The Trump Administration Is Bulldozing the Bill of Rights to Crack Down on Americans Resisting its Violent Deportation Drive
Our early-February selection of the president's latest and greatest assaults on the rule of law
The Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism (ISMA), along with its flagship publication, The UnPopulist, launched Executive Watch early in Trump’s second term. This project, designed to track presidential abuses of power as they are happening, has been meticulously documenting the illicit actions emanating from the White House.
Below is our biweekly selection of new entries posted in Executive Watch. You should bookmark this page that contains a chronological scroll of the abuses and this post that sorts and lists them under our 5 P categories:
After reading this roundup, tell us in the comments: Which of these abuses is the most troubling, and why?
Jan. 30, 2026
Federal Agents Arrest Journalist Don Lemon for Committing Journalism in Minnesota
Category: Policy Illegality
The Trump administration has been seeking to prosecute protesters who disrupted a Minnesota church service led by a pastor who is also an ICE official. Churches are not public places, so a protest there is not protected by the First Amendment—though it will be harder to argue that it is a federal crime.
But they’re not just arresting the protesters. Now they’re arresting journalists who covered the protest.
The New York Times reports:
The former CNN anchor Don Lemon was arrested late Thursday night on charges that he violated federal law during a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minn., his lawyer said, in a case rejected last week by a magistrate judge.
Mr. Lemon has said he was simply reporting as a journalist when he entered the Cities Church on Jan. 18 to observe a demonstration against the immigration crackdown in the area.
The protesters interrupted a service at the church, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official serves as a pastor, and chanted “ICE out.” Afterward, the Trump administration sought to charge eight people over the episode, including Mr. Lemon, citing a law that protects people seeking to participate in a service in a house of worship.
But the magistrate judge who reviewed the evidence approved charges against only three of the people, rejecting the evidence against Mr. Lemon and the others as insufficient. The Justice Department then petitioned a federal appeals court to force the judge to issue the additional warrants, only to be denied. …
On Friday morning, a prominent independent reporter in the Twin Cities, Georgia Fort, who had also filmed the protest at the church, said in a live-streamed video on Facebook that she was being arrested by federal agents.
The damning part is the repeated failure to get judges to sign off on this arrest, including putting extraordinary pressure on judges to do so. Early reports do not indicate if they finally got one to sign off on a warrant. And it’s not hard to see why; this is an unambiguous violation of the First Amendment.
But this is consistent with the administration’s policy in the occupation of Minnesota. The shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti resulted directly from ICE and Border Patrol agents confronting, threatening, and forcibly detaining citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights to record law enforcement activities in public.
Jan. 29, 2026
Trump Sues the IRS for $10 Billion Over Tax Return Leak and His Own Agency Will Now Decide Whether to Pay Up or Fight Him
Category: Personal Grift
Last year, Donald Trump filed a bogus lawsuit against the federal government demanding hundreds of millions of dollars—a suit to be settled by DOJ officials who he insists have no independence and take orders from him. It was a blatant attempt to loot the U.S. Treasury. Now he’s going bigger.
CNN has the story:
President Donald Trump is suing the US Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department for at least $10 billion, accusing the agency of an unauthorized leak of his tax returns during his first administration.
The suit was filed on Thursday in federal court in Florida. Trump, who filed the suit alongside his sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, is suing the IRS and Treasury personally, not in his official capacity as president.
The lawsuit alleged that the government failed to protect Trump and the Trump Organization’s confidential tax information, which was leaked to the press by Charles Littlejohn, a former IRS contractor. …
During Trump’s first term, his refusal to release his tax returns, breaking a decades-long tradition for presidential candidates, became a focal point for critics. In 2022, six years of Trump’s tax returns were made public by the House Ways and Means Committee after a legal fight over their disclosure reached the Supreme Court.
It is dubious that Trump can claim damages for the actions of a contractor for releasing tax returns that have since been made public. But the decision about whether to fight this case or pay out will be made my officials who answer directly to Trump and can be ordered to send him billions regardless of the merits of the case.
Jan. 28, 2026
ICE Is Systematically Defying Court Orders Against its Violent, Illegal, and Unconstitutional Tactics in Minneapolis
Category: Policy Illegality
The lawlessness of the administration’s occupation of Minneapolis was highlighted recently when a judge listed almost 100 court orders that ICE and Border Patrol have defied.
Politico reports:
Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz tore into the agency in a Wednesday order for what he characterized as a pattern of unprecedented defiance—violating dozens of court orders in ways that abused the rights of immigrants facing deportation proceedings.
“ICE is not a law unto itself,” Schiltz said in a four-page order.
Schiltz, a George W. Bush appointee, appended a list of nearly 100 court orders he said the immigration agency had violated in the past month solely involving immigrants detained in the Twin Cities area as part of Operation Metro Surge.
“This list should give pause to anyone—no matter his or her political beliefs—who cares about the rule of law,” the judge wrote. “ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.” …
Schiltz’s initial order came in the case of an Ecuadorian man, Juan Tobay Robles, whose release from ICE detention the judge ordered earlier this month. Schiltz lit into the agency for violating the order after officials failed to release the man for days despite the court directive.
This is consistent with the Trump administration attitude toward the law—to always push everything to the limit and require other institutions to push back with maximum force, in the hope of wearing them down and getting away with as much as possible.
Just as the people of Minneapolis are engaged in a mass act of public civil disobedience, hoping to wear down ICE and Border Patrol by adding friction to their every action, so the Trump administration is waging a campaign of official disobedience against the law itself by a refusal to complying with the judiciary except under the most extreme pressure.
Jan. 28, 2026
DHS Is Building Secret Databases of Anti-ICE Protesters, Pro-Palestinian Activists, and Other Dissenters to Target Them as ‘Domestic Terrorists’
Category: Presidential Retribution
The Trump administration is obsessed with describing anyone who might oppose it as a “domestic terrorist”—which is pretty rich for the guys who staged Jan. 6 and then pardoned hundreds of people convicted of actual assaults on the Capitol police. There have been rumblings about the Department of Homeland Security forming a database of anti-ICE protesters to be targeted for retribution. Now we have confirmation that these enemies lists are real.
Ken Klippenstein has the scoop:
We have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist,” a masked federal agent taunted a protester filming him in Maine last week.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin’s response was firm: “There is NO database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS.”
There’s just one problem: She’s lying.
Two senior national security officials tell me that there are more than a dozen secret and obscure watchlists that homeland security and the FBI are using to track protesters (both anti-ICE and pro-Palestinian), “Antifa,” and others who are promiscuously labeled “domestic terrorists.” …
“One thing I’m pushing for right now … we’re going to create a database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding and assault, we’re going to make them famous,” Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, told Fox News earlier this month. …
Impeding federal law enforcement has emerged as the Trump administration’s primary justification for actions against people like Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
As part of its new effort to support its operations in places like Minneapolis and Los Angeles, the Homeland Security Department, working with the Justice Department, has started more methodically tracking what it calls “aggressive protesters.” According to one senior official, this is a new designation the agency uses to describe the supposed threat posed by people on the streets.
Both Good and Pretti were considered aggressive protesters; in Good’s case, for criticizing ICE officers while operating a vehicle; and in Pretti’s case, getting up close to immigration officers while filming them. …
The key issue is this: “Under the Privacy Act, Levinson-Waldman explains, the government is prohibited from collecting and retaining information about Americans exercising their First Amendment rights.”
The Trump administration is taking tangible steps toward making mere dissent into evidence of criminality.
Jan. 27, 2026
Trump’s ICE Shoots Protesters and His DOJ Charges Them Instead of Investigating the Shooting, Handing Agents a License to Kill
Category: Power Consolidation
The ICE and Border Patrol immigration enforcement strategy is to shoot first and ask questions later. Or never.
The Washington Post documents a pattern of the administration declaring shootings to be justified before an official investigation has been completed, which implies that the results of the investigations are decided beforehand—and then punishing the victims with bogus charges:
Department of Homeland Security officers have fired shots during enforcement arrests or at people protesting their operations 16 times since July, and as in the recent shootings in Minneapolis, in each case the Trump administration has publicly declared their actions justified before waiting for investigations to be completed.
Most of the incidents involve officers firing at drivers during enforcement stops in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago where DHS has surged federal immigration officers. At least 10 people have been struck by bullets—including four U.S. citizens. Three people have been killed.
The shootings have sparked alarm not only for their violence but also for the Trump administration’s response. Lawyers say officials have been quick to pursue felony charges against those fired at—though in four of 10 cases, prosecutors have either dropped charges or a judge has dismissed them after evidence emerged contradicting the government’s narrative of events.
None of the officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Border Patrol or Homeland Security Investigations has faced criminal charges in any of the shootings, nor has the administration announced any internal disciplinary measures against them. …
“Historically, federal cases are investigated thoroughly up front,” said Christopher Parente, who previously served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago and Miami and is representing a woman shot by Border Patrol in Chicago. “Here, they are charging people first and asking questions later. There’s such pressure from the administration to charge right away and make headlines so they can put out false press releases.”
The effect of this policy is to grant automatic immunity for all uses of force by agents of the DHS, in effect giving them a license to kill—a license they have been using in Minneapolis.
Jan. 26, 2026
ICE Wants You to Believe That it Was Justified in Executing Alex Pretti for Exercising His First and Second Amendment Rights
Category: Policy Illegality
The shooting of Alex Pretti, another observer of the federal anti-immigration occupation in Minnesota, would seem to go beyond the murder of Renee Good to include a violation of both Pretti’s First Amendment rights and his Second Amendment rights, with administration officials justifying his killing simply for carrying a gun, without brandishing it or using it.
A USA Today report describes the response of usually right-leaning pro-gun-rights groups:
Several prominent Second Amendment rights groups have blasted federal officials for suggesting it’s dangerous—and possibly an indication of mal intent—for lawful gun owners to protest while in possession of their legally obtained firearms.
The controversy came after a Border Patrol agent on Jan. 24 shot and killed Alex Pretti, a U.S. citizen and registered Veterans Affairs nurse, in Minneapolis. Federal officials said Pretti had a gun and intended to “kill law enforcement.” But videos and a witness account in federal court show Pretti holding a phone, not brandishing a firearm. …
“Federal agents are not ‘highly likely’ to be ‘legally justified’ in ‘shooting’ concealed carry licensees who approach while lawfully carrying a firearm,” [Gun Owners for America] said. “The Second Amendment protects Americans’ right to bear arms while protesting—a right the federal government must not infringe upon.” …
“No one who wants to be peaceful shows up at a protest with a firearm that is loaded with two full magazines,” [FBI Director Kash Patel] said, adding, “You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple. You don’t have that right to break the law.” …
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” that…Pretti was “exercising his First Amendment rights to record law enforcement activity, and also exercising his Second Amendment rights to lawfully be armed in a public space in the city.”
Under the First Amendment, bystanders have a right to record the police. Pretti was also legally carrying a firearm, and armed protests—usually by the right—are common in America. Just days before Pretti was shot, an annual anti-gun-control protest was held in Richmond, Virginia. Neither of these activities is, by itself, legitimate grounds for arrest—much less federal law enforcement’s use of deadly force.
Jan. 26, 2026
Pam Bondi Demands That Minnesota Hand Over Voter Registration Records to the Administration in Exchange for Stopping the ICE Invasion
Category: Power Consolidation
What is the purpose of the massive surge of ICE and Border Patrol agents into Minnesota? Partly, it is to terrorize immigrants and the non-white population of a state that is surprisingly diverse and has a long history of welcoming refugees. But it is also a bludgeon to clobber the state into ceding federal control of elections.
Democracy Docket conveys the claims made by state officials in a court hearing:
In the hearing, the state attorneys presented the letter Attorney General Pam Bondi sent to Gov. Tim Walz (D) over the weekend as evidence of the Trump administration’s extortion campaign against Minnesota.
In that letter, Bondi demanded that the state make multiple concessions, including forfeiting its voter registration records, to the federal government in order to “restore the rule of law.” Bondi sent the letter on the same day that federal Border Patrol agents shot and killed a man in Minneapolis while he was acting as a legal observer of immigration operations. …
In its totality, the letter amounted to an assault on Minnesota’s sovereignty, demanding that it forfeit its ability to make and enforce its own laws and maintain its voter rolls without oversight from the executive branch, which does not have authority over elections.
Lindsey Middlecamp, another attorney arguing on behalf of the state Monday, described Bondi’s note as “a ransom note.”
“Their message is clear,” Middlecamp said. “Minnesota can change its laws and policies or suffer invasion of mass armed forces.”
One of the far-sighted provisions of the Constitution is that the states are responsible for running elections, including federal elections, with the possibility of legislative oversight by Congress—but no constitutional role for the executive branch. This prevents a strongman from seizing control of the process that could allow a rival to unseat him.
Donald Trump has been trying to assert that control, anyway, and now it seems that ICE and Border Patrol are the goons he has sent to bring state governments into line.
Jan. 25, 2026
The Trump Administration’s Initial Response to ICE’s Killing of Alex Pretti Was Lying Through its Teeth
Category: Power Consolidation
The killings of two observers documenting the occupation of Minneapolis by federal anti-immigration agents is the primary cause for nationwide outrage. But there is another aspect of this story that is an abuse of power in its own right: the Trump administration’s systematic lying about these cases, most recently in smearing of shooting victim Alex Pretti.
CNN’s Daniel Dale compares the claims to the facts:
Top officials in President Donald Trump’s administration have responded to the killing of Alex Pretti by the Border Patrol in Minneapolis on Saturday with a torrent of claims that are either contradicted by video footage or unsupported by any evidence presented so far.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed Pretti “attacked” officers, an assertion echoed by FBI Director Kash Patel, but no footage available as of Sunday afternoon shows Pretti committing any attack.
Noem claimed Pretti was “brandishing” a gun, but no available footage shows Pretti even holding a weapon in his hand at the scene; a concealed gun appeared to be taken from his waistband area by a federal agent moments before he was shot.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller referred to Pretti as “an assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents,” Vice President JD Vance reposted this claim, and Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino (and the Department of Homeland Security in a social media post) said it “looks like” Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” But nobody has shown any evidence that Pretti sought to kill anyone, let alone perpetrate a massacre.
Patel suggested that Pretti broke the law by carrying a concealed gun at a protest, but the Minneapolis police chief said Pretti had a permit to carry the gun and was allowed to have it on him as he was protesting in a public place.
Not only is this administration intent on describing all opponents as “domestic terrorists,” it will also make unfounded claims and invent facts to support it.
Lying to the public—including releasing AI-doctored photos—is an abuse of power in itself, because it is intended to prevent the American people from knowing the facts about the activities of their own government. The first requirement for the consent of the governed is that the governed are able to make an informed decision.
Jan. 21, 2026
Trump Creates an International ‘Board of Peace’ Made Up of Corrupt Regimes and Anoints Himself King of the World
Category: Political Corruption
Donald Trump has been using American diplomacy and taxpayer dollars to effectively create an international club of illiberal regimes that is entirely controlled by himself personally—not by the U.S. government, nor by any international institution, nor by the terms of any treaty.
The New York Times lays out the basics:
In the proposed charter of the “Board of Peace” that the United States sent to national capitals in recent weeks, one man has the power to veto decisions, approve the agenda, invite members, dissolve the board entirely and designate his own successor.
His name is spelled out in Article 3.2: “Donald J. Trump shall serve as inaugural chairman.” …
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Belarus, Pakistan and several more countries also said they were joining, ahead of the signing ceremony Thursday in Switzerland.
But many officials and experts in international affairs were stunned by the breadth of the initiative, the latest example of Mr. Trump taking apart the American-built, post-World War II international system and building a new one, with himself at the center. …
The draft charter for the board stipulates the $1 billion fee for countries that seek to stay on for longer than a three-year term. …
The U.S. official confirmed that Mr. Trump could play a central role in the board even after leaving the presidency. Mr. Trump can hold the chairmanship “until he resigns it,” the official said.
See the charter for yourself. It is an attempt by Trump to appoint himself as permanent king of the world, funded by billion-dollar dues from a rogue’s gallery of corrupt leaders and kleptocrats. The only thing that makes it possible is his misuse of military, diplomatic, and economic resources that are supposed to be used for the interests of the American people, not his own personal aggrandizement.
Jan. 21, 2026
ICE’s Secret Plan to Gut the Fourth Amendment’s Prohibition Against Warrantless Searches and Seizures and Kidnap People From Their Homes
Category: Policy Illegality
A hallmark of the Trump administration’s occupation of Minnesota is federal immigration agents demanding to enter houses without a judicial warrant, including in one notorious case where they broke down the door of a Hmong immigrant who is a U.S. citizen. Now we find that this violation of the Fourth Amendment was a deliberate but secret policy.
The Associated Press reports:
Federal immigration officers are asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter people’s homes without a judge’s warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by The Associated Press, marking a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches.
The memo authorizes ICE officers to use force to enter a residence based solely on a more narrow administrative warrant to arrest someone with a final order of removal, a move that advocates say collides with Fourth Amendment protections and upends years of advice given to immigrant communities. …
New ICE hires and those still in training are being told to follow the memo’s guidance instead of written training materials that actually contradict the memo, according to the whistleblower disclosure. …
The memo is addressed to all ICE personnel. But it has been shown only to “select DHS officials” who then shared it with some employees who were told to read it and return it, Whistleblower Aid wrote in the disclosure.
One of the two whistleblowers was allowed to view the memo only in the presence of a supervisor and then had to give it back.
The fact that they kept this secret is how we know that they know it’s unconstitutional. The Fourth Amendment requires a judge to approve a warrant so that there is an independent check on executive power—whereas an “administrative warrant” is a permission granted by the executive to itself, with no outside check.
This is literally something Americans once fought a revolution over: the issuance of “writs of assistance,” general warrants that allowed searches without specific evidence of wrongdoing. The Founders banned this in the Fourth Amendment—until the Trump administration decided to ignore it.
Jan. 15, 2026
A Reagan-Appointed Federal Judge Denounces the Administration’s ‘Unconstitutional Conspiracy’ to Deport Pro-Palestinian Students
Category: Policy Illegality
We’ve been warning that the Trump administration’s attempt to deport foreign students for their political views is an attack on the First Amendment. Now a Reagan-appointed federal judge in the case is going so far as to denounce it as an “unconstitutional conspiracy.”
The Washington Post reports:
In remarks laced with outrage and disbelief, U.S. District Judge William Young said Donald Trump and top officials have a “fearful approach” to freedom of speech that would seek to “exclude from participation everyone who doesn’t agree with them.”
Young, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan, leveled the searing critique during a hearing in Boston to determine the appropriate remedies for the administration’s detentions of pro-Palestinian students last year. The judge had ruled in September that senior administration officials engaged in an illegal effort to arrest and deport noncitizen students based on their activism.
On Thursday, he again denounced the administration’s conduct in unusually stark terms. “Talking straight here,” he said. “The big problem in this case is that the Cabinet secretaries and, ostensibly, the president of the United States, are not honoring the First Amendment.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio engaged in an “unconstitutional conspiracy” to deprive people of their rights, Young said. …
The 2025 trial revealed the machinery behind the Trump administration’s campus crackdown. Senior administration officials directed personnel at DHS who normally analyze transnational criminal networks to instead produce reports on students involved in pro-Palestinian protests, one official testified.
None of this is subtle, and it is revealing that when any of this administration’s actions is brought before a court and analyzed by someone whose outlook was formed before the madness of the Trump era—whatever their previous partisan loyalties—it is met with outraged disbelief.
Jan. 15, 2026
Trump Diverts Extorted Venezuelan Oil Money to a Mystery Account in Qatar, Supposedly for the Country’s Own Good
Category: Political Corruption
Donald Trump used the U.S. military to raid Venezuela to force its new communist leaders to make a deal in which their oil sales are controlled by him. Now the funds from those sales are being sent through a mystery account in Qatar, and nobody knows exactly who controls it or how the money is being used. Trump claims that this is for the noble purpose to ensure that the funds would flow back to Venezuela itself without facing liens and claims from creditors whom it needs to pay back, which is what would have happened if the funds had been sequestered in a U.S. bank, where they would face transparency regulations.
But, explains CNN:
Trump’s executive order should have prevented the problem of creditors blocking the flow of necessary funds to Venezuela, the expert said. The fact the funds are being held in Qatar not only places it further outside of US legal challenges to that order, it also allows for less US transparency of the movement of cash.
“Unless there’s some public plan that is going to come out and say here’s the government structure for this pot of money, who’s going to have control, here’s the various anti-corruption, anti-money laundering controls that are going to be put in place … this is being set up kind of like a slush fund,” said the expert who asked for anonymity. “It’s very troubling.” …
Some critics of the Trump administration are questioning Trump’s motivation to send the money to Qatar.
“There is no basis in law for a president to set up an offshore account that he controls so that he can sell assets seized by the American military,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, in a comment to Semafor, which first reported the money going to Qatar. “That is precisely a move that a corrupt politician would be attracted to.”
To cap it off, the sales are being brokered by firms with a history of bribery, who were let off the hook when Trump suspended attempts to rein in corruption by enforcing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Trump has been trying to create a source of money he can spend without going through Congress, and now he’s using the U.S. military—which is paid for by the taxpayers, with citizens as volunteers—as muscle to shake down foreign dictators for oil money that is now funneled through another dictatorship to who knows where.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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Excellent recap of the felonpotus and his regime's actions to circumvent or completely ignore US constitutional rights. All signs of this regime's tearing up our rights, in ny opinion, point to a near future in which the felonpotus will not just extort state's cooperation with his illegal acts of withholding funding, and putting his personal militia on the streets to terrorize any person for no reason; but to use military or paramilitary force to subdue any state in the US where people are resisting the tyranny.
Getting rid of as many immigrants as possible, particularly dark skinned ones, and even people here legally, was the first step. To rally the masses into accepting a white supremacist regime. Targeting and murdering protestors with no accountability was the next step. Now journalists are arrested for exercising their (former) rights. Who is next? Probably prominent entertainers. Then politicians who oppose felonpotus's actions and agenda in Congress and statehouses will be targeted, arrested, and imprisoned, or worse, on bogus charges.
It is obvious, from the seized ballots in Georgia from the 2020 election, that this regime seeks to replace the state's power to control elections with federal jurisdiction. Unconstitutionally. And they want no election outcome that favors Democrats in 2026, or beyond. Ever again. Democratic wins will be challenged and overturned, or the counting of ballots compromised. Looking at what this regime has accomplished so far into fascism so quickly, means that terrible times for US democracy is here. We see with our own eyes the norms of the rule of law have disappeared.
Therefore, the question is, how are we going to change this trajectory hurtling toward abject authoritarianism? Republicans in power act like they will never lose that power. The felonpotus acts like he will be king of the US all the rest of his life. With huge monuments built to glorify him, using the US Treasury as his ATM machine, completing deals that enrich himself and his family in the billions, and fawning over billionaire handlers and enablers who keep him and Republicans in power.
Will We the People have to bear assaults by the military that tries to beat us into submission? Will massive resistance and economic shutdowns really work to force the regime to back down? Will we need another revolution to prevent a new monarchy? I don't know what can, and possibly will, prevent the disasters looming over us.
There is a good deal of overlap generally, if not in specfics, in your list, which makes deciding which of these outrages is 'the worst." One thing most of them have in common is that they come from the so-called "playbook" of modern dictators. Save for outrageous grifts like putting all that stolen oil money in Qatar, where only His Nibs can decide whose pockets it ultimately lines. Setting all that aside, Bondi's attempt to extort election-related date is absolutely threatening, coming as it does on top of DOGE/Palantir's success in amassing such date nationwide. Good Christ. If there are no more fair elections in this country, there might well be an ocean of blood on our streets.