Republicans Claim “No Kings” Protesters “Hate America”

Republicans are rushing to recast upcoming protests against President Donald Trump as anti-American rallies that are somehow prolonging the government shutdown.

During an interview on CNBC Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent blamed the Democrats for a lack of movement on reopening the federal government, claiming that they were waiting to move until after the “No Kings Day” rally planned for October 18 opposing the administration’s authoritarian tilt.

“There’s a thought out there that they’re at least waiting to get this crazy ‘No Kings’ rally this weekend, which is gonna be the farthest left, the hardest-core, the most unhinged in the Democratic Party which is, you know, a big title,” Bessent claimed.

“You know, no kings equal no paychecks,” he added.

During a propaganda press conference later Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson framed the upcoming “No Kings Day” as a “Hate America rally.”

“Let’s see who shows up for that,” Johnson said. “I bet you see pro-Hamas supporters. I bet you see antifa types. I bet you see the Marxists in full display. The people who don’t want to stand and defend the foundational truths of this republic, and that’s what we’re here doing every single day.”

Other Republicans were quick to join Johnson, with Representatives Steve Scalise and Lisa McClain also referring to the protest as the “Hate America rally.”

Johnson started the trend of villainizing constitutionally protected protest last week when he inexplicably claimed that the “No Kings Day” demonstration was somehow to blame for the government shutdown. “It’s being told to us that they won’t be able to reopen the government until after that rally, ’cuz they can’t face their rabid base,” Johnson said of Democrats at the time.

For the past three weeks, GOP lawmakers have been phoning in that whole defending-the-Republic thing, ever since Johnson sent them home amid the ongoing government shutdown. It seems clear that it’s Republicans who have refused to negotiate with Democrats—not the other way around.

Crucially, Republicans are blatantly mischaracterizing the attendees of the nationwide “No Kings” rally, in an attempt to criminalize dissent against Trump. These protests, which have been recurring since the beginning of the second Trump administration, have been notably tame, reportedly populated by older, liberal white people who love America but hate Trump’s policies. The temperate collective action would likely not be left enough for anyone who was ostensibly anti-fascist. Republicans’ outlandish predictions for who is likely to attend are simply setting the stage for law enforcement crackdowns on protesters’ First Amendment rights.

The speaker’s suggestion that protesting the government is un-American is particularly disturbing, as it is not only a historically American activity, but also a foundational right supported by the U.S. Constitution—a right that Republicans such as Johnson seem to care about less and less everyday.

The largest political advertisement spender of the year is: you, the U.S. taxpayer.

While the rest of the Trump administration hatchets away at the federal budget, the Department of Homeland Security has gone on a spending spree to heap praise on Donald Trump. The agency has so far spent at least $51 million in 2025 on a sprawling ad campaign warning undocumented immigrants to either exit the country or be “hunted down.”

Fox News bought the bulk of the ad spots, airing $9 million worth of content, Axios reported Wednesday. America’s morning shows saw the most program-specific spending, with Today, CBS Morning, and Good Morning America leading the pack.

Over the course of the last month, viewers of three programs consumed the most DHS advertising: the Mexican soccer league (Fútbol: Liga MX), Fox’s The Five, and Univision’s Despierta America.

But the campaign has also had a digital arm targeting social media users. The ads have specifically targeted Spanish speakers and users who like Mexican pop music, Latin music, the Mexican Grand Prix, Latin cuisine, and the Mexican national soccer team, according to Meta ad library data obtained by Axios.

Almost all the adverts feature DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Directly facing the camera, Noem suggests that undocumented immigrants are “violent criminals” flooding American cities with drugs, and accuses the Biden administration of taking a weak stance on border crossings. (Joe Biden increased border enforcement across the board and arrested an “unprecedented” number of immigrants that crossed illegally, according to the libertarian think tank Cato Institute.)

One detail is consistent across all the DHS adspots: unmitigated applause for the current president’s agenda.

“Strong borders mean a stronger America. President Trump is making America safe again,” Noem says at the end of one advert.

Compare that to DHS’s last ad campaign under the Biden administration: a series of billboards in Texas that read a person “in immigration custody has rights.” That campaign cost $150,000, and did not feature President Joe Biden or former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

In a now infamous September raid on a 130-unit apartment building in Chicago, hundreds of agents reportedly rappelled in from helicopters, kicked in doors, ransacked rooms, deployed flashbangs, and zip-tied people—immigrants and native Chicagoans, adults and children—in the middle of the night.

Amid growing criticism of this heavy-handed blitz, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller defended the operation, calling it a “brilliantly executed raid against a Tren de Aragua complex filled with TdA terrorists.” (Tren de Aragua, or TdA, is a Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration, with characteristic alarmism, claims has “invaded the United States.”)

So, how many members of the Venezuelan gang did they catch in the controversial September raid? DHS says that, of the 37 individuals arrested that night, agents got ahold of “just one ‘verified’ Tren de Aragua member,” MSNBC reported this week.

It was previously reported that two of the 37 arrested were members of TdA, but even that disappointing figure was evidently overstating it. Further, DHS has yet to provide proof of the alleged gang member’s connection to TdA—a point worth noting, since the Trump administration has faced criticism for advancing weak claims of immigrants’ gang membership in service of its mass deportation campaign.

This new finding lends itself to the conclusions Illinois Governor JB Pritzker shared in his recent conversation with TNR’s Greg Sargent about the raid: “If this was Pinochet’s Chile, if this was Argentina under authoritarian rule, maybe you’d call it successful,” he said, adding later, “Whenever the [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and [Customs and Border Protection] agents say something, they put out a release or, you know, you’ve got Stephen Miller talking about it, they are lying.”

Federal agents ended up tear-gassing Chicago police officers on Tuesday while trying to perform basic crowd control, violating a temporary restraining order banning the very use of tear gas in the process.

A crowd of community members and protesters formed near 105th and Avenue N, where Border Patrol struck a civilian car while trying to arrest the people inside. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said that the crowd “eventually turned hostile,” forcing them to use “crowd control measures” like tear gas. CPD officers present were caught in the crossfire.

About 13 officers were exposed to the tear gas, Chicago police said. This is the second time CPD officers have been gassed by ICE while trying to work with them.

The federal agents are also blatantly ignoring the temporary restraining order sent down from Judge Sara Ellis on October 9, after journalists and community organizations brought the issue forward. Ellis explicitly banned the agents from “using riot control weapons,” “firing [tear gas] canisters,” “using force, such as pulling or shoving a person to the ground, tackling, or body slamming an individual,” “striking any person with a vehicle,” and more abuses of power. The order applies to all agents from the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE and Border Patrol, and was supposed to last until October 23. The federal agents violated it almost immediately.

Civilians have continued to be terrorized by these riot tactics.

“The eyes and the nose ... it burned,” community member Pascal Manuel told NBC 5 Investigates.

“This type of escalation is going to cause harm—it’s not the people of Chicago. It is the federal agents,” said Beatriz Ponce De Leon, Chicago’s deputy mayor of immigration and refugee rights.

There is currently no update on the status of the temporary restraining order.

Republican Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana appeared dumbstruck Tuesday night after his ridiculous attempts to blame Democrats for massive funding cuts to energy projects blew up in his face.

During an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, Sheehy was asked about the $1 billion grant that the Department of Energy pulled from the Pacific Northwest Hydrogen Hub, a clean energy project spanning Washington state, Oregon, and Montana.

“They just yanked a billion dollars from that. So, is that taking away good paying jobs in Montana?” asked Collins.

“Of course it is. As I said, we want the government to be open. You should be saying this to Chuck Schumer, who is closing the government down,” Sheehy replied. “I’m agreeing we should have the government open right now, this is an unnecessary shutdown.”

Collins pressed whether Sheehy was acknowledging that President Donald Trump’s administration was hurting his state, prompting the Republican to launch into an unrelated list of federal services interrupted by the government shutdown. “So, this shutdown is not a good thing, and that’s why we don’t want it to continue,” he said.

Collins tried to steer Sheehy back to the topic at hand. “The Trump administration didn’t have to make that decision, they decided to pull that billion dollars from your state,” she said. “Do you disagree with that?”

“Well, I think the reality is we wouldn’t be here if the government was still open, and now we’re going on week three of a pretty unnecessary shutdown,” Sheehy repeated.

But Energy Secretary Chris Wright had specifically told Collins earlier this month that the canceled grant had nothing to do with the shutdown, or the Democrats, for that matter. “He said they would’ve done that even if the government wasn’t shut down, that that was months in the making even before the government shut down,” Collins said.

The two fell silent, as Sheehy’s desperate excuses evaporated. After a long moment, Sheehy replied: “Well, it’s unfortunate we’re still shut down. We shouldn’t be.”

Last week, OMB Director Russell Vought—not Wright—declared that the Trump administration would cut nearly $8 billion in lawfully approved funding for energy projects, targeting 16 Democratic-led states. A longer list of grants to clean energy projects assembled by DOE senior staff totaling roughly $30 billion circulated Capitol Hill, alarming energy advocates and lawmakers, including Republicans whose districts could be affected by the cuts. The fate of the remaining $22 billion, which is mostly earmarked for Republican districts, remains unclear.

An opinion on Charlie Kirk could be what keeps people in or out of America.

The State Department announced Tuesday it has revoked at least six visas from foreign nationals after their recipients made comments about Kirk in the wake of the far-right youth leader’s assassination. So far, individuals from Mexico, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and Paraguay are affected.

“The United States has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans,” the State Department wrote on X. “The State Department continues to identify visa holders who celebrated the heinous assassination of Charlie Kirk.”

Exactly what qualifies for expulsion is not clear, though some of the remarks were notably benign. An Argentine national who had their visa revoked said that Kirk spread “racist, xenophobic, misogynistic rhetoric”—all of which is demonstrably true. That language in particular has even been circulated by House lawmakers in criticizing Kirk’s point of view.

In a string of social media posts, the official account for the State Department shared several examples of the comments that caught its attention from individuals “who are no longer welcome in the U.S.” The State Department claimed that nearly all of the examples suggested the commenters were attempting to justify Kirk’s death.

“Charlie Kirk was a son of a bitch and he died by his own rules,” wrote the Paraguayan national.

A German, writing in German, commented that “when fascists die, democrats don’t complain.”

The State Department warned in an X post that “[President Donald Trump] and [Secretary Marco Rubio] will defend our borders, our culture, and our citizens by enforcing our immigration laws.”

“Aliens who take advantage of America’s hospitality while celebrating the assassination of our citizens will be removed,” the department wrote.

Vice President JD Vance late Tuesday decried “pearl clutching” over a Politico story unearthing a private group chat in which prominent members of Young Republicans chapters called Black people monkeys, spoke approvingly of rape and slavery, and wrote other odious remarks, such as “I love Hitler” and messages containing racial and homophobic slurs.

Opting for whataboutism, Vance highlighted unearthed messages by Jay Jones, a Democratic nominee for attorney general in Virginia, who recently apologized for leaked private messages from August 2022, in which he joked about shooting then-state House Speaker Speaker Todd Gilbert. Jones also said Gilbert would not take action on gun safety unless his children were endangered, writing, “Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy.”

Vance posted a screenshot of the latter comment on X, with the caption: “This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia. I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence.”

For one, it’s not a matter of fact that Jones’s messages are worse than those of the Young Republicans, who spoke about having their political opponents raped and sent to gas chambers.

Vance is also trying to downplay the importance of the messages by claiming they were shared in a “college group chat.”

But Young Republicans groups include those between 18 and 40 years old, with members of the reported group chat well into adulthood. The man Politico identifies as “the most prominent voice in the chat spreading racist messages,” for instance, is 31. The members held notable positions in Republican politics, with several leading state affiliates of the GOP’s youth arm. Some worked in state politics, and at least one serves as a state senator.

Vance’s tweet exemplifies his time-tested willingness to excuse vitriol in his own ranks, embracing a “no-enemies-to-the-right” stance that is seemingly limitless.

Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith—who has been tormented by MAGA for years over his dual criminal investigations into President Trump for illegal possession of classified documents and his role in January 6—is pulling out receipts.

“One of the major differences between the [Biden and Trump] cases is the obstructive conduct in the case that I investigated.… To prove illegal possession of classified documents, you need to show that the defendant possesses the documents willfully. That means [Trump] knew what he was doing was wrong,” Smith said in a sit-down interview at the University College London Centre for Global Constitutional Democracy, made available Tuesday. “We had tons of evidence of willfulness.”

The case Smith is referring to, in which Trump was charged with keeping classified documents in Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House, resulted in a 40-felony-count indictment against the president in 2023. The case was eventually dropped after Trump won the election in 2024.

“The government even tried to get them back before there was a criminal investigation, and then after the investigation started, [Trump] still [refused] to give them back, and then [tried] to obstruct the investigation,” Smith continued.

Even with this knowledge, it’s virtually impossible that Trump will receive any kind of consequence for these crimes, as he continues to harangue Smith—calling him a “sleazebag”—and anyone else who dared to investigate him, like New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.

President Donald Trump’s administration forced out yet another U.S. attorney for not going along with their flimsy case, The New York Times reported.

Todd Gilbert, the U.S. attorney in the Western District of Virginia, was forced to resign in August after he refused to sideline a high-ranking prosecutor who said there wasn’t sufficient evidence of criminal misconduct during the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

After being appointed in July, Gilbert was ordered to open a grand jury investigation into whether anyone at the FBI had criminally mishandled documents relating to the decade-old Russia investigation—still a sore spot for the grievance-addled president. When Gilbert told his superiors that the evidence he’d reviewed was flimsy, they blamed his deputy, Zachary Lee, for swaying Gilbert’s opinion with his decades of experience, people familiar with the matter told the Times in the Tuesday story.

DOJ officials viewed Lee, a veteran prosecutor, as a holdover from the Biden administration, even though he’d been hired during the Bush administration, the people added.

Gilbert was instructed to replace Lee with Robert Tracci, which he did, but his superiors still suspected he was consulting with Lee, people familiar told the Times. When his bosses pressed him to remove Lee, Gilbert refused—and was reportedly threatened with termination. So he resigned, posting an Anchorman meme on X to mark his departure.

“Well, that escalated quickly,” the meme said, with a photo of Gilbert being sworn in only a month before.

Now he has been replaced by Tracci.

In Virginia’s Eastern District, Trump recently installed his (apparently incompetent) former lawyer Lindsey Halligan to replace U.S. Attorney Eric Siebert, whom Trump officials had pressured to seek an indictment for mortgage fraud charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James. In doing so, Trump has also sidelined Maggie Cleary, who was briefly named acting head of the U.S. Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.

It’s been more than three weeks since Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva won the special election in Arizona, and the state has had enough of Congress’s delays.

Republican leadership has refused to swear in Grijalva until Congress returns to its regular session, breaking precedent set in April when party members swore in a pair of Florida Republicans during a pro forma session, the day after they won their special elections.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes told CNN Tuesday that Speaker Mike Johnson had left Arizonans with one option to acquire their constitutionally mandated representation: taking him to court.

“I really think that we are going to have no other choice, Laura, except to take Speaker Johnson to court,” Mayes told host Laura Coates, emphasizing the recent flooding that has occurred in Grijalva’s district and her constituents’ need to access Congress.

Grijalva became the first Latina the Grand Canyon State has sent to Congress when she won an election to determine the replacement for her father, Raul Grijalva. She’s also the last signature that the House needs on a petition to force a vote on releasing government documents related to the investigation of deceased pedophilic sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

“If I have to, I’ll take him to court,” Mayes continued. “Again, there’s no legitimate reason for him to refuse to swear her in right now. No other reason that I can think of except that perhaps she is the final vote to discharge the Epstein files.

“And it’s not fair for Mike Johnson to be holding the state of Arizona hostage because he doesn’t want to release the Epstein files,” Mayes added.

Grijalva’s swearing in appears to be background noise for Republican House leadership, which is floundering to muster solutions to a gridlock over continuous funding for Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget and its seismic cuts to Obamacare subsidies and Medicaid.

But there’s plenty of precedent for Grijalva to be sworn in, even in such complicated circumstances. For instance, the entire House was sworn in during a shutdown in 2019, during Trump’s first term.

Grijalva has already vowed to sign the bipartisan petition advancing the immediate release of the Epstein files. Just four Republicans have penned their signatures on the petition, demanding more transparency from the Trump administration regarding the investigation into Epstein and his potential associates. Those conservative lawmakers include Representatives Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, and Lauren Boebert.