"The designation of the amorphous group antifa as a terrorist organization allows the state to brand all dissidents as supporters of antifa and prosecute them as terrorists" -Chris Hedges

 

Trump’s designation of the amorphous group antifa, which has no formal organization or structure, as a terrorist organization permits the state to charge us all as terrorists. The point is not to go after members of antifa, short for anti-fascist. It is to go after the last vestiges of dissent. When Barack Obama oversaw the coordinated national campaign to shut down the Occupy encampments, antifa -- so named because they dress in black, obscure their faces, move as a unified mass and seek physical confrontations with police – was the excuse.

"I am pleased to inform our many U.S.A. Patriots that I am designating ANTIFA, A SICK, DANGEROUS, RADICAL LEFT DISASTER, AS A MAJOR TERRORIST ORGANIZATION," the president wrote in a Truth Social post. "I will also be strongly recommending that those funding ANTIFA be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the highest legal standards and practices. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

I have no love for antifa. The feeling is mutual. I was a fierce opponent of the Black Bloc anarchists who identified with antifa. They embedded themselves in Occupy encampments and refused to take part in the collective decision making. They carried out property destruction and initiated clashes with the police. Occupy activists were antifa’s human shields. I wrote that antifa was “a gift from heaven to the security and surveillance state.”

David Graeber, whose work I respect, wrote an open letter criticizing my position.

I was doxed. My lectures and events, which received phone threats forcing venues to hire private security, including bodyguards, were picketed by men dressed in black, their faces were covered by black bandanas. They all carried the same sign, no matter which city I was in, that read: “Fuck You Chris Hedges.” During a debate with an anarchist supporter of antifa in New York City, several dozen black-clad men in the audience jeered and interrupted me, often yelling out sarcastically “amen.”

The state effectively used antifa -- I am certain antifa was heavily infiltrated with agents provocateurs -- to shut all of us down. The corporate state feared the broad appeal of the Occupy movement, including to those within the systems of power. The movement was targeted because it articulated a truth about our economic and political system that cut across political and cultural lines.

Antifa, let me be clear, is not a terrorist organization. It may confuse acts of petty vandalism and a repellent cynicism with revolution, but its designation as a terrorist organization has no legal justification.

Antifa sees any group that seeks to rebuild social structures, especially through nonviolent acts of civil disobedience, as the enemy. They oppose all organized movements, which only ensures their own powerlessness. They are not only obstructionist, but obstructionist to those of us who are also trying to resist. They dismiss anyone who lacks their ideological purity. It does not matter if individuals are part of union organizing, workers’ and populist movements or radical intellectuals and environmental activists. These anarchists are an example of what Theodore Roszak in “The Making of a Counter Culture” called the “progressive adolescentization” of the American left.

John Zerzan, one of the principal ideologues of the Black Bloc movement in the United States, defended “Industrial Society and Its Future,” the rambling manifesto by Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, although he did not endorse Kaczynski’s bombings. Zerzan dismisses a long list of supposed “sellouts” starting with Noam Chomsky and including myself.

Black Bloc activists in cities such as Oakland smashed the windows of stores and looted them. It was not a strategic, moral or tactical act. It was done for the sake of destruction. Random acts of violence, looting and vandalism are justified, in the jargon of the movement, as components of “feral” or “spontaneous insurrection.” 

These acts, the movement argues, can never be organized. Organization, in the thinking of the movement, implies hierarchy, which must always be opposed. There can be no restraints on “feral” or “spontaneous” acts of insurrection. Whoever gets hurt gets hurt. Whatever gets destroyed gets destroyed.

“The Black Bloc movement is infected with a deeply disturbing hypermasculinity,” I wrote. “This hypermasculinity, I expect, is its primary appeal. It taps into the lust that lurks within us to destroy, not only things but human beings. It offers the godlike power that comes with mob violence. Marching as a uniformed mass, all dressed in black to become part of an anonymous bloc, faces covered, temporarily overcomes alienation, feelings of inadequacy, powerlessness and loneliness. It imparts to those in the mob a sense of comradeship. It permits an inchoate rage to be unleashed on any target. Pity, compassion and tenderness are banished for the intoxication of power. It is the same sickness that fuels the swarms of police who pepper-spray and beat peaceful demonstrators. It is the sickness of soldiers in war. It turns human beings into beasts.”

But while I oppose antifa, I do not blame them for the state’s response. If it was not antifa it would be some other group. Our rapidly consolidating police state will use any mechanism to silence us. It actually welcomes violence. 

Confrontational tactics and destruction of property justify draconian forms of control and frighten the wider population, driving them away from any resistance movement. It needs antifa or a group like it. Once a resistance movement is successfully smeared as a flag-burning, rock-throwing, angry mob — which those in the Trump administration are working hard to do — we are finished. If we become isolated, we can be crushed.

“Nonviolent movements, on some level, embrace police brutality,” I wrote. “The continuing attempt by the state to crush peaceful protesters who call for simple acts of justice delegitimizes the power elite. It prompts a passive population to respond. It brings some within the structures of power to our side and creates internal divisions that will lead to paralysis within the network of authority. Martin Luther King kept holding marches in Birmingham because he knew Public Safety Commissioner ‘Bull’ Connor was a thug who would overreact.”

“The explosive rise of the Occupy Wall Street movement came when a few women, trapped behind orange mesh netting, were pepper-sprayed by NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna,” I went on. “The violence and cruelty of the state were exposed. And the Occupy movement, through its steadfast refusal to respond to police provocation, resonated across the country. Losing this moral authority, this ability to show through nonviolent protest the corruption and decadence of the corporate state, would be crippling to the movement. It would reduce us to the moral degradation of our oppressors. And that is what our oppressors want.”

I saw how antifa was weaponized to break the Occupy movement. Now it is being weaponized to throttle any resistance, no matter how tepid and benign.

This justification for widespread repression is absurdist theater, characterized by fictions, including the supposed “Red-Green” alliance of Islamists and the “radical left.” Stephen Miller, Trump’s top policy adviser, insists there was an “organized campaign” behind the assassination of Charlie Kirk, whose martyrdom has turbocharged state repression. Any Trump opponent, including billionaire financier George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, will soon be caught in the net.

We are all antifa now.

 -Chris Hedges

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The Death of Free Speech

 

                                                    Cartoon by Pat Bagley

“There was ‘free speech’ for court jesters even if they insulted the king, but not for comedians under Trump.”

In 1351, the English Parliament passed a law called the Statute of Treasons. The statute specified seven different crimes that could be considered either “high treason” or “petty treaason.” Six of them actually required some kind of criminal action, like levying war against the king, or sleeping with his wife, or killing one of his ministers.

But one of them didn’t require any action at all: It was a thought crime. Known as “compassing the death of the King,” merely imagining the king’s death (or the queen’s, or their heir’s) was a crime unto itself. Professor Carlton Larson, author of On Treason: A Citizen’s Guide to the Law (an excellent book and a must read, especially for these times), writes that in defining treason in the Constitution, the Framers easily dispensed with including compassing the king’s death, because “[n]ot only was there no king in America, but this provision had generated some of the worst abuses under English law.”

The crimes against the king — including thought crimes — are an interesting juxtaposition against the role of the court jester, who could get away with quite a lot apart from providing entertainment, including criticizing, mocking, and even insulting the king directly (and perhaps referencing his death, I suppose, if they were funny enough). Shakespeare’s plays have many examples of this “jester’s privilege,” from As You Like It’s Touchstone to King Lear’s Fool. This delightful TED-Ed video narrated by Beatrice D. Otto, author of Fools Are Everywhere: The Court Jester Around the World, shows how close to the line jesters across various cultures:

One of the main purposes of the jester — the entertainer and comedian of the court — was to speak truth to power…even if you were a king or an emperor.

But that role doesn’t extend, apparently, to being a comedian under a U.S. president. Disney’s suspension of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel under pressure from the Trump administration follows in the footsteps of autocrats around the world, who are clearly more thin-skinned than their divinely-appointed historical counterparts.

For instance: In 2000, soon after coming to power, Putin became incredibly irked by a late night political satire show featuring puppets called “Kukly” — watched by over half the households in Russia — that mercilessly critiqued his administration. Kukly had also skewered Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, when he was president; Yeltsin apparently hated the show too but, as the first post-Soviet president who had made claims to support free speech, he “ground his teeth and bore it all.” Putin, not so much. This contemporaneous New York Times article describes the shift after Putin took office:

'Things changed dramatically,' [the program’s writer] said. ‘There were no requests for physical changes. But we've received threats from his political family — not threats to close the program but that the program may have some “difficulties.” And this Russian phrase, “to have difficulties,” can mean many things.’

The threats peaked this March in a private conversation between a senior Kremlin official and a top executive at NTV. Yevgeny Kiselyev, the network's general director, said the official proffered a list of tasks the network would have to meet to escape the government's wrath, including less skeptical political coverage and toned-down reporting on the war in Chechnya. ‘One of those demands was to get Mr. Putin's look-alike — his rubber look-alike, that is — off the “Kukly” show,’ Mr. Kiselyev said in an interview.

At the time of the article’s publication, NTV’s chairman, Vladimir A. Gusinsky, had just been jailed. The show was still on the air, and the show writer was quoted as stating, “I'm not saying we don't have freedom of speech. I'm saying that the field of that freedom is being narrowed. There are fewer and fewer who can speak the truth. And maybe ours is one of the last.”

The show was later canceled, and replaced with milquetoast programs that were allowed to criticize people — as long as they were popular celebrities or enemies of the Kremlin, like President Obama.

Since then, everyone is joining the Autocrat Crybaby Club. Turkey’s Erdogan prosecuted a Turkish man for making a meme that compared him to Gollum. Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sissi threatened to fine a comedian dubbed as “Egypt’s Jon Stewart” with a $10 million fine (he Feld to the U.S….oops). Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes at Lucid that Berlusconi brought the power of the state against media outlets in Italy.

Of course, all of them are following the OG fascist playbook:

 

With Trump, don’t forget that this has been something he been trying to do for a long time. Comedian Michelle Wolf got canceled for her jokes about Sarah Huckabee Sander’s eyeshadow at the 2018 White House Correspondent’s Dinner (which was in my opinion a pretext for the real reason, which was that she roasted Trump, a lot). This year’s dinner’s comedian was canceled after she criticized the Trump administration on a podcast. In fact, the WHCA president decided they wouldn’t have a comedian, at all.

The crackdown at ABC is one that is sure to be the beginning of many more, especially if we don’t resist and speak up, now. Perhaps the silver lining of Disney’s actions against Kimmel is that it might get some ordinary folks who have been in denial that we have crossed a Rubicon to finally wake up and take notice.

Renato and I discuss more about the legal implications of Kimmel being taken off air, as well as the charges against Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, in this week’s pod:

-Asha Rangappa, The Freedom Academy

Asha Rangappa is an Assistant Dean and Senior Lecturer at the Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and a former Special Agent of the FBI, specializing in counterintelligence investigations.

Political Murders

 

"The Cato Institute has an admitted libertarian bias, which influences its research and policy recommendations. While it presents itself as a nonpartisan organization, its positions align with libertarian principles, often leading to fiscally conservative and socially liberal views..." 

In Solidarity

 

The Trump regime’s campaign of authoritarian repression took a major step forward this week with the indefinite suspension of Jimmy Kimmel. Like a third-rate mob boss, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair issued a public threat to “take action” against stations airing Jimmy Kimmel for a joke that offended the regime. His actual words: “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.” Within hours, ABC/Disney execs (specifically, CEO Bob Iger) chose what they thought was the easy way. They silenced Kimmel because they believe caving to authoritarian censorship is best for their bottom line.  It’s on us to prove them wrong and show there’s a price to sacrificing our First Amendment rights at the altar of corporate profit. Let’s dig a little deeper into the greed, corruption, and cowardice at play here -- and then let’s get to work protecting our First Amendment rights. That means boycotts, protests, and demands of our representatives. More on that below. The state of play Trump and his cronies are rapidly working to consolidate power and use the full might of the federal government to squash peaceful dissent -- bending media companies, business leaders, universities, and so many other institutions to Trump’s will. Silencing Kimmel is just one example of how our institutions are putting their own shortsighted self-interest first and choosing to give in to fascism instead of fighting back. Here’s a brief review of how we got here: December 2024: ABC/Disney caves to a frivolous defamation lawsuit by Trump, paying $15 million to his presidential library rather than going to court to defend the freedom of the press. July 17: CBS announces that it will cancel the late-night show of Trump critic Stephen Colbert. The move comes as CBS’ parent company, Paramount, awaits FCC approval of an $8 billion merger. July 18: Trump takes to Truth Social to post that “Jimmy Kimmel is next.” July 24: The FCC approves Paramount’s merger just one week after Colbert’s cancellation. September 10: Charlie Kirk is murdered. Trump administration officials and other Republican leaders begin calling for a massive crackdown on the left. September 15: In his show’s opening monologue, Kimmel notes that Trump and his allies are “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it." September 17 (morning): In an interview on a far-right podcast, FCC Chair Brendan Carr openly threatens to revoke the broadcast license of any stations airing Kimmel’s show. September 17 (afternoon): Within hours of Carr’s threat, Nexstar Media Group -- a TV conglomerate that (like Paramount) wants FCC approval of a merger -- says its local ABC affiliates will not air Kimmel's show. Another TV conglomerate with FCC business pending, Sinclair Media Group, rapidly follows suit. September 17 (evening): ABC/Disney announce that they are pulling Kimmel's show off the air entirely. Appeasing a tyrant only leads to more tyranny. If ABC/Disney refuses to reverse their decision, the regime will only become more emboldened to target comedy, opinion, and even news they don’t like. None of us will be free to dissent. None of us will be able to speak our minds. How we’ll fight back We need to pressure ABC/Disney to reinstate Kimmel’s program, cease their political collusion with Trump and his FCC lapdogs, and commit to defending free speech. That means fighting back with our voices and our wallets -- because no wannabe king can match the power we wield when millions of us take action together. Here are some things you can do right now: ❌ Cancel your Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ subscriptions until Jimmy Kimmel Live! is reinstated. Then, use the customizable sample posts in our social toolkit (or create your own!) to let Disney and your network know with the hashtag #BoycottDisneyABC. 💬 Use this contact form to send a message to ABC/Disney that we won’t stand for cowardice and corruption. If you’re canceling Disney services, postponing a vacation to a Disney theme park, or taking some other action in response to their corporate cravenness, let them know. 🔥 Email your representative to demand an investigation into government censorship. Carr’s threats may violate the First Amendment and other federal law, but an attempt to subpoena Carr is being blocked. Let’s turn the heat up to demand that Carr, ABC/Disney execs, and their partners be hauled before Congress to testify under oath. 📣 Protest in person. We’ve already heard of dozens of locally led events popping up outside ABC/Disney offices and studios across the country. Get out to one if you can, and make a plan to join us on No Kings Day, as well. We’re working with partners nationwide to plan additional actions that push ABC/Disney towards putting free speech over the whims of a wannabe king. We’ll share those as they develop, but for now, let’s use our voices, our dollars, and our peoplepower to show Disney that they’re standing on the wrong side of history. In solidarity, Indivisible Team P.S. Boycotts like this one are most effective when we move swiftly and uniformly to take our business elsewhere. Please take a moment to cancel that subscription right now, and then forward this email to other folks, especially Disney+/Hulu subscribers, who may join our efforts. Indivisible Project is a locally led, people-powered movement of thousands of local groups in red, blue, and purple states, and in urban, suburban, and rural areas. Our mission is to power and lift up a grassroots movement of local groups to defeat the Trump agenda, elect progressive leaders, and realize bold progressive policies

 

"Trump now forces the debate to center on our First Amendment"

 

Dictators always fear comedians. (It’s no coincidence Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was a comic before he was a political leader.) Autocrats, notoriously thin-skinned, cannot stand to be mocked. They demand obedience. When Donald Trump, a ridiculously thin-skinned despot, and his FCC lackey Brendan Carr pressured ABC to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air for commenting on MAGA Republicans’ desperation to assign baseless blame for the Charlie Kirk murder, we saw the clearest evidence yet that the First Amendment is in peril.

ABC, which already caved to Trump in delivering a $15M tribute in the form of a “settlement” of a frivolous case, should learn that you can never appease a dictator. Capitulation is just an invitation to further extortion.

Ironically, Trump now forces the debate to center on our First Amendment. Regardless of party, we can agree that government censorship is un-American. Hollywood unions and guilds can take collective action against Disney/ABC for folding; Americans can call local TV affiliate stations to demand ABC put Kimmel back on; Disney shareholders can reject quisling management; and House and Senate Democratic leaders can do something, such as demand Carr to be fired/step down. (They can also vow to impeach him if he is still around when they win back the House.)

Even before the Kimmel suspension, Trump, JD Vance, and the entire Trump regime launched a cynical, dangerous attack on their political enemies based on the lie that “the Left” was responsible for Kirk’s murder. So far, we have no concrete evidence of the killer’s political outlook (having a trans roommate does not make one a “leftist;” just as being raised by Republican parents does not make one a MAGA extremist)—or if the killer possesses a coherent political ideology.

Trump nevertheless declared “ANTIFA” (an amorphous, decentralized grab-bag of characters) a domestic terror organization, a move that opens the door to pursuing scores of groups he (baselessly) alleges have ties to “ANTIFA.” By Thursday he was brazenly declaring that networks that criticize him should lose their licenses. This is fascism in plain sight.

As Trump fully embraced his twisted self-image as a dictator, several Democrats stepped forward: Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y), Democratic Sens Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and Reps. Jason Crow (D-Col.), Greg Casar (D-Tex), and Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) announced introduction of the No Political Enemies (NOPE) Act, “To protect individuals and organizations, including non-profits, faith groups, media outlets, and educational institutions, from politically motivated targeting and prosecution by the federal government.” We thank them for governing.

The most robust leadership in the democracy fight is coming from governors, recently from Illinois Gov. JD Pritzker (on military occupation of cities) and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (on Trump’s effort to rig the 2026 elections through re-redistricting that diminishes primarily Black and Hispanic voting power). This week, another articulate Democratic governor stepped up, this time to address political violence.

With a solid record on public safety and personal experience with political violence, Pennsylvania’s Gov. Josh Shapiro was ideally suited to the task. Last year, when sitting at the Passover Seder table with his family, a man threw two Molotov cocktails into Shapiro’s home, igniting a fire. (Trump conveniently ignores the incident when reciting recent acts of political violence). His state was also the location of the worst mass murder of Jews in America (by a White nationalist) and of the first attempted assassination of Trump. Shapiro knows violence does not come from one ideological group.

He delivered remarks this week at the Eradicate Hate Global Summit. “I will not be deterred in my work for you, and I will not be silenced,” he declared. He then explained why violence is antithetical to democracy: “It tears at the fabric of American society, and the fundamental principles this nation was founded upon... A nation where civil disagreement should be welcome, because that discourse can lead to progress.”

He also rejected selective outrage. “Unfortunately, some—from the dark corners of the internet all the way to the Oval Office—want to cherry pick which instances of political violence they want to condemn,” he said, pointing out that such crass opportunism makes healing impossible.

Shapiro then made the critical point: “Censorship—using the long arm of government to silence people, businesses, and nonprofits and restrict their right to free speech—will not solve this problem.” He declared, “Prosecuting constitutionally protected speech will only erode our freedoms and deepen mistrust. That is un-American.”

The governor also argued that to stop violence, we need to fund law enforcement and help young people cope with violent extremism online that sucks them into to a dark world of nihilism, destruction, and performative violence. He pointed to his wife’s work on a “digital literacy toolkit that teachers and parents can use to help our kids navigate online.”

Refusing to adopt the legacy media framing reducing everything to right vs. left combat, Shapiro seized the opportunity to educate Americans about the prevalence of alienation and hopelessness, which leads to loss of confidence in institutions. Too many people, especially children and young adults, are left vulnerable to violent messengers who play on their profound loneliness.

“Frustrated by a lack of progress and consumed by a feeling of hopelessness, they find refuge, often in the dark corners of the internet where their righteous frustration is taken advantage of and used to foment hate,” Shapiro said. Government therefore must retain people’s trust and offer techniques to prevent violent radicalization. Moreover, all Americans must “see our common humanity” and “reject the forces that are trying to pull us apart.”

At a press conference, Shapiro insisted, according to the New York Times, “We need to be universal in our condemnation,” adding that Trump has once again failed the “leadership test, failed the morality test, and it makes us all less safe.”

The autocrat’s excuse for crushing civil liberties amounts to a false choice between free speech and public safety. The overwhelming number of elected Republicans have refused to denounce Trump’s crusade of vengeance and censorship. We find no better illustration of the depths to which the MAGA Republican Party has sunk.

Shapiro provided a model for addressing the issue: Condemn all violence. Denounce selective outrage. Zealously defend the First Amendment and call out censors. Give young people tools to guard against online radicalization. Also, show Americans that compassionate, sensible, and effective government can improve their lives.

We applaud Shapiro’s undaunted pursuit of sanity, decency, public safety, and First Amendment rights. These are times that demand fortitude from our leaders. All those exhibiting it deserve our acknowledgement, our gratitude, and our praise.

Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian is reader-supported. To join us in the battle to preserve our free speech and our democracy, please add your voice to our community by becoming a free or paid subscriber.

First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

 

"Trump’s latest upending of conservation policy will be a disaster for wild landscapes and the creatures who live in them"

The Trump administration is plotting to undo a quarter-century of policy for the protection of national forests against new road building. This is a terrible turn for our public lands and needs to be stopped. 

When I lived in the little town of Moab, Utah, my habit on hot summer days was to drive into the nearby La Sal Mountains, a mostly roadless island of pines and firs and freshwater streams floating over the oven of the red rock desert. 

The La Sals, public land overseen by the U.S. Forest Service, include vast stretches of woods accessible only by foot. The thing to do there was to dump your car on one of the few dirt roads that cross the mountains, shoulder your pack and give oneself over to the habitat of the cougars, lynx, black bears and elk, none of whom like roads (or, for that matter, people who go backpacking). 

Much of the forest of the La Sals was designated to be protected from new development under the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Policy issued in the final days of the Clinton administration.

The roadless rule, as it became known, ended road construction, logging and coal, gas, oil and other mineral leasing on 58 million acres of some of the wildest remaining undeveloped national forest lands — an area equal in size to all of Pennsylvania and New York State combined.

The roadless rule happened not because the federal government happily opted to stop giving public land to industry for private profit. It was the result of a decade of conflict between the federal government and mainstream environmental groups and enviro direct actionists who engaged in tree sits and blockades and other forms of civil disobedience.

Some 600 public hearings were held across the nation to discuss the roadless rule, with the public providing more than 1.6 million comments over two years. The proposed rule received more comments than any other environmental rule on public lands in U.S. history.

What had taken two years to put together would now be put asunder in three weeks. In June, the Trump administration announced that it intended to rescind the roadless rule, and this month it instituted an accelerated three-week public comment period, set to end on Sept. 19.  What had taken two years to put together would now be put asunder in three weeks. 

The most important thing to understand about President Donald Trump’s endeavor is that every new road blazed into a previously unroaded landscape is a disaster for wild landscapes and the creatures who live in them. In two decades, reporting on the exploitation of American public lands, I’ve found that the most important first effort in destruction of habitat and the fouling of clean air and water is the building of a road. 

A road cut through wilderness is a wound that won’t stop bleeding. It doesn’t matter if it’s paved or unpaved, though a paved road always brings more traffic. Then again, it doesn’t matter whether a road is heavily trafficked or lightly used. The very presence of a road alters the environment around it.

This is especially true in high-altitude forested landscapes, such as the La Sals, as roads divert the natural downstream flow of precipitation, producing heavier runoff and more erosion that disrupts the hydrology and sedimentation of nearby waterways. 

Road runoff carries the poisons that automobiles drip from their chassis. The grinding engines and the sound of rattling metal terrify wildlife. From the tailpipes comes carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, heavy metals. You get more roadkill. You get more hunting and poaching. Roads scare off the cougars and wolves and bears, who learn that death awaits on roads.

Reed Noss, one of the premier conservation biologists in the United States, writes that the cumulative effect of roads blazed into previously unroaded ecosystems is “nothing short of catastrophic.” For the sake of wild things, Noss recommended that most existing roads on public lands “should be closed and obliterated.”

He especially liked the idea of keeping out road-attracted humans who “bring along their chainsaws, ATVs, guns, [and] dogs,” who “harass virtually every creature they meet, and leave their mark on every place they visit. The more inaccessible we can keep our remaining wild areas to these cretins, the safer and healthier these areas will be.” 

A road cut through wilderness is a wound that won’t stop bleeding. Noss is one of a host of conservation biologists to come to this conclusion. Biologists publishing in the journal Science found that roads “fragment landscapes and trigger human colonization and degradation of ecosystems, to the detriment of biodiversity and ecosystem functions.” 

In the American West, even a few dirt roads built near streams on public lands where native trout spawn can produce terrible damage. The fish depend on a properly functioning riparian system, with its panoply of vegetation, its resistance to erosion. The fish rely on intricate gravel substrates where eggs lodge in nests called redds, and on clean, cold water that carries off the waste discharge of the embryos and oxygenates the eggs.

Now a road comes through. The water is clouded with eroded soils. Fish eggs suffocate in the fine silt and clays and sand. They rot in their waste, as the smothering cloud prevents it from being washed away.

The fine sediment, like a wave of glue, cements the gravels, impeding construction of the redds. The available light in a trout stream must be just so.

The roadless area nearest my house in the Catskill Mountains is the Slide Mountain Wilderness, some 50,000 acres of forest, hills, cliffs, peaks and clean water. It’s the place people around here go if they wish to escape the machines of industrial Homo sapiens. There are no roads and no mechanized travel, in keeping with the 1964 Wilderness Act, which defines wilderness as “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man.” 

Lands designated as wilderness under the act retain their “primeval character and influence.” Not only are roads prohibited in wilderness areas, so is extractive industry, and there are severe restrictions on commercial activity. No business, no money making, also no cars, no motorcycles — hell, you can’t even ride a bicycle in designated wilderness because it’s considered a form of mechanized transport.

The 2001 roadless rule was an extension of the wilderness protection ethic of the 1964 law. For an administration hell-bent on exploiting land to make as much money as possible, the roadless rule is anathema. If our last wild places are to stand a chance of surviving this century, it must remain in place.

-Christopher Ketcham / Truthdig

The threatening of liberal foundations and nonprofits after Kirk’s death

 

What are the Trump administration’s allegations?

High-ranking members of the Trump administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, are accusing certain progressive organizations of encouraging violence against right-wing public figures and suggesting they played a role in Kirk’s death. Miller, for example, has likened those groups to “a vast domestic terror movement.”

Vance has said the government will “go after the NGO network that foments, facilitates and engages in violence,” in a reference to nonprofits he alleges are supporting illegal activities.

President Donald Trump has blamed Kirk’s death on “a radical left group of lunatics” that doesn’t “play fair.” He has stated that they are “already under major investigation,” although no such probe has been disclosed to date. Trump has raised the possibility of criminal charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as the RICO statute, which is typically used to prosecute gangs and organized crime rings. But, to be clear, the Trump administration has not yet produced evidence to support any of its allegations of wrongdoing by nonprofits and their funders.

A video feed is displayed in the White House briefing room on Sept. 15, 2025, as U.S. Vice President JD Vance hosts a podcast episode of ‘The Charlie Kirk Show’ at the White House, following the assassination of the show’s namesake. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

What organizations are being targeted?

Some conservative media outlets and Trump administration members have singled out specific nonprofits and funders. Their targets include billionaire George Soros, whose Open Society Foundations are among the country’s largest philanthropies, and the Ford Foundation, another of the nation’s top grant makers. The outlets and officials claim that both foundations allegedly provided money to as-of-yet unnamed groups that “radicalized” Tyler Robinson and led to what the White House has called “organized agitation.”

Another target is the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that regularly reported comments Kirk made disparaging Black, LGBTQ and other people.

The Ford Foundation is among more than 100 funders that signed onto an open letter posted to the Medium platform on Sept. 17, in which they objected to these Trump administration’s attacks. Open Society Foundations also signed the letter, and, in a post on the X platform, it denied the specific allegations directed at it by the Trump administration. The Southern Poverty Law Center has posted its own denial on Facebook.

Most but not all of the organizations Trump and his officials have accused of wrongdoing are charitable nonprofits and foundations. These organizations operate in accordance with the rules spelled out in Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. tax code.

What can count as a charitable activity is defined very broadly due to the language that Congress approved over a century ago. It includes public policy advocacy, a limited amount of direct lobbying, social services and a broad range of other activities that include running nonprofit hospitals, theaters and universities. Churches and other houses of worship count as U.S. charities too.

The rights of nonprofits are also protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which entitles them to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, and the right to assemble and “petition the government for a redress of grievances” – which cements their right to participate in public policy advocacy.

Obviously, institutions – including nonprofits – and the people who lead them can’t promote criminal activity or incite political violence without breaking the law. U.S. Supreme Court precedents have set the bar very high on what counts as an incitement to violence.

Are there any precedents for this?

The Republican Party has previously attempted, and failed, several times in the past few years to expand the executive branch’s power to deregister charities for partisan purposes. Most recently, GOP House members drafted an amendment that was cut from the final version of the big tax-and-spending bill Trump signed on July 4. But many nonprofit advocates remain concerned about the possibility of the Trump administration using other means to limit nonprofit political rights.

Are there precedents for the repression of US nonprofits and their funders?

Under the Bill of Rights, the U.S. has strong protections in place that shield nonprofits from partisan attacks. Still, there are some precedents for attempts to repress them. The Johnson Amendment to a tax bill passed in 1954 is a well-known example. This law ended the ability of 501(c)(3) charities, private foundations and religious organizations to interfere in political campaigns.

Despite strong support from the public and the nonprofit sector for keeping it in place, the Trump administration has attempted to repeal the Johnson Amendment. What is largely forgotten is that Lyndon B. Johnson, then a member of Congress, introduced the measure to silence two conservative charities in his Texas district that supported his political opponent.

The Republican Party has also claimed in recent years that conservatives have been victims of efforts to suppress their freedom to establish and operate charitable nonprofits. A notable case was the GOP’s accusation during the Obama administration that the Internal Revenue Service was unfairly targeting Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny. Following years of outrage over that alleged partisanship, however, it later turned out that the IRS had applied extra scrutiny to progressive groups as well.

Some political observers have suggested that the Trump administration’s inspiration for targeting certain nonprofits and their funders comes from what’s going on in other countries. Hungary, Russia, Turkey and other countries have punished the activities of their political opponents and nongovernmental organizations as crimes.

What do you think could ultimately be at stake?

The economic and political freedoms that are the bedrock of a true democracy rely on a diversity of ideas. The mechanism for implementing that ideal in the U.S. relies heavily on a long-standing Supreme Court doctrine that extends constitutional rights to individuals and organizations alike. Nonprofits, in other words, have constitutional rights.

What this means for American society is a much greater proliferation of nonprofit activity than you see in many other countries, with the inevitable result that many organizations espouse unpopular opinions or views that clash with public opinion or the goals of a major political party. That situation does not make their activities illegal.

Even Americans who disagree with the missions of Turning Point USA or the Southern Poverty Law Center should be able to agree that both institutions contribute to what Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas once called the “market place of ideas” necessary for an open democracy.

Is it easy to see what donors fund and what nonprofits do with their money?

This situation leaves open the question of whether the public has a right to know who is bankrolling a nonprofit’s activity. Following the money can be frustrating. Federal law is somewhat contradictory in how far it will go to apply democratic ideals of openness and transparency to nonprofit activity. A key example is the long-standing protection of donor privacy in U.S. law, a principle that conservatives generally favor.

The courts have established that making a charitable gift is a protected free speech activity that entitles donors to certain privacy rights. In fact, the most recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling related to charitable giving, handed down in 2021, upheld a conservative nonprofit’s right to strip donors’ names from reporting documents.

This privacy right extends to foundations: They can decide whether to disclose the names of their grant recipients. Still, all nonprofits except churches need to make some disclosures regarding their finances on a mandatory form filed annually.

Looking forward, organizations that advocate for the charitable sector as a whole, such as the National Council of Nonprofits, are closely following the efforts of the Trump administration. Their role is to remind the public that nonprofits on both the right and left side of the political spectrum have strong advocacy rights that don’t disappear when bad things happen.

 -Beth Gazley, Professor of Nonprofit Management and Policy, Indiana University, The Conversation

"The vice president's justifications for this ideological abuse of government power are obviously false"

 

On Monday, Vice President JD Vance hosted the Charlie Kirk show, ostensibly to pay tribute to his fallen friend. But that was not Vance’s sole purpose for assuming Kirk’s mic. Indeed, the vice president used the occasion to launch an unhinged broadside against his perceived political opponents, threatening the free speech rights of civil society.

Vance knew what he was doing. Before introducing White House aide Stephen Miller as a guest, Vance protested that “the crazies on the far left” are saying, “Oh, Stephen Miller and JD Vance, they’re going to go after constitutionally protected speech.” Vance insisted this was not his intent: “No, no, no.”

The vice president doth protest too much. In his next breath, Vance made his agenda clear. “We're going to go after the NGO [non-governmental organization] network that foments, facilitates, and engages in violence.” He did not cite a single piece of evidence connecting Kirk’s assassin to any NGO. Nor have law enforcement officials alleged that Kirk’s killer had any accomplices. Nevertheless, Vance explained the “whole administration has been working” toward the goal of quashing NGOs.

Miller wholeheartedly endorsed Vance’s threat to non-profit groups. Miller insisted—again, without providing a shred of evidence—that an “organized campaign” led to Kirk’s murder. Miller claimed, conveniently and perhaps apocryphally, that the “last message” Kirk sent him concerned the need “to have an organized strategy to go after the leftwing organizations that are promoting violence in this country.” 

The Trump adviser vowed to “channel all of the anger” generated by Kirk’s death “to uproot and dismantle these ‘terrorist’ networks.” Again, no one other than a 22-year-old man is currently charged with the crime and, so far at least, there has been no indication that anybody else helped.

Miller’s choice of words, echoing the 9/11 era, was no accident. A “vast domestic terror movement” exists, Miller claimed, and the Trump administration would unleash the power of the federal government, including the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, “to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks.” Al Qaeda, a real international terrorist network, attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001.

What terror “networks” were responsible for Kirk’s horrific murder? Vance and Miller did not and could not say. Vance’s justifications for this ideological abuse of government power are obviously false. For example, the vice president claimed that political violence is “not a both sides problem,” but instead a “much bigger and malignant problem” on the left. The “data is clear,” Vance argued, “people on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence.”

In fact, while political violence in the United States is still relatively rare, the American right—not the left—is more inclined to commit such acts. For example, the CATO Institute has produced a study of politically motivated terrorism inside the United States over the past half-century. 

CATO found that 3,599 people were killed in politically motivated terror attacks from Jan. 1, 1975, through Sept. 10, 2025. Subtracting the death toll from 9/11, the single largest terror attack in American history, this figure drops to 620 people. Right-wing terrorists were responsible for the majority of these murders: 391 deaths, or 63% of the total. Meanwhile, left-wing terrorists accounted for 65 murders, or about 10.5% of the total.

This finding has been confirmed in other studies as well. For instance, the Anti-Defamation League reports that all the extremist-related murders from 2022 through 2024 were committed by right-wing extremists. “One of the reasons extremist murder totals have been down in recent years has been a decrease in deadly incidents connected to domestic Islamist extremists and far-left extremists,” the ADL found. 

That has already changed in 2025, as an ISIS-inspired terrorist killed 14 people in an attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day. But the point remains: In general, right-wing extremists, including white supremacists, are more deadly than other types of extremists.

The Trump administration knows what the data shows—and is trying to hide it from the public. Still another study, published by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in 2024, found that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism.” 

The NIJ’s analysis shows that “far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists” since 1990. The NIJ’s study was previously hosted on the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) website. But according to 404 Media, the DOJ quietly deleted it in recent days. An archived version can still be found online. So, the data is clear. But it shows exactly the opposite of what Vance wants people to believe.

In making his case, Vance ignored the data on actual political violence in America. Instead, he cited a single online poll conducted by YouGov to support his argument. But even here he was cherry-picking. The vice president ignored a series of other polls showing that the American right is more likely to support political violence.

For example, polling by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) shows that Republicans are more likely than Democrats and independents to agree that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save the country.” Fortunately, only a minority of Republicans (18%) and Democrats (11%) agreed with this statement during polling earlier this year. 

However, the American right has repeatedly demonstrated greater support for political violence, as shown in PRRI’s polling. In August 2021, for instance, Republicans’ support for political violence peaked at 35%, whereas Democrats have never exceeded 13% approval. Similarly, an analysis of polling data conducted by researchers at the University of California Davis found that MAGA Republicans “are more likely than others to endorse political violence.”

All of which is to say that Vance is dishonest. While trying to point the finger at the left, he whitewashed political violence from his own side, even though it is far more common.

Indeed, the vice president said nothing about the murders of Melissa Hortman and her husband in June. Hortman was a Democratic politician who previously served as the speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives. Nor did Vance mention the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol—an act of political violence that was instigated by his boss and resulted in approximately 140 police officers being assaulted by right-wing rioters and extremists.

Of course, Vance did mention the July 14, 2024, assassination attempt on President Donald Trump in Butler, Pa., falsely insinuating that the would-be assassin was part of a left-wing trend, even though the shooter had known mental health issues and no political motive or accomplices have been found. As should be clear by now, Vance has no interest in a sober reflection on political violence in America or on solutions. He is using the heinous murder of Kirk as a cudgel against his political foes.

There was much more wrong with the Vance speech, including claims he made about the funding of The Nation, a magazine that published a story he disliked about Charlie Kirk. A deputy editor for The Nation quickly pointed out on social media that Vance’s claim was not true. But that fact, like so many others, does not matter to Vance.

Since the murder of Charlie Kirk last week, Vance and others have honored the conservative activist as a champion for free speech. Kirk did not deserve to die for his speech. Hs death was a tragedy—a negation of the right to free speech each American enjoys. But if the Trump administration truly wants to honor Americans’ First Amendment rights, then it should not cynically exploit Kirk’s assassination to target the speech of its critics.

Tom Joscelyn is a senior fellow at Just Security Susan Corke is the executive director of Democracy Defenders Action and Democracy Defenders Fund. Norm Eisen is publisher of The Contrarian.

 

Kimmel Gone

 

ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel Live! off the air “indefinitely” on Wednesday, citing comments the comedian made during his Monday night monologue about the killing of Charlie Kirk. Nexstar Media Group—which is seeking Federal Communications Commission approval for a pending $6.2 billion merger with Tegna—said its ABC-affiliated stations would not run the show “for the foreseeable future.” 

Sinclair Broadcast Group, another large ABC affiliate owner, also suspended the show, demanding that Kimmel apologize to Kirk’s family and make a “meaningful personal donation” to them and his right-wing student activist group Turning Point USA. 

FCC Chair Brendan Carr appeared on political commentator Benny Johnson’s podcast earlier Wednesday, saying Kimmel’s remarks were “truly sick” and that there was a “strong case” for action against ABC and its parent company Disney. Trump celebrated the news on Truth Social, saying “That leaves Jimmy [Fallon] and Seth [Meyers], two total losers, on Fake News NBC.”

-The Morning Dispatch