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Ignoring Court Orders Would Make Trump a King

12 February 2025 at 11:00

There are already dozens of lawsuits across the country aimed at halting Elon Musk’s assault on the government and other illegal actions pushed by President Donald Trump’s new administration.

“If the President really did this… I just don’t see how that’s not a dictatorship.”

These include challenges to the structure of Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, to his use of a private server at the Office of Personnel Management, to his alleged access to the nation’s most sensitive payment systems, and his dismantling of the US Agency for International Development. There are challenges to Trump’s firings of civil servants, inspectors general, and independent agency commissioners, as well as his executive orders targeting birthright citizenship and the rights of trangender individuals. There are suits challenging Trump’s unconstitutional attempt to withhold funds appropriated by Congress, and others seeking to protect career FBI agents who investigated January 6.

As the cases progress, and judges have issued orders halting overreach on the part of Musk and Trump, a growing chorus on the right are urging them to ignore the courts. For constitutional and government scholars, this would be a fundamental step from democracy toward autocracy.

“If the President really did this as a categorical matter—’I’m just going to ignore any order I don’t like’—that’s basically the end,” says Martin Redish, a constitutional law professor at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law. “I just don’t see how that’s not a dictatorship. Let’s put it this way: at least the adjective in the phrase ‘constitutional democracy’ would be lost.”

Mainstream conservative thinkers agree that defying court orders would cross a constitutional Rubicon. “If the administration openly defies a court order, then I think we are in a different situation,” warned Yuval Levin, a public policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, in an interview on Ezra Klein’s New York Times podcast where he largely argued against the conclusion that Trump and Musk are engaged in illegal or unconstitutional conduct.

But as federal judges begin to block Trump administration actions, Musk, Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and their followers have responded with a campaign to discredit not only those judges, but the judicial system itself, should it stand in their way. The strategy, which echoes Christian nationalist beliefs about the sovereignty of rulers, appears to be an attempt to set the stage for defying the US Supreme Court if it doesn’t ultimately validate their efforts.

Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton University professor who focuses on the rise and fall of constitutional governments, says the attacks are a replay of the distrust Trump and his followers sowed about the election system during his three presidential campaigns, when Trump claimed ahead of voting that the election would be rigged against him. “They’re doing is the exact same thing,” Scheppele explains, by “pre-delegitimizing all the courts.”

If the Supreme Court ultimately rules for Trump’s administration, “it’ll all be forgotten. But if they lose, they prepare the ground for rebellion against the judges,” Scheppele warns.

Musk, in particular, is busy laying out this framework on X, the social media platform he owns. On February 3, amidst his lawless, whirlwind effort to seize control of the federal government via the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, he paused to post a warning on X: “Activist judges must be removed from the bench or there is no justice.” Just five days before he had posted that “If no judge is EVER removed from the bench, no matter HOW unjust their verdicts, our legal system is fundamentally broken. This MUST happen.” Some of his attacks have come in response to claims about judges in other countries, or in local court systems. “That contemptible worm posing as a judge should be thrown out and face criminal charges,” he wrote while attacking a UK judge. He called a Delaware jurist who blocked his multi-billion dollar Tesla compensation package “a radical far left activist cosplaying as a judge.” Such smears and dehumanizing rhetoric help define the judicial system as illegitimate—and even could set the stage for violence against judges who rule against him or Trump. As Musk wrote in October when responding to a far-right Italian account: “Necessarily, to be a true democracy, it must be will of the PEOPLE that prevails. No judge is greater than the consensus will of the people.”

This rhetoric ramped up as federal judges began to hit the pause button on some of DOGE’s activities. After a Manhattan federal district court judge issued a temporary order that may have prohibited Musk’s team from viewing the Treasury Department’s sensitive payment system information, DOJ lawyers pursued a normal approach and asked the judge to reconsider.

Smears and dehumanizing rhetoric could set the stage for violence against judges.

But Musk, Vance, and some of their supporters quickly jumped to the idea of impeaching judges and defying court orders. On February 8, Musk agreed with a post by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) that the New York-based judge’s order was a judicial “coup.” The next day, Musk called for his impeachment and proposed that Congress be able to fire the “worst 1%” of judges. The day after, he broadly called on Congress to begin impeaching judges.

Vance joined the push on February 8, when he reposted a message from a far-right Harvard legal scholar who claimed judges have no business pausing presidential actions: “Judicial interference with legitimate acts of state, especially the internal functioning of a co-equal branch, is a violation of the separation of powers.” A day later, Vance posted his own version: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” When Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) responded to warn Vance that “ignoring court decisions we don’t like puts us on a dangerous path to lawlessness,” Vance doubled down by reposting a response that called for defying the courts and highlighted “the fact that the judiciary has nothing to compel obedience.”

This isn’t the first time that Vance, who has a law degree from Yale, has called for defying judges. During his Senate campaign, he urged Trump to fire civil servants and ignore the Supreme Court if it disagreed. “When the courts stop you,” Vance said during an a 2021 podcast taping, “stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’” With Trump and his subordinates now having fired civil servants, independent agency commissioners, and inspectors general in violation of the law, we may soon find out if Vance was bluffing.

On Sunday, while making his way back from the Super Bowl, Trump made his own complaints about the judges who have put up roadblocks to Musk’s assault on the government. “No judge, frankly, should be allowed to make that kind of a decision. It’s a disgrace,” he groused.

While Musk and Vance’s recent posts are the most prominent recent examples of right-wingers toying with defying courts, figures from the Christian nationalist segment of Trump’s coalition have also been pushing the step. In their drive to end what they refer to as “judicial supremacy,” they would remake our system of government and establish Trump as, in virtually every sense of the word, a king.

In late January, Jeremy Carl, a senior fellow at the conservative Claremont Institute who served as a deputy assistant Secretary of the Interior during the first Trump administration, posted to his 46,000 X followers that the “the single biggest litmus test for” a new Trump administration would be how it responded to “rogue judges attempting to thwart its lawful actions.”

Carl, who has argued in favor of Christian nationalism and is the author of the 2024 book The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart, got decent traction with the post—upwards of 235,000 views. Among those who noticed was far-right activist Charles Haywood, a shampoo magnate who, as the Guardian has reported, runs a secretive, Christian nationalist group called the Society for American Civic Renewal. Haywood believes that an authoritarian takeover of the US government is both imminent and necessary. He has written that he aspires to serve as a “warlord” leader of armed factions who would wage “more-or-less open warfare with the federal government, or some subset or remnant of it.” To his own 35,000 X followers, Haywood reposted Carl’s post, commenting, “This is exactly right. Sovereign is he who decides the state of exception. And Trump had better establish, fast, that he is sovereign over the Executive Branch, rather than subordinate to puffed-up judges. Because if he is not sovereign, he is nothing.”

That wasn’t the first time Haywood had argued in favor of Trump establishing authority over the courts. In a December blog post, he expounded upon the concept of “private justice”—basically the idea that in an unjust society, it’s acceptable for citizens to exact justice on their own. The United States, he argued, was unjust partly because of the state of its courts. Juries, he wrote, “are usually entirely composed of the lower orders of society, who cannot escape from the burden of jury service by cleverly pleading hardship of one type or another, and of those with a political ax to grind.” US judges, he writes, have “tremendous and often not-reviewable discretion.” He slammed judges in Washington, D.C. who oversaw trials of January 6 rioters as crusaders for left-wing causes, accusing them of having “savagely sentenced men and women with ludicrous penalties, as they shriek and spew hatred at the defendants.” He complains that “when today Americans peacefully protest against abortion, they receive long prison sentences imposed by cackling judges.” 

Christian nationalists’ drive to end what they call “judicial supremacy” would virtually establish Trump as a king.

Another person who responded publicly to Carl’s January X post was Ben Crenshaw, a visiting assistant professor at the University of Mississippi’s Declaration of Independence Center. “My advice: ignore the courts and carry on,” he posted in a reply to Carl. A few days earlier, Crenshaw had published a piece in American Reformer called “The End of the Rule of Black Robes,” which responded to a federal district court injunction barring Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship. “Any other Republican president would abide by the injunction and begin the torturous, expensive, and lengthy litigious process of challenging the ruling all the way up the Supreme Court,” Crenshaw wrote. “But Trump is not like any Republican president and there is another path—a more risky but also potentially fruitful—path he could take. Trump could ignore the federal judge and continue to enforce his executive order.”

American Reformer is the unofficial journal of the TheoBros, a group of mostly millennial, ultra-conservative men, many of whom proudly call themselves Christian nationalists. One tenet of their take on Protestantism is the idea that the United States should be subject to biblical law rather than a secular constitution. One of the journal’s board members is Chris Buskirk, who in 2019 co-founded the Rockbridge Network, a powerful group of Republican donors, with Vance. Buskirk also founded 1789 Capital, the rightwing investment firm where Donald Trump Jr. recently began working

Vance’s connection to anti-democratic ideas isn’t just from the Christian nationalist movement. Vance is also a creature of the reactionary, anti-democratic ideologies that have taken hold in Silicon Valley, where he worked for billionaire Peter Thiel, himself a self-proclaimed monarchist. This so-called “New right” views democracy as a weak, underperforming form of government in contrast to kings who can rule a country like a CEO runs a company. In the last few weeks, Musk’s hostile takeover in the same style that he slashed and gutted Twitter is an example of this ideology literally taking hold in government under Trump.

One of the most well-known purveyors of this anti-democratic thinking is the blogger Curtis Yarvin, whom Vance has cited as an intellectual influence. In a recent interview with Politico, Yarvin expressed an openness to defying the Supreme Court, suggesting that “the right moment” could come after Trump cemented himself in a position of popularity.

By contrast, many Christian nationalists chiming in say the lower courts—those already blocking many of Trump’s and Musk’s operations—have issued illegitimate rulings that should be ignored now. After Musk’s attempt to get federal workers to sign away employee rights and voluntarily resign was put on hold by a judge, Carl urged the administration to ignore the order. “We’re going to find out soon whether Judge O’Toole, some random judge in Mass. who nobody has ever heard of, or President Trump runs the Executive Branch,” the Claremont Institute analyst posted on X. “I hope the administration protects its rights aggressively.”

A week earlier, when Trump’s illegal scheme halting billions in government spending was blocked by a judge in DC, Carl had also urged defiance, citing Abraham Lincoln’s famous 1861 refusal to comply with an order from Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney. “If Trump surrenders the legitimate authority the American people invested in him to a radical District Court Judge, nothing else matters,” he wrote. “Channel Lincoln and make a legal argument that tells the judge to pound sand.” (“It was a freaking civil war,” Redish says of Lincoln’s actions. “I don’t think you can generalize that kind of situation.”)

In calling for Trump to ignore court orders, Carl and his fellow Christian nationalists are urging the president to set off an obvious and dramatic constitutional crisis. That kind of bold defiance, says Scheppele, might invite broad pushback—something Trump and his allies likely want to avoid. Instead, she cautions, they might opt for delayed and incomplete compliance. “People who are worried about this shouldn’t assume that the absence of a clear declaration of defiance means we’re fine,” she says. “You have to pay way more close attention to what’s actually happening on the ground.”

Slow, slapdash compliance can cause permanent harm without the risks of open defiance.

We are already seeing the Trump administration take this approach. On Trump’s seventh day in office, when the Office of Management and Budget released a memo ordering a freeze in billions of dollars of federal payments, judges quickly jumped in to stop this “wildly illegal” order, as the president does not have the authority to halt spending appropriated by Congress. But two weeks later, on February 10, a federal judge in Rhode Island found that parts of the administration were failing to comply and ordered those offices again to restart spending. In the case fighting the closure of USAID, plaintiffs allege the administration is defying the court’s order to reinstate employees. ProPublica has found many other instances of noncompliance affecting everything from health services to water projects. In what could be a sign of judicial pushback, on Tuesday a judge in Massachusetts not only blocked cuts to NIH research grants, but put in place ongoing reporting requirements to confirm the administration would obey the ruling.

Slow, slapdash compliance can cause permanent harm by making space for Trump and Musk’s court-barred agendas to proceed, without the risk of crossing into open defiance. The strategy is working. Organizations and contractors connected with USAID have laid off employees and shut their doors, causing millions globally to lose access to food and medication, even as a judge has ordered a halt to the dismissal of all USAID employees. “They’re much more concerned with breaking things, changing facts on the ground,” says Scheppele, who used an analogy of destroying an aquarium with a blender. “They’ve already blended all the fish—they’re not going to be able to recover the aquarium. They’re just moving so fast, hoping the courts will be slow, so that by the time the court gives them a final order, they’ll say, ‘Well, what do you want us to do? It’s fish soup.'”

Whether the Trump administration crosses into open defiance of courts or not, the push to empower the president to do whatever he wants is well underway—with or without the courts’ blessing.

Christian Nationalists Are Swooning Over JD Vance’s Remarks on Fox News

30 January 2025 at 22:15

On Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Wednesday evening, Vice President JD Vance held forth about what he called an “old-school, very Christian concept.”

You love your family, then you love your neighbor, then you love your community, then you love you fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to run a society.

These may sound like familiar anti-liberal talking points, but one particular corner of the internet was ecstatic about Vance’s words: the TheoBros, a group of mostly millennial, ultra-conservative men, many of whom proudly call themselves Christian nationalists. Among the tenets of their tributary of Reformed Protestant Christianity is the idea that the United States should be subject to biblical law.  

After Vance’s Hannity appearance, Andrew Isker, a reformed preacher and co-author of the book Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide For Taking Dominion And Discipling Nations, was triumphant in a post to his 37,000 followers on X. For years, Isker wrote, people had called him “‘racist’ for speaking about the ancient, traditional Christian idea of ordered loves.” But now, he wrote, “To see it articulated clearly by the Vice President of the United States shows that we are winning and the postwar liberal rejection of all unchosen bonds is on its last legs. Our fathers will be honored once again.”

In response to a post on X that was critical of Vance’s remarks about the supposed Christian hierarchy of love, Andrew Torba, Isker’s co-author and CEO of the far-right social media platform Gab, posted to his 469,000 followers on X: “The Vice President of the United States is talking about rightly ordered loves…and you’re blackpilling?” (In other words, he suggested, it was ridiculous to complain about such a happy turn of events.)

Indeed, what is known as the Christian order of love is one of the TheoBros’ favorite topics. One key element of this doctrine for them is that it’s un-Christian to love foreigners as much as you love your countrymen. Yet for many of them, this idea is more than just an expression of patriotism. Rather, it’s rooted in the concept of kinism—a white nationalist term, popularized a few decades ago, that nations should be ethnically and racially pure and that the United States specifically is the domain for white Christians.

Which was the quiet part that some of the TheoBros said out loud after Vance’s remarks.  

“Any Christian who denies ‘hierarchy of loves’ has white men at the lowest level of their hierarchy of loves,” posted Stephen Wolfe, author of the 2022 book The Case for Christian Nationalism.

William Wolfe, no relation to Stephen, served in the previous Trump administration both as deputy assistant secretary of defense and as director of legislative affairs at the State Department. He posted, “Liberal Christians really are like: ‘There is no such thing as a hierarchy of love and also all white men are the worst.’”

This isn’t the first time Vance has amplified ideas from the world of the TheoBros. As I wrote last fall, he touched on similar themes in his address in July at the Republican National Convention:

Vance portrayed a vision of America that resonated deeply with Trump voters. “America is not just an idea,” he said solemnly. “It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.”

To many viewers at home, this seemed like the stuff of a boilerplate, patriotic stump speech. But the words “shared history” lit up a far-right evangelical corner of social media. “America is a particular place with a particular people,” Joel Webbon, a Texas pastor and podcaster, wrote on X. “This is one of the most important political questions facing America right now,” posted former Trump administration official William Wolfe. “Answer it wrong, we will go the way of Europe, where the native-born populations are being utterly displaced by third world migrants and Muslims. Answer it right, and we can renew America once more.”

Vance was embracing one of their most cherished beliefs: America should belong to Christians, and, more specifically, white ones. “The American nation is an actual historical people,” says Stephen Wolfe (no relation to William), the author of the 2022 book The Case for Christian Nationalism, “not just a hodgepodge of various ethnicities, but actually a place of settlement and rootedness.” For this group of evangelical leaders, Vance, a 40-year-old former Marine who waxes rapturous about masculinity and women’s revered role as mothers, was the perfect tribune to spread their gospel of patriarchal Christian nationalism.   

Vance’s connections to the TheoBros are well documented. Not only has he been photographed posing with them, he co-founded the Rockbridge Network, a group of powerful Republican donors, with Chris Buskirk, who serves on the board of the TheoBro magazine American Reformer. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also has connections to the TheoBros movement.

The TheoBros have noticed the new vice president’s embrace of their ideas, and they’re delighted. “JD Vance and [former Fox News host] Tucker Carlson definitely have been reading reformed right wing X,” one anonymous TheoBro X account gushed to its 67,000 followers Thursday.  “I’m convinced that J.D. Vance has an alt and reads our tweets,” posted Brian Sauvé, a TheoBro in Ogden, Utah. “And there’s nothing you can do to convince me otherwise.”

Christian Nationalists Are Swooning Over JD Vance’s Remarks on Fox News

30 January 2025 at 22:15

On Sean Hannity’s Fox News show on Wednesday evening, Vice President JD Vance held forth about what he called an “old school, very Christian concept.”

You love your family, then you love your neighbor, then you love your community, then you love you fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that. They seem to hate the citizens of their own country and care more about people outside their own borders. That is no way to run a society.

These may sound like familiar anti-liberal talking points, but one particular corner of the internet was ecstatic about Vance’s words: the TheoBros, a group of mostly millennial, ultra-conservative men, many of whom proudly call themselves Christian nationalists. Among the tenets of their tributary of Reformed Protestant Christianity is the idea that the United States should be subject to biblical law.  

After Vance’s Hannity appearance, Andrew Isker, a reformed preacher and the author of the book Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide For Taking Dominion And Discipling Nations, was triumphant in a post to his 37,000 followers on X. For years, Isker wrote, people had called him  “‘racist’ for speaking about the ancient, traditional Christian idea of ordered loves.” But now, he wrote, “To see it articulated clearly by the Vice President of the United States shows that we are winning and the postwar liberal rejection of all unchosen bonds is on its last legs. Our fathers will be honored once again.”

In response to a post on X that was critical of Vance’s remarks about the supposed Christian hierarchy of love, Andrew Torba, Isker’s co-author and CEO of the far-right social media platform, Gab, posted to his 469,000 followers on X. “The Vice President of the United States is talking about rightly ordered loves… and you’re blackpilling?” (In other words, he suggested, it was ridiculous to complain about such a happy turn of events.)

Indeed, what is known as the Christian order of love is one of the TheoBros’ favorite topics. One key element of this doctrine for them is that it’s unchristian to love foreigners as much as you love your countrymen. Yet for many of them, this idea is more than just an expression of patriotism. Rather, it’s rooted in the concept of Kinism—a white nationalist term, popularized a few decades ago, that nations should be ethnically and racially pure and that the United States specifically is the domain for white Christians.

Which was the quiet part that some of the TheoBros said out loud after Vance’s remarks.  

“Any Christian who denies ‘hierarchy of loves’ has white men at the lowest level of their hierarchy of loves,” posted Stephen Wolfe, the author of the 2022 book The Case for Christian Nationalism.

William Wolfe, no relation to Stephen, served in the previous Trump administration both as the deputy assistant secretary of defense and as director of House affairs at the Department of State. He posted, “Liberal Christians really are like: ‘There is no such thing as a hierarchy of love and also all white men are the worst.’”

This isn’t the first time that Vance has amplified ideas from the world of the TheoBros. As I wrote last fall, he touched on similar themes in his address last July at the Republican National Convention:

Vance portrayed a vision of America that resonated deeply with Trump voters. “America is not just an idea,” he said solemnly. “It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation.”

To many viewers at home, this seemed like the stuff of a boilerplate, patriotic stump speech. But the words “shared history” lit up a far-right evangelical corner of social media. “America is a particular place with a particular people,” Joel Webbon, a Texas pastor and podcaster, wrote on X. “This is one of the most important political questions facing America right now,” posted former Trump administration official William Wolfe. “Answer it wrong, we will go the way of Europe, where the native-born populations are being utterly displaced by third world migrants and Muslims. Answer it right, and we can renew America once more.”

Vance was embracing one of their most cherished beliefs: America should belong to Christians, and, more specifically, white ones. “The American nation is an actual historical people,” says Stephen Wolfe (no relation to William), the author of the 2022 book The Case for Christian Nationalism, “not just a hodgepodge of various ethnicities, but actually a place of settlement and rootedness.” For this group of evangelical leaders, Vance, a 40-year-old former Marine who waxes rapturous about masculinity and women’s revered role as mothers, was the perfect tribune to spread their gospel of patriarchal Christian nationalism.   

Vance’s connections to the TheoBros are well-documented. Not only has he been photographed posing with them, he co-founded the Rockbridge Network, a group of powerful Republican donors, with Chris Buskirk, who serves on the board of the TheoBro magazine American Reformer. Pete Hegseth, now President Trump’s Secretary of Defense, also has connections to the TheoBros movement.

The TheoBros have noticed the new vice president’s embrace of their ideas, and they’re delighted. “JD Vance and [former Fox News host] Tucker Carlson definitely have been reading reformed right wing X,” gushed one anonymous TheoBro X account to its 67,000 followers on Thursday.  “I’m convinced that J.D. Vance has an alt and reads our tweets,” posted Brian Sauvé, a TheoBro in Ogden, Utah. “And there’s nothing you can do to convince me otherwise.”

Insurrectionists Melt Down After Vance Says Trump Shouldn’t Pardon Violent J6ers

12 January 2025 at 21:53

JD Vance is learning what it’s like to be a target of Trump supporters.

Chaos in MAGA world ensued after the Vice President-elect told Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream that not all insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 will receive pardons from Donald Trump.

“It’s very simple,” Vance claimed on the show. “If you protested peacefully on January the sixth, and you’ve had [Attorney General] Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned. If you committed violence on that day, obviously, you shouldn’t be pardoned, and there’s a little bit of a gray area there, but we’re very much committed to seeing the equal administration of law. And there are a lot of people, we think, in the wake of January the sixth, who were prosecuted unfairly, and we need to rectify that.”

WATCH: @JDVance lays out President-elect Trump’s pardon process for January 6th participants. Tune in tomorrow for the rest of Shannon's exclusive interview with Vice President-elect JD Vance. pic.twitter.com/RvqXrL6rO3

— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) January 11, 2025

Lest you forget: As my colleague Mark Follman has chronicled, January 6, 2021, was indeed a heavily armed insurrection that saw 140 police officers injured and the deaths of four participants and five police officers who had been at the Capitol. More than 1,200 people have been charged for their actions that day, according to the Department of Justice. That includes more than 120 people charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer and 11 charged with assaulting a member of the media or destroying their equipment, the DOJ says.

Trump has made repeated promises to free the more than 460 participants who have been sentenced to periods of incarceration on his first day in office, calling them “hostages” and “political prisoners.” As recently as this past week, at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, he promised to issue “major pardons” when asked whether he would pardon those charged with violent offenses.

Vance’s recent comments, though, throws these pledges into question. So it comes as no surprise that after his comments aired on Fox News Sunday, some insurrectionists promptly melted down.

An X account purporting to represent Jake Lang, who’s incarcerated in DC while awaiting trial on charges that he beat police officers at the Capitol, posted a lengthy message addressed to Vance, writing in part: “The J6 Hostages families have been CRUSHED by the mixed messaging coming from the White House on the J6 Pardon Process recently. WE ARE UTTERLY CONFUSED!!”

“We have been waiting 4 years for this moment, & now it seems like your Administration is going to possibly leave some of our brothers behind; to rot away in the gulag for the next 10 to 20 years,” the post continues, before falsely alleging that that “ALL” insurrectionists “were set up and trapped by the FBI” and falsely claiming that all protested peacefully. “Mr. Vice President @JDVance, there is only one solution: BRING ALL OUR J6 POWs HOME!! NO MAN LEFT BEHIND – DAY ONE FULL PARDONS & CLEARING OF THE PRISONS!!”

In another post on X, someone identifying themselves as “January 6th survivor” Philip Anderson—the same name as someone facing felony and misdemeanor charges for his actions that day—alleged Vance’s comments were hypocritical, writing: “Telling your own supporters that the election was stolen and then not giving them a pardon or commutation after you sent them into what you call a “fedsurrection” and “trap” is a betrayal. All of the J6 defendants must be saved. JD Vance is wrong and I hope Trump will save his own supporters.”

The criticisms apparently got to Vance so much that he took to X in supplication. After a pair of conservative commentators known as the Hodge Twins told their 3.2 million followers that the VP-elect “Better rethink what you just said,” Vance reminded followers that he “donated to the J6 political prisoner fund and got ROASTED for it during my Senate race,” adding, “I’ve been defending these guys for years.” He also reiterated a disproven conspiracy theory that there were “federal informants in the crowd,” writing, “Do they get a pardon? I don’t think so.”

“The president saying he’ll look at each case (and me saying the same) is not some walkback,” Vance wrote. “I assure you, we care about people unjustly locked up. Yes, that includes people provoked and it includes people who got a garbage trial.”

Trump does not yet appear to have publicly commented on the infighting, and his spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones on Sunday afternoon. But there’s a lot about all this that feels microcosmic of our broader politics, including Vance’s desperation to receive the MAGA seal of approval and Trump (possibly) turning his back on his most ardent supporters. If Vance’s comments are accurate, and Trump does leave some insurrectionists in prison, expect more chaos to come on the right.

Insurrectionists Melt Down After Vance Says Trump Shouldn’t Pardon Violent J6ers

12 January 2025 at 21:53

JD Vance is learning what it’s like to be a target of Trump supporters.

Chaos in MAGA world ensued after the Vice President-elect told Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream that not all insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 will receive pardons from Donald Trump.

“It’s very simple,” Vance claimed on the show. “If you protested peacefully on January the sixth, and you’ve had [Attorney General] Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned. If you committed violence on that day, obviously, you shouldn’t be pardoned, and there’s a little bit of a gray area there, but we’re very much committed to seeing the equal administration of law. And there are a lot of people, we think, in the wake of January the sixth, who were prosecuted unfairly, and we need to rectify that.”

WATCH: @JDVance lays out President-elect Trump’s pardon process for January 6th participants. Tune in tomorrow for the rest of Shannon's exclusive interview with Vice President-elect JD Vance. pic.twitter.com/RvqXrL6rO3

— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) January 11, 2025

Lest you forget: As my colleague Mark Follman has chronicled, January 6, 2021, was indeed a heavily armed insurrection that saw 140 police officers injured and the deaths of four participants and five police officers who had been at the Capitol. More than 1,200 people have been charged for their actions that day, according to the Department of Justice. That includes more than 120 people charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer and 11 charged with assaulting a member of the media or destroying their equipment, the DOJ says.

Trump has made repeated promises to free the more than 460 participants who have been sentenced to periods of incarceration on his first day in office, calling them “hostages” and “political prisoners.” As recently as this past week, at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, he promised to issue “major pardons” when asked whether he would pardon those charged with violent offenses.

Vance’s recent comments, though, throws these pledges into question. So it comes as no surprise that after his comments aired on Fox News Sunday, some insurrectionists promptly melted down.

An X account purporting to represent Jake Lang, who’s incarcerated in DC while awaiting trial on charges that he beat police officers at the Capitol, posted a lengthy message addressed to Vance, writing in part: “The J6 Hostages families have been CRUSHED by the mixed messaging coming from the White House on the J6 Pardon Process recently. WE ARE UTTERLY CONFUSED!!”

“We have been waiting 4 years for this moment, & now it seems like your Administration is going to possibly leave some of our brothers behind; to rot away in the gulag for the next 10 to 20 years,” the post continues, before falsely alleging that that “ALL” insurrectionists “were set up and trapped by the FBI” and falsely claiming that all protested peacefully. “Mr. Vice President @JDVance, there is only one solution: BRING ALL OUR J6 POWs HOME!! NO MAN LEFT BEHIND – DAY ONE FULL PARDONS & CLEARING OF THE PRISONS!!”

In another post on X, someone identifying themselves as “January 6th survivor” Philip Anderson—the same name as someone facing felony and misdemeanor charges for his actions that day—alleged Vance’s comments were hypocritical, writing: “Telling your own supporters that the election was stolen and then not giving them a pardon or commutation after you sent them into what you call a “fedsurrection” and “trap” is a betrayal. All of the J6 defendants must be saved. JD Vance is wrong and I hope Trump will save his own supporters.”

The criticisms apparently got to Vance so much that he took to X in supplication. After a pair of conservative commentators known as the Hodge Twins told their 3.2 million followers that the VP-elect “Better rethink what you just said,” Vance reminded followers that he “donated to the J6 political prisoner fund and got ROASTED for it during my Senate race,” adding, “I’ve been defending these guys for years.” He also reiterated a disproven conspiracy theory that there were “federal informants in the crowd,” writing, “Do they get a pardon? I don’t think so.”

“The president saying he’ll look at each case (and me saying the same) is not some walkback,” Vance wrote. “I assure you, we care about people unjustly locked up. Yes, that includes people provoked and it includes people who got a garbage trial.”

Trump does not yet appear to have publicly commented on the infighting, and his spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones on Sunday afternoon. But there’s a lot about all this that feels microcosmic of our broader politics, including Vance’s desperation to receive the MAGA seal of approval and Trump (possibly) turning his back on his most ardent supporters. If Vance’s comments are accurate, and Trump does leave some insurrectionists in prison, expect more chaos to come on the right.

Biden and Harris Do What Trump Refused: Support a Peaceful Transfer of Power

7 November 2024 at 19:00

Since Donald Trump won reelection, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have both done what the now-president-elect and his fellow Republicans refused to do in 2020: publicly accept loss and advocate for a peaceful transition of power.

In a Thursday morning speech outside the White House, Biden told Americans, “We accept the choice the country made.”

“I’ve said many times,” he continued, “you can’t love your country only when you win. You can’t love your neighbor only when you agree.” He added, “Something I hope we can do, no matter who you voted for, is to see each other not as adversaries, but as fellow Americans. Bring down the temperature.”

The remarks, both unifying and a call for calm, sharply contrasted with the Trump campaign’s rhetoric in the final stretch of the election, which included Trump just this weekend saying he would be “ok” with journalists being shot at. Biden’s speech was also radically different from the near-constant conspiracy theories Trump and his allies promoted after Trump lost the 2020 election—which, as recently as today, he has continued to insist he won.

President Biden: "Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable … The American experiment endures. We're going to be okay, but we need to stay engaged. We need to keep going." https://t.co/627FiKv7Sz pic.twitter.com/hZoGsFc7yl

— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 7, 2024

Seemingly alluding to Trump’s attacks on the voting system, Biden on Thursday also added that he hoped “we can lay to rest a question about the integrity of the American electoral system. It is honest, it is fair, and it is transparent, and it can be trusted, win or lose,” he said. Of course, now that Trump has won, the GOP suddenly appears to agree with this, despite the fact that they and their candidate spent years sowing doubt in the electoral system—including up until election night.

The president also told Americans who voted for Harris they had to keep the faith and keep peacefully fighting for what they believe in. “Setbacks are unavoidable,” Biden said. “Giving up is unforgivable.”

“The American experiment endures, we’re going to be okay, but we need to stay engaged,” the president added. “We need to keep going, and above all, need to keep the faith.”

Harris struck a similar tone during her concession speech at Howard University on Wednesday. “The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for,” Harris told the crowd. “But hear me when I say, hear me when I say, the light of America’s promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting.”

Harris also acknowledged that “folks are feeling and experiencing a range of emotions right now,” but urged her supporters to still accept the election results.

“A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results,” she continued. “That principle, as much as any other, distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny.”

The dual speeches came at a moment of widespread concerns that American democracy and so many civil liberties hang in the balance with Trump’s return to power. But with a future so unknown—and even frightening—to many, both Harris’ and Biden’s post-election remarks reminded Americans what leadership looks like: recognition of, and respect for, the will of the people, and a reminder that the future of American democracy remains worth peacefully fighting for.

Spokespeople for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Donald Trump’s Wish List for Student Debt Will Hurt Millions

31 October 2024 at 10:00

There are more than 45 million people with student loans, and many more who are gearing up to go to college at a time when tuition is at record highs: The average annual cost of a private university hit nearly $60,000 in 2024.

The next president will have the power to either ease that financial burden or aggravate it. And while Donald Trump’s bluster on the campaign trail has not included a lot of clarity on his policy plans, his public statements, along with the actions of his previous administration, set out a roadmap for the many ways he will try to gut the affordability of higher education for future students—while sinking those who already have student debt into a deeper financial hole.

What’s more, the agenda authored by the conservative Heritage Foundation for a future Republican administration, known as Project 2025, also offers a blueprint. Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, but because it was written by some of his closest allies, it is likely that, should Trump win in November, pieces of the project will become policy priorities.

Here’s what a second Trump term could mean for student debt:

Defunding and closing the Education Department could decimate college affordability for low-income students: At a rally in Wisconsin last month, Donald Trump said that he wants to shut down the Department of Education should he return to the Oval Office. “I’m dying to get back to do this,” he said. “We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education.” 

As president, Trump proposed cutting nearly $4 billion from the Pell Grants reserve fund—and redirecting half to NASA for space exploration: “So that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!”

Trump couldn’t close the Education Department singlehandledly: it would require an act of Congress. But defunding the department would have far-reaching implications for education funding. A key one: The department administers $39 billion of Pell Grants, scholarships awarded to students from low-income backgrounds. About half of Pell Grants go to students whose families earn less than $20,000 per year. Without the department, it’s unclear who would distribute and oversee Pell Grants; if they’re thrown into chaos, low-income students will have little choice but to take on additional student loans. Trump has shown a willingness to compromise this crucial source of financial aid in the past: During his presidency, he proposed cutting nearly $4 billion from the Pell Grants reserve fund—and redirecting half of that to NASA for space exploration: “So that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!” Trump tweeted at the time.

Ending Public Service Loan Forgiveness: Signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007, the PSLF program promises to cancel the remaining debt for public servants, from police offices and prosecutors to public defenders, who have made 10 years of payments on their loans. In the last four years, the Biden-Harris administration has awarded $74 billion in student debt relief to public servants who’ve met PSLF’s payment requirements.

But when the first wave of borrowers qualified for relief in 2017, Trump’s Education Department rejected 99 percent of applicants. His administration then proposed a 2021 budget that would have nixed PSLF entirely. That did not pass, but the goal remains: Project 2025 includes an explicit recommendation to terminate PSLF should there be a Republican president.

Hampering other forms of student debt relief: In June 2023, the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s attempt to cancel up to $10,000 of student debt for low- and middle-income borrowers. Trump called the decision a “massive win” that halted an “unconstitutional student loan gimmick.”

In the wake of this decision by the Supreme Court, the Biden-Harris administration sought to provide relief another way: They launched the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan, an income-driven repayment program that would lower required payments for many borrowers, and forgive the remainder of their debt after somewhere between 10 and 25 years, depending on the original loan balance. Within months, more than a dozen Republican-led states had sued to shut down the program. Those lawsuits are ongoing. And it is safe to say that a Trump-Vance administration would do little to stop them: In June, Trump called Biden’s latest student debt relief efforts “vile,” while Vance has encouraged Republicans to fight student loan cancellation “with every ounce of our energy of power.” Plus, Project 2025 suggests that a future Trump administration should end all existing income-driven debt repayment plans because they are too generous.

Weakening debt relief for borrowers defrauded by for-profit schools: When Betsy DeVos served as Trump’s education secretary, she rewrote an existing department rule that discharges the loans of students who attended fraudulent colleges. Her version shrunk the amount these loans could be canceled, limiting them to just three cents for every dollar spent on their degrees. Congress passed a bipartisan resolution to overturn DeVos’s rule, but Trump vetoed it, leaving her restrictions in place until Biden undid them upon taking office. Should Trump return to the White House, this relief for borrowers would very likely be on the chopping block.

Causing some student loans to accrue more interest: In 2018, the Trump administrations budget proposed ending subsidized Stafford loans, which don’t accrue interest while undergraduate students are in school. This change would lead to thousands of additional dollars of debt for borrowers, many of whom are also from low-income families—about 70 percent of subsidized loan borrowers also qualify for Pell Grants. In 2018, the Center for American Progress estimated that an end to subsidized loans would saddle nearly 6 million students with an additional $2.8 billion in costs each year.

Donald Trump’s Wish List for Student Debt Will Hurt Millions

31 October 2024 at 10:00

There are more than 45 million people with student loans, and many more who are gearing up to go to college at a time when tuition is at record highs: The average annual cost of a private university hit nearly $60,000 in 2024.

The next president will have the power to either ease that financial burden or aggravate it. And while Donald Trump’s bluster on the campaign trail has not included a lot of clarity on his policy plans, his public statements, along with the actions of his previous administration, set out a roadmap for the many ways he will try to gut the affordability of higher education for future students—while sinking those who already have student debt into a deeper financial hole.

What’s more, the agenda authored by the conservative Heritage Foundation for a future Republican administration, known as Project 2025, also offers a blueprint. Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, but because it was written by some of his closest allies, it is likely that, should Trump win in November, pieces of the project will become policy priorities.

Here’s what a second Trump term could mean for student debt:

Defunding and closing the Education Department could decimate college affordability for low-income students: At a rally in Wisconsin last month, Donald Trump said that he wants to shut down the Department of Education should he return to the Oval Office. “I’m dying to get back to do this,” he said. “We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education.” 

As president, Trump proposed cutting nearly $4 billion from the Pell Grants reserve fund—and redirecting half to NASA for space exploration: “So that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!”

Trump couldn’t close the Education Department singlehandledly: it would require an act of Congress. But defunding the department would have far-reaching implications for education funding. A key one: The department administers $39 billion of Pell Grants, scholarships awarded to students from low-income backgrounds. About half of Pell Grants go to students whose families earn less than $20,000 per year. Without the department, it’s unclear who would distribute and oversee Pell Grants; if they’re thrown into chaos, low-income students will have little choice but to take on additional student loans. Trump has shown a willingness to compromise this crucial source of financial aid in the past: During his presidency, he proposed cutting nearly $4 billion from the Pell Grants reserve fund—and redirecting half of that to NASA for space exploration: “So that we can return to Space in a BIG WAY!” Trump tweeted at the time.

Ending Public Service Loan Forgiveness: Signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007, the PSLF program promises to cancel the remaining debt for public servants, from police offices and prosecutors to public defenders, who have made 10 years of payments on their loans. In the last four years, the Biden-Harris administration has awarded $74 billion in student debt relief to public servants who’ve met PSLF’s payment requirements.

But when the first wave of borrowers qualified for relief in 2017, Trump’s Education Department rejected 99 percent of applicants. His administration then proposed a 2021 budget that would have nixed PSLF entirely. That did not pass, but the goal remains: Project 2025 includes an explicit recommendation to terminate PSLF should there be a Republican president.

Hampering other forms of student debt relief: In June 2023, the Supreme Court struck down President Biden’s attempt to cancel up to $10,000 of student debt for low- and middle-income borrowers. Trump called the decision a “massive win” that halted an “unconstitutional student loan gimmick.”

In the wake of this decision by the Supreme Court, the Biden-Harris administration sought to provide relief another way: They launched the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan, an income-driven repayment program that would lower required payments for many borrowers, and forgive the remainder of their debt after somewhere between 10 and 25 years, depending on the original loan balance. Within months, more than a dozen Republican-led states had sued to shut down the program. Those lawsuits are ongoing. And it is safe to say that a Trump-Vance administration would do little to stop them: In June, Trump called Biden’s latest student debt relief efforts “vile,” while Vance has encouraged Republicans to fight student loan cancellation “with every ounce of our energy of power.” Plus, Project 2025 suggests that a future Trump administration should end all existing income-driven debt repayment plans because they are too generous.

Weakening debt relief for borrowers defrauded by for-profit schools: When Betsy DeVos served as Trump’s education secretary, she rewrote an existing department rule that discharges the loans of students who attended fraudulent colleges. Her version shrunk the amount these loans could be canceled, limiting them to just three cents for every dollar spent on their degrees. Congress passed a bipartisan resolution to overturn DeVos’s rule, but Trump vetoed it, leaving her restrictions in place until Biden undid them upon taking office. Should Trump return to the White House, this relief for borrowers would very likely be on the chopping block.

Causing some student loans to accrue more interest: In 2018, the Trump administrations budget proposed ending subsidized Stafford loans, which don’t accrue interest while undergraduate students are in school. This change would lead to thousands of additional dollars of debt for borrowers, many of whom are also from low-income families—about 70 percent of subsidized loan borrowers also qualify for Pell Grants. In 2018, the Center for American Progress estimated that an end to subsidized loans would saddle nearly 6 million students with an additional $2.8 billion in costs each year.

In Media Blitz, Vance Covers For Trump’s “Fascistic” Threats

27 October 2024 at 23:02

In a Sunday morning media blitz, vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) tried to clean up former President Donald Trump’s disturbing comments about his domestic political opponents being “the enemy within.”

In interviews with CNN’s Jake Tapper and NBC’s Kristen Welker, Vance tried to downplay, dismiss, and alter Trump’s repeated characterizations of Democrats as “evil,” “dangerous,” and “enemies.”

Trump has made such comments multiple times. Earlier this month, he told Fox host Maria Bartiromo, “We have the outside enemy and then we have the enemy from within—and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these countries.” Trump added that he considers California Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff among those enemies. And in a podcast interview with Joe Rogan on Friday, Trump said the “enemy from within” was more dangerous than North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Tapper, host of CNN’s State of the Union, pressed Vance on those comments from the very start of their interview, as well as John Kelly’s characterization this week of Trump as a fascist who admires Hitler. Vance said Kelly’s comments about Trump were inaccurate. At one point, Vance said, “I believe Donald Trump is the candidate of peace.” Later in the interview, Vance said Trump was reserving his threats to send the military after “people rioting after the election” rather than all Americans.

TAPPER: "He wants to use the military to go after the enemy within."

VANCE: "There's the game that you're playing."

TAPPER: "I’m not playing a game." pic.twitter.com/rvb6GgC3BA

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) October 27, 2024

At another point, Tapper reminded Vance that Trump shared a social media post saying Liz Cheney—now among the Republicans campaigning for his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris—should be put before a war tribunal. “None of that sounds fascistic to you at all?” Tapper asked. “No, of course it doesn’t,” Vance responded, before alleging Tapper was taking Trump’s statements out of context.

.@jaketapper: "Liz Cheney, [Trump] said, should be put before a war tribunal. None of that sounds fascistic to you at all?"@JDVance: "No, of course it doesn't." pic.twitter.com/3YuiEI3MGH

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) October 27, 2024

When Welker, of NBC’s Meet the Press, asked Vance if he agreed with Trump that Pelosi and Schiff “are more dangerous than Russia and China,” he dodged. “Well, I think what Donald Trump said is that those folks pose a greater threat to United States’ peace and security, because America’s strong enough to stand up to any foreign adversary,” Vance replied.

In his interview with Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan, he gave a slightly clearer answer. While she didn’t ask specifically about his response to Trump’s comments about “the enemy from within,” Brennan did ask Vance, “What price should Moscow pay for trying to manipulate American voters?”—referring to a Friday announcement by the FBI that Russia was behind a fake video of mail-in ballots being destroyed in Pennsylvania.

“A lot of countries are going to try to manipulate our voters. They’re going to try to manipulate our elections. That’s what they do,” Vance replied. After Brennan pressed him, Vance condemned Russia’s actions, but said he would not commit to how the US should or would respond.

Asked what price Moscow should pay for posting fake videos to interfere with the U.S. elections, JD Vance says: "I don't think that we should set American foreign policy based on a foreign country spreading videos on social media. I think we should set American foreign policy… pic.twitter.com/SC1rVgH12o

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) October 27, 2024

As my colleague Inae Oh and I have tracked, Trump has indeed threatened to prosecute, or called for the prosecution of, a long list of political opponents, including Harris, Cheney, President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former President Barack Obama, and a slew of others. So—contrary to Vance’s assertions—Trump has given us ample reason to take his threats seriously.

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