Donald Trump and maga Republicans must support the advice from military JAG officers to prevent war crimes and murder sof non-combatants

Echo opinion published in the Los Angeles Times by Jackie Calmes. 

At least Donald Trump didn’t “kill all the lawyers” first, literally following Shakespeare’s words in “Henry VI, Part 2” on evading the rule of law. Instead, just a month into his second term in February, he and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth simply fired the top lawyers at the Army, Navy and Air Force, known as judge advocates general, or JAGs.

“It’s what you do when you’re planning to break the law: You get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down,” Georgetown Law professor Rosa Brooks said at the time, according to The New York Times. She wasn’t alone in her fear, or her prescience.

Nine months later, the storylines embroiling Trump are getting all tangled up, creating a knotty mess of lawlessness, hypocrisy and potential war crimes in what conservative columnist George Will has dubbed “this moral slum of an administration.” And that owes at least in part to the fact that the president has gotten rid of good lawyers and other guardrails so he can act with impunity.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Americans got news of two utterly contradictory actions that grotesquely captured Trump’s amoral and immoral instincts — one involving killings, the other a presidential pardon.

First, the Washington Post disclosed a chilling twist on a September 2, 2025 attack that was the first of 21 known U.S. military strikes so far on small boats allegedly hauling drugs, the opening of Trump’s undeclared war on so-called narco-terrorists. 

In fact, the commander for the operation, reportedly following Hegseth’s verbal order to “kill them all,” ordered a second strike when two of 11 men on board were seen alive, clinging to wreckage. At least 72 other humans have since been blown up on vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

The nonprofit news site the Intercept had first reported the September 2, episode just over a week later, but its report was little noted at the time. 

Subsequently, on Saturday, following the Post report and CNN’s confirmation, former military lawyers in a shadow watchdog group formed after the Pentagon purge in February released a five-page legal analysis stating that it “unanimously considers both the giving and the execution of these orders, if true, to constitute war crimes, murder, or both,” punishable by U.S. and international courts.

Prosecution could extend from Hegseth “down to the individual who pulled the trigger,” the Former JAGs Working Group said.

For all their tough-guy bravado, both Hegseth and Trump (definitely not a Trumanesque “the buck stops here” sort of president) have been trying mightily to distance themselves from the imbroglio, while each man insists the strikes were lawful. “I don’t know anything about it,” the commander in chief told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, returning from his holiday golf break. But, he added, “I wouldn’t have wanted … a second strike.”

The designated fall guy seems to be Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley, who led the Joint Special Operations Command and ordered SEAL Team 6 to fire a second strike. Trump and Hegseth have repeatedly pointed to him, even as they insist they have his back. People at the Pentagon reportedly aren’t reassured.

Trump is using the controversy, meanwhile, to brag about his victories against drug traffickers, despite offering no public evidence that the dead men in those tiny boats were drug runners. 

Yet, his boasts couldn’t be more dissonant with the weekend’s other Trump-related news: the president’s celebratory announcement on social media that he would pardon a proven, big-time drug-trafficker, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.

Against Hernández there was heaps of evidence, enough to convict him in a U.S. federal court last year on charges of running his country as a narco-state, taking bribes and putting his police and military in league with drug cartels to funnel more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. To “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses,” he said, according to trial testimony.

Trump made good on the pardon this week — perhaps his greatest abuse of that presidential power in a long line of them, other than the January 6, pardons. Hernández was freed on Tuesday from prison.

Why would Trump do it? Because he could. There is no one to stop him. Both as a matter of justice and politics, this pardon is all but inexplicable. Sometimes there’s just no explaining the madness of Trump as anything other than that.

Quizzed by reporters, Trump gave his go-to explanation for pardoning the undeserving: The case, like his own in past years, “was a Biden administration set-up.” Never mind that the investigation of Hernández began in Trump’s first term. Or that the federal judge in his trial was a Bush appointee, P. Kevin Castel, who went on at length before sentencing Hernández — to 45 years — about the justice of the case.

Then there’s the third storyline snarled in the one about Trump’s killings in international waters: his campaign against six Democratic lawmakers, all military or intelligence veterans, who made a video last month telling U.S. service members that they should not — must not — obey illegal orders. “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” Trump thundered, though the Democrats were stating the law and military code. Hegseth, dutiful lapdog, directed the Navy to investigate one Democrat, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, for “serious allegations of misconduct.”

The alleged strike against survivors, on top of Trump’s general policy of lethal force against purported drug runners, underscores exactly why the Democrats spoke out. What’s more, they did so a month after Adm. Alvin Holsey, head of the U.S. Southern Command, announced his exit amid reports that he was forced out for objecting to the sea strikes.

Here’s the good news: Even senior Republicans in Congress have been roused to object. The public MUST act as well: to pull another “Epstein files” maneuver, creating so much pressure that Congress can’t back down from oversight hearings. In other words, bring in the lawyers. 

Ukraine President Zelensky is dealing with American diplomats who are "playing games" reports Spiegel news in Germany

Echo report published in NewsNation by Andreas Rinke, Gabriel Stargardter and Dominique Vidalon:

BERLIN Germany (Reuters) – The French President and German Chancellor have voiced skepticism over the direction that U.S. efforts to negotiate a peace between Ukraine and Russia are taking, German magazine Spiegel cited a transcript of a confidential call as showing.

• France, Germany express skepticism over US plan
• The report is from Germany's largest news magazine
• French and German officials won't comment

In a report on Thursday, December 4, 2026, Spiegel said that in the call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders, France’s Emmanuel Macron warned that the United States could insist that Ukraine makes territorial concessions to Russia without guarantees to prevent future Russian aggression.

“There is a chance that the U.S. will betray Ukraine on territory without clarity on security guarantees,” he said, according to the magazine.

In the call that took place on Monday, December 1, 2025, Germany’s Friedrich Merz warned

Zelenskiy that U.S. negotiators are “playing games” and that he should be “very careful” over the next few days, the Spiegel report said.

Berlin declined to comment, while the French President’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The President did not express himself in these words,” Spiegel quoted the Élysée as saying.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must end illegal deportations going against court orders- Trump pledged to evict ciminals NOT students

College freshman is deported flying home for Thanksgiving surprise, despite court order- AP by Holly Ramer (Associated Press)

Echo published in the Houston Chronicle in Texas: Why is the US deporting college students❓ | Opinion

College student deported:  Concord, N.H. (AP) — A college freshman trying to fly from Boston to Texas to surprise her family for Thanksgiving was instead deported to Honduras in violation of a court order, according to her attorney.  Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, 19, had already passed through security at Boston Logan International Airport on Nov. 20 when she was told there was an issue with her boarding pass, said attorney Todd Pomerleau. The Babson College student was then detained by immigration officials and within two days, sent to Texas and then Honduras, the country she left at age 7.
Regarding “College freshman is deported flying home for Thanksgiving surprise, despite court order,”(Nov. 28): When will the madness stop? A college student in Boston coming to Austin for Thanksgiving is handcuffed and shackled by immigration officials at the airport and immediately deported to Honduras, a country she hasn't been in since she was seven.

I thought criminals and felons were the targets❓❗ People, please rise up and help our politicians get the courage to stop the unlawful treatment of our people who are supposedly not the target for deportation.

From Ahronda James, in Cypress, Texas

Donald Trump is a bully and Republicans must impeach him for death threats to elected lawmakers

Trump’s violent rhetoric endangers democracy

An echo opinion published in The Daily Record in Maryland

Incredibly, Donald Trump, 🤢who is the President of the United States, accused six Democratic members of Congress of “seditious behavior punishable by death.” Their so-called crime in his eyes was to advise United States service members to refuse to obey illegal orders. Yes, the president called for the execution of members of Congress because they told servicemen and women to obey the law.

Melania Trump's failed anti-bully campaign

Donald Trump called their experienced advice, set out on a videotape, “seditious behavior at the highest level,” and he demanded they be arrested and tried for their crimes. He shared another post saying, “Hang them [sic] George Washington would.” 🤥

All who serve in the military swear a solemn oath to uphold and protect the Constitution. To be clear, the US military’s Uniform Code of Justice allows a military member to refuse to obey a “patently illegal order.” That would include an order that directs the commission of a crime or the violation of constitutional rights. In his first term, Trump suggested that the military shoot peaceful protesters in the legs, an illegal and unconstitutional action should it have occurred.

We don’t know for sure yet whether Donald Trump actually believes he has the right to execute these members of Congress, or any service member who refuses to obey an illegal order, or whether he is playing to his maga cult supporters. 

But, what we do know is that political violence in this country is on the rise, and his statements calling for execution serve as a dog whistle to those who might do the president’s bidding.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the congresswoman from Georgia, announced recently she has received threats of violence after Trump attacked her, because she refused to remove her name from the Epstein Files discharge petition. 

In a short time, we witnessed the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the fire bombing of the residence of Josh Shapiro, the Pennsylvania governor, and the murder of an elected Minnesota Democrat, on June 14, 2025, state representative Melissa Hortman was assassinated in a shooting at her home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, and her husband Mark was also murdered. 

Our politics have become far too violent, and we must find a way to tone down the rhetoric. All six who Trump threatened are under 24-hour protection and one senator received a bomb threat.

Donald Trump, when he issues threats like the one he has directed at the six members of Congress, acts more like a 250-pound, 10-year-old schoolyard bully than the leader of a free nation. His actions are wrong, they are evil, dangerous and frankly, they are revolting. 

We are aware that nothing will distract him from doing this in the future, that there is no one to rein him in partly because he believes he’s above the law, but we wanted to go on record to express our views.

#ImpeachTrumpNow

Death is an obsession with Donald Trump who exploits his fixation for causing harm to others: His support for the death penalty is another dire example of Trump's cruelty

Donald Trump’s death penalty obsession: As with most other developments in the Republican Party, it can be traced back to Donald Trump. Echo opinion published in The Boston Globe by Theo Zenou:

The president’s bloodlust is filtering down to red-state America.

Theo Zenou is a historian and a journalist.

This has been a trying year for Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Every time someone is executed at Florida State Prison, activists hold a vigil outside the death chamber. They say prayers and, at 6 p.m., the time of execution, they ring a bell. In 2025, they have rung the bell 17 times.

Florida’s 17 executions are more than have taken place in any other state, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, and are by far the highest number carried out in a year in Florida since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. 

But the grim record is about to be topped. On December 9, another inmate is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection.

This acceleration in executions is due to Governor Ron DeSantis, who signed the death warrant and set the execution date in each case. In Florida, unlike other states, this is the prerogative of the governor. Although juries vote for death sentences, DeSantis — and DeSantis alone — decides whether those sentences are actually carried out. In the past, Florida’s governors have held off on signing specific death warrants. As a result, some inmates have spent decades on death row.

“I support capital punishment because I think there are some crimes that are just so horrific the only appropriate punishment is the death penalty,” DeSantis, who has led Florida since 2019, said in May. The Republican believes that the execution spree could serve as “a strong deterrent” against violent crime. 

When he was asked by reporters why he had signed fewer death warrants earlier in his tenure — none between 2020 and 2022, six in 2023 and just one last year — he said he had other priorities to deal with, chief among them the COVID pandemic.

But it’s not hard to imagine another reason for DeSantis’s enthusiasm for the death penalty. The governor is reportedly eyeing a 2028 presidential run, and he could be flexing his muscles to impress the Republican electorate. Taking a hard line on crime has long been popular with conservatives. In recent months, however, the rhetoric has escalated. Take Texas Governor Greg Abbott. After two undocumented immigrants allegedly killed an Air Force cadet in a jet-ski hit-and-run, he tweeted: “Welcome to Texas. Here’s your Death Penalty.” Almost all 44 executions carried out this year in the United States, the highest figure in 15 years, occurred in red states, with 76 percent concentrated in Texas, Florida, Alabama, and South Carolina.

As with most other developments in the Republican Party, it can be traced back to Donald Trump. The president has long been a proponent of capital punishment. Back in 1989, when he was just a New York real estate developer, Trump took out ads in the city’s newspapers calling for the executions of the Central Park Five — men accused of raping a Central Park jogger. “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY,” screamed the all-caps headline. As it turned out, the Central Park Five were later exonerated.

Not that it has stopped Trump from bringing that same gung-ho approach into the Oval Office. The president has been hell-bent on expanding capital punishment at both the federal and state levels — even when his efforts flout the law. This hasn’t made headlines, but it is another sign of the United States’s troubling slide into illiberalism.

Trump claims that his stance enjoys “broad public support.” But that’s not the case. Public support for capital punishment is actually at a 50-year low, according to a recent Gallup poll, with just 52 percent of Americans in favor. Thirty years ago, it was 80 percent.

At present, the death penalty is legal in 27 states and at the federal level. But before this year’s 44 executions and counting, it had become less common. There were a total of 25 in 2024. None were performed by the U.S. government since Joe Biden imposed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021. Even prior to that decision, only a small number had been carried out in the 21st century. The lone exception was during Trump’s first term, with 13 executions.

Now, Trump is back with a vengeance. On January 20, the first day of his second term, he overturned Biden’s moratorium and signed an executive order titled (all caps again) “RESTORING THE DEATH PENALTY AND PROTECTING PUBLIC SAFETY.” 

In it, Trump painted a picture of sinister conspiracy. “For too long,” he wrote, “politicians and judges who oppose capital punishment have defied and subverted the laws of our country.”

No longer. The president, who once told his supporters that “I am your retribution,” was committing himself to delivering that retribution. He called on Attorney General Pam Bondi “to pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use.” He also ordered Bondi to systematically pursue death sentences in the murders of law enforcement officers and all capital crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.

This has already had consequences on the ground. Although there have been no federal executions this year, federal prosecutors are seeking capital punishment in as many as 20 cases, according to the Federal Capital Trial Project. Luigi Mangione’s, the alleged murderer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan, is the most high profile defendant. 

Although the state of New York abolished the death penalty in 2007, the federal government is still able to seek it for any capital crime committed there. Bondi’s justification was simple: “We carry out Donald Trump's agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again.”🤢

The Department of Justice is aggressively considering bringing capital charges in additional cases. In the process, the DOJ is testing the limits of due process. Under federal law, defendants are entitled to a “reasonable opportunity” to present mitigating evidence for why they should not face a death sentence. This can be due to physical or mental health issues or a history of trauma. Typically, this mitigation phase lasts around a year.

But the DOJ is now giving defense lawyers as little as two months to make a case for why their clients deserve to live. 

Payments to court-appointed mitigation specialists were also paused during the government shutdown. “This is really unlike anything I’ve ever experienced,” Mairead Burke, a mitigation specialist based in the District of Columbia, told The Washington Post.

In October, a New Mexico murder defendant facing a capital sentence filed an emergency motion demanding that the process be paused until funding is resumed. His attorneys argued that the situation amounted to “a deprivation of his right to counsel while the government seeks his death.” The DOJ denounced their “strained reasoning.”

Not even inmates whose death sentences were commuted by President Biden are safe from government overreach. Trump has said online he wishes for them to “GO TO HELL!” Bondi has done her best to oblige and moved most of them to a Colorado prison so harsh it is known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.” As Aaron Seitz, a former US assistant attorney general, told the Wall Street Journal: “If you’re not going to be killed lawfully at the hands of the state, well, your prison sentence is going to be hard as hell.”
But Trump’s impact has not just been felt at the federal level. In his January 20, executive order, he also directed Bondi to “encourage” states to seek capital punishment in all applicable cases. Cut to 11 months later and Republican state legislators are obediently doing his bidding. Nine states are currently trying to reinstate the death penalty, according to The Hill, while bills to expand the definition of capital crimes — for instance, to include pedophilia — are on the floor of 14 state houses.

Here too, Florida has been leading the pack. In February, DeSantis signed a bill into law automatically requiring capital punishment for “unauthorized aliens” convicted of a capital felony. That requirement for capital punishment — juries would have no say — is believed to run afoul of the US Constitution. The law’s sponsor, Randy Fine, a former state senator, is hoping that the conservative Supreme Court won’t strike it down. But that doesn’t appear to be his primary concern. His motivation for the law was to show loyalty to Trump. “We wanted to make sure that the state was lined up to follow in President Trump’s lead,” he said.

For decades, America has stood as an outlier among Western democracies for continuing to impose capital punishment. But Trump’s hard-line approach cannot be dismissed as business as usual. Yes, past Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were vocal supporters of the death penalty. But they didn’t flout legal norms the way Trump does. He has not simply defended capital punishment in theory. He has used the bully pulpit to demand the executions of specific individuals, disregarding both their right to a fair trial and the independence of the courts.

His push to expand capital punishment is not happening in a vacuum either. It needs to be understood as part of a broader attack against the rule of law. The president has made illiberalism his credo. He has unleashed the National Guard on U.S. cities. He rails against judges whose decisions he disagrees with. And he treats Immigration and Customs Enforcement like his personal special forces.

Similarly, Trump treats the death penalty as his personal prerogative. It has now become routine for the president to publicly call for the execution of murder suspects. After the Ukrainian refugee Irina Zaratuska was murdered on a train in August, Trump raged on social media: “The ANIMAL … should be given a ‘Quick’ (there is no doubt!) trial, and only awarded THE DEATH PENALTY.” But the president does not even need someone to be accused of a crime to demand their head. He acts like he is judge, jury, and executioner. Recently, after a group of Democratic lawmakers released a video saying soldiers should not obey unlawful orders, he went online to inveigh against “traitors.” His verdict: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

Such rhetoric is irresponsible. For one thing, in the case of murder suspects, it is clearly prejudicial and threatens the integrity of the judiciary. For another, it turns capital punishment into a grisly form of entertainment. This breeds a desire for vengeance among the wider public. At any time, this is bad for a healthy society. But at a time when political violence is flaring up, it is downright dangerous.

Since his return to power, Donald Trump has been carrying out a carpet-bombing campaign against America’s institutions. Call it the shock and awe approach to governing. It is easy, amid the chaos, to miss some of the damage being done. That has certainly been the case with the Trump administration’s expansion of capital punishment. Because it directly affects only a few individuals, it has elicited little public outcry. But it is no less concerning. Trump’s obsession with “THE DEATH PENALTY” betrays the destructive impulse at the heart of his presidency.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must fire Pete Hegseth and RFKjr because both men are putting American lives at risk of harm

To the editor of the Yakima Herald-Republic newspaper, in Washington state— Delusional Trump has no idea how to lead (IMO, Donald Trump behaves like a crime boss, mafia style.)

Donald Trump is the worst president the U.S. has ever had. He views the point of presidency to increase his personal wealth. That’s not his job. He is supposed to direct actions to improve the lives of citizens.

Trump fundamentally misunderstands every action he has taken.

He has appointed radically unqualified individuals. Fox (Fake❗) News hosts and RFK Jr., who created a measles outbreak because of his stupid unsound opinions.

• Pete Hegseth is an alcoholic supposedly in recovery, an unqualified secretary of defense who is putting American military lives in harms way by compromising security and causing them to obey illegal orders.
• RFKjr is harming all Americans who are now at risk for becoming ill with preventable infectious diseases because of his wrong minded and dangerous anti-vaccine delusions. 

Following his own threats against congressional members who didn’t kowtow to him, he had to back down, saying: “TRUMP DOES NOT WANT TO EXECUTE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, WHITE HOUSE SAYS,” an astonishing sentence for the government of the United States from its dictator-in-waiting.

Trump is a war criminal, bombing boats in international waters with no facts, operations the administration has carried out for more than 60 days without congressional authorization, and deploying the U.S. military amid and against our citizens. A baby Mussolini.

Trump has few constant ideological stances — one is that his tariffs will spur economic growth and benefit the consumer (not true). Tariffs have, in fact, caused prices to rise (as everyone else knows). U.S. Citizens pay the costs of tariffs, despite Trump’s delusional thoughts.

From MICHAEL MARTIN in Selah, Washington state

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must end the ICE terror they are a masked group of demonic thugs

 Evil and cruelty are the Trumpzi brand.

Echo opinion published in the Lewiston Maine Sun Journal:

Maine must continue to fight for the faceless and forgotten targeted by ICE | Opinion:  If we don’t, aren’t we complicit❓

Majorities of Americans disapprove of ICE and say the agency mistreats our citizens and immigrants.

The high rate of disapproval about ICE may stem in part from concerns about the agency's tactics. Half (52%) of Americans say that ICE's tactics are too forceful. Only 26% say that its tactics are about right and 11% say that they are not forceful enough.

Majorities of both Democrats (86%) and Independents (60%) say that ICE's tactics are too forceful. But only 12% of Republicans think ICE is too forceful; 52% say ICE's tactics are about right. Those who think ICE's tactics are not forceful enough are in the minority in all three groups: 1% of Democrats, 8% of Independents, and 24% of Republicans.

About half of Americans support protests against ICE: Americans are more likely to somewhat or strongly approve than disapprove of protests against ICE actions (48% vs. 39%). Majorities of Democrats (76%) and Independents (55%) approve of protests against ICE actions, with small shares disapproving (12% of Democrats and 28% of Independents). Most Republicans disapprove of anti-ICE protests (76%, compared to 13% who approve).

Donald Trump and dangerous maga Republicans must resign because they are creating a Nazi "Mein Kampf" government

Echo opinion: FIRST HAND ACCOUNT: WORSE THAN HITLER AND THE NAZIS (Letter to the editor, Portland Press Herald)

Comparison between Trump administration, Nazi regime is chilling❗

I am a 94-year-old Jewish American ✡️who still has fire left in the belly. I enlisted and served for three and a half years in the United States Marine Corps. My father was born in Odessa, Ukraine, and my mother was born in a small village near Moscow. 

She was persecuted by pogroms, they emigrated to Canada and then the United States. Many of my father’s family perished under the Nazi regime.

When I see, hear and read about the immigrant policy under the current presidential administration, it is — without a doubt — a carbon copy of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” from the 1930s, and ’40s in Nazi Germany. However, the present seizing of immigrants and racially profiled citizens has become worse than the Gestapo “rounding up” the Jews. 

The systematic, dehumanizing process employed by this cruel Donald Trump administration far surpasses Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

My hope and wish is that the American people will wake up, see through this sham, and take appropriate action before we soon become a fascist state and lose our precious democracy. 

God bless America. - From Ed Fraktman, in Scarborough, Maine

Donald Trump is giving illegal orders to the National Guard

Echo report published in The New York Times and again in Maria Shriver's Sunday Paper by Shawn McCreesh, a White House reporter for The Times covering the Trump administration.

What I do not understand is how Mr. McCreesh can report about this situation without raising the salient question 💥- How can Donald Trump keep getting away with giving illegal orders to the National Guard?)

(Maine Writer preface- Donald Trump continues giving illegal orders regardless of how many people are harmed but then when the inevitable result turns tragic, he deflects the subject by reigning down more cruelty.)

Trump’s Evil Response to ragic Shooting Intensifies Anti-Migrant Stance- to deflect from the fact about how the National Guard were in harm's way because he issued an illegal order for them to be in Washington DC to police peaceful civilians.

Donald Trump is furiously demanding limits on migration and attacking ethnic groups as he steps up his efforts to equate immigration with crime and economic distress.

The shooting of two National Guard members by a gunman identified by the authorities as an Afghan national has set off an especially intense level of fury in President Trump and a new push to step up his anti-immigration policies.

In a series of statements in the two days since the shooting on a Washington street corner just blocks from the White House, Mr. Trump has cast the attack as exactly what he has warned about and made clear that he intended to use it to pursue an even more maximalist version of his agenda.

In social media posts near midnight on Thanksgiving, he vowed to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries” and threatened to strip U.S. citizenship from naturalized migrants “who undermine domestic tranquillity.”



He threatened to “end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country” and deport foreigners deemed to be “non-compatible with Western Civilization.”

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director said in a statement that his agency had “halted all asylum decisions until we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.”

On the same day, the State Department announced that it was halting visas for Afghans, including those who had helped the United States during the war in their country.

Mr. Trump used remarkably derogatory and personal terms in his Thursday night posts to portray Somali refugees as preying in gangs on innocent Americans, and Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, who emigrated to the United States from Somalia and became a citizen 25 years ago, as someone who “probably came into the U.S.A. illegally.” He described her as “always wrapped in her swaddling hijab.”

Those statements came after he had ordered the administration to review the status of green card holders from 19 nations that he has subjected to a travel ban.

It is not clear what authority Donald. Trump has to follow through on his demands or how he will seek to have them carried out. 

Under federal law, for example, U.S. citizens can generally be denaturalized only if they are found to have concealed material facts about their background in gaining citizenship or to have misrepresented themselves in the process.

But, the ferocity of his response was in keeping with his longstanding views on immigration, race and national identity and what he sees as a direct link from those factors to crime, national security threats and economic distress — even though those links, where they exist, are often tenuous and more complex than he makes out.

The killing of one of the National Guard members and the critical wounding of another is also sure to fuel further debate over the costs and benefits of using the military on the streets of American cities. Mr. Trump has already ordered another 500 National Guardsmen to Washington on top of the roughly 2,000 there already, although a federal judge ruled last week that the initial deployment was illegal.

The shooting and Mr. Trump’s response assure that immigration will remain at the center of American politics heading into the 2026 midterm election cycle and at a time when the White House is on the defensive over issues like the cost of living and the Jeffrey Epstein files.

In his second term, Donald Trump has been primarily focused on deporting migrants from the United States. But over the last several days he has re-emphasized policies and language that date back to his first term, when he disparaged African countries, and the 2024 campaign, when he singled out groups of migrants and blamed them for crime and other social ills.

Since the shooting, Donald Trump has seemed to fixate on Somalian refugees in Minnesota in particular.

“We’re not taking their people anymore,” Donald Trump said on Thursday. He later wrote on social media that Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of that state, was “seriously retarded” for welcoming immigrants from Somalia.

Asked Thursday at Mar-a-Lago what Somalis in Minnesota had to do with the accused Afghan shooter in Washington, Mr. Trump replied: “Ah, nothing. But Somalians have caused a lot of trouble.”

The shooting has taken on an outsize significance in the story that Mr. Trump tells about the country and the world. The details of the tragedy dovetail neatly with so many of the issues that animated his campaign for president.

The way Mr. Trump talks about immigration invokes tropes, not all of which are supported by the facts, about out-of-control crime in big cities and about foreign invaders who take advantage of American hospitality with no intent to assimilate to an American way of life. He repeatedly brings up the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and its border and refugee policies, which Mr. Trump had said all along would result in catastrophe.

When he spoke in Palm Beach on Thursday, he held up a photograph showing Afghans rushing onto a plane leaving their country as its government collapsed in 2021. Such scenes, he said, were incontrovertible proof of what he had been warning about for years.

He downplayed the fact that the suspect in the Washington shooting, an Afghan who had worked with C.I.A.-backed forces to help the United States in Afghanistan, had received asylum from the U.S. government in April, when Mr. Trump was president, according to three people with knowledge of the case who were not authorized to speak publicly. Mr. Trump had an answer ready to go when he was asked about that on Thursday.

“When it comes to asylum, when they’re flown in, it’s very hard to get them out,” he said. “No matter how you want to do it, it’s very hard to get them out. But we’re going to be getting them all out now.”

Edward Wong contributed reporting.