Donald Trump and maga Republicans rapidly creating a fascist government for no reason except to control power, money and freedom of the press

Year of Trump. The Time to Act Is Now, While We Still Can echo opinion published in The New York Times by M. Gessen. 

A year into Donald Trump’s horrible second term, friends who live outside the United States continue to express shock at the news that comes from rn for my safety. I shrug. 

Even those of us in the United States who oppose this administration’s actions have a way of normalizing them. On Tuesday, I saw a news release in my inbox: A new filing in the legal case against the construction of the giant immigrant detention facility in Florida. I — like many other Americans, it seems — had almost forgotten about Alligator Alcatraz.

In Europe, attention has been unwavering. Journalists are writing articles and making documentaries about America building a concentration camp. On these shores, we have simply become a country that builds concentration camps. It’s only one of the changes we have absorbed in the last year.

We have become a country where people are disappeared by a paramilitary force that hunts them down in their apartments, on city streets and country roads, and even in the courts. Less than a year ago, videos of ICE arrests would go viral and social media posts about ICE sightings would send chills down our spines. Now even the most high-profile detentions have faded from view: Who has been released❓ Who has been deported❓Who is still missing❓

Who can keep track❓

We have become a country where a person can be summarily executed in public for protesting that paramilitary force.

An evil ICE agent killed the innocent unarmed American citizen, Renee Good, in Minneapolis by shooting her not three times, but four times, at point-blank range on January 7, but Donald Trump, Hillbilly JD Vance and other Nazi federal officials said the shooting was justified as an act of self-defense (the video shows otherwise) and pointed to Good’s ostensible, but without her own affirmation, affiliation with left-wing groups — apparently affirming that peaceful protest is now punishable by death in America.

We are a country whose federal government deploys military and paramilitary forces in the streets of major cities, terrorizing the residents in the guise of protecting them.

I am not arguing that what we have become this year is just more of the same. Few people would make this argument anymore.

But, the truth is, even though we are taught to think of history as a series of definitive turning points with specific dates — wars, revolutions, assassinations, declarations of independence and decrees announcing martial law — no transformation is instant or total. This Trump administration has moved at breakneck speed. And still, it hasn’t broken everything yet.

We are still a country with a robust civil society. The lawyers have fought the administration in court. The people have rallied against Trump’s usurpation of power and have organized to protect their neighbors from ICE. But Trump’s attacks on universities, his assault on the judiciary, and his threats against nonprofits and philanthropies have already altered the way civil society functions. The universities and the foundations aren’t what they were a year ago, and neither is the judiciary, where so much civil-society work is concentrated. And the execution of Renee Good has surely affected every potential protester’s mental calculus.

Where is Maine Senator Susan Collins?

We still have independent media. But taking stock of how much the media landscape has changed is sobering. Even before the 2024 election, the owners of The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times curtailed the independence of their editorial pages. Soon after the election, ABC News and then the parent company of CBS News paid millions of dollars to settle what certainly appeared to be frivolous lawsuits filed by Trump. (He has filed several more, including one against The New York Times, and another against 20 individual members of the Pulitzer Prize Board, which includes Times journalists.) Now, under new ownership, CBS is rapidly transforming itself into a Trump-friendly network.

Autocrats destroy the free press in at least two ways: by cracking down, as Trump has done through lawsuits and regulatory pressure, and by reapportioning access to information. In October, the Trump administration effectively kicked legacy media outlets out of the Pentagon, replacing them with loyal journalists and influencers. The media, like civil society, is much diminished compared with what it was a year ago.

We still have elections. But how free and fair will the 2026 elections be? Trump doesn’t just carry a grudge against the election authorities of many states; he made that grudge a centerpiece of his 2024 campaign. Since he returned to office, his administration has taken a series of executive actions and filed a series of lawsuits aimed at restricting access to the polls, purging voter rolls, limiting the independence of local election authorities, and generally laying the groundwork for the systematic intimidation of both voters and election officials. States have joined this effort. Florida is cracking down on voter registration drives. Ohio and other states have introduced restrictive voter ID laws. Georgia has limited poll hours and banned providing food or water to people standing in line to vote. Texas has gerrymandered a map that threatens to disenfranchise Black and Latino voters and may wipe five Democratic congressional seats out of existence, and the Supreme Court has allowed this controversial new map to be used in the 2026, midterms. Add to this Trump’s threat to deploy the military to deal with the “enemy from within” during the elections on the one hand and his promise to send Americans what amounts to a bribe — $2,000 checks “toward the end of the year” — and you have the prospect of elections that are far less free and a lot less fair than the last ones.

A foreign observer taking stock of the United States could describe us as a nation on the brink of civil war. But we can barely keep current the list of cities where troops have been or still are in the streets: Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; Chicago; Portland, Oregon.; Memphis; New Orleans. The number of armed federal agents deployed to Minneapolis may now be five times the size of the city’s police force.

We have become a country whose government is attacking its universities, defunding research, reversing scientific advances, assaulting museums and hollowing out cultural institutions. Few of these attacks — carried out in broad daylight, announced in executive orders, extolled in speeches and put on display in giant metal letters — meet meaningful resistance. We are making ourselves stupider.

We have become a country that demonstratively tramples on international laws. Our military bombs a different nation every few weeks, commits murder on the high seas and removes foreign political leaders by force. Our government threatens the world, including our allies, with its imperial ambitions.

We are a country ruled by a megalomaniac whose views are openly hateful and proudly ignorant, whose avarice knows no bounds and whose claim to power is absolute. Foreign leaders try to appease him with flattery and curry his favor with gifts. It rarely works to temper his appetite or even catch his attention, but it’s seemingly all they can do.

To be sure, some elements of our current condition predate Trump. This country has long maintained the world’s largest carceral system, and one of the least humane in the Western world; it formed the foundation for the concentration camps.


Police executions of Black people have long been a pattern. The origins of ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, conceived as a secret police force, go back to 9/11. The culture wars date to at least the 1980s. And disregarding international law, playing the world’s heavily armed policeman, has been a longstanding bipartisan tradition — as have increasingly hostile, restrictive immigration policies. The presidency itself has been growing less transparent and more powerful for at least a couple of decades.

I am not arguing that what we have become this year is just more of the same. Few people would make this argument anymore. But the truth is, even though we are taught to think of history as a series of definitive turning points with specific dates — wars, revolutions, assassinations, declarations of independence and decrees announcing martial law — no transformation is instant or total. This Trump administration has moved at breakneck speed. And still, it hasn’t broken everything yet.

Yet, we are still a country with a robust civil society. The lawyers have fought the administration in court. The people have rallied against Trump’s usurpation of power and have organized to protect their neighbors from ICE. But Trump’s attacks on universities, his assault on the judiciary, and his threats against nonprofits and philanthropies have already altered the way civil society functions. The universities and the foundations aren’t what they were a year ago, and neither is the judiciary, where so much civil-society work is concentrated. And the execution of Renee Good has surely affected every potential protester’s mental calculus.

We still have independent media. But taking stock of how much the media landscape has changed is sobering. Even before the 2024 election, the owners of The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times curtailed the independence of their editorial pages. 

Soon after the election, ABC News and then the parent company of CBS News paid millions of dollars to settle what certainly appeared to be frivolous lawsuits filed by Trump. (He has filed several more, including one against The New York Times, and another against 20 individual members of the Pulitzer Prize Board, which includes Times journalists.) Now, under new ownership, CBS is rapidly transforming itself into a Trump-friendly network.

Autocrats destroy the free press in at least two ways: by cracking down, as Trump has done through lawsuits and regulatory pressure, and by reapportioning access to information. In October, the Trump administration effectively kicked legacy media outlets out of the Pentagon, replacing them with loyal journalists and influencers. The media, like civil society, is much diminished compared with what it was a year ago.

We still have elections. But how free and fair will the 2026, elections be❓ Trump doesn’t just carry a grudge against the election authorities of many states; he made that grudge a centerpiece of his 2024, campaign. Since he returned to office, his administration has taken a series of executive actions and filed a series of lawsuits aimed at restricting access to the polls, purging voter rolls, limiting the independence of local election authorities, and generally laying the groundwork for the systematic intimidation of both voters and election officials. States have joined this effort. Florida is cracking down on voter registration drives. Ohio and other states have introduced restrictive voter ID laws. Georgia has limited poll hours and banned providing food or water to people standing in line to vote. Texas has gerrymandered a map that threatens to disenfranchise Black and Latino voters and may wipe five Democratic congressional seats out of existence, and the Supreme Court has allowed this controversial new map to be used in the 2026 midterms. Add to this Trump’s threat to deploy the military to deal with the “enemy from within” during the elections on the one hand and his promise to send Americans what amounts to a bribe — $2,000 checks “toward the end of the year” — and you have the prospect of elections that are far less free and a lot less fair than the last ones.
As for the next presidential election, Trump has made his intentions clear: He is not planning to leave his throne. He may look for a pretext to cancel the vote. (When President Volodymyr Zelensky told him that Ukraine can’t have an election during the war, Trump visibly lit up: “So you mean if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections? Oh, that’s good.”) He may find a way to invalidate the vote after the election — he has been laying the groundwork for such a move since his first term. Even if he doesn’t, it is foolish to think that this iteration of our national nightmare will end in three years.

One term for regimes that maintain the trappings of democracy, such as legislatures, courts and elections, but use them primarily as decoration is “electoral authoritarianism.” This is what we are becoming.

It matters what we call things — what we call ourselves. It matters for wonky reasons like reading the polls: Public opinion functions differently in democratic and nondemocratic societies. But it matters more for how we think about the future. We can’t count on change being brought about by elections when we can’t count on elections. We can’t count on the freedoms and resources we enjoy today to still be available to us tomorrow.

Ask anyone who has lived in a country that became an autocracy, and they will tell you some version of a story about walls closing in on them, about space getting smaller and smaller. The space they are talking about is freedom. In Russia, mass protest used to be possible. (The first time people got prison terms for peaceful protest, in 2012, I wrote a whole book about it.) Then mass protest became impossible and the only option was what we called the one-person picket: a person standing alone with a sign. Then people started getting arrested for standing alone with a blank piece of paper, then for “liking” something on social media. Russian journalists used to know that they could write freely as long as they stuck to culture and avoided politics; now a person can get arrested for performing a tune by a banned songwriter.

Of course, the United States is not Russia — or Hungary or Venezuela or Israel or any of the many other democracies that have turned or are turning themselves into autocracies. But now is the time to focus on the similarities and try to learn from the ways other countries have cracked down on protest, eviscerated their electoral systems, limited their media freedom and built concentration camps. The only way to keep the space from imploding is to fill it, to prop up the walls: to claim all the room there still is for speaking, writing, publishing, protesting, voting. 

In fact, it is what the people of Minnesota appear to be doing, and it’s something each of us needs to do — right now, while we still can.

Trump and his cult are full stop wrong to falsely accuse innocent Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss with election fraud

Echo opinion letter published in the Los Angeles Times newspaper:
Letters to the Editor: How the January 6, hearing spotlighted Trump’s attack on people of color.  (Maine Writer- Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss are innocent victims of the Trump misinformation campaign!)

The testimony by two election workers from Fulton County, Georgia., who were cruelly targeted and personally threatened, based on false claims by the former guy Trump was disturbing and painful to watch.

In fact, the testimony by the two Black women also spotlighted the racist and defamatory thrust of Trump’s Big Lie. 

 Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman are two Georgia election workers who Trump named in his false election denial claims.

It’s no coincidence that Trump made allegations of election fraud in states, cities and counties with substantial populations of people of color. Trump’s false claims were in sync with the Republican Party’s established voter suppression efforts, which are based on spurious fears that people of color can’t be trusted with the vote and must be targeted, lest they foul our democratic voting system.

Of course, Trump, with his Big Lie, has fouled our democratic voting system beyond measure while defaming and damaging the private lives of conscientious election workers along the way. 

When will Trump be held accountable for even a portion of the harm he has done to persons and institutions?

From D. Keith Naylor, in South Pasadena, California

Donald Trump is a cult leader who continues to engage in corruption and supports The Big Lie

To the editor: Donald Trump has finally been indicted for his horrific attempt to destabilize our democracy on January 6, 2021.

It’s an important step toward accountability and I’m thankful that our legal system is working as intended. But, it’s hard to feel any relief when Republicans in Congress are even now actively trying to enshrine Trump’s crimes into law. 

Former Guy Trump arrives for a campaign rally to preach about "The Big Lie", in Erie, Pennsylvania. 

(Sue Ogrocki / Associated Press)

The American Confidence in Elections Act should be called the Big Lie Act, since it will finish what Trump started.

If passed, it would make it easier for dishonest politicians to challenge election results, increase the corporate and dark money influence in our elections, disenfranchise millions of voters, block states from running voter registration programs and empower the spread of disinformation. It is designed to help Donald Trump regain power, despite his indictments.

The fact that Trump has been charged with a whole list of new, serious crimes, along with all his other indictments and convictions shows us once again that the former president and his MAGA enablers in the House are a grave threat to our democracy and our country.

Trump in courtroom before magistrate

.

We deserve and demand fair, free and open elections, not shameless power grabs and endless corruption.

Ken Rosen, Beverly Hills, California

Protect the caravan! A pro life plea

All those Evangelicals who vote in lock step to protect life before considering any other salient issue affecting mankind, must take a stand in support of the growing caravan of migrants who are seeking asylum by  marching through treacherous terrain from Central America, mostly Honduras, to Texas.

Where are the pro-life Evangelicals?

Stretching for miles, 7,000-strong migrant caravan treks through stifling heat in southern Mexico by Kate Linthicum

A growing caravan of roughly 7,000 Central American immigrants continued its trek toward the United States on Sunday, blowing past Mexican police and immigration officials.

The group, which has swelled in size in recent days, set out before dawn on the only road out of the small Mexican border town of Ciudad Hidalgo. It arrived in the afternoon in the city of Tapachula, more than 20 miles away.

The migrants, nearly all from the poor and violent nation of Honduras, posed a growing political and humanitarian calamity for Mexico, which has come under intense pressure from President Trump to stop them.

On Friday, Mexican police used tear gas to block migrants from storming an official border crossing. But in the days since, Mexico has appeared unwilling to use force to stop the thousands of people who have illegally crossed the Suchiate River from Guatemala into Mexico and started walking north.

That may be in part because the migrants include hundreds of women and small children, some in strollers. It could also be because of the daunting size of the caravan, which stretched for at least two miles.

As the caravan headed north Sunday in the 90-degree heat, another group of roughly 1,500 migrants waited on the Guatemalan side of the river, hoping to enter Mexico legally.

Authorities said more than 1,000 caravan members already have entered legally and applied for refugee status in Mexico and are being detained while their applications are processed.

The migrants left Honduras more than a week ago and began arriving several days ago at the Guatemalan border town of Tecun Uman, just across the river from Ciudad Hidalgo.

Most say they intend to cross into the United States, not seek refuge in Mexico. Some complain that they were unable to find work in Honduras. Others say they are fleeing violence or political repression there and hope to apply for asylum in the U.S.

Kate Linthicum @katelinthicum
I’m only just realizing the massive scale of this caravan as they march north into Mexico. It’s several thousand people. Just look.
10:14 AM - Oct 21, 2018

The caravan is more than two miles long. People near the end are stumbling. It’s 23 miles to Tapachula and it’s so hot — 90 degrees — today.  2:11 PM - Oct 21, 2018

Ingrid Andino, her husband and their two children left their small town in Honduras about a month ago after a local gang started pressuring her 16-year-old son to sell drugs. “They were going to kill him or kill us,” she said.

Andino said her family stayed with relatives in another town for a time before seeing the caravan on the news and deciding to join.

On Sunday, she and her family walked north in a line, holding hands, while she carried a bag containing the family’s possessions balanced on her head.

Trump has made the caravan a campaign issue at rallies across the country ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, calling it a menace to national security. He has threatened Mexico and Central American countries with economic reprisal if they fail to stop the migrants and vowed to send the military to close the U.S. border should the group make it that far.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, under pressure from Trump, has said repeatedly that no migrants will be allowed to enter the country in an “irregular” manner. Mexico’s deterrence of those who tried to storm the official border crossing Friday drew praise from Trump.

But when droves of people began crossing the river, swimming or boarding rafts, Mexican police and immigration agents just watched.

Gerardo Hernandez, head of the civil protection agency in the municipality of Suchiate, Chiapas, said that as of Saturday night, 7,233 immigrants had been registered at a shelter in Ciudad Hidalgo.

The group formed an imposing bloc as it began to march Sunday. Many Mexicans who live in the area lined the highway, handing out free clothes, sandwiches and bottles of water while cheering the caravan on.

“May God bless you!” one woman shouted.
“Thank you, Mexico!” the migrants shouted back.

Several times, large groups of police officers clad in riot gear blocked the road but then retreated. At one point, a small group of police watched as members of the caravan passed, some of them skipping.

When a small group of immigration officials tried to stop the caravan to persuade its members to apply for political asylum, the caravan swept past them, too.

As the day wore on, the enthusiasm drained somewhat.

The strongest of the group, mostly young men, led while the weaker fell behind. One teenage girl stumbled into a car parked on the shoulder of the highway, then rested her head for a brief moment on the trunk. Others carried cases of water, stuffed animals or children.

Paola Oviedo, 21, walked while hugging her 18-month-old son to her chest. She was panting, and she and her baby were both sweating heavily.

Oviedo, who crossed the Suchiate River on a raft, said she decided to leave Honduras after facing death threats from her abusive ex-husband. The police did nothing to help her, she said.

She said she didn’t want her son to grow up without his mother.

“I have to do this for his future,” she said.

Each immigrant was driven by a different dream.

For Cesar Meijia, 23, it was the freedom to be himself.

When Meijia came out as gay several years ago, his family sent him to a psychologist and the local gang threatened to kill him, saying they did not want people like him in their neighborhood. “I want to go to a place where people respect me,” he said, marching with a rainbow flag tied across his broad shoulders.

For Ramon Izaguirre, 20, the dream was to return to the life he left behind.

Izaguirre was born in Honduras but later moved to Phoenix with his mother. She cleaned houses while Izaguirre worked construction. He earned enough to buy a small condominium and a silver Mazda Miata.

He said he was was deported about a month ago after a routine traffic stop revealed that a work permit he used to enter the country had expired.

Izaguirre had convinced several friends in Honduras to try to reach the United States with him again.

“All my life is there, waiting for me,” he said in English. “I miss my PlayStation. I miss Buffalo Wild Wings. I miss my car.”

The group walked together Sunday at a quick pace. Izaguirre, dressed in a camouflage shirt from his days in ROTC at a Phoenix high school, led the way. At one point, he started reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

When a pickup truck pulled up next to the caravan and offered them a ride, Izaguirre and his friends scrambled into the back.

“Let’s go,” he said, and the truck sped off.

Migrants arrived throughout the afternoon in Tapachula, finding their way to a plaza in the city’s colonial-era center.

Denis Omar Contera, an organizer with Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which is helping the group, said the caravan plans to rest Monday before setting out again.

He laughed off claims made by some Republicans that the caravan is being organized by Democrats or political opponents of the right-wing president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez.

“The only people who have helped us are the poor people of Guatemala and Mexico who have shared with us their beans and tortillas,” he said.

Times staff writer Patrick McDonnell in Mexico City contributed to this report.

6:20 p.m.: This article was updated to include the new number of caravan members who have applied for refugee status in Mexico.

5:10 p.m.: This article was updated with political analysis and scenes from the caravan.

9:30 a.m.: This article was updated with the caravan passing police en route to the U.S. and with additional background.

This article was originally published at 7:15 a.m.

Los Angeles Times report describes Benghazi inquisition

Mrs. Hillary Clinton held her head high while the Republians on the Benghazi inquisition committee relentlessly questioned her for 11 hours, wiithout finding any new information.  

Congressman Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, led the committee without realizing how his torturous tactics could even have violated Mrs. Clinton's civil rights (in my opinion). 

Mrs. Clinton wasn't on trial, but they treated her like a hostile witness! In my opinion, Gowdy and his right wing questioners conducted an unlawful investigation of an American citizen.

Here's how The Los Angeles Times described the inquisition:

Benghazi hearing ends after extraordinary 11-hour grilling of ClintonRepublicans grilled former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton through nearly 11 hours Thursday in a long-awaited hearing of the House Benghazi committee that produced little if any new information, but ample partisan argument.

The hearing provided an extraordinary spectacle, starting in the morning and stretching well into the night, far longer than such sessions typically last even with multiple witnesses.

Through the lengthy session, Clinton maintained a relentlessly calm and smiling demeanor, showing few visible signs of fatigue other than a hoarse throat that began to develop in the 10th hour.

From her opening statement on, she sought to seize a rhetorical high ground above the partisan fray, reminding members of the panel that after attacks on diplomatic facilities during the administrations of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush in which hundreds of Americans were killed, members of both parties "rose above politics" to examine what had gone wrong.

In investigating the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in the Libyan city of Benghazi, "Congress has to be our partner as it has been after previous tragedies,” Clinton said.

"We need leadership at home to match our leadership abroad," she said in her opening statement. "Leadership that puts national security ahead of ideology."

Live: Marathon Clinton testimony continues. Is anyone still watching?

Clinton’s appearance was preceded by several weeks of bad publicity for the committee, starting when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) said in a television interview that the panel had succeeded in driving down Clinton’s poll ratings.

Democrats had long charged the committee with partisanship. Therefore, Democrate have relentlessly repeated McCarthy’s politically damaging disclosure.

As a result, panel Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) began the hearing on defense, using his opening statement to justify the panel’s existence.

Although seven previous congressional investigations had examined the Benghazi attacks, "those previous investigations were not thorough," Gowdy said. The current panel was seeking "the truth,” he declared.

But if one of Clinton’s goals was to convey an image of being more composed and serious than her inquisitors, members of the committee often appeared to help, engaging in one high-decibel shouting match and numerous partisan jabs.

The committee’s seven Republicans and five Democrats squabbled over the cost to taxpayers of the multiple investigations, the conduct of the State Department in responding to those inquiries, even the length of the hearing, itself.

"We’ve been here for 9 1/2 hours, and the questions are increasingly badgering ... increasingly vicious," Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said as the evening wore on and Republican members turned from questions about the attack to inquiries about Clinton’s use of a private server for her emails while she headed the State Department.

"They simply wish to wear you down."

The hearing has been eagerly anticipated for its potential impact on next year's election. Partisans on both sides anticipate that if Clinton is the Democratic nominee, mobilizing each party's supporters will be a higher priority than finding or converting the relative handful of voters who remain undecided about her.

Both parties think the committee proceedings could help in the mobilization effort.

Among Republicans, "Benghazi" has become a watchword on the campaign trail -- an almost all-purpose label for sins of both omission and commission that GOP voters perceive in the former secretary of State's record.

Democrats are equally convinced that the committee provides an example of Republican unfairness and excess. The committee’s Democratic members made more than a dozen references to the panel’s $4.7-million price tag, saying that the GOP was wasting taxpayer money in an effort to harm Clinton’s campaign.

Republicans have hoped the hearing would produce slip-ups by Clinton that could be used to mobilize opposition in next year's election. An exasperated outburst she made when she last testified about Benghazi, almost three years ago, has become a GOP talking point.

Democrats, always nervous about Clinton's tendency to become defensive when criticized, watched to see how she parried the GOP attacks. Yet, as the evening wore on, Democratic apprehensions turned to applause as party spokespeople rushed to congratulate Clinton on her stamina and to denounce the committee for what they saw as a partisan inquisition.
Gowdy conceded after the hearing that Clinton’s lengthy testimony had broken little new ground.

"I don't know that she testified much differently today than when she previously testified," he said.

The hearing began on a testy note as Gowdy and the senior Democrat on the panel, Rep. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, sparred over whether the panel’s work was merely repeating what other investigations had done.

A few hours later, the two men, joined by Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), escalated their conflict, engaging in an angry procedural fight over whether to release the transcript of the committee's interrogation of Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime friend of Clinton's and an aide to her husband.

As Clinton watched, smiling, Cummings -- shouting across the committee dais -- accused Gowdy of selectively releasing Blumenthal's emails in order to make false allegations. 

Gowdy accused the Democrats of attempting to disrupt the committee's proceedings, then vowed to investigate Clinton's old friend further.

"If you think you've heard about Sidney Blumenthal so far, wait until the next round," he said before stalking out of the committee room for a lunchtime recess.

When the committee reconvened, the members voted 7 to 5, along party lines, not to release the transcript.

Blumenthal remained a major focus in the committee’s afternoon session, with Gowdy and other Republicans questioning why he had such ready access to Clinton.

"I don't know what this line of questioning does to help us get to the bottom of the deaths of four Americans," Clinton responded to Gowdy at one point.

Said Schiff: "I just don’t understand the preoccupation with Sidney Blumenthal. You would think he was in Benghazi, manning the barricades."

As the questioning unfolded, Republican members of the panel pursued several disparate lines of questioning.

Several repeatedly accused Clinton of denying requests from Stevens and other American diplomats for more security. Clinton, repeating a position she has taken since the controversy over the Benghazi attack began, said that she had relied on the judgment of the State Department's security professionals.

Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor from South Carolina, cited cables from Stevens to the State Department warning that the security situation at American installations in Libya was deteriorating and needed to be bolstered. The administration did not fully heed those his warnings.

Gowdy juxtaposed those messages against emails from Blumenthal that were getting Clinton’s attention. Blumenthal, a former journalist and Clinton administration operative whom the Obama White House had banned from working at the State Department, offered voluminous advice to Hillary Clinton on Libya, including how she could use the overthrow of its dictator to her political gain.

Clinton repeatedly denied that Blumenthal had been an important advisor to her or a major source of information about Libya.

"I don't want you to have a mistaken impression about what I did and how I did it," she said of the attention her emails had gotten.

"Most of my work was not done on emails," she said, adding that she did not even have a computer in her State Department office.

Rep. Peter J. Roskam (R-Ill.) sought to portray Clinton as the chief architect of U.S. policy toward Libya, accusing her of forcing a reluctant Obama administration to take an active role there and then trying to take political credit for it.

Some of the most personal questioning came from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who suggested that in the days after the attack, Clinton had tried to hide information about the motivation of the attackers in order to influence the 2012 election.

"It’s just 56 days before an election" and "you can’t be square with the American people," Jordan said. Clinton and other Obama administration officials had downplayed the terrorist nature of the attack "because Libya was supposed to be this great success story," Jordan said.

"Americans can live with the fact that good people sometimes give their lives for this country," he said, but not "when their government’s not square with them."

With a rare note of irritation entering her voice, Clinton shot back that "the insinuations that you are making do a disservice" to government officials who were trying to do "the best we could with the information we had."

The GOP allegation that she had failed to take security requests seriously is "a very personally painful accusation," she said a few minutes later. "It has been rejected and disproven by nonpartisan and dispassionate investigators."

"I’ve lost more sleep than all of you put together," she told the panel members.

The assaults in Benghazi began when dozens of attackers overran guards at the U.S. diplomatic compound there and ran through it, setting fire to buildings, including the one in which Stevens and another State Department employee were hiding. The two died of smoke inhalation. The attacks continued into the next morning, when mortar rounds were fired at a nearby CIA annex, killing two more Americans.

Clinton last testified about the attack in January 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It was a heated exchange. Republicans on the panel accused the administration of botching the U.S. response to the attacks. They took aim at its confusion about what happened, and its early explanation -- later proved wrong -- that the compound was overrun not by a terrorist attack but a demonstration that got out of control.

Clinton famously scolded the committee for its focus on the motivations of the attackers and how the Obama administration initially got it wrong. “What difference, at this point, does it make?” she said in a testy back-and-forth with committee Republicans, adding, “It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again.”

Democrats on the current committee have repeatedly attacked the direction of the investigation. They accuse Gowdy of failing to interview potential witnesses with firsthand knowledge of what happened in the attack and instead using committee resources to drag top Clinton operatives into closed-door interrogations in a bid to generate headlines.

Last week, the committee spent hours interviewing longtime Clinton advisor Huma Abedin and even alerted the media to the location of the questioning, which was closed to the public.

The five Democrats on the committee are contemplating whether to resign from the panel, altogether in protest. Schiff said whether the Democrats remain on the panel may depend on “just how long they intend to keep this thing alive.”

“At a certain point, we may very well reach the conclusion that the diminishing returns of our continued participation don’t outweigh the liability of giving it any respectability,” he said.