Trump Takes Fascist Threat to Next Level With New Proposal on Judges

Donald Trump thinks it should be “illegal” for the public to criticize the Supreme Court justices who rule in his favor.

In a bizarre speech over the weekend, between a bad Emmanuel Macron impression and claiming that he is better looking than Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump made a frightening declaration: He believes that those who criticize his judges should be punished.

“I really think it’s illegal what they do, with judges and justices. They’re playing the ref,” Trump said at a Saturday rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. “Remember the term. Playing the ref with our judges and justices should be punishable by very serious fines and beyond that.”

But even as others get their First Amendment rights taken from them, Trump thinks he should still have a right to criticize the courts. “The New York court system is totally corrupt,” Trump said in the same Saturday speech, referring to the court that convicted him of 34 felonies in his hush-money trial. His rants about the judge, the prosecutors, and the witnesses in that trial were so extreme that he was slapped with a gag order back in March, part of which still remains in place.

Trump’s suggestion comes as the Supreme Court’s conservative justices are under greater scrutiny after multiple reports of corruption and ties to far-right groups. Last month, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced articles of impeachment against Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

J.D. Vance argued Tuesday that access to firearms should only be restricted for those convicted of a crime—meaning that those under restraining orders should still be able to purchase weapons.

During a press conference in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Vance was asked what he thought about restricting firearms access for those convicted of stalking. Vance answered the question, and then some.

“Well look, I think that we certainly don’t want violent criminals to have access to weapons, and that includes people, I think, who have been convicted of stalking. But I think it’s important to say convicted,” Vance replied.

“And what a lot of those of us who are pro-Second Amendment, what we don’t want is, you know, we don’t want somebody to have their gun rights taken away when they haven’t actually been to court of law. Whether it’s a First Amendment right, a Second Amendment right, you are entitled to due process in this country,” Vance explained.

“Certainly, people who are convicted of a crime, they should not be able to carry a firearm. But people who have not gone through due process, they still have their rights,” he said.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court upheld a New York law prohibiting domestic abusers under restraining orders from carrying firearms, with one lone dissenter: Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas argued that the government could not “strip the Second Amendment right of anyone subject to a protective order—even if he has never been accused or convicted of a crime.”

In the majority opinion, Chief Supreme Court Justice Roberts found that the New York law was in line with constitutional law. “Our tradition of firearm regulation allows the government to disarm individuals who present a credible threat to the physical safety of others,” Roberts wrote.

J.D. Vance and Donald Trump are attacking Andy Beshear over comments the Kentucky governor made on MSNBC Tuesday morning.

“I mean, think about what some people have had to go through because of these laws,” Beshear told Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe regarding Republican states’ laws against abortion.

“J.D. Vance calls pregnancy resulting from rape ‘inconvenient.’ Inconvenience is traffic. Make him go through this,” Beshear added.

The Trump-Vance campaign seized on the words and took them out of context, claiming that Beshear actually called for Vance’s family members to be raped. Vance’s spokesperson William Martin called for Kamala Harris to “immediately repudiate” Beshear’s comments.

The Republican vice presidential nominee chimed in himself, calling Beshear a “disgusting person.”

It’s pretty clear that the Trump campaign is deliberately misinterpreting Beshear’s words, looking to make an issue when in reality, Beshear was accusing Vance of downplaying pregnancies resulting from rape. Recent polls have shown that while the Harris-Walz campaign is surging, Trump and Vance are going in the opposite direction.

Vance could be attacking Beshear as a way to distract from his own views on abortion. Last week, he said that “normal” women don’t care about their reproductive rights, and, long before that, he said some weirder things about procreation and women who don’t have children. In any case, Vance and Trump have struggled to land any effective attack or criticism against Harris or her running mate, Tim Walz, so expect to see them try to manufacture more controversies as the election draws nearer.

He may not be in office, but Donald Trump has been speaking with the powers that be about Israel’s war on Gaza—but it’s not in an effort to end the genocide.

Instead, Trump has allegedly been talking with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to avert a cease-fire deal, fearing that doing so could help Vice President Kamala Harris win in November, according to PBS.

“The reporting is that former President Trump is on the phone with the Prime Minister of Israel, urging him not to cut a deal right now, because it’s believed that would help the Harris campaign,” said PBS’s Judy Woodruff Monday night. “So, I don’t know where—who knows whether that will come about or not, but I have to think that the Harris campaign would like for President Biden to do what presidents do, and that’s to work on that one.”

Woodruff clarified on Wednesday that the anecdote was not based on her original reporting, but rather on an an Axios story last week that cited two U.S. sources as claiming that Trump and Netanyahu had spoken on the phone about cease-fire and Gaza hostage talks. Netanyahu’s office and Trump both separately denied the report.

“I did encourage him to get this over with. You want to get it over with fast. Have victory, get your victory, and get it over with. It has to stop, the killing has to stop,” Trump said at a New Jersey press conference on Thursday, referring to their meeting at Mar-a-Lago last month. But he also criticized cease-fire demands.

During Biden’s speech at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, the president promised that his administration is working around the clock to bring “humanitarian assistance into Gaza,” “peace and security to the Middle East,” and to deliver a “cease-fire” and an end to the war.

The president also nodded to the more than 3,500 protesters who took to the streets of Chicago on Monday, demanding an immediate cease-fire to the war, claiming that the demonstrators “have a point.”* The war has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians since it began 10 months ago.

Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, who escaped the besieged country in December, reported on Monday that the humanitarian area in south Gaza is little more than 14 square miles.

“Crammed in it are more than 1.8 million people, with no water, no electricity, no food, no clinics or pharmacies, and no shelters,” he wrote, lamenting in a separate post that he cannot “understand how this government continues to fund the genocide but cannot put an end to it” and “force the aggressors to stop dropping bombs.”

* This piece has been updated to clarify the number of protesters at the DNC.

This piece has been updated with Woodruff’s statement on Wednesday.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign is sinking fast. Federal Election Commission filings indicated that the fringe political candidate spent more than he brought into the campaign in July, with more than half of his donations coming out of the pocket of his running mate Nicole Shanahan, a Silicon Valley lawyer and investor.

But shortly after the dire news broke, Shanahan revealed precisely why the conspiracy theorist has remained on the ballot so long, despite his abysmal polling.

“I’ve got to keep focusing on what matters the most outside of party lines. I need to focus on a vision that goes beyond November,” Shanahan told Tom Bilyeu’s Impact Theory podcast, adding that there are “benefits” to staying in the race, including official party recognition if their campaign secures more than five percent of the vote. That could translate into a stronger third party in the next election cycle, thanks to public funds that could provide up to $13.5 million dollars to the fledgling political group.

“That means that we could position for a real third-party election in 2028, where we don’t have to go around and spend tens of millions of dollars on ballot access, which means that we can spend all of that time and money campaigning,” Shanahan said.

But there’s an entirely different outlook for the Kennedy campaign should they decide to pull out—and, according to Shanahan, it would all be for the benefit of one candidate.

“There’s two options that we’re looking at, and one is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Walz presidency because we draw votes from Trump,” she said. “Or, we walk away right now and join forces with Donald Trump.”

That latter option would require explaining to all of Kennedy’s supporters why the alternative political pairing have, after all their efforts, ultimately bent the knee to the two-party system. And while that wouldn’t pave the way for more political representation for everyday Americans, it could translate into administration positions for Kennedy and Shanahan. In fact, Trump already floated the idea in July, pitching that Kennedy—a notorious vaccine skeptic—could lead the Health and Human Services Department should the Republican nominee win in November.

“Not an easy decision,” Shanahan said.