Trump Threatens RICO Charges Against George Soros

Amid escalations in Donald Trump’s use of lawfare against his political opponents, the president on Wednesday threatened to hit George Soros with charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO—citing long-running MAGA conspiracy theories about the Democratic megadonor.

On Truth Social Wednesday, Trump said George Soros and his son Alexander “should be charged with RICO because of their support of Violent Protests, and much more, all throughout the United States of America.”

Trump and his allies frequently claim that popular displays against their agenda must be the result of an astroturfed campaign—with George Soros often posited as the mastermind.

The Soros’s Open Society Foundations issued a statement in response to Trump’s threat. The philanthropy network does “not support or fund violent protests,” and the president’s remarks about its founder, George Soros, and chair, Alex Soros, are “outrageous,” the statement says.

Going back to 2018, Trump claimed that demonstrators against Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination were “paid for by Soros and others.” Similar claims were touted by the MAGA right amid the Women’s March in 2017 and protests against police brutality in 2020.

More recently, Trump said constituents who spoke out at Republican town halls were “paid troublemakers.” Protesters against Trump’s ongoing federal takeover of Washington, D.C., were too, according to the president, bought by Democrats.

Conspiracy theories related to Soros came to the fore in particular during the June demonstrations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles.

Trump repeatedly claimed protesters were “paid insurrectionists or agitators or troublemakers.” Meanwhile, MAGA social media circulated conspiracy-minded posts, such as photos of pallets of bricks (actually taken in New Jersey and Malaysia) as purported evidence of Soros-funded groups arming L.A. protesters with bricks “to be used by Democrat militants against ICE.”

Now, the president suggests such paranoid claims are sturdy enough to serve as the foundation for RICO charges. “Be careful, we’re watching you!” the president wrote, before signing off.

This story has been updated.

A group of Federal Emergency Management Administration staff who wrote a letter to Congress criticizing President Donald Trump—and who asked to be protected from “politically motivated firings”—have been suspended, likely for political reasons.

Thirty-six FEMA employees, including two who were involved in the federal response to deadly flooding in Texas earlier this summer, received emails Tuesday saying they’d been placed on administrative leave “effective immediately, and continuing until further notice,” according to The New York Times.

They were part of a group of 182 FEMA employees who signed a letter warning Congress that President Donald Trump’s efforts to “phase out” the agency could make way for another Hurricane Katrina-level environmental disaster. The rest of the signatories were anonymous.

The employees advocated that FEMA be removed from the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, and made into an independent Cabinet-level agency. The letter criticized faulty leadership, as well as the Trump administration’s decision to gut millions from essential programs related to climate change and resilience.

Notably, they’d asked for protection from “politically motivated firings.” FEMA’s former acting head Cameron Hamilton was fired in May after defending the agency.

While the employees who were suspended Tuesday night were not given a reason for the decision, the suspensions appear to be part of a wider trend in the Trump administration of weeding out dissidents.

In July, 144 staff members at the Environmental Protection Agency were placed on administrative leave after they signed and publicized a “declaration of dissent” against Administrator Lee Zeldin and the greater Trump administration.

President Trump is threatening a Republican-led “comprehensive crime bill” to, of course, “Make America Great Again.”

“Speaker Mike Johnson, and Leader John Thune, are working with me, and other Republicans, on a Comprehensive Crime Bill,” Trump posted on Truth Social just after midnight on Wednesday. “It’s what our Country need, and NOW! More to follow. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”

The president offered no other details, but his current federal occupation of Washington, D.C., and his countless unsubstantiated campaign trail claims about just how bad the streets of America are can help us guess.

While some Democrats have framed his unleashing of armed National Guard troops in Los Angeles and D.C. as a distraction, the move has interrupted the lives of real people and serves as a chilling blueprint for what may come next. On Monday, Trump signed an executive order to create a “quick reaction force” in the National Guard that could be deployed nationwide. And he’s already promised to send troops to cities like Baltimore, Chicago, and New York.

This all comes as crime in America is the lowest it’s been in years.

In 2024, Donald Trump won Iowa’s first state Senate District handily, by 11 points. In a Tuesday special election, Democratic candidate Catelin Drey won an upset 10-point victory, as the district swung blue by 21 points since the presidential election.

Drey defeated Republican Christopher Prosch, filling a vacancy left by late Republican state Senator Rocky De Witt. The last time the seat was up for election, in 2022, De Witt beat a Democratic incumbent by about 10 points.

Drey’s victory breaks a supermajority that Iowa Senate Republicans have enjoyed since 2022. This means Republican senators will have to reach across party lines and recruit at least one Democrat to confirm the nominees of Republican Governor Kim Reynolds.

The election was the fourth Iowa special election this year, all of which bode poorly for the GOP’s standing in the Hawkeye state. Two of the elections that took place before Tuesday also went to Democrats, one of whom ousted an incumbent Republican 52–48. All three also saw Democratic overperformances from 2024—by 24, 25, and 26 points.

Looking beyond state lines, according to The Downballot, Democratic candidates in special elections nationwide have overperformed the party’s 2024 presidential election results by around 16 points.

Republican Senator Susan Collins’s ribbon-cutting ceremony Tuesday turned into a public shaming as more than 200 protestors gathered to jeer the centrist from Maine.

This was Collins’s first public, press conference-style event in her home state in nearly a decade. Video shows the room erupting in boos as she approached the front of the room to cut the ribbon for a new Main Street in Seaport, Maine. The boos eventually turned into chants of “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

Collins smiled and cut the ribbon as if her angry constituents weren’t even there. The crowd continued to shout her down.

“I’m so disgusted with the cuts the Republican Party has made to this Big Ugly Bill.... Get outta here!” one constituent yelled at Collins while she was at the podium.

“So now, if you would let me celebrate—,” Collins responded, alluding to the Main Street grand opening.

“Oh please, there’s no celebration for a genocide!” another constituent shouted, causing the crowd to erupt once again.

“Could you please just listen for one—”

“We’d like you to listen!”

“You don’t ever listen to us!”

“Your votes destroyed our Supreme Court!”

“You refuse to have town halls with us!”

“Why are you funding genocide?”

“I have a suggestion,” Collins said when she was able to get a word in. “Could you listen to the suggestion?”

“Vote Graham Platner!” another attendee shouted.

“Here is my suggestion,” said Collins. “I would like the town of Seaport, which has worked so hard with state, local, and me, to bring today about. To be able to celebrate—”

Collins was again shouted down, this time over her votes to continue funding and arming Israel in its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

This all comes as progressive populist Democrat Graham Platner announced his bid to unseat Collins last week in a now viral video. His candidacy serves as a foil to Collins on almost every issue, and Maine residents are starting to notice.

“My name is Graham Platner and I’m running for U.S. Senate to defeat Susan Collins and topple the oligarchy that’s destroying our country,” he said in his campaign video. “I’m a veteran, oysterman, and working class Mainer who’s seen this state become unlivable for working people. And that makes me deeply angry.”

Platner, a Marine veteran, has pledged to end “endless wars” and refuse to take money from AIPAC.

“What is happening in Gaza is a genocide. I refuse to take money from AIPAC or any group that supports the genocide in Gaza,” he told Jewish Insider. Collins has long been AIPAC-backed and voted for President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Collins’s chances of winning have been precarious for some time now. Her dedication to a spineless centrist conservatism has frustrated Maine voters, especially in a state won by Kamala Harris in the 2024 general election. That, combined with Collins’s icy reception at her own event, and Platner’s current surge, should make the longtime senator very worried.