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whistleblowers
Critics Say Trump NDA Requirement Would 'Kneecap Whistleblower Protections'
The lone intent of the new policy, said one watchdog, "would be to protect the administration from the leak of embarrassing, politically damaging, or unlawful information.”
May 26, 2026
The Trump administration—the self-styled “most transparent administration in history”—plans to require all federal government employees to sign nondisclosure agreements in what it claims is an effort to stop damaging information from leaking, but what critics warn is a cynical effort to subvert accountability and hide malfeasance.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday on a draft notice posted to the Federal Register by the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which is expected to be published on Wednesday.
Consistent with the Trump administration’s efforts to squash negative reporting on its endeavors, the new rule contains a sweeping order that would ban federal employees from going to the press with any information deemed “confidential.”
Notably, this is different from the typical designation of "classified" vs. "unclassified." It encompasses “non-public, confidential, or proprietary information” or “any sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material that is not currently publicly available and should not be disclosed under applicable law.”
Both current and former employees would need "written permission from an authorized agency official" to speak to the press about matters deemed "confidential" under the draft's terms, or they could be subject to civil and criminal penalties.
It will be up to individual agencies whether they require employees to sign the NDAs, but the document said doing so would "promote consistency across government, better protect confidential information, and better inform federal employees of their rights and obligations regarding confidential information."
Under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon has already enacted a strict NDA that “prohibits the release of non-public information without approval or through a defined process," which it enacted late last year along with random lie-detector testing aimed at finding leakers.
The draft notice reported on Tuesday suggests a similar requirement will become blanket policy across a wide swath of agencies. The notice gives an idea of what sorts of information the administration wants to shield from journalistic scrutiny.
The document cites the unauthorized leak in February 2025 of information about the Department of Homeland Security's mass deportation targets in Los Angeles and Aurora, Colorado, which led then-Secretary Kristi Noem to start subjecting employees to polygraph tests to root out leakers.
Another whistleblower in January published identifying information for about 4,500 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol employees.
The draft also pointed to disclosures to the New York Times and Washington Post, giving the outlets advanced notice of the planned US raid on Venezuela to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro in January, which the outlets waited to publish until after the illegal operation was complete.
The NDA proposal is the latest attack on critical journalism by the Trump administration, part of a pattern to assert stricter control over the flow of information to the public.
The Pentagon has sought to strip credentials from outlets unless they agree to only publish approved information. Trump and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr have threatened the broadcast licenses of networks that give Trump negative coverage and opened investigations into them. Trump, meanwhile, has personally launched unprecedented multi-billion-dollar lawsuits against media outlets, many of which judges have thrown out of court due to lack of merit.
In a statement sent to Common Dreams on Tuesday, Lauren Harper, the Daniel Ellsberg Chair on Government Secrecy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, called the proposed NDA requirement "not just absurd" but "unnecessary and dangerously secretive."
“This policy, from a president who has previously attempted to impose oppressive, corporate-style confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements on federal employees," Harper said, "would kneecap whistleblower protections, undermine the First Amendment, and wrongly inhibit the public’s right to know.”
OPM Director Scott Kupor defended the requirement. “In much of the private sector," he told the Post, "employees handling sensitive business or customer information are routinely required to sign confidentiality agreements, and the federal government should not be held to a lower standard.”
But critics argue that the federal government doing the same poses potential First Amendment violations. Although federal whistleblower laws protect employees’ ability to go to the press about waste, fraud, and abuse, experts told the Post that the NDA proposal could, in practice, be used as a “catchall gag order” that could lead employees to feel their jobs are in danger if they speak out.
“Trying to force the entire federal government to adopt the Trump organization’s aggressive use of NDAs won’t make anybody safer and won’t improve agency processes," Harper said. "Its sole intent would be to protect the administration from the leak of embarrassing, politically damaging, or unlawful information.”
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), said the NDA proposal shows the Trump administration is continuing "its efforts to silence federal employees.”
“This proposed rule," said Kelley, "sweeps in an extraordinarily broad category of information, extending restrictions to the very material the public relies on to learn when an administration is causing harm. Federal employees do not surrender their First Amendment rights when they accept federal employment."
"OPM claims the form will be ‘optional’ for agencies to use and merely restates existing law," Kelley added. "We know that will not be true. OPM will pressure agencies to make the NDA mandatory and then fire employees who refuse to sign it."
He said the rule change was unnecessary because there are already "extensive policies and procedures" to prevent classified and privileged info from being leaked.
Kelley said, "This proposed rule sweeps in an extraordinarily broad category of information, extending restrictions to the very material the public relies on to learn when an administration is causing harm."
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Named for Daniel Ellsberg, Tlaib Proposal Would Protect Whistleblowers and Journalists
"With whistleblowers, journalists, and civil liberties under significant attack and government decision-making shrouded in increasing secrecy, reining in the abuses of the Espionage Act could not be more urgent.”
Mar 12, 2026
Warning that the Espionage Act has been used to "persecute and criminalize" dissenters, journalists, and whistleblowers numerous times since it was passed into law, US Rep. Rashida Tlaib on Thursday introduced the Daniel Ellsberg Press Freedom and Whistleblower Protection Act to "rein in" the 109-year-old law.
The proposal is named for the military analyst-turned-activist who disclosed decades of deception by the US government regarding Vietnam when he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971—an act that led the government to charge Ellsberg with espionage, conspiracy, and other crimes before the case was thrown out over the Nixon administration's misconduct.
In the cases of Ellsberg, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and other journalists and whistleblowers, "Espionage Act prosecutions have been used to silence dissent and undermine government transparency and are a clear violation of the First Amendment and the fundamental right to due process," said Tlaib (D-Mich.).
“Alerting the public to government wrongdoing is not a crime,” said the congresswoman. “The Espionage Act has been abused by administrations of both parties to target whistleblowers and journalists for sharing critically important information with the public. With whistleblowers, journalists, and civil liberties under significant attack and government decision-making shrouded in increasing secrecy, reining in the abuses of the Espionage Act could not be more urgent.”
Tlaib noted that in addition to past administrations using the Espionage Act to prosecute media sources and whistleblowers who alerted the public about mass surveillance, torture, drone assassinations, and war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the FBI raided the home of a Washington Post reporter in January in connection to the prosecution of a government whistleblower.
The proposed legislation would limit the scope of the Espionage Act to foreign agents and government employees who have a legal duty to protect classified information—prohibiting the use of the law to prosecute publishers, journalists, or members of the public.
It would also increase due process standards and safeguards for whistleblowers who disclose government wrongdoing, war crimes, or abuses of power to the public. The legislation would create and affirmative public interest defense and require the government to prove that a whistleblower acted with the specific intent of harming the US or aiding a foreign power.
Under the Daniel Ellsberg Press Freedom and Whistleblower Protection Act, said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel for the ACLU, "the government could no longer abuse [the Espionage Act] to silence those sharing information that is beneficial to the public."
“For too long the Espionage Act has been used to persecute and silence whistleblowers, journalists and publishers,” said Leventoff. “But journalism is not a crime—it is a First Amendment protected activity that protects our democracy by allowing the public to hold our nation’s leaders to account."
The Espionage Act was originally passed to crack down on those who spread information that could interfere with the war effort during World War I, and "from its inception," said Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights and Dissent, "the law has been used to stifle public debate and has become the go to weapon against whistleblowers and now journalists."
"Public servants who witness egregious crimes like torture, mass surveillance of Americans, or the killing of civilians, and seek to alert the American people about them are whistleblowers," said Gibbons. "Yet, using the Espionage Act the government prosecutes them as though they were spies. And with the government going further and prosecuting a journalist under the Espionage Act, the threat not just to press freedom, but to our very democracy, posed by this antiquated law is growing. Rep. Tlaib’s bill is desperately needed as it is well past time to bring the Espionage Act in line with the First Amendment.”
Tlaib noted that before his death in 2023, Ellsberg expressed public support for the reforms the congresswoman had proposed, when she introduced them as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act.
“For half a century, starting with my own prosecution, no whistleblower charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 has had, or could have, a fair trial," said Ellsberg in 2022. "These long-overdue amendments would remedy that injustice, protect the First Amendment freedom of the press, and encourage vitally needed truth-telling.”
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Former ICE Lawyer Says Agency Is Teaching Recruits to 'Violate the Constitution'
"Never in my career had I ever received such a blatantly unlawful order," said Ryan Schwank, who blew the whistle last month on a "secretive" ICE memo directing agents to enter homes without judicial warrants.
Feb 24, 2026
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is "lying to Congress and the American people" and directing new recruits to "violate the Constitution," according to a whistleblower who testified on Capitol Hill Monday.
Ryan Schwank, a former ICE lawyer who worked at the federal government’s law enforcement training academy, stepped down from his post last week after submitting a whistleblower complaint about an agency policy directing agents to enter homes and arrest people without a judge's warrant.
"I swore an oath to uphold the Constitution," Schwank said at a joint forum on ICE's constitutional violations hosted by Senate and House Democrats. "I followed that oath for four-and-a-half years, working side by side with ICE officers. And I followed it when I resigned on February 13, 2026, a little over a week ago, so I could speak to you today."
He had joined ICE in 2021 as a senior lawyer for the agency, tasked with advising agents on immigration laws and the Constitution. In September 2025, amid President Donald Trump's "surge" in recruitment to carry out his "mass deportation" crusade, Schwank became an instructor for new recruits at the ICE Academy at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia.
"On my first day," Schwank said, "I received secretive orders to teach new cadets to violate the Constitution by entering homes without a judicial warrant."
Schwank said he was “instructed to read and return a memo" that claimed ICE agents had this power in the presence of his supervisor. “Before I was shown this memo, my supervisor warned me that two previous ICE instructors had been dismissed because they questioned senior ICE management over the legality of the memo.”
That memo, which was sent to US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials in May, was revealed to the Senate last month through a whistleblower disclosure by Schwank and another official whose identity has not yet been made public.
“The acting ICE director authorized the very conduct that DHS—in 2025 legal training materials—has called ‘the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed’—that is, ‘physical entry of the home’ without consent or a proper warrant,” Schwank said.
His testimony confirms previous reporting from the Associated Press, which found that these orders were distributed in a highly unusual way: DHS officials like Schwank were shown the memo before being required to return it to their supervisors and relay the information verbally to new recruits without showing them the directive.
Under this new directive, the whistleblower report said “newly hired ICE agents—many of whom do not have a law enforcement background—are now being directed to rely solely on” an administrative warrant drafted and signed by an ICE official to enter homes and make arrests.
“No court has ever found that any law enforcement has this type of authority to enter homes without a judicial warrant under such circumstances,” said David Kligerman, the senior vice president and special counsel for Whistleblower Aid, the group that sent the disclosure to Congress.
“Never in my career had I ever received such a blatantly unlawful order—nor one conveyed in such a troubling manner,” Schwank said on Monday. “I was being shown this memo in secret by a supervisor who made sure that I understood that disobedience could cost me my job. ICE is teaching cadets to violate the Constitution, and they were attempting to cloak it in secrecy.”
Schwank also said that top ICE and DHS officials were deceiving Congress and the public when they claimed that the new officers and agents brought on as part of the agency's hiring spree were receiving the same basic training as in the past, even as agency syllabi showed that their training hours had been slashed by about 40%.
Testifying before Congress earlier this month, ICE's acting director, Todd Lyons, said that while hours have been cut, “The meat of the training was never removed."
"This is a lie,” Schwank said. “ICE made the program shorter, and they removed so many essential parts that what remains is a dangerous husk. No reasonable person would believe a training program suddenly cut nearly in half could meet the minimum legal requirements.”
The Trump administration has said the reduction of ICE training by more than 240 hours was mostly the result of eliminating Spanish-language classes.
However, according to dozens of pages of internal documents released by Senate Democrats, which were reviewed by the New York Times, the agency's February syllabus had also eliminated classes about the proper use of force, handling the property of detainees, filling out paperwork alleging someone is in the United States without authorization, taking a "victim-centered approach," and "integrity awareness training."
The number of exams agents must take has also been drastically reduced, from 25 in 2021 down to just nine. Some of the exams no longer required are ones on "Judgment Pistol Shooting” and “Determine Removability,” which the Times said was "a reference to how agents decide if people they encounter have legal status in the United States."
Schwank’s testimony comes after immigration agents shot and killed three United States citizens in recent weeks, causing heightened scrutiny of ICE and other DHS agencies. Since Trump's second inauguration on January 20, at least 32 people have been shot by agents, resulting in nine deaths.
In areas where ICE has been surged, such as Minnesota—which was swarmed by around 3,000 agents late last year—numerous instances have been documented of what appear to be uses of unnecessary force, racial profiling, and violations of constitutional rights.
“I am here because I am duty-bound to report the legally required training program at the ICE academy is deficient, defective, and broken,” Schwank said. “Deficient training can and will get people killed... It can and will lead to unlawful arrests, violations of constitutional rights, and fundamental loss of public trust in law enforcement.”
Schwank's testimony came as a partial shutdown of DHS entered its second week, after Democrats refused to fund the agency without significant reforms to ICE, including requirements that they obtain judicial warrants and carry out their duties without masks.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who chaired Monday's panel, said he hopes Schwank's testimony will encourage other whistleblowers to come forward.
“We know about the Trump administration’s decimation of training for immigration officers and its secret policy to shred your Constitutional rights because of the brave Americans who are speaking out today,” Blumenthal said. “They are coming to Congress because we have the responsibility to not only bear witness to these crimes, but to do something to make sure they don’t happen again.”
“To anyone else who is repulsed by what you’re seeing or what authorities are asking you to do, please know that you can make a real difference by coming forward," he added. "You’ll meet a moral imperative. Our door is open, we are here for you when you are ready, and we will do everything within our power to protect your rights.”
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Tulsi Gabbard Hit With Whistleblower Complaint So Classified It Needs to Be Locked in a Safe: Report
The attorney representing the whistleblower called it "confounding" that it took Gabbard’s office eight months to send a disclosure to Congress.
Feb 02, 2026
A whistleblower last year filed a complaint against US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard whose contents are so sensitive that the complaint itself has reportedly been locked in a safe.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the complaint was filed in May, and it set off "a continuing, behind-the-scenes struggle about how to assess and handle it, with the whistleblower’s lawyer accusing Gabbard of stonewalling the complaint."
The Journal's sources say that the complaint is so classified that no one in the US Congress has even laid eyes on it, as disclosure of its contents could cause "grave damage to national security."
A letter written by Andrew Bakaj, the whistleblower's attorney, to Gabbard in November accused her office of trying to block the complaint from reaching members of Congress by failing to provide guidance about how it should be handled while minimizing national security risks.
Gabbard's office told the Journal that it is working to get the issue resolved but that it is taking time because of the sensitive nature of the complaint, which it dismissed as "baseless and politically motivated."
However, Bakaj told the Journal that he doesn't believe Gabbard's office is making a good-faith effort to disclose the complaint to Congress.
“From my experience, it is confounding for [Gabbard’s office] to take weeks—let alone eight months—to transmit a disclosure to Congress,” he said.
The Journal was not able to verify the contents of the complaint against Gabbard, and Bakaj told the paper that its contents are so highly classified that he has not been allowed to view it.
Whistleblower Aid, the nonprofit legal organization where Bakaj serves as chief legal counsel, called on Monday for Congress to open an investigation into Gabbard "for hiding high-level intelligence... for nearly eight months," as well as for "her attempts to bury a whistleblower disclosure about her own actions," as required by US law.
National security attorney Mark Zaid, who co-founded Whistleblower Aid, praised the organization's work in representing the whistleblower and declared in a social media post that Gabbard and her office "have a lot of explaining to do."
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'The Fourth Amendment Literally Exists to Prevent This': Memo Claims ICE Can Forcibly Enter Homes Without Judicial Warrants
"Every American should be terrified by this secret ICE policy authorizing its agents to kick down your door and storm into your home," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, demanding congressional hearings.
Jan 21, 2026
"The United States government is looking for ways around that pesky Fourth Amendment," an investigative journalist said of Wednesday reporting by the Associated Press on an internal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo claiming that ICE agents can forcibly enter a private residence without a judicial warrant, consent, or an emergency.
The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
ICE's May 12 memo, part of a whistleblower disclosure obtained by the AP, says that "although the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS Office of the General Counsel has recently determined that the US Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose."
The January 7 disclosure was sent to the US Senate by the group Whistleblower Aid, which is "keeping the whistleblowers' identities anonymous even from oversight investigators," according to the document. It notes that despite being addressed to "All ICE Personnel," the seemingly unconstitutional memo "has not been formally distributed to all personnel."
Instead, it "has been provided to select DHS officials who are then directed to verbally brief the new policy for action. Those supervisors then show the memo to some employees, like our clients, and direct them to read the memo and return it to the supervisor," the disclosure details. "Newly hired ICE agents—many of whom do not have a law enforcement background—are now being directed to rely solely on" an administrative warrant drafted and signed by an ICE official to enter homes and make arrests.
Yeah, why could anyone think that ICE fits the description of the Gestapo?apnews.com/article/ice-...
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— Dan Sohege (@danielsohege.bsky.social) January 21, 2026 at 4:48 PM
Asked about the May 12 memo, signed by acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the AP that everyone DHS serves with an administrative warrant has already had "full due process and a final order of removal," and the US Supreme Court and Congress have "recognized the propriety of administrative warrants in cases of immigration enforcement."
However, as Whistleblower Aid senior vice president and special counsel David Kligerman stressed in a Wednesday statement, "no court has ever found that ICE agents have such legal authority to enter homes without a judicial warrant."
"This administration's secretive policy advocates conduct that the Supreme Court has described as 'the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed'—that is the warrantless physical entry of a home," he noted. "This is precisely what the Fourth Amendment was created to prevent."
"If ICE believes that this policy is consistent with the law, why not publicize it?" he asked. "Perhaps they've hidden it precisely because it cannot withstand legal scrutiny. Policies which impact fundamental constitutional rights, particularly one which the Supreme Court has called the greatest of equals among the Bill of Rights, should be discussed openly with the American people. It cannot be undone by hidden policy memos."
They just make up bullshit, bad-faith legal theories, do what they want until a court stops them, then lather, rinse, and repeat. In the meantime, they get to terrorize people. And nothing will happen to any of those responsible.Our courts are not equipped to deal with this.
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— Radley Balko (@radleybalko.bsky.social) January 21, 2026 at 5:14 PM
Other lawyers, journalists, and critics responded similarly to the AP's reporting on social media. Alejandra Caraballo of the Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic declared that "the Fourth Amendment literally exists to prevent this."
Bradley P. Moss, an attorney specializing in litigation related to national security, federal employment, and security clearance law, said, "Remember when the Fourth Amendment was still a thing?"
American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote: "It has been accepted for generations that the only thing which can authorize agents to break into your home is a warrant signed by a judge. No wonder ICE hid this memo!"
"This is the Trump administration trashing the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution in pursuit of its mass deportation agenda," he continued, highlighting a footnote that suggests "they won't even rule out authorizing home invasions with no judicial warrant for people not even ordered removed!"
"In short, this secret memo explains SO MUCH of what we've been seeing over the last months, including this raid of a home in Minneapolis where ICE officers presented no judicial warrant before breaking in the door," he said. "Turns out they were secretly told they don't need one!"
While Reichlin-Melnick shared photos of a scene in which armed immigration agents used a battering ram to enter a Minneapolis home and arrest a Liberian man, federal agents also recently broke down the door of a residence in neighboring Saint Paul, Minnesota, and arrested ChongLy "Scott" Thao, a US citizen who was later freed.
The AP reporting and responses to the leaked memo came as the Trump administration on Wednesday surged immigration agents to Maine for what it dubbed "Operation Catch of the Day," mirroring the federal deployment to not only Minnesota—where ICE officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good, a US citizen, in her vehicle earlier this month—but also Illinois and California.
US Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, opened an inquiry into reports of unconstitutional detentions of US citizens by immigration agents in October and on Wednesday demanded answers about the new whistleblower disclosure.
Blumenthal sent lists of questions and requests for records to Lyons and US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as well as Benjamin C. Huffman, director of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. The senator also wrote to Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), urging them to call the ICE and DHS leaders to testify before their panels.
"Every American should be terrified by this secret ICE policy authorizing its agents to kick down your door and storm into your home," Blumenthal said in a statement. "It is a legally and morally abhorrent policy that exemplifies the kinds of dangerous, disgraceful abuses America is seeing in real time."
"In our democracy, with vanishingly rare exceptions, the government is barred from breaking into your home without a judge giving a green light," he continued. "Government agents have no right to ransack your bedroom or terrorize your kids on a whim or personal desire. I am deeply grateful to brave whistleblowers who have come forward and put the rights of their fellow Americans first."
"My Republican colleagues who claim to value personal rights against government overreach now have an opportunity and obligation to prove that rhetoric is real," the senator added. "They must hold hearings and join me in demanding the Trump administration answer for this lawless policy."
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Authoritarians Gain Power From Lists; Here's How to Fight Back
Schindler built a list to save lives. Natanson built one to save the truth. The FBI just seized it. Whose list are you on?
Jan 17, 2026
At dawn on January 15, the infrastructure I documented in “The Disappearance Machine” completed its pivot. FBI agents seized a journalist’s devices containing 1,169 federal sources and know every person those sources ever contacted.
The surveillance tools built to map immigrant networks are now mapping dissent. The databases are merging. The lists are compiling. The machine is building its lists.
This essay asks when and how we will build ours.
In August, I preached and I warned: The United States had built a system for disappearance at scale, and it wouldn't stay at the border. I was dismissed as alarmist. Five months later, the wolf is through the door. The FBI at a journalist's home at dawn, seizing the devices that map everyone who ever talked.
The machine built to disappear immigrants is now being calibrated for journalists, whistleblowers, and political opposition. This is not the beginning of that process. It is the middle.
On January 15, 2026, FBI agents arrived at Hannah Natanson’s Virginia home before first light. They took her phone. Two laptops. A Garmin watch. The Washington Post reporter had spent a year as the “federal government whisperer,” building a network of 1,169 Signal contacts from federal workers documenting President Donald Trump’s transformation of government. Every one of those contacts trusted that encryption meant protection. Now their names, numbers, and message histories sit in FBI forensic labs. The trust was misplaced. The exposure is underway.
This is not a separate story from the immigration enforcement apparatus I documented in “The Disappearance Machine.” It is the same infrastructure, the same surveillance tools, the same logic of bureaucratic erasure, the same expansion I warned was inevitable.
The machine built to disappear immigrants is now being calibrated for journalists, whistleblowers, and political opposition. This is not the beginning of that process. It is the middle. The die is cast. The machinery is active. And it is learning how to map dissent the same way it learned to map migration: through databases, devices, and the quiet accumulation of lists that no one sees until it is too late.
The Infrastructure Does Not Discriminate
The tools were built for the border. They will not stay there.
In “The Disappearance Machine,” I described how the United States government contracted with Palantir, Amazon, and Anduril to build AI-powered surveillance systems for immigration enforcement. Predictive software. Commercial databases that map not just individuals but their relationships, behaviors, and associations. Cell signals tracked. Protest attendance logged. Clinic visits recorded. The same way totalitarian regimes once tracked enemies by ledger and index card, we now track them by algorithm and metadata.
That infrastructure was never going to stay confined to immigration. The tools don’t discriminate. They sort, flag, and process by design. A database built to map immigrant networks maps any network. Software trained to predict “deportability” predicts any target category you feed it. Surveillance systems deployed to track one population can pivot to another with a policy memo and a shift in priorities.
The Natanson raid makes that pivot visible. The FBI seized devices containing years of communications, contacts, and location data. Signal conversations with phone numbers traceable through government records. Email chains revealing addresses. Browser history showing which government sites she visited and when. Even the Garmin watch, because location data maps patterns of movement, meetings, and association.
This is not traditional criminal investigation. This is network mapping at scale. The same forensic capabilities applied to immigration databases are now being applied to journalist-source relationships. The architecture is identical. Only the target has changed.
The Lists Are Always the Core
Every authoritarian system runs on lists. Oskar Schindler knew that. He built one to save lives because the same machinery was building them to end lives. The list doesn't care what it's for. It just processes names.
The Disappearance Machine operates on lists. More than 20 million people are being targeted, already within reach of the immigration enforcement system based on the government’s own data. Not just undocumented immigrants but visa holders, DACA recipients, parolees, asylum seekers, aid workers, and US citizen children connected by family ties. The list converts proximity into guilt, connection into evidence, care into crime.
Now the same list-making infrastructure is being turned inward. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s December 2025 memo directs the FBI to compile “lists of groups or entities engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism.” These lists are compiled in secret. No notice. No hearing. No means for redress. Updated every 30 days. The FBI has established cash reward systems for informants and publicized tip lines for reporting suspected domestic terrorists.
None of this is new. It is merely new again.
A government employee on both lists, flagged for immigration ties and for contact with a journalist, becomes a higher-priority target.
The FBI’s Security Index and Rabble Rouser Index, exposed by the 1975 Church Committee, rolled civil rights leaders, clergy, and students into a homogeneous category of threats to national security. The Church Committee’s core lesson remains relevant: When the government builds systems for tracking domestic enemies, those systems rarely stay confined to people engaged in actual crime. They expand, driven by broad labels and institutional instincts to gather more information than needed.
The Natanson raid exposes how these lists are populated in practice. Seize a reporter’s devices. Map every source who ever made contact. Cross-reference with employment databases to identify agencies, departments, positions. Match timing of communications with leaks or published stories. Build a network diagram of everyone connected to information the government wants to control.
Hannah Natanson’s 1,169 sources on her federal government beat are not the whole exposure. Add thousands from years covering education. Sources from her January 6 coverage. Breaking news contacts from mass shootings and disasters. Email and phone contacts accumulated across a career going back to 2019. We are talking about thousands of people whose information now sits in FBI databases, flagged by association with someone the government decided to investigate.
Most did not share classified information. They shared workplace conditions, policy changes, agency mismanagement. That is often protected whistleblowing under law. But protection under law means little when the goal is not prosecution. The goal is mapping. Building lists. Identifying networks. Creating a comprehensive picture of who talks to whom about what.
And here is what makes this moment different from the Church Committee era: The lists are converging. The lists from immigration enforcement, the DOGE data accumulations, and journalist surveillance are being compiled in the same databases, using the same tools, following the same logic. Today they are separate categories. Tomorrow they can be merged, cross-referenced, analyzed for patterns. A government employee on both lists, flagged for immigration ties and for contact with a journalist, becomes a higher-priority target. The infrastructure doesn’t just track. It learns. It predicts. It escalates.
Bureaucratic Disappearance, Scaled and Refined
The violence hides in the paperwork.
In “The Disappearance Machine,” I described how people are being taken and files vanish. Lawyers find no records. Families are left with no answers. The system hides itself in bureaucracy. Cloud servers instead of filing cabinets. Charter flights instead of cattle cars. Software platforms instead of stamped passports. The fear is made public through spectacle, a raid televised, a camp built in a week, while the machine operates in silence.
The Natanson raid follows the same pattern. The spectacle is the dawn knock, the devices seized, the attorney general’s public statements about “classified information” and “national security.” That is theater. The real work happens in silence. FBI forensic labs extracting years of data. Analysts building network maps. Names added to databases. Sources flagged for investigation. All conducted under legal process that makes it feel orderly, authorized, routine.
This is what bureaucratic disappearance looks like when applied to dissent rather than detention. No one is being put on a plane. But sources are being exposed, careers destroyed, networks mapped, and fear distributed through the knowledge that contact with a journalist creates a permanent record accessible to law enforcement. The outcome is the same as physical disappearance: silence. Self-censorship. Networks dissolved not through arrests but through the rational calculation that speaking carries unacceptable risk.
The lesson is being taught one case at a time. Every federal employee now knows that contacting a journalist may mean their name ends up in an FBI file. Every journalist knows their sources face exposure if devices are seized. Every advocacy organization knows they might be labeled domestic terrorists and subjected to the same surveillance. The chilling effect operates not through mass arrests, which would be too visible, too contestable, but through the quiet accumulation of cases that teach everyone else to stay silent or risk everything.
This is how totalitarian systems operate. Not through spectacular violence but through bureaucratic process that converts dissent into data, association into evidence, and speech into crime. The machine does not announce its intentions. It simply processes the next case, adds the next name, expands the next database. And by the time the pattern is obvious to everyone, it is too late to stop it.
The Expansion Was Always the Plan
“If you’re telling yourself this is just about immigration, you are lying to yourself.” That is what I wrote in “The Disappearance Machine.” The infrastructure now in place can be turned inward with a single policy shift. A protest database. A subpoenaed group chat. A misread message. The files are already compiled. The logic is already tested. What began with immigration will not stop at the border. It will not stop at citizenship. It will not stop at all, unless it is broken.
The Natanson raid is that expansion happening in real time.
The surveillance tools built for immigration enforcement are now being applied to domestic political opposition. The lists are being compiled. The networks are being mapped. The legal framework is being established piece by piece.
This is the moment when action matters. Not later, when the pattern is obvious to everyone. Now, when the machinery is visible to those willing to look.
National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, issued September 2025, directs law enforcement to investigate “acts of recruiting or radicalizing persons” for “political violence, terrorism, or conspiracy against rights.” It identifies ideological markers as red flags: “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.” “Extremism on migration, race, and gender.” “Hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
The Bondi memo implements this vision by directing the FBI to compile lists of groups engaged in “organized doxing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, destruction of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder.” These categories are breathtakingly broad. They could encompass virtually any protest that becomes disruptive, any criticism framed as “anti-American,” any opposition to immigration enforcement or support for “radical gender ideology.”
What we are witnessing is the creation of a domestic terrorism designation process without legal foundation. No federal law permits the president to label domestic groups as terrorist organizations. Yet the administration proceeds anyway, using the same infrastructure built for immigration enforcement. Secret lists compiled. Cash rewards for informants. Joint Terrorism Task Forces, historically used against foreign threats, now mobilized against American citizens engaged in constitutionally protected activities.
This is not a future risk. It is operational now. The Natanson raid demonstrates how the system works in practice. A journalist documents government actions. Sources provide information. The government decides that information is dangerous. Devices are seized. Networks are mapped. Sources are exposed. Legal process provides cover. Bureaucracy makes it feel orderly. And the next journalist, the next source, the next researcher learns the lesson: Silence is survival.
What History Teaches
Ask survivors of authoritarian regimes what they remember. They rarely describe the first moment of violence. They describe the silence.
They remember when neighbors vanished and no one asked where they had gone. They remember how fear hardened into habit. How routine replaced resistance. How everyone waited too long to believe what was happening because believing meant acting, and acting meant risk.
We have seen this before. Not identical, but unmistakably familiar. In Nazi Germany, it was lists, uniforms, house visits, household registries, and public silence. Files became train rosters. Erasure became routine. Citizens looked away because the violence arrived not as chaos but as order. The Stasi in East Germany compiled comprehensive surveillance files on millions of citizens. The KGB used networks of informants to map dissent. The Gestapo maintained card files on suspected opponents. Each system relied on the same core infrastructure: comprehensive surveillance, secret lists, bureaucratic processing, and the normalization of disappearance.
The technology changes. The logic does not.
Now it is cloud servers instead of filing cabinets. AI-powered network analysis instead of hand-drawn relationship maps. Device seizures instead of house searches. The scale of what is now possible exceeds anything historical authoritarian regimes could achieve. The Stasi employed hundreds of thousands of informants and took decades to compile files on millions of people. The FBI can map networks of millions in months, using tools that automatically analyze communications, predict associations, and flag targets for investigation.
One device seizure exposes thousands of sources. Metadata reveals patterns of contact that would have taken years of human surveillance to establish. Location data maps every meeting, every movement, every association. And the databases that receive this information do not forget. Unlike paper files that could be destroyed, digital records persist indefinitely. They can be searched instantaneously, cross-referenced with immigration records, tax records, health records, financial transactions, social media activity, and location data from cell towers and traffic cameras.
This is not paranoia. This is documented capability. The contracts are public. The technologies are commercial. The legal frameworks are established. The only question is how far the government chooses to go. And history teaches that governments with comprehensive surveillance capability always go further than they initially promise.
The question survivors of other regimes ask is always the same: Why didn’t anyone act sooner? And the answer is always the same: because it arrived not as chaos but as order. Forms being filed. Legal procedures followed. Systems working exactly as designed. By the time the violence becomes undeniable, the infrastructure is already complete and the space for resistance has closed.
We are in that middle space now. The infrastructure is operational but not yet complete. The expansion is happening but not yet normalized. The lists are being compiled but not yet acted upon at full scale. This is the moment when action matters. Not later, when the pattern is obvious to everyone. Now, when the machinery is visible to those willing to look.
What Schindler Knew
Schindler understood something essential: The list is the power. Whoever holds the names decides who disappears and who survives. He built a list to save lives because the same machinery, in other hands, was building lists to end them. Same columns. Same categories. Same bureaucratic logic. Different purpose. That was the only difference that mattered.
Hannah Natanson built a list too. Not names to save from trains, but names willing to speak truth. 1,169 sources who believed that documenting the dismantling of democratic government mattered more than their comfort, their careers, their safety. She built a network of witnesses. A chorus of voices. A record of resistance written in encrypted messages and quiet meetings and the steady courage of people who decided that silence was not an option.
That list is now in FBI hands. The sources are exposed. The network is mapped. The chorus is identified. The machinery built to disappear immigrants has turned inward, and the first thing it seized was a record of everyone who ever talked.
This is not coincidence. It is strategy.
The answer to a list of targets is a list too long to process, too distributed to seize, too deeply rooted to pull from the ground.
Hannah Arendt wrote that totalitarianism succeeds not through violence alone but through isolation. It atomizes. It separates. It makes each person feel alone, unseen, unable to trust that anyone else sees what they see or feels what they feel. The purpose of seizing a journalist’s sources is not prosecution. It is silence. It is severing. It is teaching every federal employee, every potential whistleblower, every citizen with something true to say that they stand alone. That no one will protect them. That the machine sees all, remembers all, and forgives nothing.
The answer to isolation is solidarity. The answer to silence is a thousand voices. The answer to a list of targets is a list too long to process, too distributed to seize, too deeply rooted to pull from the ground.
Schindler saved 1,100 lives because he understood that the list was the power and he seized it. Hannah Natanson documented a transformation of government because she understood that the truth required witnesses and she gathered them. Both built something the machinery could not build for itself: trust. Connection. A web of humans who chose each other over safety.
That is what the machine cannot tolerate. Not the leaks. Not the stories. The solidarity. The proof that isolation can be broken, that people will still speak to people, that the chorus can grow louder even as the machinery grows stronger.
What we build now determines what survives. The networks we create. The connections we protect. The records we keep in too many hands to seize, too many places to raid, too many voices to silence.
The machine is processing names. It will not stop. It does not tire. It does not forget.
But neither does memory. Neither does history. Neither do the witnesses who refuse to look away.
Schindler built a list. Hannah built a list.
Now build yours.
This essay builds on “The Disappearance Machine,” published in Common Dreams, August 30, 2025. A comprehensive academic version has been accepted for peer-reviewed publication and will appear this spring.
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'Part of a Larger War': Whistleblower Exposes ICE Effort to Spy on Immigrants—and Americans
"The ICE crackdown isn’t just about immigration; it’s about gathering intelligence... on antifa, on the radical left... and anyone else they consider terrorists," said journalist Ken Klippenstein.
Jan 14, 2026
An "outraged" Border Patrol official has leaked files exposing numerous secret Trump administration efforts to spy on both migrants and American citizens, and to falsely portray every single person who enters the United States without authorization as a terrorist or drug trafficker, a US investigative journalist revealed Wednesday.
The disaffected Border Patrol official gave journalist Ken Klippenstein documents showing "the dizzying scope" of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations. These range from previously undisclosed code names of secret ICE missions to an explanation that a key objective of a nationwide campaign called Operation Abracadabra is "tying every individual who crosses the border illegally to a foreign terrorist organization [or a] transnational criminal organization."
A document on another operation—code-named Benchwarmer—reveals that, in an effort aimeda at "collecting information not normally gained" during standard interrogations, “plainclothes agents have been embedded in transport vans, sally ports, processing areas, and detention cells to gather important tactical intelligence and or information."
🚨Border Patrol whistleblower outraged by ICE's conduct exposes over a dozen secret ICE programs in documents leaked to me:www.kenklippenstein.com/p/21-secret-...
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— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein.bsky.social) January 14, 2026 at 9:40 AM
Klippenstein wrote that opposition to ICE's actions "has spread throughout the Department of Homeland Security" in the wake of last week's killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE officer Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis. Articles of impeachment filed Wednesday by Democratic members of Congress against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem note how she falsely accused Good of "domestic terrorism."
The discontent with ICE "is also affecting the Justice Department," said Klippenstein, who noted the resignation of half a dozen federal prosecutors "over pressure to investigate Renee Good’s widow," and that FBI officials are "increasingly split" over the White House's effort to link Good with extremists.
"The media is telling a certain story about ICE, giving the blow by blow on the most public horrors but never quite seeing the bigger picture that it’s part of a larger war," Klippenstein asserted. "As a military intelligence source told me, the ICE crackdown isn’t just about immigration; it’s about gathering intelligence in support of [President Donald] Trump’s war on cartels—as well as on antifa, on the radical left, those who are 'anti-American,' and anyone else they consider terrorists."
ICE has also come under fire during Trump's second administration for its surveillance of people who criticize the agency on social media, using facial recognition technology to identify US citizens without their consent, and other policies and practices.
Time's Philip Wang reported Wednesday on dissent among ICE's ranks over Good's killing and the Trump administration's response, which includes legally dubious claims of "absolute immunity" for Ross.
“I’m embarrassed,” one former ICE agent of over 25 years told Wang. “The majority of my colleagues feel the same way. It’s an insult to us... to see what they’re doing now.”
Insiders have pointed to the Trump administration's rush to hire and rapidly deploy more than 10,000 new ICE agents to carry out the president's plan for the "largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants” in US history as a major cause for concern. Critics say that ICE's ramped-up recruitment—which includes $50,000 signing bonuses and the use of racist messaging to lure applicants—is producing inadequately trained ICE officers who, confident of their impunity, are terrorizing communities.
"When thousands of over-militarized immigration agents descend on American communities akin to an invading military force, it seeks to terrorize us, actively harms public safety, and raises the likelihood of violence," Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the advocacy group America's Voice, said in a statement Wednesday.
"Meanwhile, the mass deportation agenda is diverting money, manpower, investigative attention, and resources away from real threats—like child exploitation, drug trafficking investigations, and... disaster preparedness funding—all for the purpose of becoming foot soldiers in Stephen Miller's anti-immigrant crusade," Cárdenas added, referring to the white nationalist White House deputy chief of staff.
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Warren Calls for Probe as Whistleblowers Accuse Trump Appointees of 'Systematically Destroying' Fair Housing Act
Warren says new whistleblower reports "show the extent of the Trump administration's attack on civil rights and show how the administration appears to be ignoring the law."
Sep 22, 2025
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren is calling for an investigation into the Department of Housing and Urban Development after several whistleblowers reported that Trump appointees have gutted enforcement of the decades-old law banning housing discrimination.
A New York Times report published Monday, quotes "half a dozen current and former employees of HUD’s fair housing office" who "said that the Trump political appointees had made it nearly impossible for them to do their jobs" enforcing the 1968 Fair Housing Act "which involve investigating and prosecuting landlords, real estate agents, lenders and others who discriminate based on race, religion, gender, family status or disability."
In a video posted to social media, Warren (D-Mass.) explained that “if you’re a mom protecting her kids from living with an abusive father or if you’re getting denied a mortgage because of the color of your skin, you have civil rights protection under US law. But the Trump administration has been systematically destroying these federal protections for renters and homeowners.”
According to the Times, when President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency, formerly led by billionaire Elon Musk, launched its crusade to dismantle large parts of the federal government at the start of Trump's second term earlier this year, the Office of Fair Housing (OFH) had its staff cut by 65% through layoffs and reassignments, with the number of employees dropping from 31 to 11. Just six of the remaining staff now work on fair housing cases.
The number of discrimination charges pursued by the office has plummeted since Trump took office. In most years, it has 35. During Trump's second term, the office has pursued just four. Meanwhile, it's obtained just $200,000 total in legal settlements after previously obtaining anywhere from $4 million to $8 million per year.
Emails and memos obtained by the Times show a pattern of Trump appointees obstructing investigations:
In one email, a Trump appointee... described decades of housing discrimination cases as “artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary.”
In another, a career supervisor in the department’s [OFH] objected to lawyers being reassigned to other offices; the supervisor was fired six days later for insubordination.
In a third, the office’s director of enforcement warned that Trump appointees were using gag orders and intimidation to block discrimination cases from moving forward. The urgent message was sent to a US senator, who is referring it to the department’s acting inspector general for investigation.
Several lawyers said they have been restricted from using past cases in enforcement and communicating with certain clients without approval from Trump's appointees.
A memo also reportedly went out to employees informing them that documents “contrary to administration policy” would be thrown out, and that “tenuous theories of discrimination” would no longer be pursued.
Among those supposedly "tenuous" cases have been ones involving appraisal bias—the practice of undervaluing homes owned by Black families—zoning restrictions blocking housing for Black and Latino families, and cases related to discrimination against people over gender or gender expression.
The administration has also abandoned cases related to the racist practice of "redlining"—the decades-old practice of denying mortgages to minorities and others in minority neighborhoods—with memos from Trump appointees calling the concept "legally unsound."
The changes follow a sweeping set of executive orders from Trump during his first week in office, targeting "diversity equity, and inclusion" (DEI) programs. Employees at the Office of Fair Housing told the Times that Trump appointees had begun to describe much of the department's work as "an offshoot of DEI."
A HUD spokesperson, Kasey Lovett, told the Times that it was "patently false" to suggest that the administration was trying to weaken the Fair Housing Act. She pointed out that HUD was still handling approximately 4,100 cases this year, on par with the previous year. As the Times notes, "Lovett did not address, however, how many of the cases had been investigated or had resulted in legal action."
According to the Times:
Hundreds of pending fair housing cases were frozen, and some settlements revoked, even when accusations of discrimination had been substantiated, according to the interviews and the internal communications.
In one instance, a large homeowner’s association in Texas was found to have banned the use of housing vouchers by Black residents. That case had been referred to the Justice Department, but the referral was abruptly withdrawn by the new Trump appointees.
Four current staff members have provided the trove of documents to Warren, who announced Monday that she'd sent a request to Brian Harrison, HUD’s acting inspector general, to open an investigation into its handling of discrimination cases.
Warren said that the documents "show the extent of the Trump administration's attack on civil rights and show how the administration appears to be ignoring the law."
In a press release from the Democrats on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, Warren, the ranking member, highlighted the particularly devastating impact staffing cuts have had on the enforcement of complaints under the Violence Against Women Act, which the Times says only two of the six lawyers remaining at HUD have experience with.
According to Warren, whistleblowers said the cuts were "placing survivors in greater danger of suffering additional trauma, physical violence, and even death."
Warren said that as a result of the hundreds of dropped cases, "Now people are asking, 'well, why would I file a case at all if nothing's going to happen?'"
Calling for an independent investigation, Warren said, "We wrote these laws to make this a fairer America, and now it's time to enforce those laws."
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I’ve Seen States Collapse; Now I See It Happening Here
After years reporting from post-authoritarian states, I now see the same patterns in my own backyard—where justice has collapsed, truth is suppressed, and power no longer answers to the people.
Sep 07, 2025
I’ve seen the aftermath of collapsed nations—now I see it happening here.
As a journalist and analyst, I’ve spent the last several years living and reporting in regions that have undergone massive political transformations. I lived for years in the Czech Republic, where I met many people with direct ties to the Velvet Revolution. I walked the streets of Prague with those who once occupied them in protest. I studied the Russian language, traveled extensively through the former Eastern Bloc, and listened closely to the survivors of failed regimes—those who remember the slow unraveling of authority, trust, and truth.
I’ve also spent significant time in South America, where I witnessed a very different kind of collapse—and rebirth. In Bolivia, I spoke with officials and journalists who lived through the 2019 coup and saw their country fight its way back to democracy. I’ve walked with communities who understand, firsthand, how empires and juntas collapse—and how people organize in the rubble.
Now I believe this country is collapsing.
Not in the dramatic, Hollywood fashion we tend to imagine—there are no tanks in the streets, no blackout zones or food lines. But what I am witnessing now in Northern Kentucky, through my work with the Northern Kentucky Truth & Accountability Project (NKTAP), is unmistakable: a slow-motion institutional implosion. And it mirrors what I have seen in failed or failing states around the world.
In Northern Kentucky, I’ve uncovered a network of corruption that spans law enforcement, prosecutorial offices, courts, and local media. I’ve documented how whistleblowers are silenced, public records denied, and criminal cases manipulated to protect the powerful.
Police ignore credible murder leads. Prosecutors bury evidence. Courts issue orders without hearings. And journalists—some out of fear, others out of complicity—refuse to report the truth. In my own case, I’ve faced obstruction, threats, targeted harassment, and retaliatory smears simply for investigating what any decent system should have investigated itself.
Our institutions are no longer capable of self-correction. That means the burden of accountability, truth telling, and justice now falls on us.
The structures of governance still stand. The buildings are still open. But the rule of law has collapsed in all but name. What remains is theater—a simulation of justice that functions to preserve power, not serve the public.
This isn’t just about Northern Kentucky. It’s a microcosm. I’m in touch with colleagues around the country—investigators, reporters, former civil servants—and I hear the same story again and again:
- Entire state agencies captured by private interests;
- Local governments ignoring open records laws;
- Whistleblowers retaliated against without recourse;
- Judges ruling from sealed dockets with no oversight;
- Public health policy shaped by ideology, not science; and
- Independent journalism gutted, bought, or blacklisted.
We are in a moment of mass epistemic failure, where truth itself is destabilized and power no longer answers to reason, law, or fact.
It doesn’t come with a bang. It comes with:
- The quiet refusal to investigate credible crimes;
- The steady normalization of lawlessness;
- The dissolution of public trust; and
- The emergence of parallel systems of truth-telling and justice.
This is what I’ve seen before. In Prague. In La Paz. In the fractured republics of the former USSR. It begins when the official channels of accountability no longer function—and the people must build their own.
That’s what I’m doing with the Northern Kentucky Truth & Accountability Project. We’re documenting. Archiving. Speaking to victims. Exposing public records that local officials tried to bury. We’re creating a people’s archive—a living record of a regime in decline.
Because when institutions stop telling the truth, the only way forward is to tell it ourselves.
I used to believe that America was “different”—that our legal tradition, constitutional system, and civic institutions would inoculate us from the kinds of collapse I saw abroad. I no longer believe that.
The US is not collapsing because it is uniquely broken. It is collapsing because it is a state like any other, vulnerable to the same corruption, elite decay, and loss of legitimacy that have brought down countless systems before.
The question is not whether collapse is happening. It is. The question is what we do after we accept that reality.
We can pretend this is just “polarization.” We can tell ourselves that if we just wait for the next election, the pendulum will swing back. Or we can admit the truth: Our institutions are no longer capable of self-correction. That means the burden of accountability, truth telling, and justice now falls on us—on journalists, organizers, whistleblowers, and ordinary people with the courage to say: enough.
I’ve seen what happens when people organize. I’ve also seen what happens when they don’t.
And I’m telling you: Now is the time to choose.
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'Cowardice': Senate GOP Brushes Whistleblowers Aside to Confirm Trump Loyalist Emil Bove
"Bove, facing a wave of damning allegations that the overwhelming majority of Republican senators refused to take seriously, has been confirmed for one reason only: obedience to Trump."
Jul 30, 2025
Nearly every Senate Republican on Tuesday voted in favor of confirming Trump loyalist Emil Bove to a lifetime federal court seat, brushing aside whistleblowers who alleged that the Justice Department official expressed support for defying court orders and lied during his sworn judiciary committee testimony.
The final Senate vote on Bove's confirmation to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit was 50-49, with every member of the Democratic caucus voting no. Just two Republicans—Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—opposed Bove's confirmation.
Maggie Jo Buchanan, interim executive director of the advocacy group Demand Justice, said the vote "represents some of the worst aspects of far too many elected to office in Washington—cowardice and political expediency over duty to constituents."
"The American people want and deserve judges who are independent and fair, not ones who have done nothing to hide their political loyalties," she added. "Bove, facing a wave of damning allegations that the overwhelming majority of Republican senators refused to take seriously, has been confirmed for one reason only: obedience to Trump."
Tuesday's vote came hours after The Washington Post reported that a third whistleblower had shared evidence with senators suggesting that Bove "misled lawmakers about his handling of the dismissal of public corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams."
Democratic senators demanded an investigation into the allegations before the final vote to confirm Bove, but Republicans rushed ahead with the vote anyway.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in a statement following Tuesday's vote that "this sham, hide-the-ball confirmation process is a new low for subservient Senate Republicans."
"Even as the lawless Emil Bove appears to have misled the committee about multiple, credible, backstopped allegations of misconduct, this body has sunk to simply being a partisan rubber stamp for President Trump," said Whitehouse. "Republicans have ignored whistleblower after whistleblower who bravely came forward to corroborate evidence of Bove's misconduct."
"Bove's confirmation sets the stage for the president and his allies to seek out favorable rulings, no matter how unconstitutional their actions may be."
Whistleblower Aid, a group representing one of the Bove whistleblowers, said prior to Tuesday's vote that Trump's Justice Department claimed to have lost a complaint "documenting Emil Bove's contempt for the rule of law" before finding it again on Monday.
The group noted that the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General "received an online copy of the complaint from Whistleblower Aid on May 2 and signed in a couriered copy three days later." The complaint, according to Whistleblower Aid, "provided documentary evidence that Bove and other senior DOJ officials instructed department lawyers to violate a court order relating to the Trump administration's immigration deportation policies."
"They also directed DOJ lawyers to commit perjury in federal court to cover up the violation, the evidence shows," according to the group. "Yet the office now says the documents were lost and refound only after Whistleblower Aid presented proof of submission and receipt. Evidence relevant to the Senate's final vote on the Bove nomination has thus sat unacknowledged for almost three months, foreclosing the possibility of any meaningful investigation into a lifetime judicial appointment."
Last month, The New York Times reported that one whistleblower—a DOJ lawyer who has since been fired—alleged that Bove said earlier this year that the Justice Department "would need to consider telling the courts 'fuck you'" if they ruled against the Trump administration's attempts to deport immigrants without due process.
Caroline Ciccone, president of the watchdog group Accountable.US, said Tuesday that Bove's confirmation "should send a chill down the spine of every American."
"Bove has shown total loyalty to Trump above the American people; refused to commit to recusing himself on cases involving the president; and is the subject of multiple whistleblower complaints," said Ciccone. "His extreme ideological record and ethical lapses have raised grave concerns about his integrity, but that didn't stop Republican senators from ramming his confirmation through, falling in line with Trump's scheme of hand-selecting judges who vow personal loyalty over the rule of law."
"Bove's confirmation sets the stage for the president and his allies to seek out favorable rulings, no matter how unconstitutional their actions may be," she warned. "And that is a threat to fundamental freedoms everywhere."
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