No Truth in the World – Part II

by Sammy Attoh / November 24th, 2025

Read Part I.

Truth today is not measured by justice but by geopolitical convenience. Nations are told who to admire and who to despise, and the contradictions are suffocating.

Castro vs. Mandela: Contradictory Legacies

Fidel Castro: After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the U.S. imposed an embargo in 1960, later tightened in 1962. Its original intent, according to declassified CIA documents, was to “bring about hunger, desperation, and the overthrow of the Castro government.”¹ Despite Cuba’s achievements in literacy and healthcare, Castro was vilified as a dictator. Yet in Havana in December 1975, he declared:

“We shall defend Angola and Africa! The imperialists seek to prevent us from aiding our Angolan brothers. But we must tell the Yankees to bear in mind that we are a Latin-American nation and a Latin-African nation as well. African blood flows freely through our veins.”²

Nelson Mandela: Once branded a terrorist by the U.S. and UK, Mandela was later celebrated as a saint. After his release in 1990, he toured America, raising funds and political support. President George H.W. Bush welcomed him, and Congress honored him.³ Yet Mandela himself testified to Cuba’s decisive role:

“The decisive defeat of the aggressive apartheid forces [in Angola] destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor. The defeat of the apartheid army served as an inspiration to the struggling people of South Africa.”

In Havana in July 1991, Mandela proclaimed:

“What other country has such a history of selfless behavior as Cuba has shown for the people of Africa?”⁴

This selective framing reveals that sainthood or villainy is often assigned not by moral struggle but by political utility. The Cubans who perished in Angola and Namibia—the young flowers of Cuba—remain largely unhonored in Western narratives, even though Mandela himself acknowledged their blood as part of his liberation.

The Cry of Mourning

The hundreds of Cuban youth who died in Southern Africa were not mercenaries but volunteers. Between 1975 and 1991, over 425,000 Cubans served in Angola at the request of the Angolan government, fighting apartheid South Africa’s invasions.⁵ Their sacrifice was immense, yet in American and Western press, Castro was demonized while Mandela was canonized.

This is the contradiction that burns: the Cubans died for Mandela’s freedom, but their names are erased from the saintly narrative. The U.S. celebrated Mandela while continuing to suffocate Cuba with embargoes condemned by the UN for 33 consecutive years.⁶

A World Choking on Contradictions

We celebrate human ingenuity while tolerating human cruelty. We canonize certain leaders while vilifying others, not on the basis of truth but on the convenience of empire. We reach for the stars but fail to reach for each other.

If there is “no truth in the world,” it is because truth has been suffocated by propaganda, selective memory, and the machinery of war. The challenge is not only to expose these contradictions but to demand a new direction—one where the genius of humanity is harnessed for life rather than death, for cohabitation rather than domination.

Until that shift occurs, the world will continue to choke. And the cry for truth will remain the most urgent, unanswered call of our time.

Endnotes:

• 1
  Peter Kornbluh and William M. LeoGrande, eds. Cuba Embargoed: U.S. Trade Sanctions Turn Sixty. Washington, D.C.: National Security Archive, February 2, 2022. Available at: National Security Archive.
• 2
  Fidel Castro. “Speech at Havana Rally on Angola.” December 15, 1975. Transcript reprinted in The Militant, Vol. 78, No. 45 (December 15, 2014). New York: Pathfinder Press.
• 3
  United Nations General Assembly. Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial and Financial Embargo Imposed by the United States of America Against Cuba. Resolution adopted October 29, 2025 (A/RES/80/7). New York: United Nations.
• 4
  Nelson Mandela. “Speech at Rally in Matanzas, Cuba.” July 26, 1991. In How Far We Slaves Have Come, by Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1992. Nelson Mandela Foundation Archive.
• 5
  See note 2.
• 6
  See note 3.

FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Sammy Attoh is a Human Rights Coordinator, poet, and public writer. A member of The Riverside Church in New York City and The New York State Chaplains Group, he advocates for spiritual renewal and systemic justice. Originally from Ghana, his work draws from ancestral wisdom to explore the sacred ties between people, planet, and posterity. Read other articles by Sammy.

Elon Musk vs. Dungeons and Dragons

A New Front in the Culture Wars

by Bill Berkowitz / November 24th, 2025

I’ve never played Dungeons & Dragons, but plenty of my family members do, and they consider it to be one of the world’s most engaging table top games; a game that also promotes community. And, like any game that has been around for more than fifty years, there’s bound to be changes. And, with changes, comes angry voices in opposition. One of the angriest right now is Elon Musk.

Writing for The Atlantic, Adam Serwer recently detailed Musk’s fury over changes to the game and the way Wizards of the Coast, the company behind D&D, has begun reckoning with its past

Last November, on X, the billionaire tycoon Elon Musk told the toy company Hasbro to ‘burn in hell.’ Hasbro owns the company Wizards of the Coast, which produces the game Dungeons & Dragons. Wizards had just released a book on the making of the game that was critical of some of its creators’ old material. ‘Nobody, and I mean nobody, gets to trash’ the ‘geniuses who created Dungeons & Dragons,’ Musk wrote. The book acknowledged that some earlier iterations of the game relied on racist and sexist stereotypes and included ‘a virtual catalog of insensitive and derogatory language.’ After a designer at Wizards said that the company’s priority now was responding to ‘progressives and underrepresented groups who justly took offense’ at those stereotypes, and not to ‘the ire of the grognards’—a reference to early fans such as Musk—Musk asked, ‘How much is Hasbro?,’ suggesting that he might buy the company to impose his vision on it, as he’d done with Twitter.

According to Mint’s Ravi Hari (with inputs from Deutsche Welle), “Musk has become increasingly vocal about the gaming industry, especially on his platform X (formerly Twitter).” He noted that “Too many game studios … are owned by massive corporations,” adding, “xAI is going to start an AI game studio to make games great again!”

Dungeons & Dragons was the original role-playing game, born in the early 1970s after insurance underwriter and cobbler Gary Gygax met a student named Dave Arneson at a Midwestern tabletop gaming convention. In his piece, Serwer explains how their breakthrough came from shifting away from reenacting historical battles with miniatures toward a more character-driven, improvisational style involving a Dungeon Master, dice rolls, and narrative collaboration. It was, as he puts it, essentially “a game of pretend.”

Serwer’s piece, “Why Elon Musk Needs Dungeons & Dragons To Be Racist: The fantastical roots of ‘scientific racism,’” goes beyond the game’s mechanics, tracing how fantasy itself carries the weight of 20th-century ideas about race. He delves into J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, fantasy’s seminal 20th-century text, published in 1937, and the Lord of the Rings series that followed it. Both were “written, an era in which many Westerners believed that ‘races’ shared particular natures, characteristics, and capabilities. That genetic determinism seeped into the books. Although uncountable readers were inspired by the tales of its diminutive heroes defying stereotypes to save the world, some drew other conclusions. The books, and the ideas embedded in them, would go on to have a magnetic appeal to the political forces Tolkien had rejected.”

Serwer points out that in the early days, the game was  “largely confined to the white, nerdy, male subculture in which it was born. Most of these players wouldn’t have thought much about the racial meaning of the game—even when the stereotypes were blatant, like one inspired by a ‘traditional African-analogue tribal society’ set in a jungle featuring dark-skinned ‘noble savages’ and ‘depraved cannibals.’ But for kids like me, [Jewish and Black] the meaning was always there.”

Although business wise D&D had always been “in financial peril,” sales grew during the Great Recession, “while the retail hobby stores that doubled as hangout spots where many kids were introduced to the game started to close. No one expected the game to experience a sudden renaissance,” Serwer writes. “But it did. In 2011, the sitcom Community ran a D&D-themed episode. The nostalgic horror show Stranger Things, which debuted in 2016, showed kids playing D&D together. As other geeky pastimes became more mainstream—such as Disney’s Marvel juggernaut—the stigma once associated with those activities began to fade, a process I’ll call ‘de-geekification.’”

Protests following the murder of George Floyd led the D&D development team to acknowledge “in a blog post that some earlier versions of the game offered portrayals of fantasy creatures that were ‘painfully reminiscent of how real-world ethnic groups have been and continue to be denigrated. That’s just not right, and it’s not something we believe in.’

In 2022, Wizards announced that it would be removing the word race from the game and substituting species, noting that “‘race’ is a problematic term that has had prejudiced links between real world people and the fantasy peoples of D&D worlds.”

So where does that leave Elon Musk? Will he continue his personal crusade against the direction D&D is taking? Will he attempt to buy Hasbro? Or launch a gaming empire of his own? What’s clear is that his outrage is about much more than a hobby: it’s about who gets to define the stories we tell, the worlds we imagine, and the futures we fight over.

FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Bill Berkowitz is a longtime observer of the conservative movement. Read other articles by Bill.

Antifa and Neo-Nazis clash — guess which Trump calls a foreign terror group?

Jordan Green,

 Investigative Reporter
November 24, 2025 

RAW STORY


A video still shared by the State Department on X allegedly shows an attack carried out by members of Antifa Ost in Budapest, Hungary in February 2023. Courtesy State Department

The Trump State Department officially added a German antifascist group and three other European far-left groups to its list of foreign terrorist organizations last week.

But the action, which freezes U.S. assets and imposes penalties on anyone who offers support to the groups, ignored a transnational neo-Nazi group that has committed acts of violence of its own and is linked to the murder of two men in Florida.

The State Department announcement about plans to apply the terror designation to Antifa Ost accused the group of conducting “numerous attacks against individuals it perceives as ‘fascists,’” specifically citing “a series of attacks in Budapest in mid-February 2023.”

What the announcement leaves out is that the attacks allegedly committed by Antifa Ost took place during an annual gathering, the “Day of Honor,” organized by neo-Nazis to commemorate a battle fought by the German army and local collaborators against the Soviet Union in Hungary during World War II.

By the State Department’s own admission, “extreme right sympathizers … attacked groups they took to be antifascist demonstrators” during the event.

The first “Day of Honor” march in 1997 was organized by the Hungarian chapter of Blood and Honour. Members of the international Blood and Honour group and its armed wing Combat 18 continue to attend the event, according to a report financed by the German Foreign Ministry.

Canada added Blood and Honour and Combat 18 to its list of proscribed terrorist entities in 2019, alongside the UK and Germany. A Spanish court ordered the dissolution of the group in that country.

The Canadian government describes Blood and Honour as “an international neo-Nazi network whose ideology is derived from the neo-Nazi doctrine of Nazi Germany,” while saying Combat 18 “has carried out violent actions, including murders and bombings.”

As noted by the Canadian government, Blood and Honour members pleaded guilty to murdering two unhoused men in Tampa, Fla. in 1998, reportedly “because they considered them inferior.”

“It sure shows the game here that’s afoot,” Tom Joscelyn, a senior fellow at Just Security, recently told a podcast, adding that the Trump administration is “going after what they claim is this international terrorist menace in antifa” by sanctioning Antifa Ost.

“But they’re not going after the neo-Nazi group, which is by far larger and has also committed acts of violence in this context. I think it puts everything in stark relief.”

‘Greatly inflating the threat’


Joscelyn has written extensively about al-Qaida and was a principal author of the final report of the House January 6thCommittee.

“There is a threat from antifa adherents inside the U.S., and no one will be surprised if there’s a successful antifa-style attack in the future,” Joscelyn told Raw Story.

“However, the administration is greatly inflating the threat for their own political purposes while ignoring well-established threats from far-right and neo-Nazi groups.”

In order to designate a group as a foreign terrorist organization, the State Department is required to demonstrate that a group’s activities “threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security (national defense, foreign relations, or the economic interests) of the United States.”

Thomas Brzozowski, formerly domestic terrorist counsel for the Department of Justice, said the State Department announcement cited “no attacks or alleged attacks on Americans” and “no plots against Americans” by members of Antifa Ost or the three other left-wing groups.

“We do not discuss deliberations or the potential deliberations of our designations process,” an unidentified State Department spokesperson said in a statement to Raw Story.

The German government has said the threat posed by Antifa Ost has “decreased significantly” thanks to the successful prosecution of several prominent members, according to Reuters.

The outlet reported that the German government said it was not consulted by the U.S. before plans to designate Antifa Ost as a foreign terrorist organization were announced.

Brzozowski said he thinks “even the folks at State know” there’s no way to show Antifa Ost as a legitimate national security threat.

“And they’re doing their best, I’m sure,” he said. “But come on! They’re put in a bind. They’ve got to deliver, or else they’re going to get fired.

“The sequencing is all backwards at this point. And that’s dangerous. Because

 this is really political theater, is what it is. This is giving effect to a presidential directive.”

Brawling with neo-Nazis

The violence at the “Day of Honor” event in Budapest has been politicized in Hungary.

Légió Hungária, a neo-Nazi group that assumed responsibility for organizing the event from Blood and Honour, receives support from the ruling Fidesz party, led by Trump ally Viktor Orbán, according to the 2023 report by B’nai B’rith and Amadeo Antonio Foundation, underwritten by the German Foreign Ministry.

In 2019, members of Légió Hungária vandalized a Jewish community center in Budapest during a nationalist gathering commemorating the 1956 uprising against the Soviet Union, as reported by the State Department during Trump’s first term.

This September, Hungary declared Antifa Ost a terrorist organization, in alignment with Trump’s agenda.

But the Trump administration has remained silent on the 2019 attack carried out by Légió Hungária, as well as reports cited by B’nai B’rith that participants in the 2020 “Day of Honor” chanted, “Jews out!”

The report also cited “Holocaust denial and distortion, historical revisionism of World War II, and worship of the Waffen-SS as core ideological elements of the event.”

Shortly after taking office this year, President Trump announced the launch of a Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, which accused U.S. universities of turning a blind eye to the issue, amidst an administration campaign to deport pro-Palestine activists.

“Anti-semitism in any environment is repugnant to this nation’s ideals,” said Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights and leader of the task force, when the effort was launched.

“The [Justice] Department takes seriously our responsibility to eradicate this hatred wherever it is found.”

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment from Terrell for this story.

Despite Légió Hungária receiving state backing, Hungary’s Supreme Court reportedly upheld a police ban on the 2023 “Day of Honor,” finding: “Extreme groups are expected to appear at this event. The holding of the event in their presence may be accompanied by considerable attack on public order and peace.”

But, as a 2023 State Department report noted, neo-Nazis sidestepped the ban.

“Media outlets reported that despite the police ban, several hundred extreme-right and neo-Nazi sympathizers gathered in the Buda Castle to commemorate ‘Day of Honor.’ Police successfully prevented them from clashing with a group of 100-200 Hungarian and international counter-protesters in the area,” the report reads.

“According to statements by police, antifascist demonstrators elsewhere in the city assaulted several individuals they assumed to be affiliated with the extreme right,” the report continues.

“Similarly, extreme right sympathizers reportedly attacked groups they took to be antifascist demonstrators.”

The circumstances of violence allegedly committed by antifascists in Budapest is telling, Joscelyn told Raw Story.

“The U.S. went from designating al-Qaida for the 9/11 hijacking to designating overseas antifa adherents for brawling with neo-Nazis,” he said.

The State Department’s selective sanctions against antifascists while turning a blind eye to neo-Nazi violence reveals the Trump administration’s actual objectives, Joscelyn added.

“You saw even during the No Kings protests there were very prominent MAGA Republicans that said this was an extremist effort and warning of violence and warning of events that didn’t happen.

“That shows how desperate the administration and its supporters are to portray its opposition as extremists. The concept of antifa is the cudgel they’re using to bash their opposition.”

Jordan Green is a North Carolina-based investigative reporter at Raw Story, covering domestic extremism, efforts to undermine U.S. elections and democracy, hate crimes and terrorism. Prior to joining the staff of Raw Story in March 2021, Green spent 16 years covering housing, policing, nonprofits and music as a reporter and editor at Triad City Beat in North Carolina and Yes Weekly. He can be reached at jordan@rawstory.com. More about Jordan Green.

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M

Trump-pardoned CEO's firm accused of 'knowingly' enabling Hamas attacks

Matthew Chapman
November 24, 2025 

RAW STORY


FILE PHOTO: Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, speaks at the Bitcoin Asia conference, in Hong Kong, China, August 29, 2025. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo

A new lawsuit against a cryptocurrency company whose billionaire founder was recently pardoned of federal crimes by President Donald Trump argued that the firm "knowingly" helped finance the Oct. 7, 2021, attack on Israel by Hamas, Reuters reported on Monday.

The firm, Binance, serves as an exchange for cryptocurrency trading, and was the primary competitor to FTX before the latter firm was implicated in a fraud scheme by its CEO and declared bankruptcy in 2022.

"According to a complaint made public on Monday, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange laundered money for Hamas even after pleading guilty in November 2023 and paying a $4.32 billion criminal penalty for violating federal anti-money-laundering and sanctions laws," reported Reuters.

The plaintiffs, who include 306 American victims and relatives of victims, "accused Binance of knowingly enabling Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Iran's Revolutionary Guard to move more than $1 billion through its platform, including more than $50 million after the October 7 attack," according to the report.

"Binance intentionally structured itself as a refuge for illicit activity," the complaint said. "To this day, there is no indication that Binance has meaningfully altered its core business model."

Binance's former CEO and founder, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to money laundering charges in 2023. Earlier this year, Trump gave him a full pardon, claiming that he was politically targeted by the Biden administration.

However, that pardon came after Binance spent months promoting a stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency venture owned by Trump family members that has netted them over $1 billion in profit.

IRS sues GOP Senator over a $5 million unpaid tax bill: report

Robert Davis
November 24, 2025 

The Internal Revenue Service filed a lawsuit against West Virginia Senator and former Governor Jim Justice, a Republican, on Monday over a $5 million tax bill that Justice has not paid, according to a new report.

Local news station WKBN in West Virginia reported that the Justices had been contacted "multiple times" by the Treasury Department regarding more than $5.1 million in taxes that the family has owed since 2009.

The lawsuit claims the Justices have “neglected or refused to make full payment" on the debt, according to the report.

It adds that Justice and his wife must pay any debts that the court "deems just and proper.”

Justice replaced former Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin in the Senate in 2025. Before that, he served as West Virginia's governor from 2017 until 2025.

The lawsuit was filed about a month after the IRS filed a lien against Justice and his wife for around $8 million. A federal court also forced Justice to sell six of his companies to satisfy part of his outstanding debt.

Read the entire report by clicking here.

These horrifying threats and acts of violence prove Trump must be removed

Sabrina Haake
November 23, 2025

RAW STORY

The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) governs the conduct of every person in the United States military, and applies equally to all ranks and branches, whether in combat, or not.

All service members are taught, and are expected to understand, its core principles. Ignorantia juris non excusat, or “Ignorance of the law,” is not a legal defense in the US military. Under Art. 92 of the UCMJ, members have a duty to obey all lawful commands, and they have a parallel duty to disobey all unlawful commands. Obeying a manifestly illegal order, like an order to target civilians, can expose a service member to criminal liability.

The duty to disobey manifestly illegal orders is a cornerstone of international law, with foundations in Nazi atrocities-related post-WWII trials like Nuremberg. Orders of such nature that their unlawfulness is clear and obvious, such as an order to target unarmed civilians, are considered manifestly illegal.

Manifestly illegal orders

Donald Trump has ordered the summary execution of at least 83 people so far in strikes on suspected drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth call these targets “narco-terrorists” because they think that means they can treat them as enemy combatants in a war that does not exist.

It doesn’t. Even if the victims were “narco-terrorists,” for which Trump has provided zero evidence, at worst, they are citizen criminals entitled to interdiction and legal process under US and international law.

No country has the right to execute non-combatant civilians unless faced with imminent threat, otherwise unhinged leaders could shoot people for sport, which Trump’s snuff videos are chillingly starting to resemble.

International condemnation of Trump’s campaign is growing, along with a global chorus accusing him of murder that would be louder if Trump weren’t threatening foreign trade like a mob boss. Formerly strong US allies, including the UK, Colombia, and the Netherlands, have either refused or suspended related intelligence sharing with the US. Military support groups are starting to talk in earnest, offering counseling and advice on what to do when faced with illegal order situations.
Calls to execute US lawmakers

Against this legal framework, the President of the United States has called for the prosecution, conviction, and death penalty for federal legislators, for reminding military personnel that they must follow the UCMJ. After Democratic legislators, all veterans of Intelligence or the US military, released a video reminding members of their duty to disobey illegal orders, Trump came unglued, unleashing a series of posts confirming that he is a danger to all Americans and unfit to lead the military.

Trump wrote:

"It’s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand - We won’t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET."


"SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!" he added in a later post.

Eliciting stochastic violence, Trump then reposted other posts calling the lawmakers "traitors" and "domestic terrorist Democrats" and another reading, "HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!"

Trump is criminally insane. What are officials waiting for to remove him?


The evidence that Trump is unfit to lead, and is a metastasizing threat to the US citizenry, is objectively irrefutable:He is using the US military for domestic law enforcement, which has long been illegal under federal law
He has openly turned the Department of Justice into a lawless political weapon
He is sending armed, masked and insufficiently trained federal agents to attack people in their beds, at schools and churches, and on the sidewalks
His closest advisors publicly encourage excessive brutality as his “War” Secretary praises “lethality” unconstrained by the laws of combat
Advancing his violence toward the media, last week he defended the dismemberment of a journalist critic
He has officially declared groups who oppose him politically to be “domestic terrorists” in clear violation of the First Amendment
His administration has been caught lying about peaceful protestors threatening ICE agents in order to justify ICE brutality.

At the same time Trump is violating the rule of law at home, transforming the nation into an occupied military zone, his national security blunders have seriously increased the risk of harm from outside forces by:
Sharing a plan of attack through unsecured sources
Posting juvenile social media rants that gave Iran advance notice to move their enriched uranium
Accidentally declaring part of Mexico as US territory now under US command
Alienating NATO, demoralizing Ukraine, and supporting Putin’s murderous regime in Russia
Claiming victory in Gaza even as both sides continues attacking on the other
Selling fighter jets to Saudi Arabia despite national security warnings.

These cumulative blunders suggest he doesn’t care about long-term, or even short-term, risks to national security. For example, Trump’s plans to sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia ignores consistent warnings from national security officials that he will be letting China steal the American military’s advanced technology. Trump either doesn’t care, or lacks the cognitive capacity to understand, that Riyadh and Beijing have a formal security partnership.

“We will be doing that, we’ll be selling F-35s,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, because the Saudis “want to buy them, they’ve been a great ally.”

These facts trigger a duty to act, regardless of politics.

Federal officials, including his cabinet, and members of Congress, all swore an oath to follow the Constitution and protect the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Legal tools within their reach include impeachment and removal, Congressional oversight and the power of the purse, and the 25th Amendment.

This is not a partisan issue. America is in danger. Federal officials’ complicity and failure to act is now a dereliction of duty in deference to a man whose cognition is in question, who still has access to the nuclear codes.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

Trump Should Be Removed From Office and Prosecuted

Under Trump’s neofascist worldview, the only “legal” act is obedience, while defiance of his whims and illegal orders is a crime.


President Donald Trump speaks to members of press aboard Air Force One on November 14, 2025 while in flight from Washington, DC to West Palm Beach International Airport.
(Photo by Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)

Thom Hartmann
Nov 24, 2025

Common Dreams

I’ve been feeling something unusual these past few weeks: optimism.

Not naïve optimism or the kind that ignores danger, but the real kind that arrives when you see people waking up, standing up, and refusing to bow before a lawless president who believes rules are for suckers and the Constitution is a mere suggestion rather than the foundation of our republic.

We’re now governed by a man who treats legal limits as personal insults. Donald Trump doesn’t just violate our nation’s norms and laws: like every wannabe third-world tinpot dictator before him, he despises the idea that any law can constrain him at all.

Trump and the spineless sycophants in his administration have rejected the entire idea of a rules-based society. He and his lickspittles are turning the presidency into a throne, trying to transform you and me into its subjects, and painting as enemies anyone who insists soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen (and others in government) should follow the law.

Trump has declared war on the American Way.

Under Trump’s neofascist worldview, the only “legal” act is obedience, while defiance of his whims and illegal orders is a crime. We saw this when Trump lashed out at lawmakers who reminded our military that their sworn oath is to the Constitution and not to him personally.

He posted a rant about those six CIA and military veterans/lawmakers and wrote “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” in response to their message that both history and law — including military law — require soldiers to refuse illegal orders. Then he reposted a message calling for them to be hanged.

That wasn’t a rhetorical flourish: it was Trump’s declaration of war on the rule of law, something so essential that it’s the basis of every democracy and civilized society in history throughout the world. Instead of respecting American ideals, he’s sounding more like his “good friend,” the murderous dictator of Saudi Arabia (who’s given Trump’s family billions, with more billions on their way).

You’d think that after the My Lai massacre, the horrors committed at Abu Ghraib, and the Nuremberg trials, Americans — and Trump and those around him — would have gotten the message, but over at the Fox propaganda channel and on other rightwing media they’re actually defending this obscene behavior.

It’s also criminal behavior: 18 U.S. Code § 610 makes it a crime for any federal official — including the president — to use their authority to intimidate, threaten, or punish citizens for their political expression, voting behavior, or dissent. Threatening members of Congress with execution for following the law is an extreme, textbook violation.

Meanwhile, the country is learning how this un-American philosophy plays out on the ground. In cities like Charlotte, Portland, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc., masked, anonymous secret police-style federal agents descend without warning, kicking in doors and smashing car windows, arresting U.S. citizens, stealing people’s possessions, invading trusted community spaces, shuttering businesses, and sending tens of thousands of students home in fear.

This isn’t border enforcement or public safety: it’s warfare against due process and America itself. It’s gotten so bad that Senator Elissa Slotkin and her peers are getting death and bomb threats.

Our nation’s Founders warned us that America’s greatest threats to liberty would come not from abroad, but from leaders who’d try to turn our legal system and military against us. James Madison said the means used against foreign dangers too easily become instruments of tyranny at home. That warning wasn’t theoretical: it was aimed directly at moments like this.

Yet we’re also see something the Founders hoped for, something that echoed their heroic efforts against King George III: average Americans refusing to be cowed.

Impeachment isn’t a political act: it’s a constitutional obligation when a president becomes a danger to the Republic. And Trump crossed that line long ago.

People are documenting abuses, flooding the streets in peaceful protest, forming rapid-response networks, hauling the government into court again and again. Ordinary citizens are doing the job Congress has been too afraid, too compromised, or too divided to do.

It’s the most patriotic thing happening in America today.

Which is why Trump’s response to lawful dissent has been so horrific: he’s demanding Saudi-style executions.

He wasn’t being metaphorical: he demanded actual executions (although he later pretended to walk it back). That’s the language of a dictator. It’s the purest expression of Trump’s governing philosophy: if the law gets in his way he simply ignores it.

This isn’t merely corruption. It’s not even ordinary authoritarianism. It’s a direct repudiation of the entire American experiment. Defiance of courts and the law is a poison that says the only legitimate authority is the will of the leader, and Trump’s entire presidency has featured a nonstop campaign to replace the rule of law with the rule of Trump.

He enriched himself in office (he’s made billions off his position in just 10 months), he wielded the government as a tool of reprisal, he attacked judges, he extorted foreign governments, he stole government property and lied about it to federal investigators, he’s using public office to reward loyalists and punish critics, and he now presides over masked, unaccountable paramilitary raids that terrorize American communities.

The Constitution offers a clear remedy for a president who behaves like this.

Impeachment isn’t a political act: it’s a constitutional obligation when a president becomes a danger to the Republic. And Trump crossed that line long ago.

The only way to restore the rule of law is for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings immediately. Half measures are complicity. Silence is complicity. Delay is complicity.

But impeachment alone isn’t enough. There must also be criminal prosecution of Trump and his co-conspirators. Real prosecution, by real prosecutors, following real evidence, for real crimes.

And while we’re at it, DOGE deserves a pretty good looking at, too. And what happened to all those government investigations of billionaire donors’ companies?

Trump and those doing his bidding must face justice. His children who participated must face it. His bagmen and loyalists who broke laws to carry out his will must face it. A nation can’t heal if high office becomes a shield from justice.

Equality before the law is the foundation of any functioning democracy. If we abandon that principle now, we abandon the Republic itself.

I believe we’re at or very near a turning point. People are rising up. Communities are resisting. Judges are pushing back. Journalists are exposing what the administration wants hidden. The illusion of Trump’s invincibility is cracking.

The billionaires who believed he could terrorize the country into submission on their behalf are discovering that Americans refuse to bow.

This country was built by people who rejected kings. It can survive this counterfeit king, too.

But only if we act. Only if we insist that the Constitution still has meaning. Only if we refuse to let a lawless president redefine the rule of law as disloyalty.

Trump has declared war on the American Way. The only acceptable response is the full force of our constitutional system: impeachment, prosecution, and the unrelenting assertion that no man, no family, and no political movement is above the law.

I realize the political reality is that Mike Johnson won’t allow such a vote in the House and the Senate is now controlled by Republicans so timid and cowed by Trump that a GOP senator who’s a physician is afraid to criticize Bob Kennedy. But we’re only 12 months away from an election that could sweep both bodies and we must lay the foundation now for that.

That means waking up as many people as possible (share this newsletter and others!), engaging with groups like Indivisible, and supporting litigators and progressive Democrats across the board.

We can do this. We just need resolve, passion, and to begin the hard work of reclaiming the American Way and the American Dream, as Democrats did in the 1930s and the 1960s, and both parties did to oust Nixon and imprison his cronies in the 1970s.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of "The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream" (2020); "The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America" (2019); and more than 25 other books in print.
Full Bio >

Karoline Leavitt declares soldiers must never question illegal orders

David Edwards
November 24, 2025 

RAW STORY


Fox News/screen grab

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted that the United States "can't have" soldiers questioning whether orders are legal after Democrats pointed out that troops have a responsibility not to follow illegal orders.

During a Monday interview on Fox News, Leavitt said Democrats were giving "a wink and a nod to the 1.3 million active duty service members who serve in our United States armed forces and essentially encourage them to defy the orders of their commander-in-chief."

"Not a single order this president or administration has given to our military has ever been illegal, nor will it ever be," she insisted. "This administration respects and abides by the law."

"You can't have a soldier out on the battlefield or conducting a classified order questioning whether that is lawful or whether they should follow through. There must be a chain of command in our military."

Despite Leavitt's claim, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) states that service members can be liable for following unlawful orders, including burglary, murder, assault, rape, and property destruction. The UCMJ also prohibits "all conduct of a nature to bring discredit upon the armed forces, and crimes and offenses."

Pentagon Threatens to Court Martial Democrat Who Warned Troops Against Following Illegal Trump Orders

“Fuck you and your investigation,” replied Sen. Ruben Gallego in defense of fellow Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) takes questions from press after a town hall at NOAH Cholla Health Center on March 17, 2025 in Scottsdale, Arizona.
(Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Nov 24, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

The US Department of Defense on Monday announced it was launching an investigation into a Democratic senator who had participating in a video warning active-duty troops to not follow illegal orders given by President Donald Trump.

In a social media post, the DoD said it had “received serious allegations of misconduct” against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a retired US Navy captain who was one of several Democrats with backgrounds in national defense to speak out against the president potentially giving unlawful orders that pit the US military against American civilians.

As a result of the investigation, the DoD said that Kelly could be recalled to active duty to face potential court-martial proceedings for violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

“All servicemembers are reminded that they have a legal obligation under the UCMJ to obey lawful orders and that orders are presumed to be lawful,” the DoD said. “A servicemember’s personal philosophy does not justify or excuse the disobedience of an otherwise lawful order.”

In addition to Kelly, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-Penn.), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Md.), and Jason Crow (D-Colo.) appeared in the video.

In a follow-up social media post, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attacked the Democrats in the video as the “seditious six” and said that Kelly had been singled out for investigation because he was the only member who was still subject to UCMJ given his status as a retired Naval officer.

“As was announced, the Department is reviewing his statements and actions, which were addressed directly to all troops while explicitly using his rank and service affiliation—lending the appearance of authority to his words,” wrote Hegseth. “Kelly’s conduct brings discredit upon the armed forces and will be addressed appropriately.”

Trump has been calling for the prosecution of the six Democrats who appeared in the video for the last several days, and he even went so far as to say in one Truth Social post they deserve to be executed for “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

Shortly after the Pentagon announced its investigation into Kelly, he responded with a lengthy social media post in which he defended his service record and vowed not to back down despite threats from the Trump administration.

“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work,” he said. “I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) responded on X with a much shorter five-word post that read, “Fuck you and your investigation.”

Pete Hegseth's threat against senator poised to backfire spectacularly: observers

Matthew Chapman
November 24, 2025

 RAW STORY


U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth closes his eyes as he stands by U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictures), in the Oval Office at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 21, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

President Donald Trump's Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, has threatened to call up Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) into active military service again, just so he can court-martial him — but even if he goes through with this plan, it is likely to backfire spectacularly, some observers warned on Monday.

Kelly is one of six Democratic lawmakers from a military background who made a joint video reminding active servicemembers that if they are given illegal orders, like to kill unarmed civilians or take over civilian law enforcement in American cities, they have a duty to refuse those orders.

This is clearly outlined in the Uniform Code of Military Justice — but ever since the video came out, Trump and his devotees have falsely claimed these lawmakers are trying to countermand lawful orders, with Trump even calling the video "seditious" and threatening to have them executed.

But Hegseth, who now calls his position "Secretary of War" under an executive order Trump signed, would be wise to just let this go, some commenters noted on social media — because to actually try to prosecute him under military law would not just fail, but give Kelly a massive profile and fundraising boost and possibly even position him as a top-tier presidential candidate in 2028.

"Alternate headline: Pentagon threatens to make Mark Kelly the first Senator to raise $1 billion for their next election," wrote Inside Elections' Jacob Rubashkin.

Erick Erickson, a longtime conservative commentator, agreed: "Thanks to Pete Hegseth, this guy is going to make so much money this coming year as a fundraiser and he’s in prime position now for 2028 over Gavin Newsom."

Kelly, for his part, posted a defiant response on X himself.

"In combat, I had a missile blow up next to my jet and flew through anti-aircraft fire to drop bombs on enemy targets. At NASA, I launched on a rocket, commanded the space shuttle, and was part of the recovery mission that brought home the bodies of my astronaut classmates who died on Columbia. I did all of this in service to this country that I love and has given me so much," wrote Kelly. "If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work. I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution."

Trump’s ‘Unlawful Orders’ Dispute

by Ted Galen Carpenter | Nov 25, 2025 | ANTIWAR.COM

President Donald Trump is at the center of yet another bitter constitutional crisis.  His political adversaries have mounted a concerted campaign urging military personnel to disobey any “illegal orders.”  Trump responded to such calls by threatening to prosecute and even execute proponents for engaging in “seditious behavior.”  Since the U.S. Constitution designates the president as commander-in-chief of the armed services, Trump is, of course, currently at the top of the military’s chain of command.  Defiance by subordinates, he asserted, would constitute treason.

There are numerous important issues at stake.  They include the proper extent of the president’s powers under the Constitution, preserving civilian control of the military, the nature of the oath that military personnel take to protect and defend the Constitution, and the appropriate remedy if it appears that the president as commander-in-chief has given an unlawful order.

According to the Washington Post, Trump’s wrath apparently was triggered by a video organized by Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan), a former CIA analyst.  It features Slotkin and other lawmakers (many of whom are military veterans) who contend that “threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home.” They add bluntly: “Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders.”

It was not entirely clear which specific orders upset the lawmakers, but the video came out right after the Trump administration authorized military strikes against alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific, threatened military action in Venezuela, and deployed the National Guard into U.S. cities — actions which have sparked legal challenges and widespread concerns.

Slotkin and other critics contend that enlistees in the military take an oath to obey the Constitution, not the commander-in-chief or any other official.  That point is true to some extent, but the concept of “unlawful orders” is not objective or self-defining.  Even the oath of enlistment itself is somewhat murky.  Personnel taking the oath swear both to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies” and to “obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me.”  Military officers swear the oath of commissioned officers, which contains very similar language.

The oaths do not directly address the problem of how to deal with a situation when an order from the president or another military official might violate the Constitution. The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) requires members of the armed services to obey all lawful orders but also obligates them to disobey any unlawful order.  Those twin requirements would seem to create a conceptual mess for anyone not having a law degree and an extensive background in the specifics of military law.

The language of the UCMJ and other relevant statutes also seems to leave a person in the military adrift about what exactly to do if they conclude that an order is indeed unlawful.  If the individual disobeys an order that authorities later determine to be lawful, they risk being court martialed.  Conversely, if one abides by an unlawful order, that person might be deemed to have violated the oath to protect and defend the Constitution.

Probably the best course among a set of highly imperfect ones facing a member of the military who believes that an order is unlawful is to resign and then publicly state the reasons for refusing to execute the order.  That course would at least be honorable, albeit somewhat perilous.  Refusing to implement an order, but staying on in one’s post to sabotage the president’s policy is both dangerously disruptive and dishonorable.

As a society, America also faces a nasty dilemma. The danger certainly exists that a rogue president could negate important features of democratic rule and establish a dictatorship.  Indeed, many of Trump’s opponents allege that he attempted to stage an executive coup on January 6, 2021, when his supporters rioted and penetrated the U.S. Capitol.  His critics now contend that he is once again trying to acquire dictatorial powers.

If that allegation ultimately proves to be true, history likely would praise any military leaders who impeded or defied his attempt to become a dictator.  But such a dire scenario is far from indisputable.  Trump certainly has expanded executive power in dangerous and unhealthy ways from the standpoint of civil liberties and constitutional norms.  However, many of his predecessors committed similar offenses and set numerous worrisome precedents.  Yet most of the critics who excoriate Trump for his conduct either remained silent or explicitly endorsed earlier episodes.  For example, a plethora of critics denounce the administration for attacking boats suspected of carrying drugs out of Venezuela and considering a regime-change war to oust that country’s leftist dictator.  But most of those self-proclaimed guardians of the Constitution were conspicuously silent about or even supported Washington’s equally illicit regime-change crusades in such places as Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine.

Moreover, if the allegation that Trump is trying to establish a dictatorship proves to be bogus, encouraging military figures to defy the president’s orders risks creating chaos in the chain of command and badly weakening the military as a reliable institution.  Worse, such disobedience undermines the core constitutional principle of civilian control of the military.  America’s founders wisely designated an elected civilian official to the commander-in-chief of the military.

Do we really want members of the military, especially high-ranking officers, deciding whether or not to obey an order from the commander-in-chief?  Embracing such a mentality entails the inherent risk of encouraging military leaders to substitute their judgment for that of the president.  Down that path lies an enhanced risk of a coup by the military elite.

Dr. Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and the Libertarian Institute. He is also a contributing editor to National Security Journal and The American Conservative. He also served in various senior policy positions during a 37-year career at the Cato Institute. Dr. Carpenter is the author of 13 books and more than 1,600 articles on defense, foreign policy and civil liberties issues. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (2022).