patrick.net

However, there is one element of the activist left that still poses a significant threat to the Donald Trump and his agenda, and that is lawfare. Many of the same elements of our system of justice that were used to harass, bankrupt, and even try to jail President Trump in years past are still in place and are already being weaponized against MAGA right now.

Here are several activist judges who are trying to take control of the government for the Deep State as we speak.

Judge Angel Kelley, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, nominated by President Joe Biden

Yesterday, Kelley granted a restraining order against National Institute of Health (NIH) funding cuts. The Trump administration had moved to capped indirect costs, i.e. reimbursements for “overhead” expenses on university research, at 15 percent. This is fundamental to the Trump administration’s agenda of slashing waste, but it was met with strong pushback from the universities. Judge Kelley immediately stepped in on their behalf. ...

Senior Judge Amy Berman Jackson, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, nominated by President Barack Obama

Jackson recently made news by temporarily reinstated the fired head of the Office of the Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger, a Biden appointee. She is known as a clear partisan with a long history of attacking Trump and his Republican allies. She presided over the Russian collusion case and multiple January 6 U.S. Capitol riot cases, where she built a reputation for opining on her judicial philosophy for an hour or more even during “procedural courtroom check-ins,” according to CNN. ...

Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, nominated by President Barack Obama

A Democrat donor, McConnell is attempting to block another spending freeze from Trump and is even taking the extreme approach of threatening administration officials with criminal charges if it is not reversed.

But McConnell is more than just a typical Democrat, he’s a committed activist, as the Daily Caller reported:

While he was in private practice as an attorney until 2009, McConnell donated hundreds of thousands to Democratic campaigns and political action committees, including 2008 presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama, according to Federal Election Commission records. He also donated over $8,000 to Democratic Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s 2006 senate campaign.

He not only worked at the ACLU, but he was on the board of directors for the Rhode Island branch of Planned Parenthood for four years. ...

Senior Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, nominated by President Bill Clinton

Kollar-Kotelly boldly stood against Trump’s efforts to cut government excess by blocking DOGE from “obtaining access to certain Treasury Department payment records,” which handles an estimated 90 percent of federal payments.

The judge is known for having sentenced seven pro-life activists to federal prison in a particularly cruel fashion. The husband of activist Paula “Paulette” Harlow, 77, whom Kollar-Kotelly sentenced to prison, was thoroughly rebuked by the judge when he emphasized that his wife was dying and plead for mercy and leniency. In response, Kollar-Kotelly suggested that Harlow “make every effort to stay alive” as part of the “tenets of your religion.”

Nasty. ...

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, nominated by President Barack Obama

Engelmayer blocked DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department payment system. In his ruling, Engelmayer forbade all political appointees including the Treasury Secretary(!) from accessing Department of Treasury data. ...

Senior Judge George O’Toole Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, nominated by President Bill Clinton

O’Toole has already tried to buck Trump two to significant ways.

First, he blocked Trump’s federal government employee buyout even after 65,000 federal workers had already taken the offer. This prolonged a pause on the deferred resignation program.

He also temporarily blocked the transfer of trans women (aka biological males) to men’s prisons. This ruling rebuffs part of Trump’s “two sexes” executive order from taking full effect. This also prolongs “trans” prisoners’ access to “gender-affirming care.”

Chief Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales, of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, nominated by President Barack Obama

Gonzales made headlines by blocking the deportations of Venezuelan criminals to Guantanamo Bay. ...

The pattern is clear: these are political operatives using the judicial system to pass de facto legislation that blocks elements of the Trump agenda. Maybe some of this will get overturned, but it gums up with works and undermines the agenda of the democratically elected president.

Though the players are largely unfamiliar to the general public, they are performing essentially the same function as the Lisa Monacos, Jack Smiths, and Alvin Braggs of the world.

Senior Judge Amy Berman Jackson, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, nominated by President Barack Obama

Jackson recently made news by temporarily reinstated the fired head of the Office of the Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger, a Biden appointee.

CNN ran a remarkable story yesterday headlined, “Judge Chutkan rejects call from Democratic AGs for temporary restraining order blocking DOGE’s access to federal data.” Chutkan is the same DC Circuit judge who gave the J6ers such a hard time and was reversed by the Supreme Court. So you know that if she couldn’t find support for a TRO it was pretty bad. It was another I told you so moment.




Lawyers for 18 blue states had asked Chutkan to temporarily restrain Musk and DOGE from accessing government information systems... They also wanted the judge to block Musk and DOGE from firing any employees at those agencies.

But Chutkan ruled the states hadn’t shown “that they will suffer imminent, irreparable harm absent a temporary restraining order.” Regular readers will recall imminent, irreparable harm is one of the hardest elements to prove to get a TRO. So, that was good news. But it got much better.

Judge Chutkan—no friend to Trump—couldn’t find a way to justify a temporary restraining order. That means their legal case was embarrassingly weak—so weak that even the judge who handed down some of the harshest J6 sentences wouldn’t touch it. What did Judge Chutkan see? ...

They’ve been chasing the wrong person the whole time. The billionaire they love to hate —nobody elected Elon Musk!— is just a special consultant to the White House. But if you go back and read and listen to Musk carefully, you’ll find that, while he may have hinted at authority, he never actually claimed it. ...

Since Elon wasn’t confirmed by the Senate, they thought they had him dead to rights. But ‘advisors’ don’t wield significant authority. Thus, the Appointments Clause doesn’t apply—and the plaintiffs just lost their big constitutional argument.

It was pure political aikido—using the enemy’s own momentum against them. They built an entire legal argument around a fundamental mistake. Trump’s team let the media and the blue states chase Musk around, and then ripped the rug out at the last second.

Jackson recently made news by temporarily reinstated the fired head of the Office of the Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger, a Biden appointee.

CBS 60-Minutes’ Gaslighter-in-Chief Scott Pelley was at it again Sunday night trying to put over the story that Donald Trump had unfairly cashiered a broad swathe of federal agency Inspectors General — whose job it is to investigate crime, mischief, and administrative malfeasance. In the spotlight sat one Hampton Dellinger, Special Counsel to the independent Office of Special Counsel, who just resigned after a court battle over his firing weeks ago.

Do you have any idea what a laugh riot that is? Dellinger’s job was to protect whistleblowers and enforce the Hatch Act (against public employees engaging in partisan political activities). Would you say he did a great job protecting FBI whistleblowers who testified before Congress last year — say, FBI agents Marcus Allen, Garret O’Boyle, and Steve Friend? They were suspended without pay, not allowed to seek other employment, lost homes, were financially wrecked, and hung out to dry by then-FBI boss Christopher Wray. Was Hampton Dellinger heard to make a peep about that? (Nope.) So much for protecting whistleblowers.

You can state categorically that thousands of federal employees have been engaged in what they call “the Resistance” since the first Trump administration. They openly advertise themselves as the Resistance. The Resistance is simply and purely Democratic Party activism. How is that not a violation of the Hatch Act? Hampton Dellinger did not notice any of it. Maybe that’s why he got fired, ya think?

For decades, the Supreme Court has delicately danced around the issue of universal injunctions, but has never definitively cabined their scope. The conservative justices, particularly Thomas and Gorsuch, have often signaled deep skepticism of district courts wielding nationwide policy-shaping power, particularly when those injunctions are weaponized against the executive branch.

I expect several key themes to emerge from the Supreme Court’s analysis of this appeal. First, is the Separation of Powers issue. Universal injunctions effectively let unelected district judges act like super-legislators overriding executive action without check. That’s a direct challenge to the constitutional balance of powers.

Second, the issue of Judicial Overreach versus Proper Relief. Traditionally, injunctions should only apply to specific, named plaintiffs, not hypothetical or future parties. The Supreme Court will likely reaffirm this strict standard, and reject the notion that district courts can possibly grant relief applying to the entire country—or beyond.

Finally, the Forum-Shopping Problem. The Trump team’s brief hammers on the coordinated lawfare of cherry-picking liberal courts to engineer politically motivated injunctions. The Supreme Court may even set new limits that could prevent a handful of progressive district judges from effectively governing the entire nation from the bench.

Trump Administration Deports Hundreds of Migrants, Despite Judge's Order Stopping Removal

The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador despite a federal judge’s order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members

The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador despite a federal judge's order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg issued an order Saturday evening blocking the deportations but lawyers told him there were already two planes with migrants in the air — one headed for El Salvador, the other for Honduras. Boasberg verbally ordered the planes be turned around, but they apparently were not and he did not include the directive in his written order.

“Oopsie…Too late,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, a Trump ally who agreed to house about 300 migrants for a year at a cost of $6 million in his country’s prisons, wrote on the social media site X above an article about Boasberg’s ruling. That post was recirculated by White House communications director Steven Cheung.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who negotiated an earlier deal with Bukele to house migrants, posted on the site: “We sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars.”

The migrants were deported after Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times in U.S. history.

The law, invoked during World Wars I and II and the War of 1812, requires a president to declare the United States is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under immigration or criminal laws. It was last used to justify the detention of Japanese-American civilians during World War II.

The ACLU, which filed the lawsuit that led to Boasberg's temporary restraining order on deportations, said it was asking the government whether the removals to El Salvador were in defiance of the court.

"This morning, we asked the government to assure the Court that its order was not violated and are waiting to hear, as well as trying to do our own investigation,” ACLU’s lead lawyer, Lee Gelernt, said in a statement Sunday.

Venezuela’s government in a statement Sunday rejected the use of Trump’s declaration of the law, characterizing it as evocative of “the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horror of the Nazi concentration camps.”

Tren de Aragua originated in an infamously lawless prison in the central state of Aragua and accompanied an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living conditions after their nation’s economy came undone last decade.

Trump Administration Deports Hundreds of Migrants, Despite Judge's Order Stopping Removal

The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador despite a federal judge’s order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members

@LokiJulianus • Mar 15

Current legal theory: the President can blow people up half a world away
without review, but he can't put some Venezuelans on an airplane without a
judge signing off on it.

LokiJulianus • Mar 15

Current legal theory: the President can blow people up half a world away
without review, but he can't put some Venezuelans on an airplane without a
judge signing off on it.

Impeachment would be too mild for the claque of Woke-activist federal judges attempting to nullify the executive branch with hectoring writs against any and all sorts of executive actions. If simply bounced off their benches, they could just take up new careers as NPR legal commentators or transsexual pole-dancers. Rather, what you’ve got here is an obvious seditious conspiracy, plain for all to see, orchestrated by the same legal Nosferatus as RussiaGate, the 2020 election, and the J-6 witch hunt.

The catch is, this time it is discoverable and subject to prosecution because the party running this legal insurrection no longer has its hands on the levers of power in the DOJ and the FBI as it did when they ran the aforementioned ops. And so, the mighty silence emanating from those two agencies just now should tell you something: namely, that cases are being carefully constructed to finally bring these despicable caitiffs to real and chastening law.

If you want to know one paramount reason for institutional failure in our country, look to the evil enterprise that calls itself “Lawfare.” It originated as a blog launched on September 1, 2010, founded by three key figures: Benjamin Wittes, Jack Goldsmith, and Robert Chesney. Over time it evolved into an activist operation, The Lawfare Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to (cough cough) “Hard National Security Choices,” and run under the shady umbrella of the Brookings Institution.

The point of Lawfare is self-evident in its name: it is an instrument of warfare against a perceived enemy which, for the past decade, has been the political faction led by Mr. Trump, the once-and-current chief executive of the federal government. Mr. Trump is a danger to the bureaucratic arm of the federal government because he has defined it as a racketeering operation and moved decisively to end its depredations. Lawfare is the praetorian guard of the permanent DC bureaucracy, including especially its rogue intel actors, who function as enforcers for the Democratic party that largely staffs the bureaucracy. ...

Now, the difference between Lawfare and the practice of law is that Lawfare trafficks lavishly in lies to do its business in the courts and actual law practice is supposed to be dedicated to ascertaining the truth in matters that come before the courts. Lawfare is grounded in dishonesty — as is its main client, the Democratic Party. That is exactly why Judge James Boasberg went along with FBI Director James Comey’s false warrant applications in the FISA court that enabled the RussiaGate operation to do its dirty business. Thus, the grand orchestrator of the Lawfare enterprise as a whole, Norm Eisen, is a sort of Father-of-Lies.

Remember beyond all this sturm and drang stands an essential principle: the truth is sturdy and untruth is fragile. Like you, I am standing by to see what eventually comes out of the Trump DOJ in the way of cases that might definitively settle this mighty battle between Lawfare and the law.

The Trump Administration on Friday updated its policy on troops with gender dysphoria asked Judge Reyes to dissolve her preliminary injunction.

The Biden-appointed judge immediately called a hearing and used it as an opportunity to shout at DOJ lawyers. Obviously, her mind is already made up.

Earlier this week, Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee from Uruguay, issued a temporary nationwide injunction blocking Trump’s transgender military ban.

DOJ attorneys were back in court on Friday asking Judge Reyes to dissolve her injunction. ...

The Justice Department detailed Judge Reyes’ shocking statements toward its attorneys in last month’s hearing.

“During these hearings, Judge Reyes engaged in hostile and egregious misconduct that violates Canons 2A and 3A(3) of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which requires judges to “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary” and “be patient, dignified, respectful, and courteous to litigants,” the DOJ wrote in a complaint against Judge Reyes.

the mighty silence emanating from those two agencies just now should tell you something: namely, that cases are being carefully constructed to finally bring these despicable caitiffs to real and chastening law.

Trump latest executive order flipped the safety off the government’s lawfare defenses. The last of yesterday’s EO was titled, “ Preventing Abuses of the Legal System and the Federal Court.” Reuters ran the story under the headline, “Trump Asks Bondi to Scrutinize Lawyers Who Fight US in Courts.”

The order directed newly confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi to “review conduct” by lawyers and law firms who engage in “frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation” against the US. “Accountability is especially important when misconduct by lawyers and law firms threatens our national security, homeland security, public safety, or election integrity,” Trump wrote in the memo.

In plain English, Trump’s new executive order wasn’t only about legal ethics—it declared open hunting season on the class of lawyers who turned suing the federal government into a cottage industry during the last eight years. Wrapped in language about “restoring the integrity of the legal system,” the EO ordered the Attorney General to dig through past litigation for signs of so-called abuse—“frivolous lawsuits,” “fraudulent practices,” or other conduct that could justify sanctions, disbarment, or even security clearance reviews.

That last part is the tell. By invoking security clearances, Trump escalated the lawfare activists to the level of a national security concern, thereby weaponizing the courts as a tool for striking back.

What makes this EO a watershed moment was the targeting direction. For years, the legal Left swamped federal dockets with activist litigation, much of it designed less to win cases so much as to delay, entangle, or extract headlines.

Until now, the consequences were mostly reserved for Trump’s own lawyers, who’ve been sued, disbarred, and encased in leftwing blowback like swarms of angry hornets. But this EO flipped the script: it formalized retroactive scrutiny of government critics under the banner of ethics enforcement, potentially banning them from federal courtrooms, stripping clearances, or canceling lucrative federal legal contracts.

It wasn’t just a memo—it was a message: if you wage lawfare against the government, you’d better be on all fours, or the government might litigate back.

And lawfare is, after all, the Democrats’ favorite tool. So reduced court authority reduces opportunities for lawfare, benefitting conservatives most.

The fight is only starting. Congress holds power to define court jurisdictions and set rules like Issa’s bills limits on injunctions. There is a lot they could do, since only the Supreme Court is explicitly defined in the Constitution’s third Article.

“The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.”

Congress controls the other courts. Congress can reshape them, reduce their jurisdictions, or even abolish them entirely if it wants (though it’d be political dynamite and practically unworkable). In other words, only SCOTUS is constitutionally immortal. The rest are legislative houseplants. Congress can water them, or not.

And they are thinking about the weed problem hard.

Surely you know the old joke: “What do you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the sea?” (Answer: “a good start!”). There’s a reason why lawyers are so broadly despised. Law is humanity’s instrument for creating order out of the terror and chaos of nature, where anything goes. The result of law theoretically, is a civil society, where only the good, true, and right things can go.

These days, lawyers are hard at work to replace civilized order with the terror and chaos of nature — which is to say, the seeking of raw power: this is what I can do to you! That primal despotism is the motivating engine of the Democratic Party in its terminal phase, a feral, power-seeking monster. It was why, in case you hadn’t noticed, the essential drive of Woke politics was the sadistic pleasure it took in exacting its endless punishments — cancellation, personal ruin, censorship — not correcting alleged injustices against marginalized minorities. And that tells you, by the way, exactly why the J-6 defendants were treated so harshly by the likes of Judge James Boasberg, Tanya Chutkan, and their colleagues of the DC federal district.

Any lawyer or judge's power ends at the barrel of a gun.

In yet more good news yesterday, and probably not coincidentally, Politico ran a story headlined, “Appeals Court clears the way for Musk, DOGE to resume cuts to USAID.”

Earlier this month, Maryland District Judge Theodore Chuang (Obama appointee) had coughed up a preliminary injunction forbidding anybody —DOGE, Elon Musk, or even Marco Rubio— from working on USAID. Yesterday, a three-judge panel on the Fourth Circuit (Trump, Bush, Clinton) ruled 3-0 to toss Judge Chuang’s injunction and ordered that DOGE can keep on cutting while the lawsuit continues.

There isn’t much left to cut.

The court’s decision explained, “While defendants’ role and actions related to USAID are not conventional, unconventional does not necessarily equal unconstitutional.” For those of you following my primer on injunctions, as I predicted, the appeals court found the plaintiffs failed to prove the two hardest elements: they failed to prove a likelihood of success on the merits and failed to prove any irreparable harm.

“To the extent these alleged harms are cognizable damages at all,” the Court explained, “most can be remedied by money damages. Generally, injuries that can be cured by monetary relief, by law, are not irreparable.”

Then, for good measure, the Court briefly considered the government’s case. It did find irreparable harm— for DOGE. “The district court has, based on alleged injuries from a handful of plaintiffs, issued injunctive orders that dictate and restrict a separate branch of government. Unlike the harm alleged by plaintiffs, this harm cannot be remedied by monetary damages. It truly is irreparable.”

That was the shot heard ‘round the world’s courtrooms: District judges enjoining the President are causing irreparable harm.

Finally, warming to its theme, the order added several more refreshing comments about district courts minding their own business. I bet this language will soon begin appearing in all the government’s briefs:

Last, as to the public interest, the public certainly has an interest in ensuring the
government is acting constitutionally. However, the public also has an interest in judges
wielding power only when so authorized. That authorization limits us to deciding cases
and controversies, not political disputes. Cases and controversies involve actual injuries to
actual parties, not injuries that are speculative and extend beyond the parties in this case.
Courts must be wary of stretching to find harm at the preliminary injunction stage when
the record does not support it.

In short, the Trump Agenda sprang forward yesterday like greased lightning. Alas, the lawfare beatings threaten to continue until morale improves. “Supporters of the agency,” WaPo said, meaning grifters and deep-staters, “promised further litigation over the new cuts announced Friday.” Meaning, further litigation in friendlier circuits.

But USAID is already closed, disbanded, and its offices given away. They salted the USAID field.

French Court Bars National Rally Leader Marine Le Pen from Office for 5 Years After Embezzlement Conviction

Le Pen accused the prosecution of attempting to orchestrate her political death, stating, 'It's clear the prosecutor's only goal is to drive Marine Le Pen out of political life.'

From Trump to Le Pen: Lawfare and the New World Order

In 2016, when Donald J. Trump did the unthinkable and beat Hillary Clinton—a woman so ensconced in the halls of Davosian power she might as well have been issued a United Nations passport—the architects of the so-called "Rules-Based International Order" felt a tremor under their polished marble floors. For decades, this Order—an alliance of bureaucrats, multinationals, intelligence agencies, and supranational institutions—had operated under the conceit that history had ended, that global governance would henceforth supersede national sovereignty. Trump's triumph threatened their theology.
To these globalist mandarins, Trump’s insurgency was not merely electoral; it was heretical. He dared to question NATO’s utility, scorned open borders, mocked climate pieties, and—worst of all—promised to put America, not Brussels or Beijing, first. The idea that a nation might chart its own course, free from the guidance of transnational scolds, was an offense that had to be punished—not just to stop Trump, but to send a warning across the world: challenge the Order, and you will be destroyed.
By 2021, the game plan emerged with Orwellian clarity. Four separate prosecutions, nearly a hundred felony charges, and a cumulative sentence that would make Methuselah wince—Donald Trump was to be entombed under a legal avalanche. Not because he was uniquely corrupt, but because he was uniquely defiant. The United States, long a beacon of liberty, now took a page from banana republics, substituting ballots for subpoenas.
But while America’s progressive elite failed to jail Trump (at least so far), they succeeded in unleashing a new form of political warfare across the globe: lawfare as an instrument of regime preservation. The message was clear. Oppose the globalist consensus, and your name will appear on a docket.
Take Marine Le Pen. For years, the French nationalist leader has been the bête noire of Brussels. Her real crime? Proposing that the French—not the European Commission—should determine France’s future. After leading in the polls for the 2027 presidency, she was slapped with a conveniently timed conviction for misallocating parliamentary staff funds—a technicality so esoteric it wouldn’t pass muster in a Texas HOA dispute. On March 27, 2025, a Paris court sentenced Le Pen to a two-year suspended prison term, a fine of €20,000, and—most damningly—a two-year ban on holding public office. This means she is barred from running in the next presidential election. The case, involving €330,000 in alleged misuse of European Parliament funds, was initiated in 2016—conveniently revived just as she surged in the polls. The timing? Not coincidental.
It is worth noting that over a dozen of her National Rally party colleagues were convicted in the same case. The European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) referred the case, and the court’s decision—issued without the benefit of a jury—ignored the fact that similar cases in other EU member states have been quietly dropped or settled with modest fines. But Le Pen is not just another MEP. She is a threat to the supranational project. And in this brave new Europe, heresy against Brussels is prosecuted with greater vigor than Islamist incitement.
Germany—poster child for post-nationalist virtue—has declared open season on its own populists. Björn Höcke, a provincial voice for the AfD, faces trial for hate speech over the phrase “Everything for the Fatherland.” Frauke Petry, a former AfD leader, was convicted for perjury over statements about party finances. Meanwhile, the AfD itself is under intelligence surveillance, with whispers of a ban floating through the Bundestag. The crime? National identity.
In Romania, Călin Georgescu—a nationalist outsider—won the first round of the presidential election in November 2024, only to have the result annulled by a court citing “Russian interference.” The evidence? Nonexistent. But he was quickly arrested and charged with “communicating false information” and promoting fascism, rendering him ineligible. Democracy, you see, must be defended—even from the voters.
From South America to Eastern Europe, the same pattern unfolds. Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was imprisoned for crossing his country's own border 'illegally' and later slapped with new charges conveniently extending his sentence. In Ukraine, Viktor Medvedchuk and former President Petro Poroshenko were charged with treason—one for allegedly sharing secrets, the other for buying coal from the wrong region. In both cases, opposition became sedition.
Even celebrity isn't a shield. Ireland’s Conor McGregor, a household name and political aspirant, is on the verge of facing hate speech charges if he dares mount a campaign. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, like Trump, faces a blizzard of indictments designed to ensure his banishment from politics. Venezuela’s María Corina Machado, banned for fifteen years over a decade-old “infraction,” was erased from the ballot despite winning her primary in a landslide.
In Turkey, Israel, and Austria, the mechanisms vary but the objective remains: judicial leverage against ideological dissent. On March 19, 2025, Turkish authorities arrested Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu—widely considered the leading opposition candidate to President Erdoğan—on charges of corruption and alleged links to the PKK. Critics widely view the arrest as politically orchestrated. Protests erupted nationwide, and nearly 1,900 citizens were detained in the ensuing crackdown. Meanwhile, in Pakistan, former Prime Minister Imran Khan was sentenced to 14 years in prison in early 2025 on corruption charges. His arrest followed a series of legal cases aimed at neutralizing his return to power. Numerous leaders from his party were also jailed or barred from running, effectively sidelining the populist movement ahead of national elections. The fig leaf of legality provides plausible deniability. But only those opposing the Order ever seem to find themselves in the dock.
What was once called democracy has become a curated simulation—democracy if and only if it produces the correct result. This is why the Biden precedent matters. By criminalizing a former U.S. president, he handed moral license to governments from Paris to Tbilisi to Caracas to do the same.
What links all these cases is not the gravity of the crimes—many are trivial, others ambiguous, a few outright fabricated—but the profile of the accused. They are nationalists. Populists. Skeptics of global technocracy. Opponents of forever wars, mass migration, and carbon commandments. For these sins, they must be disqualified. If not by voters, then by judges.
Democracy, in the globalist mind, is too important to be left to the people.
So yes, Trump was the first domino—but he will not be the last. The globalist establishment may wrap itself in the language of liberal democracy, but its actions betray a creeping authoritarianism cloaked in process. The ballot box is now guarded by the gavel. And in this brave new order, the only crime is dissent.

@elonmusk

When the radical left can’t win via democratic vote, they abuse the legal system to jail their opponents.

This is their standard playbook throughout the world.

Le Pen was convicted alongside eight other members of the Rassemblement national/Front national, and twelve parliamentary aides. She did not personally embezzle funds or enrich herself from EU coffers. Rather, prosecutors accuse her of directing aides to undertake work for her party while they were receiving salaries from the European Parliament. They claim this happened between 2004 and 2016, and that Le Pen and her associates misappropriated over four million Euros in this way. While nobody doubts the substance of the accusations, what Le Pen did was far from unusual and the sentence just seems ridiculous to me. Many European parliamentary representatives have used staff paid from parliamentary budgets for party projects – including Franziska Brantner, the present co-chair of German Green Party. Until recently this was a common practice, and even now the distinction between party and parliamentary work is not always easy to maintain, and both routinely and deliberately blurred.

Yes, this is obviously a gross abuse of both the justice system and electoral system in France.