable for improper use of force and other abuses of power. Finally, cities, counties and states must immediately stop the practice of encrypting police radio frequencies in order to allow the continued monitoring of day-to-day police activity by journalists, community members and activists. Localities that have already encrypted their police communications should, at the very least, provide access to those frequencies to responsible media outlets and activist groups.Investigation and prosecutionProgressive areas of the country should utilize aggressive enforcement of all administrative licensing, taxation, code and ethics rules to pressure Republican elected officials and community leaders. Government agencies, advocacy groups and citizens should aggressively investigate compliance with professional licensing rules and regulations, and tax and code compliance for all businesses, organizations and prominent community members who provide financial or other aid to Republican and conservative causes and officials. Additionally, all Republican elected officials should be aggressively investigated by the press, Democrats and allied law enforcement for compliance with municipal, state and federal rules and regulations regarding their personal and business interests, as well as their compliance with campaign finance laws and financial disclosure rules.MediaProgressive citizens, businesses and activist groups should monitor local press for uncritical, supportive or simply lazy coverage of Republican-authoritarian policies and statements by elected officials. Advertising boycotts, public pressure on editors and news directors, and relationship-building with local reporters, influencers, and media personalities should all be utilized to ensure that local press is accurately and responsibly reporting on authoritarian threats to communities.Activist trainingLawyers, military veterans, first responders, retired law enforcement and others with knowledge of civil disobedience, civil unrest, and conflict zones should offer training and education for citizens and activist groups. Progressive communities should provide regular training opportunities and education regarding individual rights during interactions with local law enforcement, federal authorities and the military. Safety training for civil unrest, mass casualty events and military or law enforcement incursion into communities should also be a part of ongoing education and training within communities.***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

Just a quick thing today about a comment from Trump that most people missed. Then I’m back in the research chamber finding out how the Trump administration, the Justice Department and others are working to interfere with next year’s election. But I wanted to flag Trump’s comment, made during a back-and-forth with reporters and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.Zelenskyy was asked if he’ll hold elections once peace is reached between Ukraine and Russia. Of course, Zelenskyy said. But he couldn’t safely guarantee “legal” elections while the war continues. That’s when Trump chimed in: Oh, you mean you can suspend elections during wartime? Imagine if I did that, Trump said. Joking? Not joking? It doesn’t matter because something like this is a reasonably foreseeable. If you don’t believe me, just listen to Trump’s own words about how maybe being a dictator isn’t such a bad idea, or how he can declare national emergencies whenever he wants, send the troops wherever he wants, and maybe even serve a third term.Anyway, share this post and video far and wide, because I don’t think everyone is paying close enough attention. It’s going to take a lot of work to expose the massive network of election deniers standing between the nation and a free election. Choose a paid subscription today to support my work. 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

Will we have elections next year? I hope so but honestly, I don’t know! What I do know is that there are thousands of election officials and untold amounts of court cases that stand between right now and an honest-to-goodness, free and fair election next year. It takes a lot of work to stay on top of all that and expose bad actors, like I’ve been doing for years. If you want to support those efforts, please choose a paid subscription to American Doom or throw a few dollars in our Coffee Fund. It’s hard to imagine in today’s environment of non-stop authoritarian rumblings coming from the White House, but just less than five years ago, as Donald Trump tried to cling to power amidst an election loss to Joe Biden, the Trump administration hatched what was then a shocking and unthinkable plan.In a never-issued executive order, the most fervent conspiracy theorists and executive power absolutists that the American right has to offer drew up plans to seize voting machines — with the military, if necessary. Trump’s direct involvement in those plans — if any — has never been fully revealed. The plan never came to fruition, and what followed was Trump’s flailing and criminal attempt to overturn the 2020 election. The never-issued executive order was just a part of that attempt, helping conspiracy theories about voting machines to rise from the dregs of the election-denying American right to mainstream Republican policy. Since then, the election denial movement has continued its assault on all aspects of elections, including voting machines. Trump is firmly at the head of the movement. I’ve already touched on efforts by Republicans and the Trump administration to interfere with next year’s mid-term elections. Those efforts and more will only continue. In the coming weeks and months, and — god help me — years, I’ll be detailing developments that will be familiar to those who followed reporting by myself and others in the lead-up to 2024. Among the most extreme scenarios with which Trump and Republicans could seize something resembling absolute power are the cancellation of elections or the throwing out of votes entirely. It is not hyperbole to say that both events are reasonably foreseeable.That’s because Trump continues to accumulate unprecedented military and law enforcement powers.There are many troubling possibilities that arise from Trump’s increasing use of the military for both domestic policing and immigration enforcement, some of which we’ve been seeing for the last few months, since Trump first sent the military to Los Angeles. But since we’re not in an election year, we haven’t seen another scenario play out — yet. It is not implausible to envision Trump using the military or law enforcement to enforce his election demands. The never-issued executive order from 2020 shows that Trump and members of his administration already considered using the military to disrupt the 2020 election or throw out its results completely. Trump has shown no evidence of slowing down, despite the two-term limit that nearly the entirety of the nation’s media-academic complex continues to believe will not be somehow overcome to land Trump back in the White House in 2028.Trump’s election demands — in the form of several executive orders aimed at fundamentally remaking American elections in ways that benefit Republicans and the election denial movement — include completely eliminating voting machines. Trump doesn’t have the authority to do this, not that not having legal power to do things has ever stopped Trump and his administration from simply doing things. That’s why an executive order signed by Trump on Monday caught my eye. The order, which mostly lays out more authority for the National Guard and other agencies as they continue their “mission” in Washington DC, also created a special “quick reaction force” of Guard members to be quickly deployed to, well, what I guess we’ll have to call “domestic conflict zones.” Specifically, the new “quick reaction” forces of the National Guard will be deployed to assist “local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety and order whenever the circumstances necessitate, as appropriate under law.”As if that last part matters: recent history has shown that the Trump administration will deploy the Guard and whatever other military or law enforcement agencies it wants under the most legally questionable of circumstances. The order calls on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “designate an appropriate number of each State’s trained National Guard members to be reasonably available for rapid mobilization for such purposes.”In addition to ICE and other sub-agencies of the Department of Homeland Security, Trump is now waist-deep in perverting the mission of the National Guard. Clearly, the powers-that-be within the White House and the upper ranks of the American right view the Guard as a tool at their disposal.How that tool will be used is now apparently up to Trump and Republican governors, who hold tens of thousands of Guard members under their command. ***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

In these times — that strange and insufficient phrase that we’ve all become accustomed to — balance is important, I’m told.I try to achieve balance and I think we all do. But sometimes things get out of whack. I’ve been mulling over a couple of things this week that I just can’t get past. First, how does one balance their life in the midst of such obvious turmoil? Second, how can we possibly get out of this?To answer the first question, maybe there is no balance. If this is it — and I’m beginning to believe it is — then we have to be on something of a war-footing. For me, this means being as engaged as possible, doing everything I can to share news that I think tells us where we’re going. To consume this amount of bad news takes a toll, but in what is beginning to feel to me like a wartime environment, I think it’s just something I have to do. I’ll explain why I think we’re on a path to domestic military conflict in a moment, but first, to how we get out of this: I’m not sure we can. That’s because there is no gray area here. This is black and white: you either believe that Donald Trump is right or you don’t. You either support mass deportations, military incursion on the nation’s streets, dismantling of the government, and all the other fundamental changes to American life that the Trump administration is putting into affect, or you don’t. I saw a video of a man in Washington DC confronting National Guard members yesterday. He told them they have “a duty” to disobey “unlawful orders.” Now, those Guard members in that armored Humvee are either going to go one of two ways: they’re going to come to agree with the man who had confronted them, or they’re going to continue obeying the orders they’ve been given. There is no third way, no gray area to retreat in to. I believe we’re headed toward that will make it even more difficult to come back from, which is to say, something that will make it nearly impossible for Americans on either side of this right-wrong, pro-Trump or anti-Trump divide: domestic military conflict. I believe we’re headed there because of what Trump said yesterday when asked about his takeover of Washington DC.He was asked by a reporter whether he was concerned that the federal law enforcement agents the president has deployed to DC streets would be pulled away from other, more important tasks. Like what? Trump asked. Well, counter-terrorism for one. “Oh, really, terrorism?” Trump scoffed. “They’ll stop terrorism as part of what they’re doing right now.”This means that Trump believes — as he has said repeatedly — that his fellow Americans are the enemy. Trump considers criminals on the streets of DC and, let’s face it, pretty much anyone who stands in opposition to his regime, a terrorist. There is only one way to eradicate terrorism, and that’s to eliminate it. This means domestic deployment of the military — or whatever paramilitary units of law enforcement Trump can employ to carry out his crackdowns. Lastly, this means that Democratic elected officials and law enforcement in places like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere, will have to start making very difficult decisions about how to respond to Trump’s military incursions.Trump has previewed his plans for further domestic military deployment, and some of his sycophants, like Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), spent yesterday laying the groundwork for these unprecedented actions. Comer called domestic deployment of the military an “experiment” whose time has come. But we don’t have to wait for troops to show up on the streets of, say, Chicago because it’s already occurring in DC and Los Angeles. Not only have Trump’s masked immigration agents been operating with impunity on the streets of LA and elsewhere in California for months now — likely ignoring a judge’s order to stop their racially discriminatory operations — but they went a step further yesterday. Masked agents showed up at a press conference being held by Gov. Gavin Newsom. They said they were there for immigration enforcement operations, but that was just pretext — the only immigrant the agents took during the raid was harmlessly delivering strawberries.Sending the National Guard and federal law enforcement into cities and states run by Democrats is not just an intimidation tactic, it’s effectively the launching of a military front against anyone who opposes Trump. What do you call that other than war? I’m not sure, but I know there isn’t much balance in war. ***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

I continue to monitor events in DC from my home in Savannah but am ready to go should anything major go down. Trips like these cost money, though, so if you want to support my reporting, please consider a paid subscription or dropping a few bucks in the Doom Coffee Fund. Through next week I’m offering half off all Doom subscriptions, so you can support my independent, adversarial journalism for as little as $3 a month. - jgHere’s how this is going to go: Federal police from agencies like the U.S. Park Police — like the guy in the video above — and DHS sub-agencies are going to find themselves interacting with DC residents in the days and weeks ahead.With little in the way of training of how to carry out these interactions without violating people’s constitutional rights, these officers will inevitably do so. And they’ll be doing so primarily in Black communities. The best case scenario looks like what you see above — an annoying but mostly harmless encounter with a federal agent who is walking a fine line between harassing people for no reason and just doing what he’s told. The worst case scenario is that one of these agents — who I presume overwhelmingly support the president because they chose to enlist in agencies like ICE that are staffed with some of the most aggressive law enforcement this country has to offer — shoots or kills someone.Then, all hell breaks loose. Right now, things seem relatively calm. A photographer friend working the streets in DC today told me that nothing much is going on. He found National Guard members outside the DC armory carrying in fruit snacks. All that could change in an instant, and then we’ll be headed toward unrest. 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 appreciate my journalism please consider a paid subscription to American Doom. I’m currently offering a 50 percent discount on Doom subscriptions, which means you can support my work and help fund trips to places like Washington DC to cover conflict there for as little as $3 a month.Whatever happens in Washington DC this weekend — and something will happen, because that’s the point in the swinging pendulum of American conflict at which we’ve arrived — it will probably be good for Donald Trump.He both desperately needs the media to be chasing fires and also probably doesn’t care. The reason he doesn’t care is because he doesn’t have to: his extremely powerful army of right-wing media and propagandists have followed their marching orders perfectly, spending the last 36 hours talking about in-depth crime numbers in Washington DC.Funny how none of them were talking about DC crime two weeks ago, when Trump was somewhat reeling from the fallout over Epstein. Funny how Republicans weren’t talking about the need to engage in racial gerrymandering in Texas and elsewhere until the last few weeks, after Republicans there were shown to have been out to lunch while hundreds of children died in flooding there.If there are large-scale protests in DC this weekend, they stand a good chance of being met with force. Scenes of conflict between National Guard members or local police and protesters will play on a loop across right-wing media, playing right into Trump’s hands. (Still, I hope DC protests en masse.)The level of authoritarian onslaught any given day really is overwhelming. I’ve been trying to find time to dig into the Justice Department’s work on behalf of the election denial movement, but the news just keeps breaking like waves on a beach that I can’t get out from under.Here are some alarming items from the last few days that you might have missed:* The Washington Post has obtained Pentagon plans to stand up a quick response force for deployment to domestic unrest zones. The force will be made up of a few hundred members of the National Guard to be stationed in two locations within the interior of the nation in order to respond to civil unrest within hours, the Post reports. Unprecedented doesn’t begin to cover it.* Not only does the Trump administration want secret police, but secret courts as well. Justice Department attorneys asked a judge to shield proceedings in a lawsuit between the state of California and Trump’s government from the public because it could expose immigration agents. The judge ceded somewhat and made access to the hearing audio-only.* Authoritarian crackdowns continue in Los Angeles, where local police continue to help Trump’s masked immigration agents violently confront protesters — and beat journalists.***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, thanks for opening this email or clicking on the link. It’s good to have you here. Things are crazy. I know I keep saying that but it’s the truth so just get used to it, I guess. Anyway, if you appreciate this adversarial journalism as we continue to slide into a strange and troubling future of hyper-connected authoritarianism, consider throwing a few bucks my way. Basically, if you like what you see here, please pay for it. - jg***It’s late on Friday so by the time you read this we’ll probably know a lot more about the anti-vax shooter who, as of press time, killed at least one person — a police officer responding to the scene. I imagine I’ll be spending at least some of this weekend keeping an eye on this story. Meantime, here’s a rundown of the right-wing noise over a July 26 brawl in Cincinnati. Long story short: things aren’t quite adding up. I broke down the video and found a handful of Black men trying to intervene on behalf of a man who was actively yelling the n-word. And yet, the American right has mobilized around this “Black mob” who beat up white people as part of their efforts to beef up Trump and Republicans’ claims of rising crime. More on that early next week…***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, thanks for opening this email or clicking on the link. It’s good to have you here. Things are crazy. I know I keep saying that but it’s the truth so just get used to it, I guess. Anyway, if you appreciate this adversarial journalism as we continue to slide into a strange and troubling future of hyper-connected authoritarianism, consider throwing a few bucks my way. Basically, if you like what you see here, please pay for it. - jgIt used to take months or years for the news to grind my brain into a fine, mushy enough pulp to necessitate rereading my own stories to remember what I’d reported. Now, that takes weeks or even days.What happened last week? Can’t remember. Feels like three months ago. It’s 2025? I keep forgetting. Last year never ended. Maybe it never began. The firehose of insanity continues to flood the American consciousness — at least for those of us who are still paying attention. To be very clear about why this continues to happen: it is not a distraction, from Epstein or anything else.This administration and the political machine behind it — a broad coalition of white nationalists, reactionary authoritarians, extremely greedy nihilists, just plain weird rich people, and common white trash — are not intelligent or organized enough to pull off something like a competent public relations campaign to distract the American public from the Epstein scandal, which at this point I think is fair to simply call a cover-up.No, the chaos of each day is a result of the enraged madness that has permeated the minds of millions of Americans, including nearly the entirety of the Republican party, almost all of its elected officials, and every single member of the Trump administration. All are engaged in a radical remaking of American society based on their desire for vengeance against perceived enemies and desperate need to dominate and oppress anyone who disagrees with them.As the authoritarian carnage continues, our institutions are just barely holding up. Even Democratic officials are capitulating to Trump’s authoritarian tactics. Orange County (Florida) Mayor Jerry Demings recently caved and signed an agreement for the county’s police to assist ICE in deportation efforts. Demings did so after Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s attorney general threatened to suspend local officials from office for refusing to cooperate with ICE.Meanwhile, the U.S. military is expanding its work at the southern border; ICE now has the funds to hire 10,000 additional agents; the FBI is now assisting Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in locating state Democratic lawmakers who have left in order to prevent a quorum that would allow Republicans to carry out an unprecedented redistricting plan that will give the GOP five additional seats in Congress; immigration agents are lying in court as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to criminalize protest and stifle dissent; Trump is threatening to “federalize” Washington DC over a random carjacking of a 19-year-old DOGE official, even though crime was down there last year, just like it was across the country in 2024.It’s only $5 a month to support my work. You might as well so we can all have a little fund during the Decline. That’s on the bullets and blood front. Meanwhile in the information warfare space, Trump is once again leading the charge in the American right’s assault on free and fair elections, including open attempts to rig the 2026 midterms in favor of Republicans.Trump’s departments of Justice and Homeland Security are asking for access to the personal information of millions of voters, part of the administration’s attempts to identify supposed perpetrators of voter fraud. (This is really just an attempt to locate undocumented immigrants for deportation, as well as probably part of an effort to identify trans Americans for opaque purposes that are nothing if not concerning.) The DOJ voting rights section has essentially become the official government arm of the election denial movement.The voting rights section is now led by a woman who previously worked for an election denial group called the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF); the DOJ has asked for voter rolls from nine states and been granted the information by two; it has filed a statement of interest on behalf of right-wingers who would like to purge Black voters in Alabama; the department has also filed a statement of interest on behalf of Tina Peters, the Colorado election official who believed in Trump’s lies about election fraud so fervently she granted access to sensitive voter information to an associate of Mike Lindell; Justice has also filed suit in North Carolina, following the lead of frivolous lawsuits filed by the RNC there and elsewhere in the lead-up to the 2024 election, as well as California, where the department is suing to learn the identities of 16 noncitizens who were so honest that they informed local election officials that they were improperly registered to vote.Meanwhile, the main PAC supporting Trump had a record-breaking eight month stretch of fundraising — all for a president who we’re told is prohibited from running for a third term.This is just what I got to this week. Next week, we’ll dig into the strange case of a brawl in Cincinnati and an attempted carjacking of a DOGE staffer. Both events are being used as justification for more authoritarian power grabs by Trump, to be carried out by the military or local law enforcement. Whichever comes first, or is easier, I guess.******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