Hollywood Union Says AI-Generated Tilly Norwood ‘Not an Actor’

The synthetic performer, says SAG-AFTRA, is “a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers—without permission or compensation.”


AI-generated “actor” Tilly Norwood appears at a computer-generated red carpet event.
(Photo by Particle 6)

Brett Wilkins
Sep 30, 2025

COMMN DREAMS

Screen actors and their union are among those who on Tuesday condemned a computer-generated “actress” created by a newly launched artificial intelligence studio as “not a replacement for a human being,” while urging talent agencies to eschew signing synthetic performers.

Billed as Hollywood’s first artificial intelligence actor, “Tilly Norwood” was introduced by Particle 6 founder and CEO Eline Van der Velden, who has launjched a new venture called Xicoia, the “world’s first AI talent studio.”

One of over 40 digital personalities Xicoia says it aims to develop, Norwood has attracted the attention of real-life talent agents—a development that has drawn condemnation from the powerful Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) union, which represents more than 160,000 performers in film, television, voice acting, video games, and other media.

“SAG-AFTRA believes creativity is, and should remain, human-centered,” the union said in a statement Tuesday, adding that it is “opposed to the replacement of human performers by synthetics.”

The union continued:





To be clear, “Tilly Norwood” is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers—without permission or compensation. It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion, and, from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience. It doesn’t solve any “problem”—it creates the problem of using stolen performances to put actors out of work, jeopardizing performer livelihoods and devaluing human artistry.

“Additionally, signatory producers should be aware that they may not use synthetic performers without complying with our contractual obligations, which require notice and bargaining whenever a synthetic performer is going to be used,” SAG-AFTRA added.

Individual actors also slammed Norwood’s rollout, with Melissa Barrera—who has starred in films including Scream and In the Heights—taking aim at any agent who might be tempted to represent the AI character.

“Hope all actors repped by the agent that does this, drop their a$$,” Barrera said. “How gross, read the room.”

Natasha Lyonne, star of Russian Doll and director of Uncanny Valley, said: “Any talent agency that engages in this should be boycotted by all guilds. Deeply misguided and totally disturbed. Not the way. Not the vibe. Not the use.”

Veteran television actor Chris McKenna addressed those who think Norwood “will only replace actors,” writing on social media that the AI creation “needs no hairstylist, makeup, wardrobe, lighting, direction, transportation, rest, or lunch... the trickledown will be devastating.”

Van der Velden defended her creation in a Sunday Instagram post, writing, “To those who have expressed anger over the creation of my AI character, Tilly Norwood, she is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work—a piece of art.”

“Like many forms of art before her, she sparks conversation, and that in itself shows the power of creativity,” she added.

SAG-AFTRA has long opposed the use of AI performers, making the issue a key part of its 2023 strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and last year’s video game strike. The union has also backed legislation at the federal and state level to regulate AI.

The 2023 strike, which lasted 118 days, ended with SAG-AFTRA winning concessions including explicit consent, notification, and bargaining for the use of AI replicas of performers and safeguards against digitally generated characters replacing human actors.

Creator says AI actress is ‘piece of art’ after backlash

By AFP
September 29, 2025


Members of an actors' guild protest as part of a strike against the Hollywood studios in November 2023 in Los Angeles, California - Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP Yana Paskova

The creator of an AI actress who exploded across the internet over the weekend has insisted she is an artwork, after a fierce backlash from the creative community.

Tilly Norwood — a composite girl-next-door described on her Instagram page as an aspiring actress — has already attracted attention from multiple talent agents, Eline Van der Velden told an industry panel in Switzerland.

Van der Velden said studios and other entertainment companies were quietly embracing AI, which her company, Particle6, says can drastically reduce production costs.

“When we first launched Tilly, people were like, ‘What’s that?’, and now we’re going to be announcing which agency is going to be representing her in the next few months,” said Van der Velden, according to Deadline.

The AI-generated Norwood has already appeared in a short sketch, and in July, Van der Velden told Broadcast International the company had big ambitions for their creation.

“We want Tilly to be the next Scarlett Johansson or Natalie Portman, that’s the aim of what we’re doing.

“People are realizing that their creativity doesn’t need to be boxed in by a budget -– there are no constraints creatively and that’s why AI can really be a positive.”

AI is a huge red line for Hollywood’s creative community, and its use by studios was one of the fundamental sticking points during the writers’ and actors’ strikes that gripped Hollywood in 2023.

“Scream” actress Melissa Barrera said performers should boycott any talent agent involved in promoting the AI actress.

“Hope all actors repped by the agent that does this, drop their a$$. How gross, read the room,” she wrote on Instagram.

Mara Wilson, who played the lead in “Matilda” in 1996, said such creations took work away from real people.

“And what about the hundreds of living young women whose faces were composited together to make her? You couldn’t hire any of them?” she said on social media.

In a lengthy post on Norwood’s Instagram page, Van der Velden defended the character, and insisted she was not a job killer.

“She is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work – a piece of art. Like many forms of art before her, she sparks conversation, and that in itself shows the power of creativity.

“I see AI not as a replacement for people, but as a new tool… AI offers another way to imagine and build stories.”

The use of AI has become increasingly visible in recent months in the creative industries, generating controversy each time.

The virtual band “The Velvet Sundown” surpassed one million listeners on streaming platform Spotify this summer.

In August, Vogue magazine published an advertisement featuring an AI-generated model.

Unions Sue to Protect Federal Workers From Mass Firings During Government Shutdown

“If these mass firings take place, the people who keep our skies safe for travel, our food supply secure, and our communities protected will lose their jobs,” one labor leader warned.

Members of the American Federation of Government Employees protest against firings during a rally to defend federal workers in Washington, DC on February 11, 2025.
(Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images


Jessica Corbett
Sep 30, 2025
COMMON DREAMS


Just hours before an expected US government shutdown, two major unions for federal workers filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in hopes of protecting them from the Trump administration’s threat of mass firings.

“Announcing plans to fire potentially tens of thousands of federal employees simply because Congress and the administration are at odds on funding the government past the end of the fiscal year is not only illegal—it’s immoral and unconscionable,” American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) national president Everett Kelley said in a statement.



Federal Workers Union Denounces Trump’s Threat of ‘Illegal Mass Firings’ Amid Shutdown Fight

“Federal employees dedicate their careers to public service—more than a third are military veterans—and the contempt being shown them by this administration is appalling,” Kelley declared.

Filed by AFGE and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in the Northern District of California, the new suit specifically takes aim at the Office of Management and Budget, OMB Director Russell Vought, the Office of Personnel Management, and OPM Director Scott Kupor.

“Federal workers do the work of the people, and playing games with their livelihoods is cruel and unlawful.”

The OMB last week “issued a memorandum threatening that if ‘congressional Democrats’ do not agree to the administration’s
demands, and the federal government shuts down, there will be mass firings of federal employees,” the complaint explains. The memo “takes the legally unsupportable position that a temporary interruption of appropriations eliminates the statutory requirement for all unfunded government programs and directs all federal agencies to ‘use this opportunity’ to consider reductions in force (RIFs) for any programs for which the funding has lapsed and that are not priorities of the president.”

“This past weekend, the Trump administration doubled down on its illegal activity,” the complaint notes, as OMB and OPM “told agencies that federal employees could work during the shutdown in order to effectuate these RIFs. But this directive is contrary to federal law, because carrying out RIFs is plainly not a permitted (or ‘excepted’) function that can lawfully continue during a shutdown.”

“The threat of massive layoffs was repeated and reinforced yesterday by the White House press secretary who, when asked whether there will be mass layoffs of federal employees, answered, ‘There will be if Democrats don’t keep the government open,‘” the filing continues. “These actions are contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious, and the cynical use of federal employees as a pawn in congressional deliberations should be declared unlawful and enjoined by this court.”

AFSCME president Lee Saunders highlighted how the firing threat connects to Project 2025, a policy agenda from a host of far-right figures, including Vought, published last year, in the lead-up to the November election.

“The Trump administration is once again breaking the law to push its extreme Project 2025 agenda, illegally targeting federal workers with threats of mass firings due to the federal government shutdown,” Saunders said. “If these mass firings take place, the people who keep our skies safe for travel, our food supply secure, and our communities protected will lose their jobs. We will do everything possible to defend these AFSCME members and their fellow workers from an administration hell-bent on stripping away their collective bargaining rights and jobs.”




AFSCME and AFGE are represented by Altshuler Berzon LLP, Democracy Defenders Fund, and Democracy Forward, whose president and CEO, Skye Perryman, accused President Donald Trump of “using the civil service as a bargaining chip as he marches the American people into a government shutdown.”

“Federal workers do the work of the people, and playing games with their livelihoods is cruel and unlawful. That is why we have sued today,” said Perryman, whose group has played a leading role in challenging the administration in court, as an increasingly authoritarian Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency have worked to gut the federal bureaucracy.

“Since inauguration, this administration has pursued a harmful Project 2025 agenda, attacking community programs and charities, lawyers, schools, private companies, law firms, judges, universities, public servants, and the programs, foundations, and civil servants working to deliver services to people and keep communities safe,” she noted. “No one’s lives have been made easier or better by these actions, and we will continue to meet these attacks in court. We are honored to again represent AFGE and AFSCME in protecting the American people from the Trump-Vance administration’s callous and unlawful agenda.”

The government will shut down at midnight unless Congress takes action. Although the GOP controls both chambers and the White House, they lack the numbers to advance most legislation in the Senate without Democratic support. The Senate voted Tuesday evening on Democrats’ and Republicans’ competing resolutions, neither of which passed.

Democrats have fought to expand Affordable Care Act subsidies and reverse cuts to Medicaid in the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act that congressional Republicans passed and Trump signed this summer. GOP leaders have refused to consider walking back their assault on the healthcare of millions of Americans.

In the event of a shutdown, “non-expected” employees are furloughed while “excepted” employees continue working, but no one gets paid until the shutdown ends.

Only these workers can 'break' shutdown as America careens toward 'disaster': expert

David Badash, 

The New Civil Rights Movement
September 30, 2025 


U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) arrives for a Senate vote, hours before a partial government shutdown is set to take effect on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 30, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Political scientist Larry Sabato is warning that President Donald Trump and the Republican Party may exploit the likely federal government shutdown, saying that the GOP, as the “anti-government party,” is “perfectly happy” when the government shuts down and “perfectly happy to eliminate quite a number of domestic policy programs.”

Republicans will “go after anything that Democrats normally favor, and they’ll probably try to do it in a way that will not be repairable once this shutdown ends,” warned Professor Sabato, founder and director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. He noted that the Trump administration’s goals include shrinking or eliminating large parts of the federal government.

Calling it “a very real threat,” Sabato told CNN that the White House has already warned that a shutdown could provide “a pretext for laying off many more federal workers.”

“They’re going to use this as best they can. Never let a crisis go to waste — that’s their theory.”

Sabato said it “would take a pocket full of miracles to stop what’s likely to happen at midnight,” and warned that “Trump is not bluffing.”

“The reason the implications are serious is because so much of what the U.S. government does grinds to a halt,” Sabato also said.

“Probably the most serious part of it is that the troops and the TSA officers and lots of other people, including air traffic controllers, while they have to show up, are not paid. So if this goes on for 35 days, there are a lot of families who are without food.”

“But, look,” he added, “the only thing that could break this and keep it relatively short is if you had mass protests from, say, the TSA workers and the air traffic controllers.”

“Oh, and by the way, the military — none of them are paid during a government shutdown, yet they are mandated to attend work.”

“Well, you know, that tends to wear on people, especially if they can’t pay their weekly or monthly bills.”


America, Sabato said, is “headed for another disaster and another advertisement to the world that the American system no longer works.”

Border Patrol union warns of 'life and death' consequences due to shutdown

Nicole Charky-Chami
September 30, 2025 

RAW STORY


U.S. Border Patrol officer stands guard as protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) draw hundreds to the ICE headquarters in south Portland, Oregon on Sept. 28, 2025. REUTERS/John Rudoff

The union representing the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol complained Tuesday that it could lose funding amid a looming government shutdown.

"On behalf of the men and women patrolling and securing our borders, we strongly support the bipartisan House-passed Continuing Resolution (CR) and urge the Senate to immediately pass and send it to President Trump for his signature," National Border Patrol Council President Paul Perez told Fox News. The union represents about 18,000 agents.

"A government shutdown means we go without mission-critical funding for patrol vehicles, roads, radios, infrastructure and agent pay," Perez said.

"What our agents do every day — ensure the safety of the American people and the sovereignty of our great country — is not a game, it’s life and death. We hope our Democrat-elected leaders in Congress will stop playing political games and fund our government."

Republicans have the majority, including the Senate, House of Representatives and the executive office. Some are on vacation with the shutdown just hours away.

Democrats have argued that Republicans are lying to Americans by claiming that Democrats are the ones delaying the push to avert a government shutdown, using the talking point that Democrats want to fund health care for undocumented immigrants.

Democratic leaders have argued that they want to address the Affordable Care Act before time runs out and healthcare premiums rise.

The shutdown — expected to happen at midnight Tuesday — could pause key government services and furlough thousands of government workers.

This move could also be an opportunity for Trump to finish the work that DOGE started.

And in a memo from the White House, the Trump administration this week outlined reduction-in-force plans in the event of a government shutdown, plans that signal mass firings could come. It's unclear who might be lose their jobs; however, multiple White House aids report that positions that do not align with Trump's agenda would likely be targeted.

'Drunk with power': Author tells how Chief Justice John Roberts 'corrupted' Supreme Court

Alexandria Jacobson,

 Investigative Reporter
September 30, 2025

RAW STORY




Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts poses for a portrait at the Supreme Court. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

Twenty years ago this week, John Roberts was sworn in as chief justice of the Supreme Court, at 50 years old.

On that day, Lisa Graves “wept.” As chief counsel for nominations with the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2002 to 2005, she anticipated Roberts’ commitment to “advancing a right-wing political agenda through the judiciary,” she writes in her new book: "Without Precedent: How Chief Justice Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights."

With President George W. Bush having two Supreme Court vacancies to fill, Roberts was considered a “bankable vote for the Right’s political agenda” and was supported by the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo, the activist and fundraising impresario now widely considered the architect of the Court’s 6-3 conservative majority, Graves said.

“The Roberts Court I feared would be terribly destructive of Americans' rights, and it's been even more destructive than I feared,” Graves told Raw Story.

From rulings in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which ushered in an era of unfettered dark money influence on elections, to Trump v. United States, which granted President Donald Trump “unprecedented immunity … to act as though he is above the law,” Graves argues Roberts facilitated the politicized state of a court that’s supposed to be impartial, but is now packed with Republican “partisan loyalists.”

“Roberts had conveyed this image that he was going to be a fair umpire as part of his nomination, but he has not been a fair umpire,” said Graves, now executive director of public policy watchdog group True North Research.

"He has put his weight — his fist — on the scale of justice, in favor of Donald Trump.”
‘Arrangement was illegal’

"Without Precedent" reveals how Roberts “sidestepped the ethics code” of the Court before he sat on it, by not recusing himself from a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals three-judge panel in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, while interviewing for “the biggest” promotion to the Supreme Court.

The appeals panel overturned a district court, ruling in favor of the Bush administration by determining that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a driver for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, held at Guantánamo Bay.

Roberts interviewed with Bush the same day the appeals court issued its order. Four days later, Bush announced Roberts’ nomination.

“Three prominent legal ethics professors later concluded that this arrangement was illegal under federal law,” Graves writes.


Lisa Graves. (provided image)

Roberts would recuse himself when the case reached the Supreme Court, which determined that the Bush administration did not have the authority to establish war crimes tribunals, and special military commissions were illegal under the Geneva Conventions and military law.

“His ambition for power I think was key to him deciding to secretly interview with a party to a case before him and not recuse himself,” Graves told Raw Story.

“Had he recused himself, which would have been the right thing to do, he might not have been chosen to be the chief justice or to be nominated to the Supreme Court, and had he ruled against the Bush administration, he might not have been chosen for that position.

“In fact, I think it's fair to say in either scenario, he would not have been chosen.”

‘Corrupted’


Ethical concerns have plagued the Supreme Court in recent years, including revelations that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito accepted undisclosed luxury trips and gifts from billionaires, while their wives engaged in political actions related to the attempted overturning of Trump's loss in the 2020 election.

Roberts failed to stand up to Thomas and Alito’s “corruption and bias” and protect the integrity of the Court, Graves writes, by not agreeing to “commonsense and enforceable ethics rules.”

“In my view, the compelling explanation for why the self-described institutionalist facilitated Thomas and Alito’s unethical participation is that Roberts needed their votes to accomplish his agenda of aggrandizing presidential power to try to save Trump — as no one on the Court had dared to do for Richard Nixon — and to expand the power of the Court to have the final say over almost every issue,” Graves writes.


“That’s because Roberts, too, has been corrupted. As the saying goes, ‘A fish rots from the head down.’”

‘Reactionary docket’

The Supreme Court’s docket is “almost entirely discretionary,” and the Roberts-led Supreme Court has created a “reactionary,” case-load, Graves writes.

“The pattern we are seeing of the Roberts Court inserting itself into so many controversies reveals how the Court’s Republican appointees do not want American law — and culture — to remain as is,” Graves writes.




Without Precedent (provided image).

Last week, Thomas made a rare public appearance at Catholic University's Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C., to say the Court should take a more critical look at settled precedent.

That’s “unsurprising,” Graves said, given Thomas and his Republican-appointed peers’ voting records in cases such as Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, which overturned the right to abortion in Roe v. Wade.

During his confirmation hearing, Roberts was “very clever” in setting the stage for his Court’s pattern of overturning precedents by assuring senators he understood the principle of respecting precedent but discussing leaving room for a decision to be reversed, Graves said.

“I would say Roberts Court is out of control, or maybe drunk with power, because it is arrogantly overturning precedent after precedent in order to allow Trump to behave as no other president has,” Graves told Raw Story.

‘Judicial junta’

The Supreme Court’s new term starts Monday. It is set to hear a slate of cases related to Trump’s policies, from tariffs to transgender rights.

One case set to be heard on Oct. 15 is the Louisiana redistricting case, Callais v. Landry, where Roberts is “poised to constrict” Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which he fought against as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration.

Graves reveals how at Roberts’ Supreme Court nomination hearing, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) was “deeply troubled” by Roberts’ “mean-spirited view,” of Section 2, which allows voters to seek judicial relief in response to a state or local government denying or limiting their right to vote based on race or color.

“Given the the performance of John Roberts and his fellow Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, I don't think any legal precedents are safe from this judicial junta,” Graves said.

But while Graves writes that decisions from the Roberts Court have assaulted workers’ rights, environmental protections, access to healthcare and voting rights, to name a few, she doesn’t want readers to come away “hopeless.”

Rather she hopes readers feel “a moral imperative for us to join together to reform the United States Supreme Court and restore and expand our rights.”

“I hope that they have a greater understanding of how we got into this mess, and the role that John Roberts has played in dismantling our rights and advancing this right-wing billionaire-backed agenda,” Graves said.

“ I hope that they will engage in the vital effort to reform the court and repair the damage that John Roberts and his fellow right-wing appointees have done on the Court.”

Without Precedent is out now.

Trump says Harvard to run 'giant series of trade schools': 'Then their sins are forgiven'

Robert Davis
September 30, 2025 

RAW STORY


President Donald Trump on Tuesday said his administration is closing in on a deal with Harvard University that would require the Ivy League university to pay $500 million towards opening and operating trade schools focusing on artificial intelligence.

Trump took questions from reporters during a news conference in the Oval Office on Tuesday after signing an executive order concerning the use of AI in pediatric cancer cases. He was asked about the latest negotiations between the White House and Harvard regarding accessing federal grant funding. The Trump administration moved to withhold federal funding to the university earlier this year because of Harvard's campus antisemitism policies, a move that multiple federal judges have ruled was illegal.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the White House was considering referring Harvard for "debarment" proceedings, which would disqualify the university from receiving federal funding.

"We're in the process, and we're getting very close," Trump said. "Linda [McMahon] is finishing up the final details. They'd be paying about $500 million, and they'll be operating trade schools. They're going to be teaching people how to do AI and lots of other things. Engines. Lots of things."

Trump has previously said he wants Harvard to pay a $500 million fine to restore more than $2.2 billion in funding that was previously approved but never paid.

"This would be a giant series of trade schools that would be operated by Harvard," Trump said of his plan. "We're very close to that. Finalizing. Haven't done it yet. But they would put up $500 million, and interest and everything from that account would go to the trade school. It's a big investment, done by very smart people. And then their sins are forgiven."

Trump’s Latest Big Lie: ‘Radical Left Violence’

The GOP is using this lie to censor speech, ban comedians and commentators, prosecute people who’ve spoken out against Trump, violently attack protesters, and to justify the monopolization of our media by right-wing billionaires.

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks during an event at the Kennedy Center on August 13, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

Thom Hartmann
Sep 30, 2025

Common Dreams


US President Donald Trump’s assault on our elections system and the GOP’s successful 2024 effort to deny at least (according to official US government statistics) 4.2 million Americans their right to vote (which gave Trump the election and Republicans the House and Senate) was based on his 2020 Big Lie that our elections were corrupted by “millions” of “illegals” voting, along with “massive” voter fraud.

They’re continuing that Big Lie (which the GOP first embraced in the 1960s with Operation Eagle Eye that intimidated mostly Hispanic and Native American voters) going forward, with some observers expecting as many as 10 million Americans being denied their vote in 2028.

Miller Says He and Trump Will Use Law Enforcement to ‘Dismantle’ the Left After Kirk Shooting

Inflaming Tensions, Trump Threatens Political Left With Retribution Over Killing of Charlie Kirk

But corrupting and stealing elections was just their first effort, starting back in the 1960s, the one that brought them to power. Now, with that power, they’re doing their best to gut the basic guardrails of our 250-year-old constitutional system with brand-new Big Lies.

The newest Big Lie for 2025 is that America is racked by “radical left violence” leading to the disintegration of law and order in our cities and the spread of terror among politicians and anybody else who dares speak out about the issues of our day.

Republican Big Lies have caused enormous damage, from FDR’s era through Joe McCarthy’s witch hunts to George W. Bush lying us into two illegal and unnecessary wars to today.

They’re using this to censor speech, ban comedians and commentators, prosecute people (including lifelong Republicans like Comey, Krebs, and Taylor) who’ve spoken out against Trump, violently attack protesters, and to justify the monopolization of our media by right-wing billionaires.

Most recently, when a Trump-supporting (Trump sign in his yard, Trump “Make Liberals Cry Again” T-shirt) straight, white, self-proclaimed Christian who thought Mormons were the anti-Christ murdered worshipers in a Latter Day Saints church in Michigan, Trump’s first response was to claim it was “anti-Christian violence.”

Instead, it appears this former Marine war vet with PTSD thought he was defending Christianity. But instead of asking if he was “radicalized” by preachers like Trump’s guy “Pastor” Robert Jeffress (who goes on and on about how the LDS Church is a “false religion”) or the algorithms on YouTube, Facebook, or X, right-wing media is today filled with rants about “attacks on Christianity,” blaming “the left” even for this attack.

It echo’s the GOP’s efforts to portray the two people who tried to assassinate Trump, Charlie Kirk’s killer, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shooter last week, and other political violence as originating from the “radical left.”

Which is really and truly another Big Lie.

First, there’s basically no “radical left” in America anymore. The anti-capitalist pro-violence subset of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) that I knew back in the 1960s when I was part of Michigan State University’s SDS are long gone and well discredited (and a few imprisoned).

Second, the “far left” folks who are still around aren’t violent, by and large. Lefties are more interested in protecting Social Security, getting a national healthcare system into place, raising taxes on the morbidly rich, and getting guns off the streets instead of pointing them at people. The last high-profile “leftie” shooter was the mentally ill guy who took a shot at Republican Congressman Steve Scalise back in 2017.

Even the FBI and the Department of Justice themselves had acknowledged the fact that the vast majority of politically-inspired violence in America was coming from the right, at least until puppy-killer Kristi Noem or one of her lickspittles (or her boyfriend) ordered the reports removed from the government websites.

The independent and nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies analyzed 893 terrorist plots that took place between 1994 and 2020. Their report concluded:
Right-wing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994.

But don’t expect to hear that from anybody in the administration or on Fox “News” or other right-wing media outlets. Instead, they’re using “far left violence” as their excuse to dismantle our rights, impose soldiers on cities run by Democrats, and pour your tax dollars into extreme policing and militarization of our society.

This isn’t the first time the GOP has used the Big Lie technique to sway public opinion in a way that demonizes Democrats. On September 23, 1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the Teamsters and said:
“he opposition in this year has already imported into this campaign a very interesting thing, because it is foreign. They have imported the propaganda technique invented by the dictators abroad.

Remember, a number of years ago, there was a book, Mein Kampf, written by Hitler himself. The technique was all set out in Hitler’s book—and it was copied by the aggressors of Italy and Japan.

According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature would make it more credible, if only you keep repeating it over and over and over again.

He then did what Democrats—and what honest news media we have left—need to be doing today: He called out their lies and exposed their technique:
Well, let us take some simple illustrations that come to mind. For example, although I rubbed my eyes when I read it, we have been told that it was not a Republican depression, but a Democratic depression from which this Nation was saved in 1933.

That this Administration—this one today—is responsible for all the suffering and misery that the history books and the American people have always thought had been brought about during the twelve ill-fated years when the Republican party was in power.

He followed that with a list of four other Republican lies, including their assertion that he’d tried to get America into WWII, that he was secretly planning to prevent GIs from leaving the service when the war was over, and even a lie about his dog (Fala, after which his speech was named in the press). He summed it up:
Well, I think we all recognize the old technique. The people of this country know the past too well to be deceived into forgetting. Too much is at stake to forget.

They’re still doing it. Which raises the question: What will be Trump’s and the GOP’s next Big Lie?

They’ve already tried convincing Americans that:Immigrants are a major source of crime (when crime rates regarding immigrants are about half that of natural born Americans);
Democrats are the party of rapists and pedophiles (ahem…Trump’s “best friend” Jeffrey Epstein, E Jean Carroll);
Democrats want to defund the police (when they’re fighting for more cops in virtually every city in America);
Are in favor of abortion “after birth”;
That former President Joe Biden wanted to ban gas stoves and gasoline cars;
Biden wanted to “ban meat“;
Democrats plan on huge tax increases on the middle class;
”Antifa” (“Anti-Fascist”) is a domestic terrorist organization;
Democrats are “deranged pieces of shit”; and
Liberals want to “force taxpayers to fund transgender surgeries for minors’ nationwide” and, yesterday, Trump said Democrats want to “reopen the wall.“

This after promoting the Big Lie that got three police officers killed and 140 hospitalized on January 6 about the 2020 election was “stolen” and their Big Lie about immigrants voting that resulted in over 4 million citizens being denied their right to vote last year.

Republican Big Lies have caused enormous damage, from FDR’s era through Joe McCarthy’s witch hunts to George W. Bush lying us into two illegal and unnecessary wars to today.

It’s way past time that Democrats and the media start calling these Big Lies exactly what they are, and pointing out that the strategy originated in the modern era with Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler.

Enough is enough.



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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.
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Is This the Beginning of the End for US Democracy?

In Portland, in 2025, we hear echoes of the same beginnings of dictatorships everywhere: protesters recast as “terrorists,” and enemies within, and federal troops poised to turn against us.

Protesters march on September 28, 2025 in Portland, Oregon.

(Photo by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland/Getty Images)

Amy La Porte
Sep 30, 2025

Common Dreams

I covered dictatorships for CNN. Now, I recognize the first act. First come the words: “war,” “domestic terrorists,” “full-force.” Then the decrees: control, discipline, submission. Authoritarianism is not improvised; it is scripted. Now, as I sit in a Portland cafe, doomscrolling headlines about my own home, I am struck by an eerie parallel: the incipient rumblings of the Syrian civil war. Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown did not begin with barrel bombs and chemical weapons. It began with a few scattered protests, anti-government graffiti tagged on a schoolyard wall in Daraa, and a branding of dissenters as enemies of the state.

As I glance outside the window, a farmers’ market thrives, and children ride bikes through an archway of late summer blooms. The city feels as it always has to me: alive, quotidian, and safe. A few blocks over, however, a different scene unfolds. Federal agents arrive as Department of Homeland Security (DHS) helicopters buzz over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field offices. Armored vehicles transform an otherwise ordinary boulevard into a landscape of occupation.
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Led by Demise in US Under Trump, ‘Democracy Around the World Continues to Weaken’


Poll Shows US Majority Wants Checks on Presidential Overreach

As a dual citizen, born in Australia to an American bloodline, I always admired the US for the audacious democratic experiment that defined the modern world. But today, more than a decade after I first planned my move to the US, I am now planning a just-in-case escape route from Portland, through Washington state, toward the Canadian border. Maps bookmarked, gas tank kept full, passports always within reach. I am, after all, a persona non grata: a journalist, a CNN “fake news” alumnus no less. US President Donald Trump has said of journalists: “I would never kill them but I do hate them.” Cold comfort.

Since leaving CNN, I have also written in opposition to the current administration following the Supreme Court’s dismantling of Roe, and for the rights of the unhoused during the Trump administration’s punitive measures in Washington, DC. I have confronted the rhetoric and policies that strip the vulnerable of rights and recognition. In 2025 America, my voice puts a target on my back. Still, on October 18, I will take to the streets of Portland, joining millions across some 2,000 cities to remind those in power of a truth older than the republic itself: America has no kings.

The question now is not whether Americans can hear the warning bell of authoritarianism, but whether they will heed it before it is too late.

History reminds us that totalitarianism seldom arrives as a cataclysm, and instead as a creeping normalization of rhetoric that softens us for what’s to come. Scholars call it “democratic backsliding”: slow, at first, mundane and almost imperceptible. Death by a hundred incremental erosions. When state legislatures in the US criminalize gender-affirming care, they echo morality laws of the junta-run nation of Mali, where both same-sex couples and their tacit neighbors will now be persecuted. Women’s autonomy shrinks here under abortion bans; in Afghanistan, the rollback began with veils and movement restrictions. When late-night show hosts vanish from screens here, recall Bassem Youssef’s forced exile in Egypt.

It often starts with “us-versus-them,” and a chorus of dehumanizing labels like “invaders,” “illegals,” and “animals”; in Nazi Germany, Jewish immigrants were called “rats” and “parasites.” For those there, who went about their lives, choosing not to react to each stroke of a pen and press release, each edict alone no doubt felt survivable. But together, when left unchallenged, they would go on to suffocate and extinguish all aspects of democratic freedom, with consequences for the entire populace, not just those initially marked.

When President Trump flirts (however flippantly) with the idea of extending his presidential term beyond the 22nd Amendment, we know enough to infer that intimations are rarely benign. He is borrowing from the authoritarian playbook: the normalization of permanent rule. Consider Russia’s Vladimir Putin: First democratically elected in 2000, he soon discovered how to exploit constitutional loopholes. By orchestrating the Medvedev interregnum, he reset the clock on term limits, ultimately turning Russia’s democratic process into a seat of his own self-serving and indefinite rule. Or Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey: Once the symbol of democratic Islamic governance, he hollowed out systems of checks and balances from within until term limits collapsed.

American history books teach us that the authority of this nation flows upward, not downward, from its people, not its rulers. And yet, in Portland, we have watched how federal power can be deployed domestically under the banner of “order.” In 2018, the city became the cradle of Occupy ICE, where protesters against family separation shut down a local ICE facility, leading to copycat demonstrations in other cities. In 2020, the administration sought to forestall another public humiliation. Under “Operation Diligent Valor,” protesters were dragged into unmarked vans and state-sanctioned tear gas choked downtown blocks. Civil-liberties groups, legal scholars, and local officials condemned these moves as escalatory and extrajudicial; Portland’s mayor called it a “federal occupation.”

Assad had once labelled early dissenters “armed terrorist gangs” to justify his violent crackdowns and later the systematic extermination of his own citizens. In Portland, in 2025, we hear echoes of the same beginnings: protesters recast as “terrorists,” and enemies within, and federal troops poised to turn against us. Today it is Portland. Tomorrow, it could be any city that dares to dissent.

The question now is not whether Americans can hear the warning bell of authoritarianism, but whether they will heed it before it is too late. The only sustainable reply is peaceful defiance: citizens assembling in public forums, online and off, and insisting on their rights. History shows that authoritarian rule falters when met with unified resistance, and even the most persistent forces struggle to withstand a people’s refusal to kneel.


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Amy La Porte
Amy is an Emmy-nominated writer, producer, and former CNN television reporter. She now leads a nonprofit organization and has taught journalism and communications theory at several universities in Australia and the United States.
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The US Must Unite in Nonviolent Insurgency to Stop Trump

A government changes its behavior when a country becomes ungovernable.

Demonstrators holding signs and flags face California National Guard members standing guard outside the Federal Building as they protest in response to federal immigration operations in Los Angeles, on June 9, 2025.
(Photo by Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images)


Nan Levinson
Sep 30, 2025

TomDispatch


On July 17, I joined a group of Vermonters for a Good Trouble Lives On action in a village near where we were staying that month. Over the past 161 straight days, a small but determined contingent of mostly white, mostly grey-haired, mostly too-polite-to-make-much-trouble residents had been gathering at noon to protest US President Donald Trump’s policies on a little triangle of land where two streets meet in the village center. Their number had swelled to several dozen on that very hot day, a significant turnout for a community of fewer than 1,000 people. The majority of those driving past us flashed their lights, waved, or nodded in support, including the driver of a giant Pepsi delivery truck. (Since signs asked drivers-by not to honk because the noise upset the neighbors, honkers, I was told, were the opposition.) A young organizer tried to start a chant of protest, but the majority made it clear that they preferred to stand quietly, and she gave up.

It was civil, respectful, and earnest—very Vermont and, as it should have been, lots of fun. In the midst of it, I found myself thinking about a conversation several days earlier with a woman I’ll call Laura, whom I’ve come to know over the summers we’ve spent in Vermont. She’d stopped by to say hello and chat. And though we usually steer clear of national politics, recognizing, I think, that our views on the subject don’t align particularly well, this time we ventured carefully into talk about Trump’s America the second time around.
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She told me that she didn’t see much difference. The stock market was still strong, and her groceries didn’t cost her much more when she went to shop.

She probably stands to benefit (as do I) from some of the revisions in tax legislation misnamed Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” She claimed not to pay much attention to political news, and she’s hardly alone there. People’s lives are overburdened enough, or they simply find the news too upsetting. News about that bill was hard to miss, however.

It makes little sense to play by the rules when we have a president who doesn’t even think there are rules.

I told her about the Turkish graduate student at Tufts University (where I had taught journalism) who was nabbed on a street in my neighborhood in March by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, apparently guilty of nothing more than co-writing an op-ed on Palestine for the college newspaper, which no one reads, including the students there. Laura recognized my distress. ICE was preying on Vermonters then, too. Still, its predatory policies seemed far away from the serenity of our shared afternoon.

Laura is an older woman, highly educated, actively devout, intelligent, resourceful, good-humored, and a long-time resident of a community that struggles to balance its relative wealth with the neediness of surrounding communities. Although she lands on the side of the comfortable, most of her wealth seems to be in land on which taxes keep rising to the limit of what she can afford. She’s deeply invested in local politics when it comes to housing and taxes in her area and particularly the tensions between longstanding Vermonters and newer arrivals. The newcomers—“We call them the stroller mafia,” she told me—pushed through new taxes aimed at curbing short-term rentals to tourists that limit the already-scarce housing available to residents. It was a laudable goal, but bad news for many longtime residents, including some of Laura’s friends who rely on the income from renting out extra rooms in the big houses they bought long ago.

Vermont, for people who have never been there, is cows, multicolored leaves, and Bernie Sanders. Its politics do lean notably progressive, but 10% of Vermonters still live in poverty. The state also suffered devastating floods in 2 of the last 3 summers, and it struggles to pay for adequate education and healthcare for its inhabitants. In other words, it’s like all too many other states, just smaller and with more maple syrup.

I like and respect Laura. Still, while I was patting myself on the back for finding common ground with someone I had classified as “on the other side”—that generous and high-minded territory we’re supposed to seek out in these uncommon and ungenerous times—I had to acknowledge that civility only gets you so far. I struggle to believe that a shared gripe or a joke about the absurdities of American politics brings us closer to agreeing on tax policy or a viable safety net for poor Americans or the humane treatment of immigrants, because common ground is not common cause and that’s what matters now.

It’s not important, maybe not even desirable, that Laura and I agree on everything. Still, in these grim Trumpian times, until reasonable, caring people like her start to reckon with the draconian policies raining down on our heads, as well as on the heads of people without papers and on neighboring Vermonters who stand to lose their healthcare and more in the years to come, I fear that the policies coming out of Washington will only get endlessly meaner and more destructive.

So, there I was, in common cause with those stalwart protesters, cheering the friendly drivers and flashing everyone the peace sign, and all I could think was: This shit is not working.

Beyond Civility

Neither has much else we’ve tried. Letter writing? Laura would toss out mail from someone she doesn’t know. Phone banking? She’d hang up. (So would I, which is why I no longer make those calls.) Door knocking? Vermont’s small congressional delegation is already left of center, and voters tend to like their own representatives, even when they dislike Congress as a whole, giving incumbents a significant advantage. So, while flipping Congress to the Democrats would revive the possibility of checks and balances, I’m leery of putting too many of my hopes into next year’s midterm elections.

I’m cautious, too, about trusting the rule of law when, despite many favorable lower court rulings, the arc of the Supreme Court seems to bend ever more Trumpward. And sure, so many of us can keep harping on the Epstein files, since that scandal is creepy and (let’s admit it) deliciously dirty, but I doubt any new disclosures—no matter what they reveal—will bring about Donald Trump’s downfall any more readily than his other messes have.

How about congregating in some public arena with thousands (tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions?) of people who already agree with me? May such communal resistance continue to grow in size, commitment, and wit. Building a movement takes time, and such demonstrations bolster solidarity and help create more resistance. So far, however, even the largest protests appear to have dented Trump’s consciousness only in leading him to want to charge George Soros with racketeering for supposedly financing them.

I can sign every petition and read every email from organizations I admire and others I’ve never heard of, each proclaiming calamities scarier than the last one—and then, of course, asking for a donation. And I am scared. Just hearing the words “Stephen Miller” or “Laura Loomer” sends my blood pressure soaring, but I suspect that neither hypertension nor money are the keys to the sea change our political culture needs. The problem isn’t just the challenge of getting Trump to pay attention. It’s that the kinds of political activism I’m used to (and that have been effective in the past) no longer get enough Americans worked up enough, or inconvenience them enough, to take on Trump and his agenda.
Strategic Thinking

To succeed, a political campaign generally needs specific, clear, and easy-to-grasp goals and a nimble strategy where benchmarks can be set and progress charted. (Probably a good soundtrack too, but that’s another matter.) What we have now, on the other hand, is a sprawling outcry against a slew of unbelievably rotten policies and a wildly out-of-control president. God knows, there are enough rotten policies, not to speak of corruption and mendacity, to keep everyone busy, and a mass movement does need to be widely inclusive. But the misgovernance extends beyond Donald Trump, and simply excoriating him and dreading autocracy isn’t faintly enough.

It shouldn’t be hard to come up with some goals that would be widely shared. For starters, a healthy economy, affordable (evidence-based) healthcare, decent schools, and breathable air are all basic necessities being visibly undermined by this administration. Nonetheless, in this all too strange Trumpian world of ours, it’s proving all too hard to find a winning strategy—especially given that so much of what’s coming out of Washington falls into the category of (to borrow a favorite Trump phrase) never-seen-anything-like-it-before (at least when it comes to both intensity and sheer looniness). It makes little sense to play by the rules when we have a president who doesn’t even think there are rules, except for whatever ones he makes on the spur of the moment to support his own whims, prejudices, and self-interest.

So, what if the strategy is not to change Trump’s mind (good luck on that!), but to change the public’s mind?

Pillars Prop Up, Pillars Can Crumble

Which brings me to the consent theory of power, a favorite of theorists and agitators from way back, updated by Gene Sharp, an advocate of nonviolent resistance. For those who want to change the mess we’re in, that seems to me the way to go, as injury to people—in fact, personal or mob violence of any sort—is counterproductive, not to mention wrong. The recent murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk was a distinct reminder (not that we should have needed one) of where extreme intolerance of opposing ideologies from all directions all too often leads.

Add to that the finding of political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan that, historically speaking, nonviolent resistance has been more successful than violent campaigns. In that context, Sharp’s pragmatic strategies for noncompliance can be considered an active, peaceful response to the sense of powerlessness that authoritarians like “our” president aim to foster. According to Sharp, “The rulers of governments and political systems are not omnipotent, nor do they possess self-generating power.” Their power to keep a country functioning, he stresses, relies on the cooperation and obedience of those they govern. And that’s their vulnerability, too, because the governed can undermine the power of their rulers by withdrawing that very compliance and assistance.

In the consent theory, political power is seen as an inverted triangle balanced on its point and kept from tipping over by various supporting pillars, including the police, the military, media organizations, businesses, schools, and civic and religious groups. Dissidents are encouraged to think of ways to get members of those institutions and groups to disengage or defect until those pillars become unstable and cause the triangle of power to at least tilt, if not topple. An obvious barrier to enlisting those pillars to challenge the status quo is, of course, that many of them are the status quo. Just think, for instance, of the tech billionaires in full grovel mode to Donald Trump. But since it doesn’t take every pillar or even universal defiance in any one pillar to weaken a government like his, focusing on the most persuadable of his followers, along with the fence-sitters, is a place to start.

If the grassroots action is sustained and substantial, if it really is inconvenient enough, he might indeed have to deal.

Obvious forms of noncooperation include boycotts or strikes, but that’s just a beginning. (Sharp suggested 198 methods.) For instance, federal government workers withheld their consent earlier this year by ignoring Elon Musk’s time-wasting demand for weekly emails listing their accomplishments. And what began as a kind of unorganized grassroots opposition worked its way up (as such things often do) to a few department heads who, of course, then took credit for the defiance.

Refusal can be powerful, allies are sometimes found in surprising places, and small actions have a tendency to multiply.

Here’s an example from elsewhere: In 2020, after the Polish government stripped its judges of procedural power and independence, they donned their legal regalia and took to the streets of Warsaw, along with hundreds of jurists from 22 European countries and about 30,000 citizens in a mass protest that came to be called the 1,000 Robes March. It took a few more years and additional pressures to unseat the ruling party, but the symbolism was stunning and effective. While it might be hard to imagine berobed American judges marching through our streets in protest, not so long ago it was hard to imagine a president thumbing his nose at their rulings.

Such resistance requires savvy planning and sharp thinking, though not necessarily centralized leadership. And while some challenges to power include individual defiance, Sharp argues that, “If the rulers’ power is to be controlled by withdrawing help and obedience, the noncooperation and disobedience must be widespread.” In other words, what’s needed in America now is a nonviolent insurgency, one that enlists all those folks holding clever signs on that grassy sward in Vermont and all the drivers flashing their lights in solidarity, not to speak of that Pepsi truck driver (as well as Coke truck drivers) and even some modest portion of the drivers who honked in opposition. (Don’t at least a few have buyer’s remorse by now?) And don’t forget those people passing by in embarrassed silence and everyone like them across the country and their friends and relatives, all refusing to go along until their demands are addressed. Think of it—it could happen—as an epidemic of passive aggression against a brazenly aggressive president.

Noncooperation, nonviolent as it is, isn’t without risks, and you can bet Trump would respond to any organized, widespread challenge with a hissy fit of historic proportions and a slew of punitive, repressive executive orders. But he’s also been known to cave in to pushback, as bullies often do. (TACO—yep, Trump always chickens out—anyone?) If the grassroots action is sustained and substantial, if it really is inconvenient enough, he might indeed have to deal. His deal offers are, of course, invariably one-sided and self-serving, but as he loses power, so too will he lose the capacity to make deals solely on his terms.

Sharp’s strategy reminds me of a prediction Charley Richardson, a very good troublemaker who cofounded Military Families Speak Out, made to me long ago. A government changes its behavior, he told me, when a country becomes ungovernable. My question is: When will that happen in the latest version of Donald Trump’s America?


© 2023 TomDispatch.com


Nan Levinson
Nan Levinson, a Boston-based journalist, reports on civil liberties, politics, and culture. Her book, "War Is Not a Game: The New Antiwar Soldiers and the Movement They Built" (2014), is about the recent G.I. antiwar movement. She is the author of "Outspoken: Free Speech Stories" (2006), was the U.S. correspondent for Index on Censorship, and teaches journalism and fiction writing at Tufts University.
Full Bio >

‘Deeply Un-American’: Trump Tells Generals to Use US Cities as Military ‘Training Grounds’

“Wake up, people, the US is fast approaching a point of no return,” warned one critic, who said the president’s alarming rhetoric “comes right out of the fascism playbook.”

Brett Wilkins
Sep 30, 2025
COMMON DREAMS


President Donald Trump told hundreds of senior military commanders Tuesday that the country is “under invasion from within” and that they should use American cities as “training grounds” to target domestic “enemies”—remarks that drew warnings of encroaching fascism as the president expands his invasion and occupation of US communities.

Speaking to nearly 800 US generals and admirals stationed around the world who were summoned to Quantico, Virginia by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for a highly unusual assembly, Trump told military leaders they would be used against the American people.

“They’re vicious people that we have to fight,” the president said, referring in this case to critical journalists, whom he called “sleazebags.”

(Trump begins speaking at the 1:09:45 mark in the following video)




“Just like you have to fight vicious people, mine are a different kind of vicious,” he added.

Trump then said that cities “run by the radical left Democrats... San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles” are “very unsafe places, and we’re gonna straighten them out one by one.”

“And this is gonna be a major part for some of the people in this room,” he continued. “This is a war too. It’s a war from within.”

Referring to Hegseth, Trump said, “and I told Pete, “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”




Responding to this, Naureen Shah, director of government affairs at the ACLU’s Equality Division, told Common Dreams that when Trump said “the enemy within,” he meant “those who disagree with him.”

“We don’t need to spell out how dangerous the president’s message is, but here goes: Military troops must not police us, let alone be used as a tool to suppress the president’s critics,” Shah said. “In cities across the country, the president’s federal deployments are already creating conflict where there is none and instilling profound fear in people who are simply trying to live their lives and exercise their constitutional rights. Our country and democracy deserve far better than this.”

Trump also said during his Tuesday speech that “only in recent decades did politicians somehow come to believe that our job is to police the far reaches of Kenya and Somalia while America is under invasion from within,” a false assertion given centuries of US imperialism and colonization, first in the Americas and then around the globe.

“We’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don’t wear uniforms—at least when they’re wearing a uniform you can take them out; these people don’t have uniforms,” Trump said. “But we are under invasion from within; we’re stopping it very quickly.”

He then turned his attention to “radical left lunatics, that are brilliant people but dumb as hell when it comes to common sense,” falsely accusing the previous administration of opening US borders to Venezuelans after that country’s government “emptied its prison population into our country.”

In another lie, Trump said that “Washington, DC was the most unsafe, the most dangerous city in the United States of America, and to a large extent, beyond.”

The president claimed that “we took out 1,700 career criminals” during his recently launched takeover of DC—almost certainly another false statement given that more than 80% of arrests made in the capital were for misdemeanor offenses, many of them immigration-related.

Trump said US troops are “following in a great and storied military tradition” of presidents who have deployed military forces against “domestic” enemies.

“Today, I want to thank every service member from general to private who’s helped secure the nation’s capital and make America safe for the American people,” he said, adding in another blatant lie that “we haven’t had a crime in Washington in so long.”

“We’re going into Chicago very soon,” he said, although Operation Midway Blitz is already underway in the city.

“How about Portland?” he asked, adding in a comment utterly divorced from reality that the laconic Oregon city “looks like a war zone.”

Trump ordered troops to invade Portland despite the city ranking 72nd in violent crime in the US, according to FBI data.

In an apparent moment of doubt, Trump asked during a Sunday NBC News interview, “Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening?”

Recounting how Democratic Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek asked Trump to not deploy federal forces to Portland, Trump said during Tuesday’s speech that “unless they’re playing false tapes, this looked like World War II. Your place is burning down.”

Amid small-scale protests in Portland over Trump’s authoritarian Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crackdown, Fox News aired a report conflating video footage from 2020 protests against the police murder of George Floyd with the recent images. Anti-ICE protesters have burned an American flag and set small street fires in Portland, but no structures have been burned down.

Trump also said that any anti-ICE protesters who throw objects at federal vehicles or agents can be met with unlimited force.

“You get out of that car, and you can do whatever the hell you want to do,” the president said.

Critics swiftly pushed back on Trump’s suggestion of using American cities as military “training grounds.”

Congressman Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a former Marine Corps combat veteran who served multiple tours during the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, said on the social media site X that “today’s speeches by Trump and Hegseth were weak portrayals of ‘leadership’ by two small, insecure men.”

“US cities should never be ‘training grounds’ for the military,” Moulton added. “There is no ‘enemy from within.’ The reputational and operational damage being done to our military will take years to undo.”

The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State said on social media, “This is authoritarian, unconstitutional, and a direct threat to our democracy.”

“Today’s speeches by Trump and Hegseth were weak portrayals of ‘leadership’ by two small, insecure men.”

Chris Rilling, a former senior official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said on X: “Trump should be impeached for this statement alone. Period.”

Some legal experts noted that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits use of the military for domestic law enforcement.

Leaders of the Not Above the Law Coalition—which includes progressive groups such as Public Citizen, MoveOn, and Stand Up America—called Trump’s remarks “deeply un-American.”

“This dangerous rhetoric delivered during an unprecedented gathering reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of our military’s purpose and the people it serves,” the coalition co-chairs said. “Make no mistake: This isn’t about public safety—it’s about turning our own military into a force to be used against Trump’s perceived political opponents or anyone who questions his administration.”

“Americans cannot stay silent when our leaders express plans to use our military against us,” they added. “We must reject any attempt to normalize this outrageous and unlawful directive.”

Observers abroad also expressed shock at Trump’s remarks.

“In Trump’s speech today, Trump mentioned something very dangerous: using US cities (Democrat-run, I bet) as US troops training ground,” said José Antonio Salcedo, a professor at University of Porto in Portugal. “This is definitely contrary to the US Constitution.”

“It comes right out of the fascism playbook that Project 2025 and its fringe lunatic authors have been advocating and planning,” he added. “Wake up, people, the US is fast approaching a point of no return.”

‘Fascism as a Playbook’: Trump Ripped for Saying U.S. Is ‘Under Invasion From Within’

September 30, 2025
By David Badash

THE  NEW CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT

US President Donald Trump departs after addressing senior military officers gathered at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Quantico, Virginia, on September 30, 2025.
(Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

President Donald Trump warned all 800 of America’s top military leaders that there is a “war from within” and that the nation is “under invasion” — not by armies in uniform, he said.

“America is under invasion from within, we’re under invasion from within,” the Commander in Chief told the generals and admirals assembled at Quantico, Virginia.


“No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways, because they don’t wear uniforms. At least when they’re wearing a uniform, you can take them out. These people don’t have uniforms. But we are under invasion from within.”

According to The Hill, Trump “said defending the homeland was the military’s ‘most important priority.’ He signaled that the leaders in the room could be tasked with aiding in federal interventions in Democratic-led cities like Chicago and New York City.”

“They’re very unsafe places, and we’re going to straighten them out one by one,” Trump continued. “And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”

Critics blasted the President.

Historian Federico Finchelstein, an expert on fascism, responded to the President’s remarks, writing: “The idea of the internal enemy was intrinsically connected to a notion about the inferiority, impurity, and treasonous nature of those who were considered different from the majority. Fascists disputed the idea that citizenship defined the community.”

Russian political activist Garry Kasparov warned: “And with ‘the enemy within’, and legitimizing violence, even declaring war, against it, Trump is officially using textbook descriptions of authoritarianism and fascism as a playbook.”

Arizona Democratic State Senator Priya Sundareshan wrote: “Completely unAmerican to reference US citizens and yearn for less due process to ‘take them out.'”

Other critics pointed to Trump’s recent executive order declaring Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization.”

This chilling Trump directive is the thought police on steroids

Thom Hartmann
September 30, 2025 

COMMON DREAMS


Donald Trump welcomes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Donald Trump and many of the people surrounding him have become explicit threats to what’s left of our democratic republic. And now they’re saying that my (or your) simply saying those words may be enough to get us locked up or otherwise legally, financially, or physically destroyed.

In 1964, like Hillary Clinton, I went door-to-door with my dad for Barry Goldwater, and later read both of his autobiographies, Conscience of a Conservative and With No Apologies. There’s no way Goldwater — or any Republican of that era — would tolerate the ways Trump and his toadies are ripping apart our constitutional order and flagrantly violating our laws and traditions.

And now he’s trying to pick a Made-For-Fox “News” fight in Portland. If one kid throws a Molotov cocktail, it will become the justification for another massive loss of our constitutional rights of free speech and assembly all across the nation. Cheered on by rightwing media for profit.

If Republicans don’t stand up soon and impeach Trump — and demand Vance reflect the traditional values of republican democracy or similarly face impeachment — history will judge them beyond harshly.

Trump is moving so fast, in fact, to turn America into an autocracy that this may be the GOP’s last chance to claw back the rule of law for our nation.

Democrats can’t do this themselves. Republicans control the House, Senate, and the Supreme Court, as well as a majority of the states. If our republic is to be saved, it’ll require at least a large handful of Republicans to step up and honor the oath to defend our Constitution they took when they were sworn into office.

Consider the ways Trump is tearing our nation apart, trying to pit us against each other and encouraging violence against constitutionally-protected free speech and protest.

Most recently, Trump signed a National Security Directive (this one is labeled as NSPM-7) saying that “anti-American” (aka “anti-Trump”) or “anti-Christian” rhetoric is — in Minority Report fashion — an indicator that a person may, in the future, commit a crime and therefore should be targeted now by our federal government at virtually every level.

National Security Directives are not like Executive Orders, which can be challenged. They’re often secret or even top secret documents that instruct the police and military branches of the federal government how to behave under certain circumstances.

Specifically, what they’re targeting with this one is our free speech right to criticize Trump and his administration. As journalist Ken Klippenstein reported on Saturday:
“The Trump administration isn’t only targeting organizations or groups but even individuals and ‘entities’ whom NSPM-7 says can be identified by any of the following ‘indica’ (indicators) of violence: anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States Government, extremism on migration, extremism on race, extremism on gender, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.”

This is the thought police, the speech police, the writing police on steroids. As Klippenstein notes, the directive says:
“The United States requires a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts…” (emphasis Ken’s)

Impeachment at this point isn’t optional. It’s the one constitutional mechanism designed for exactly this type of assault on the foundations of our democracy.

Consider Trump’s record:The January 6 insurrection and attempted assassination of our Vice President, incited by Trump himself, was an effort to overturn a lawful election. No greater betrayal of the Constitution exists.
Indicting former FBI Director James Comey — and going after other former Republican officials including James Clapper and John Bolton — as acts of revenge shows his willingness to weaponize justice.
Pressuring red states to gerrymander congressional maps reveals his contempt for free and fair elections.
Deploying troops and masked secret police to U.S. cities to intimidate citizens undermines civil liberties.
Harassing comedians like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert signals his hostility toward free speech.
Taking $2 billion from the UAE for his personal company as a blatant bribe in exchange for directing our government to sell that nation — which has joint military exercises with China — the AI chips that are forbidden to such foreign governments flaunts his corruption.
Disappearing protesters off the streets erodes due process.
Separating legal immigrant families and deporting brown-skinned legal residents tears at the moral fabric of our nation.
Elevating conspiracy figures like Bob Kennedy at the CDC undermines public health.
Rolling out the red carpet for Putin while abandoning allies like Ukraine weakens global democracy.
Destabilizing the economy with chaotic and unconstitutional tariffs hurts working families.
Escalating conflicts in Venezuela to the point of violence in international waters risks global war.
Burying the Epstein list raises questions about corruption and blackmail.

There comes a time when history demands a choice. For Republicans, that time is now.


Donald Trump has attacked America’s democratic institutions, unleashed chaos at home and abroad, and put his own personal power and family financial interests above the Constitution and the good of our nation.

The only remedy is impeachment. Anything less is complicity.

Republicans control the entire federal government: they can’t pass this buck to anyone else. If they refuse to impeach Trump, they’ll go down in history as the party that enabled an authoritarian coup and ended America’s 250-year experiment with democracy.


If they do impeach him, they may well save both our nation, democracy around the world, and their own integrity. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

We all must help Republicans understand the cost of inaction. By refusing to impeach, they aren’t simply protecting Trump; they’re aligning themselves with his crimes. They’re staking the future of their party, their reputations, and possibly their own freedom on a man whose every instinct is authoritarian.

Failure to stand up to Trump at this critical moment could spell the end of the modern Republican Party. Voters may forgive bad policies like tax cuts for billionaires or gutting healthcare for average Americans, but dismantling democracy itself is an unforgivable sin.


Like the leaders of the Confederacy, they’ll stain their own names forever. Just like McCarthyism and segregation taint the legacies of past politicians, Trump’s stench will follow them down the echoing halls of history for all time. Their children and grandchildren will carry that shame forever.

Cracks are already appearing: current Republican members of Congress Thomas Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene are defiantly demanding the release of the Epstein files. Ted Cruz, Don Bacon, and Rand Paul took on Trump when they objected to his attempt at censoring late-night comedians.

Former GOP politicians openly calling out Trump’s authoritarianism or opposing his previous candidacy because of his antidemocratic and unconstitutional behavior include Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, John Boehner, Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse, Larry Hogan, Charlie Baker, Jeb Bush, Christine Todd Whitman, Tom Ridge, Charlie Dent, Barbara Comstock, Fred Upton, Joe Walsh, Will Hurd, Denver Riggleman, Susan Molinari, and Ken Buck.

Former senior Republican officials who’ve awakened to the danger Trump represents to our republic include James Mattis, Mark Esper, HR McMaster, John Bolton, Rex Tillerson, Bill Barr, John Kelly, Miles Taylor, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Olivia Troye, Stephanie Grisham, Sarah Matthews, and Anthony Scaramucci.


And former GOP leaders, strategists, consultants, and conservative thinkers who’ve called out Trump’s authoritarian behavior include Karl Rove, Bill Kristol, David Frum, Peter Wehner, Mona Charen, Charlie Sykes, Tim Miller, Amanda Carpenter, Lev Parnas, SE Cupp, George Will, Michael Steele, Joe Scarborough, Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, George Conway, Reed Galen, Mike Madrid, Jennifer Horn, Ron Steslow, Stuart Stevens, Tara Setmayer, Jeff Timmer, Chris Vance, and Fred Wellman.

As you can see, today’s elected Republicans — who hold the power of impeachment in their hands — are not without allies if they choose to take on Trump and impeach him from office.

And not without role models: from Theodore Roosevelt to Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan, no previous president has ever openly proclaimed their “hatred” of Democrats or non-Republicans and set about to openly destroy the lives of those who’d opposed them or called them out.


If Trump isn’t held accountable, these could become the new norms for America and shatter our constitutional order. Republicans have spent decades waving “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and wearing slogans against government that reaches into individual lives with threats and intimidation. Will they stand up for our nation now?

Impeachment isn’t just a political strategy; it’s the last defense of our Constitution. Elected Republicans must act now, decisively and unapologetically. If they do, they may yet save America and themselves. To let them know, the phone number for the congressional switchboard is 202-224-3121.

If they fail, their legacy will be sealed forever. Not as patriots or conservatives, but as cowards willing to abandon the American experiment in exchange for momentary power and the praise of an autocrat.