Martial Law Disguised as Law and Order: The Oldest Trick in the Authoritarian Playbook

by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead / May 6th, 2025

A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.

—James Madison

We are being frog-marched into tyranny at the end of a loaded gun. Or rather, hundreds of thousands of loaded guns.

Let’s not mince words: President Trump’s April 28 executive order is the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook: martial law masquerading as law and order.

Officially titled “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” this order is a “heil Hitler” wrapped in the goosestepping, despotic trappings of national security.

Don’t be fooled by Trump’s tough-on-crime rhetoric, cloaked in patriotic language and the promise of safety.

This is the language of every strongman who’s ever ruled by force.

The White House claims the order will “empower state and local law enforcement to relentlessly pursue criminals and protect American communities.” But under this administration, “criminal” increasingly includes anyone who dares to exercise their constitutional rights.

The order doesn’t merely expand policing—it institutionalizes repression.

It sets us squarely on the road to martial law.

If allowed to stand, Trump’s executive order completes our shift from a nation of laws, where even the least among us had the right to due process, to a nation of enforcers: vigilantes with badges who treat “we the people” as suspects and subordinates.

Without invoking the Insurrection Act or deploying active-duty military forces, Trump has accelerated the transformation of domestic police into his own paramilitary force.

With the stroke of his presidential pen, he has laid the groundwork for a stealth version of martial law by:

• Expanding police powers and legal protections;
• Authorizing the DOJ to defend officers accused of civil rights violations;
• Increasing the transfer of military equipment to local police;
• Shielding law enforcement from judicial oversight;
• Prioritizing law enforcement protection over civil liberties;
• Embedding DHS and federal agents more deeply into local policing.

All of this has occurred without congressional debate, judicial review, or constitutional scrutiny.

For years, we have watched as the government transformed local law enforcement into extensions of the military: outfitted with military hardware and trained in battlefield tactics.

However, this executive order goes one step further—it creates not just a de facto standing army but Trump’s own army: loyal not to the Constitution or the people but to the president.

This is the very danger the Founders feared: a militarized police force answerable to a powerful executive, operating outside the bounds of the law.

This is martial law without a declaration.

Today, law enforcement is equipped like the military, trained in battlefield tactics, and given broad discretion over who to target and how to respond. But these are not soldiers bound by the laws of war. They are civilian enforcers, wielding unchecked power with minimal oversight.

And they are everywhere.

Armored vehicles on neighborhood streets. Flashbang raids on family homes. Riot police in small towns. SWAT-style teams deployed by federal agencies. Drones overhead. Mass surveillance below.

We are fast approaching a reality where constitutional rights exist in name only.

In practice, we are ruled by a quasi-military bureaucracy empowered to:

• Detain without trial;
• Punish political dissent;
• Seize property under civil asset forfeiture;
• Classify critics as extremists or terrorists;
• Conduct mass surveillance on the populace;
• Raid homes in the name of “public safety”;
• Use deadly force at the slightest provocation.

In other words, we’ve got freedom in name only.

It’s the same scenario nationwide: in big cities and small towns alike, militarized “warrior” cops—hyped up on power—ride roughshod over individual rights by exercising almost absolute discretion over who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect.”

This nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence has already ensured that unarmed Americans—many of them mentally ill, elderly, disabled, or simply noncompliant—will continue to die at the hands of militarized police.

From individuals shot for holding garden hoses to those killed after calling 911 for help, these tragedies underscore a chilling truth: in a police state, the only truly “safe” person is one who offers no resistance at all.

These killings are the inevitable result of a system that rewards vigilante aggression by warrior cops and punishes accountability.

These so-called warrior cops, trained to act as judge, jury, and executioner, increasingly outnumber those who still honor their oath to uphold the Constitution and serve the public.

Now, under the cover of executive orders and nationalist rhetoric, that warrior mentality is being redirected toward a more dangerous mission: silencing political dissent.

Emboldened by Trump’s call to reopen Alcatraz and target so-called “homegrown” threats, these foot soldiers of the police state are no longer going to be tasked with enforcing the law—they will be deployed to enforce political obedience.

This is not a theory. It is a reality unfolding before our eyes.

We are living in a creeping state of undeclared martial law.

The militarization of police and federal agencies over recent decades has only accelerated the timeline toward authoritarianism.

This is how freedom ends—not with a loud decree, but with the quiet, calculated erosion of every principle we once held sacred.

We’ve come full circle—from resisting British redcoats to submitting to American forces with the same disdain for liberty.

Our constitutional foundation is crumbling, and with it, any illusion that those in power still serve the public good.

For its part, Congress has abdicated its role as a constitutional check on executive power, passing sweeping authorizations with little scrutiny and failing to rein in executive overreach. The courts, too, have in the past sanctioned many of these abuses in the name of national security, public order, or qualified immunity. Instead of acting as constitutional safeguards, these institutions have largely become rubber stamps.

Indeed, the president, Congress, the courts, and the police have come to embody the very abuse the Founders fought to resist. Only now are the courts beginning to show glimmers of allegiance to the Constitution.

This is not about partisanship. This is about power without restraint.

As tempting as it is to place full blame on Trump for this full-throttle shift into martial law, he is not the architect of this police state. He is its most shameless enabler—a useful frontman for the Deep State in its ongoing war on the American people.

As we warned in Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, we are sliding fast down a slippery slope to a Constitution-free America.

We ignore these signs at our peril.

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John W. Whitehead, constitutional attorney and author, is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He wrote the book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015). He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Read other articles by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead.

 

Main-Streeting Hate and Bigotry in Trump’s America

The Patriot Front

by Bill Berkowitz / May 8th, 2025

At demonstrations, most wear matching outfits; hoodies, hats, blue t-shirts and chinos. Although they claim to eschew violence, they come prepared; donning matching shin guards like catchers wear in baseball, and often wield red, white and blue shields. They wear body cameras so their media team can process and post collected footage. Some are calling them modern-day media masters as they go about recruiting disaffected young people to become Reclaim America warriors. Welcome to the world of the Patriot Front: A well-oiled white nationalist enterprise.

Donald Trump’s rapid-fire pardons of all January 6 insurrectionists may have opened the floodgates for increased membership in white supremacist organizations. After all, why worry about engaging in violent activities, if you have a president that will readily pardon you.

In late February, a little over a month after Donald Trump’s inauguration, The Patriot Front, marched in downtown Des Moines, Iowa. A post on The Patriot Front’s website pointed out that the demonstration was in protest of ‘the mass migration of unassimilable foreigners who have invaded America.’ KCCI reported. “The group marched around the East Village and on Statehouse grounds chanting and waving flags. They wore masks or face coverings. A video on the Patriot Front’s website says they protect their identity to ‘protect the lives of those speaking out against tyranny. The FBI calls the group ‘far-right’ and ‘extremist,’ and has records referring to them as ‘white supremacist’ and ‘neo-nazis.’”

Around the same time, Patriot Front members rallied near the Massachusetts State House, Boston.com reported. “In an image shared with Boston.com, members of the group held a banner that read ‘Reclaim America,’ which is one Patriot Front’s slogans, according to the Anti-Defamation League.”

Patriot Front activists have been spotted in Tallahassee, Florida’s capital city. According to the Tallahassee Democrat, “The 20-or-so men were dressed in khakis and wearing white balaclavas covering their faces while toting their hate group’s flag and the Confederate flag.”

The Patriot Front has been active across the country, holding demonstrations in West Virginia, New York, and Nashville, Tennessee. News Channel5 Nashville recently reported that Patriot Front is “the largest hate group in America, wrapping themselves in the red-white-and-blue of the flag, marching into the middle of American cities and claiming to be patriots.”

According to NewsChannel5, Patriot Front is “building a compound in Tennessee where they train men for battles that sometimes play out on the streets of America.”

“These are hardened white supremacists who want to see a white ethno-state created somewhere in the United States,” said Jeff Tischauser, the senior researcher who tracks Patriot Front and other hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Patriot Front, which grew out of Vanguard America, was created after 2017’s “Unite the Right” Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which one woman was killed after a white supremacist plowed his car into a group of counter-protesters.

“Patriot Front espouses racism, antisemitism and intolerance under the guise of preserving the ethnic and cultural origins of their European ancestors,” Anti-Defamation League Vice President Oren Segal told USA TODAY in 2022. “They essentially believe that this is their country and they need to fight for the perception of what it was.”

Morgan Moon, a researcher for the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told the Alabama Political Reporter that Patriot Front was responsible for a majority of the White supremacist propaganda spread across the country.

While it is unclear how many members actually belong to The Patriot Front, “They’re extremely active,” Moon said. “No other white supremacist group is able to amass 200 white supremacists to finance travel and fly to places like Washington D.C. It’s significant. It shows an embeddedness of members and a hardened ideology. They’re one of the groups operating today I’m most concerned about due to their ability to carry out large propaganda demonstrations.”

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

 

Why the Republican Party Is Trying to Cut Healthcare to the Poor

by Eric Zuesse / May 8th, 2025

On May 7, the AP headlined “House GOP backing off some Medicaid cuts as report shows millions of people would lose health care,” and reported:

House Republicans appear to be backing off some, but not all, of the steep reductions to the Medicaid program as part of their big tax breaks bill, as they run into resistance from more centrist GOP lawmakers opposed to ending nearly-free health care coverage for their constituents back home.

This is as a new report out Wednesday from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that millions of Americans would lose Medicaid coverage under the various proposals being circulated by Republicans as cost-saving measures. House Republicans are scrounging to come up with as much as $1.5 trillion in cuts across federal government health, food stamp and other programs, to offset the revenue lost for some $4.5 trillion in tax breaks.

“Under each of those options, Medicaid enrollment would decrease and the number of people without health insurance would increase,” the CBO report said.

The Republican President Donald Trump presented to Congress on May 2 his proposed federal budget for 2026.

On May 2nd the U.S. White House — which has made clear that it’s beating the drums for war against China — headlined “Office of Management and Budget Releases the President’s Fiscal Year 2026 Skinny Budget” and reported that “The Budget, which reduces non-defense discretionary by $163 billion or 23 percent from the 2025 enacted level, guts a weaponized deep state while providing historic increases for defense and border security. … Defense spending would increase by 13 percent, and appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security would increase by nearly 65 percent, to ensure that our military and other agencies repelling the invasion of our border have the resources they need to complete the mission.” His budget “guts a weaponized deep state while providing historic increases for defense and border security,” and health care for the poor is part of that “weaponized deep state” he is referring to, which Republicans say must be cut in order to provide these “historic increases for defense and border security.”

All of those increases would go towards paying the suppliers (such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, etc.) to the enormously militarized police-state, at the very same time that the health, education, and welfare, of the voters, will be reduced by $165 billion or 23% below the current level.

Here are some more details regarding what that “weaponized deep state” (to use the White House’s phrase for it) consists of:

The White House’s May 2 “Major Discretionary Funding Changes” says that:

For Defense spending [ONLY the Defense Department, NOT including the approximately $700 billion yearly of annual U.S. military spending that is being paid out from OTHER federal Departments], the President proposes an increase of 13 percent to $1.01 trillion for FY 2026; for Homeland Security, the Budget commits a historic $175 billion investment to, at long last, fully secure our border. Under the proposal, a portion of these increases — at least $325 billion assumed in the budget resolution recently agreed to by the Congress — would be provided through reconciliation, to ensure that our military and other agencies repelling the invasion of our border have the resources needed to complete the mission. This mandatory supplement to discretionary spending would enable the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, among others, to clean up the mess President Trump inherited from the prior administration and harden the border and other defenses to protect America from foreign invasion.

Therefore, approximately $1.7T of total military spending is being sought by Trump (including the 13% increase to the Defense Department), while he is proposing to cut all other discretionary spending (which had previously constituted the other 47% of all U.S. Government annually appropriated federal spending (and which was previously around $800B per year) to be cut down now by $165B to around $635B total, or about 37% of all annually appropriated federal spending. Only the +13% for the Pentagon, and the +65% for the Department of Homeland Security, are increased, while everything else is getting cut drastically in order to make those increases possible.

So, while around $1.7T will be going to the military, only around $635B will be going to pay all of the other discretionary spending (including any non-military portion of the DHS). That will cut the percentage of the Government’s discretionary spending on non-military purposes down from its prior approximately 47% of the federal budget, down to approximately 37% of all of the Government’s discretionary spending.

Medicaid — health care to the poor — is on their chopping block so that the Defense Department portion of that $1.7T military cost that the U.S. Government will be paying in 2026 will be increased by 13% (and so that any non-military portion of the 65% increase to the DHS will also be paid).

Looking further at WHAT is being cut the most, the White House document shows that the only part of the Department of Education that will be increased — by $60 million — is “Charter Schools,” the part that privatizes public-school education, which is the part that billionaires want to increase (since their hedge funds etc. will be owning much of it). Meanwhile, Title 1 and K-12 federal spending will be reduced by $4.535 billion; and the program to incentivize colleges to “to engage with low-income students and increase access” will be cut by $1.579 B.

The Department of Health and Human Services will cut $4.035 from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), $1.970B from the Refugee and Unaccompanied Alien Children Program, $1.732B from AIDS and financial-assistance health programs, $3.588B from CDC and Prevention programs, $17.965B from NIH, $1.065B from programs working with addicts to help them reduce their addictions.

The Environmental Protection Agency will be cut $2.460B for Clean and Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Funds, and under a billion dollars each for such programs as the Hazardous Substance Superfund.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development will be cut by $26.718B that goes to programs for the poor.

The Treasury Department will be cut by $2.488B for the IRS.

The National Science Foundation will be cut by $3.479B and by an additional $1.130B for “Broadening Participation.”

Most of the other cuts will be below a billion dollars.

Are these massive reallocations away from programs to the needy (and from some other areas such as scientific research), into instead the military and border security, reflections of the public’s will in a democracy?

On February 26, I reported that:

On February 14, the AP headlined “Where US adults think the government is spending too much, according to AP-NORC polling,” and listed in rank-order according to the opposite (“spending too little”) the following 8 Government functions: 1. Social Security; 2. Medicare; 3. Education; 4. Assistance to the poor; 5. Medicaid; 6. Border security; 7. Federal law enforcement; 8. The Military. That’s right: the American public (and by an overwhelming margin) are THE LEAST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on the military, and the MOST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on Social Security, Medicare, Education, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid (the five functions the Republican Party has always been the most vocal to call “waste, fraud, and abuse” and try to cut). Meanwhile, The Military, which actually receives 53% (and in the latest year far more than that) of the money that the Congress allocates each year and gets signed into law by the President, keeps getting, each year, over 50% of the annually appropriated federal funds.

An important point to be made here is that both #s 4&5, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid, are “discretionary federal spending” (i.e., controlled by the annual appropriations that get voted into law each year), whereas #s 1&2 (Social Security and Medicare) are “mandatory federal spending” (i.e., NOT controlled by Congress and the President). So, Trump and the Republicans are going after the poor because they CAN; they can’t (at least as-of YET) reduce or eliminate Social Security and Medicare. However, by now, it is crystal clear that Trump’s Presidency will be an enormous boon to America’s billionaires, and an enormous bane to the nation’s poor. The aristocratic ideology has always been: to get rid of poverty, we must get rid of the poor — work them so hard they will go away (let them seek ‘refugee’ status SOMEWHERE ELSE).

Trump is increasing the military and border security, and decreasing education, assistance to the poor, Medicaid, federal law enforcement, and even Social Security and Medicare (the latter two by laying off many of the people who staff those bureaucracies).

Therefore, the Republicans’ effort to cut health care to the poor is merely a part of their overall effort to cut Governmental help to the nation’s poor; and all of this is being done in order to increase federal purchases of armaments from corporations such as Lockheed Martin, who make all or most of their profits only by selling to the U.S. Government and to its allied Governments.

However, on many levels, the greatest amount of “waste, fraud, and abuse,” and sheer corruption, is actually in the only federal Department that has never been audited: the Defense Department. This means that Republicans are reallocating from the neediest to the greediest. (NOTE: I have equal contempt for both of America’s political Parties, but this reallocation is specifically a Republican specialty. So, this isn’t merely a matter of opinion. It is a historical fact.)

However, on many levels, the greatest amount of “waste, fraud, and abuse,” and sheer corruption, is actually in the only federal Department that has never been audited: the Defense Department. This means that Republicans are reallocating from the neediest to the greediest. (NOTE: I have equal contempt for both of America’s political Parties, but this reallocation is specifically a Republican specialty. So, this isn’t merely a matter of opinion. It is a historical fact.)

UPDATED: Last paragraph added at 3 PM PST.

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Eric Zuesse is an investigative historian. His new book, America's Empire of Evil: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. Read other articles by Eric.

WAIT, WHAT?!!

Fox Host Says While Elon Musk Is 'Going Around Cutting Other People's Contracts,' He Keeps His $38 Billion In Government Deals Untouched

Adrian Volenik
Wed, May 7, 2025

BENZINGA

Elon Musk is facing growing backlash from Fox News’ Jessica Tarlov over how much money his companies are getting from the federal government, all while federal programs are being slashed and workers are being laid off.

$8 Million a Day While Others Get Cut

Tarlov, co-host of Fox News’ “The Five,” took aim at Musk on-air last week, saying, “Let’s also talk about the clear failure of DOGE based on their own set goals. We started at $2 trillion, then we moved to $1 trillion. Now we’re at $160 billion.” Tarlov was referring to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and said that if a private consulting firm performed like this, they'd be fired.

• “The real story of DOGE is that Elon Musk, who has $38 billion in government contracts, has not had a penny of his money touched while he’s going around cutting other people’s contracts,” she added.

Tarlov pointed to a recent congressional report showing Musk could face $2.37 billion in potential fines across 11 agencies. Yet, she said, the people investigating those claims are the ones being laid off.

“If that doesn’t smell like corruption, I don’t know what does,” she said.

Democrats Echo the Concerns

During a February House hearing on government efficiency, Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) raised identical concerns. “You know what Elon Musk doesn’t seem to be looking into? His own contracts,” Casar said. “We’re not looking into Elon Musk’s $8 million a day. This subcommittee chaired by Marjorie Taylor Greene and the House Republicans is looking into your grandmother’s $65 a day.”

Casar accused Musk and President Donald Trump of firing inspectors general, the officials typically tasked with holding agencies accountable. He called Musk’s role as head of DOGE a major conflict of interest.

Musk Responds

Musk pushed back at criticism during a February press conference, saying his companies win contracts based on merit and cost savings. “First of all, I'm not the one filing the contract. It's people at SpaceX or something will be putting for the contract,” he said. “And I'd like to say if you see any contract where it was awarded to SpaceX and it wasn't by far the best value for money for the taxpayer, let me know, because every one of them was.”

SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell confirmed in November that the company holds $22 billion in government contracts.

Federal Cuts, Fewer Investigators

At the same time, Democrats say Musk is overseeing massive cuts to federal programs. $80 million in FEMA funds meant to help New York with migrant assistance was pulled. Government employees have also been fired for participating in diversity training programs, even if those sessions took place during Trump's previous term.

Tarlov summed it up plainly: “He makes, I think, $8 million a day while 20,000 federal workers are getting fired.”