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due process
Stephen Miller Claims Simply Calling Trump Authoritarian 'Incites Violence and Terrorism'
"Trying to criminalize the act of calling a government 'authoritarian,'" one journalist said, "is exactly what an authoritarian government would do."
Sep 25, 2025
Stephen Miller, the White House's deputy chief of staff, signaled how far he is willing to go to criminalize dissent against President Donald Trump in a social media post on Wednesday in which he implied that merely describing the president's actions as "authoritarian" is tantamount to a criminal offense.
Miller's comments came in response to a clip of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who appeared Tuesday on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" on CBS. In the clip, posted to X, the governor is shown describing Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) mass immigration roundups.
"Masked men jumping out of unmarked cars, people disappearing, no due process, no oversight, zero accountability—that's what's happening in the United States today," Newsom said. “People ask, ‘Is 'authoritarianism' being hyperbolic?’ Bullshit we’re being hyperbolic.”
Newsom noted that he had just signed the first bill in the nation forbidding ICE agents from wearing masks while carrying out arrests and requiring them to provide identification.
"I mean, if some guy jumped out of an unmarked car in a van and tried to grab me, by definition, you're going to push back," Newsom continued. "These are not just authoritarian tendencies; these are authoritarian actions by an authoritarian government."
Newsom directly called out comments made by Miller, who recently said on Fox News that the Trump administration should use law enforcement to "dismantle" the left following the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.
“This should put chills up spines, “Newsom said. “[Miller] called the Democratic Party an ‘extremist organization,’ basically a terrorist organization, saying he’s going after his enemies."
Newsom also referred to a post made by Trump on Truth Social telling Attorney General Pam Bondi to target certain political enemies for prosecution.
Miller responded to the clip of Newsom, saying: "This language incites violence and terrorism."
As many critics pointed out, none of Newsom's statements in the clip promoted or encouraged violence. They were simply criticisms of the Trump administration’s actions, which have included rounding up immigrants without due process and singling out political opponents for persecution.
US law has historically set an extraordinarily high bar for what speech constitutes "incitement" to violence.
As Lee Rowland of the New York Civil Liberties Union explained, "The Supreme Court recognizes, rightfully, that political speech often involves really passionate, sometimes violent rhetoric. And unless and until it creates a specific and immediate roadmap to violence against others, it cannot be criminalized consistent with our First Amendment."
But Miller's comments indicate a concerted effort within the Trump administration to widen what protected political speech can be deemed violent.
On the day of Kirk’s assassination, Trump blamed “those on the radical left” for the murder, saying they “have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. He added that “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
Earlier this week, Trump signed an executive order designating “antifa,” short for antifascist, as a “domestic terrorist organization"—although it is not, in fact, an organization at all. Without a concrete group to target, critics have warned that the designation will instead be used to label those who describe Trump as “fascist” or “authoritarian” as threats in and of themselves.
Bondi suggested last week, in comments that were met with derision across the political spectrum, that the administration would use law enforcement to go after "hate speech," which is generally protected by the First Amendment.
But the characterization of criticism being equal to violence only amplified following Wednesday's shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas, which killed one detainee and critically injured two others. JD Vance made a similar suggestion that critical rhetoric toward ICE was to blame for the attack.
“When Democrats like Gavin Newsom ... say that these people [ICE] are part of an authoritarian government, when the left-wing media lies about what they’re doing, when they lie about who they’re arresting, when they lie about the actual job of law enforcement... What they’re doing is encouraging crazy people to go and commit violence," said Vance.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), likewise, blamed the shooting on "every politician who is using rhetoric demonizing ICE and demonizing [Customs and Border Protection]."
Miller's comments, which directly refer to criticism of the Trump administration as "inciting violence and terrorism," may be the most direct indication yet of an intent to criminalize First Amendment-protected dissent.
Ironically, these threats have only made criticisms of Trump as an authoritarian grow louder.
“Trying to criminalize the act of calling a government ‘authoritarian,‘” said journalist James Surowiecki, “is exactly what an authoritarian government would do.”
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Class Action Suit Challenges Trump's Unconstitutional Attack on Due Process
“All people in the United States are entitled to due process—without exception,” said an attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts.
Sep 24, 2025
Several New England affiliates of the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a new class-action lawsuit that challenges the immigration detention policies of US President Donald Trump.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts announced on Tuesday that it is joining with the ACLU of New Hampshire, the ACLU of Maine, ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, the law firm Araujo and Fisher, the law firm Foley Hoag, and the Harvard Immigration and Refugee Clinic to sue the Trump administration over its policy of denying bond hearings to people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The ACLU of Massachusetts described the denial of bond hearings for ICE detainees as "a violation of statutory and constitutional rights" that are "upending decades of settled law and established practice in immigration proceedings." The end result of this, the ACLU of Massachusetts warned, is that "thousands of people in Massachusetts will be denied due process."
The complaint contends that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has been denying ICE detainees their rights by "systematically reclassifying these people from the statutory authority of 8 U.S.C. § 1226, which usually allows for the opportunity to request bond during removal proceedings, to the no-bond detention provisions of 8 U.S.C. § 1225, which does not apply to people arrested in the interior of the United States and placed in removal proceedings."
The ACLU of Massachusetts said that the administration's misclassification of detainees stems from actions taken by the Tacoma Immigration Court in Washington, which in 2022 started "misclassifying § 1226 detainees arrested inside the United States as mandatory detainees under § 1225, solely because they initially entered the country without permission."
The lawsuit has been filed on behalf of Jose Arnulfo Guerrero Orellana, an immigrant who resides in Massachusetts and has no criminal record, but who was detained by ICE last week and has been denied the right to challenge his detention. The complaint asks that due process be restored for Orellana and others who have been similarly detained and held unlawfully.
Daniel McFadden, managing attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts, argued that the administration's actions violate fundamental constitutional rights.
“All people in the United States are entitled to due process—without exception,” he said. “When the government arrests any person inside the United States, it must be required to prove to a judge that there is an actual reason for the person’s detention. Our client and others like him have a constitutional and statutory right to receive a bond hearing for exactly that purpose."
Annelise Araujo, founding principal and owner at Boston-based law firm Araujo and Fisher, argued that the administration's detention policy "violates due process and upends nearly 30 years of established practice."
"The people impacted by this policy are neighbors, friends, and family members, living peacefully in the United States and making important contributions to our communities," she said. "Currently, the only recourse is to file individual habeas petitions for each detained client—a process that keeps people detained longer and stretches the resources of our courts."
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Trump's Venezuela Boat Strikes Are War Crimes, So Where’s The Media?
Why hasn’t the mainstream media pressed the administration on these strikes being illegal and dangerous (and unpopular)?
Sep 16, 2025
On September 2, the Trump administration shared footage purporting to show a US strike on a Venezuelan fishing boat. Even if we take the incident entirely at face value (and there are a lot of reasons to question the video itself)—the US Navy attacked a fishing boat off Venezuela, killing 11 people. On Monday, another strike was allegedly conducted on a boat, killing three people. The way the media has handled these strikes is an indictment of the state of American neoliberal reporting in a neofascist age.
Why hasn’t the mainstream media pressed the administration on these strikes being illegal and dangerous (and unpopular)? Why has no one in Washington considered the implications of calling a fishing boat carrying civilians a legitimate military target? Why isn’t the media calling the Venezuelan boat strike an abhorrent war crime at every turn?
It’s simple; they don’t care about defending the truth or holding the powerful accountable–they have no principles to stand on besides profit and access.
Within hours of these strikes breaking, major outlets were repeating the Trump administration’s line that this was a strike on a “drug boat.” According to this framing, the attacks were justified, necessary, and part of a broader war on drug trafficking. Virtually none of these outlets even entertained the obvious legal and ethical questions. Instead, they served as stenographers for the administration. This is not what an objective (not neutral) press in an advanced democracy does.
Would the Marines be greeted as liberators in Caracas?
This is reminiscent of the Iraq War era, when corporate media parroted the Bush administration’s ludicrous arguments, paving the way for invasion and occupation that would kill at least 200,000, maim millions, and destroy American democracy further.
Legal experts across the spectrum have already stood up to say the killings were illegal. Ilya Somin, a professor at George Mason University’s conservative Antonin Scalia Law School, called the strike “unjust and illegal.” Jeremy Wildeman, an adjunct professor of international Affairs at Carleton University and fellow at the Human Rights Research and Education Centre in Ottawa, described it as “part of the dangerous and ongoing erosion of due process and the very basic principles of how we interact with each other in domestic and foreign affairs, regulated by accepted norms, rules, and laws, that the Trump administration has been pointedly hostile toward following and specifically undermining.”
Wildeman added that “this is definitely about regime change and domination.” Even the Atlantic Council hedged, acknowledging that the legality was at best murky and in some cases advancing arguments to justify it. Meanwhile, US Vice President JD Vance bluntly stated that he does not care if the strikes are war crimes at all.
The available evidence does suggest this was an outright criminal massacre. The first boat was, we now know thanks to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), turning back to shore, not threatening US forces when it was fired upon. Those killed would be civilians. Even if they were transporting drugs, drug couriers are not lawful combatants. They are criminals under domestic law, not combatants in an armed conflict.
Due process was ignored. There was no trial, no arrest, no attempt at interdiction—just summary execution. And the strikes occurred in Venezuelan territorial waters, not in an international conflict zone. If another country did this, say Russia bombing a fishing boat in the Baltic, or China attacking smugglers near Taiwan, the Western media would have declared it a war crime the same day. Add this to the list of Western double standards in the international arena—we are seeing the destruction of the “liberal order” in real time.
These strikes are not a one-off. They fit into decades of US policy toward Venezuela, including economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation, and repeated regime change attempts. For 25 years, Washington has tried to topple the governments of Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro through economic sabotage, coups, and support for far-right opposition. The humanitarian toll of those sanctions has been devastating. They have themselves emboldened the repression brought about by the Maduro government, which has used America as a scapegoat, with reason, for all its faults.
Now, with this attack, we see a dangerous escalation from economic to military means. If the precedent is set that the US can strike targets inside Venezuela (this was in Venezuela’s national waters) with impunity, it opens the door to a broader military campaign. That is exactly what think tanks like the Center for Strategic and International Studies have been preparing for. One CSIS report, now deleted, explicitly laid out “options for regime change” in Venezuela, against the “Maduro narco-terrorist regime.”
So why is the media so unwilling to call this what it is? Major outlets fear losing access to government sources if they challenge the official narrative. They also simply don’t want to admit that America is committing crimes, and may not be the moral actors in every major geopolitical event, as they were taught throughout their lives. Going back to Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent 101, corporate interests are also important, with companies like Exxon and Chevron having billions at stake in Venezuela’s oil fields (and a US-backed government running things in Caracas). US military action that destabilizes or topples Maduro could directly benefit those firms.
Many of the analysts quoted in media coverage are from think tanks funded by the defense industry or oil companies. They have an interest in exaggerating Venezuela’s threat and downplaying US abuses, to make the US intervention seem justified and good. And reporters too often repackage leaks from US intelligence agencies as fact, without independently verifying. A lot of the “analysis” on the strikes in mainstream news has been from the intelligence agencies, who have a direct incentive to lie and manipulate information in favor of regime change.
Even respected outlets have contributed to this dynamic. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have both amplified the claim that Venezuela is a “narco-terrorist state.” That claim has been debunked by organizations like InSight Crime and the International Crisis Group, which show that while drugs transit Venezuela, it is hardly unique; Colombia and Mexico play a much larger role in global cocaine markets, yet they remain US allies.
Meanwhile, outlets like the Christian Science Monitor are pushing a narrative that “more Latin Americans welcome US intervention,” based on flimsy and cherry-picked anecdotes that, once again, helps the Trump administration lay the groundwork for more meddling and war. Would the Marines be greeted as liberators in Caracas? The hope is to expand the “War on Drugs” into the “War on Terror,” giving the US military more tools to intervene in Latin America, and then bringing repression to the home front (also called the Imperial Boomerang theory). In reality, the region is increasingly turning away from Washington’s militaristic and blusterous approach, seeking alternative frameworks to the failed War on Drugs.
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