Raw Story

A senior Democratic senator lambasted President Donald Trump's administration on Tuesday after a judge handed the administration its latest loss in a high-profile immigration case.

On Tuesday, Judge Waverly Crenshaw Jr. of the Middle District of Tennessee handed down a ruling that found Trump prosecutors were conspiring with people in Washington, D.C. who "may or may not have acted with improper motivation," when bringing charges against Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, CNN's Jim Scuitto reported on "The Arena." Abrego-Garcia is a Salvadoran national who had lived in Maryland for several years with temporary protected status before the Trump administration illegally deported him in March.

Initially, the Trump administration blamed his deportation on an "administrative error" before returning Abrego-Garcia to the U.S. After he arrived, prosecutors then charged him with human trafficking, and at least one top Department of Justice official called the prosecution of Abrego-Garcia a "top priority," according to the ruling.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) bashed the Trump administration's treatment of Abrego-Garcia during an interview on CNN's "The Arena" on Tuesday, calling it a "smoking gun" for the vindictive prosecution charges.

"The Justice Department decided to bring these charges against him because he asserted his due process rights when they illegally shipped him off to CECOT in El Salvador," Van Hollen said. "This looks like another example of the Trump administration sometimes manipulating the facts to bring a vindictive case against Abrego-Garcia."

By Alexander Lowie, Postdoctoral associate in Classical and Civic Education, University of Florida

Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia, announced in November 2025 that he will relaunch the group after it disbanded following his prison sentence in 2023.

Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other crimes committed during the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump granted clemency to the over 1,500 defendants convicted of crimes connected to the storming of the Capitol.

Trump did not pardon Rhodes — or some others found guilty of the most serious crimes on Jan. 6. He instead commuted Rhodes’ sentence to time served. Commutation only reduces the punishment for a crime, whereas a full pardon erases a conviction.

As a political anthropologist I study the Patriot movement, a collection of anti-government right-wing groups that include the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Moms for Liberty. I specialize in alt-right beliefs, and I have interviewed people active in groups that participated in the Capitol riot.

Rhodes’ plans to relaunch the Oath Keepers, largely composed of current and former military veterans and law enforcement officers, is important because it will serve as an outlet for those who have felt lost since his imprisonment. The group claimed it had more than 40,000 dues-paying members at the height of its membership during Barack Obama’s presidency. I believe that many of these people will return to the group, empowered by the lack of any substantial punishment resulting from the pardons for crimes committed on Jan. 6.

In my interviews, I’ve found that military veterans are treated as privileged members of the Patriot movement. They are honored for their service and military training. And that’s why I believe many former Oath Keepers will rejoin the group – they are considered integral members.

Their oaths to serving the Constitution and the people of the United States are treated as sacred, binding members to an ideology that leads to action. This action includes supporting people in conflicts against federal agencies, organizing citizen-led disaster relief efforts, and protesting election results like on Jan. 6. The members’ strength results from their shared oath and the reverence they feel toward keeping it.

Who are the Oath Keepers?

Rhodes joined the Army after high school and served for three years before being honorably discharged after a parachuting accident in 1986. He then attended the University of Nevada and later graduated from Yale Law School in 2004. He founded the Oath Keepers in 2009.

Oath Keepers takes its name from the U.S military Oath of Enlistment, which states:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States …”

Informed by his law background, Rhodes places a particular emphasis on the part of the oath that states they will defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

He developed a legal theory that justifies ignoring what he refers to as “unlawful orders” after witnessing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Following the natural disaster, local law enforcement was assigned the task of confiscating guns, many of which officers say were stolen or found in abandoned homes.

Rhodes was alarmed, believing that the Second Amendment rights of citizens were being violated. Because of this, he argued that people who had military or law enforcement backgrounds had a legal duty to refuse what the group considers unlawful orders, including any that violated constitutionally protected rights, such as the right to bear arms.

In the Oath Keepers’ philosophy, anyone who violates these rights are domestic enemies to the Constitution. And if you follow the orders, you’ve violated your oath.

Explaining the origin of the group on the right-wing website The Gateway Pundit in November 2025, Rhodes said: “We were attacked out of the gate, labeled anti-government, which is absurd because we’re defending the Constitution that established the federal government. We were labeled anti-government extremists, all kinds of nonsense because the elites want blind obedience in the police and military.”

Rebuilding and restructuring

In 2022, the nonprofit whistleblower site Distributed Denial of Secrets leaked more than 38,000 names on the Oath Keepers’ membership list.

The Anti-Defamation League estimated that nearly 400 were active law enforcement officers, and that more than 100 were serving in the military. Some of these members were investigated by their workplaces but never disciplined for their involvement with the group.

Some members who were not military or law enforcement did lose their jobs over their affiliation. But they held government-related positions, such as a Wisconsin alderman who resigned after he was identified as a member.

This breach of privacy, paired with the dissolution of the organization after Rhodes’ sentencing, will help shape the group going forward.

In his interview with The Gateway Pundit, where he announced the group’s relaunch, Rhodes said: “I want to make it clear, like I said, my goal would be to make it more cancel-proof than before. We’ll have resilient, redundant IT that makes it really difficult to take down … And I want to make sure I get – put people in charge and leadership everywhere in the country so that, you know, down the road, if I’m taken out again, that it can still live on under good leadership without me being there.”

There was a similar shift in organizational structure with the Proud Boys in 2018. That’s when their founder, Gavin McInnes, stepped away from the organization. His departure came after a group of Proud Boys members were involved in a fight with anti-fascists in New York.

Prosecutors wanted to try the group as a gang. McInnes, therefore, distanced himself to support their defense that they weren’t in a gang or criminal organization. Ultimately, two of the members were sentenced to four years in prison for attempted gang assault charges.

Some Proud Boys members have told me they have since focused on creating local chapters, with in-person recruitment, that communicate on private messaging apps. They aim to protect themselves from legal classification as a gang. It also makes it harder for investigators or activist journalists to monitor them.

This is referred to as a cell style of organization, which is popular with insurgency groups. These groups are organized to rebel against authority and overthrow government structures. The cell organizational style does not have a robust hierarchy but instead produces smaller groups. They all adhere to the same ideology but may not be directly associated.

They may have a leader, but it’s often acknowledged that they are merely a figurehead, not someone giving direct orders. For the Proud Boys, this would be former leader Enrique Tarrio. Proud Boys members I’ve spoken to have referred to him as a “mascot” and not their leader.

Looking ahead

So what does the Rhodes interview indicate about the future of Oath Keepers?

Members will continue supporting Trump while also recruiting more retired military and law enforcement officers. They will create an organizational structure designed to outlive Rhodes. And based on my interactions with the far-right, I believe it’s likely they will create an organizational structure similar to that of the cell style for organizing.

Beyond that, they are going to try to own their IT, which includes hosting their websites and also using trusted online revenue generators.

This will likely provide added security, protecting their membership rolls while making it more difficult for law enforcement agencies to investigate them in the future.

Since January, the Trump administration has reduced the federal workforce by roughly 10 percent – some 249,000 jobs – and one New York farmer is warning of what he said could be catastrophic consequences.

“We’re just going to see a huge amount of farms going out of business this year because of the mayhem,” said Wes Hillingham, a veteran organic farmer and environmental advocate from New York, speaking with the New York Times in its report Tuesday.

With a significant share of the federal workforce cuts impacting the Agriculture Department – which lost close to one-fifth of its entire staff, or around 20,000 employees – Hillingham told the Times that many farmers are struggling to get updates from the Trump administration on grants and other federal programs they had already accounted for in their planning.

Gillingham noted that even getting someone from the Agriculture Department on the phone was often a challenge.

The Trump administration appeared to downplay Hillingham’s concerns, however, with Agriculture Department spokesperson Alex Varsamis telling the Times that the Trump administration was “being transparent” about what he called its efforts to “return the department to a customer service focused, farmer-first agency.”

“President Trump is utilizing all the tools available to ensure farmers have what they need to continue their farming operations,” Varsamis said, speaking to the Times.

A failed Donald Trump administration appointee to the Department of Homeland Security, whose nomination to head up the Office of Special Counsel was scuttled due to his well-documented racist past, ended up with a lesser job at the General Services Administration, where he has been greeted with nothing but loathing, reports Politico.

Paul Ingrassia, who has admitted he has a “Nazi streak,” was at the center of a firestorm after his OSC nomination, where GOP lawmakers made it clear he would not be approved. He then withdrew from consideration.

He was then shunted off to the GSA to the dismay of his future co-workers, one of whom complained, “What are we? A halfway house for bigots who can’t find jobs anywhere else in this administration?”

According to the Politico report, Ingrassia has not been welcomed with open arms and, despite being elevated to acting general counsel, the leadership of the agency is not entrusting him with anything important.

As one GSA official explained, the Trump ally, “basically won’t be given anything meaningful because [agency] leadership doesn’t really want him.”

“I don’t know what he is or is not, but no one cares for him,” another added.

The report adds that White House staffers were relieved they were able to find a department where he could be unloaded after his legal counsel nomination crashed and burned.

“Not sure anyone is like heartbroken,” one insider admitted. “It was never expected that it would go through, at least I never did.”

You can read more here.

More than a dozen survivors of Jeffrey Epstein are demanding immediate congressional action Monday following the Justice Department’s botched release of files on the disgraced financier — a release they said failed to comply with a newly enacted law.

“We call upon Congress to stand up for the rule of law. We urge immediate congressional oversight, including hearings, formal demands for compliance, and legal action, to ensure the Department of Justice fulfills its legal obligations,” reads the joint statement signed by 18 Epstein survivors, released on Monday.

“This is not a partisan issue. Just as the Epstein Files Transparency Act was supported across party lines, we now ask elected officials from both parties to take decisive action to enforce the law, compel full compliance, and ensure meaningful transparency without further delay.”

The DOJ has faced scrutiny over its release of the Epstein files, which were mandated by law to be released, in full and with limited redactions, on Friday. Instead, the DOJ released only a small percentage of its files on Epstein, withholding hundreds of thousands of files, and made redactions outside the scope of what the Epstein Files Transparency Act permitted.

The DOJ has also been accused of accidentally exposing the identity of one of Epstein’s victims, with growing calls among lawmakers and survivors for Attorney General Pam Bondi to be held in contempt and forced to fully comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

“Survivors deserve truth,” the joint statement reads. “Survivors whose identities are private deserve protection. The public deserves accountability. And the law must be enforced.”

One Epstein survivor, Jess Michaels – who also signed the joint statement – said recently that she and other victims have knowledge of Epstein-related files that they believe should be in the DOJ’s possession, but were not included in the agency’s file release on Friday.

President Donald Trump was supposed to prioritize the economy at a MAGA rally last week — but instead rambled about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and other familiar foes.

In a Christmas-themed video, The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson (a Never Trump conservative former GOP strategist) and journalist Molly Jong-Fast brutally mocked the speech for failing to get the desired economic message across.

Jong-Fast told Wilson, "Let's talk about how positively b----- the whole thing is. It was meant to be a rally on affordability. Here's what was not discussed: affordability. Here's what was discussed: Marjorie Taylor Greene. He calls her Marjorie Traitor Brown."

Wilson, sounding amused, interjected, "And I'm also intrigued by how she's somehow a leftist."

Jong-Fast told the Never Trumper, "It has really been a week for Trump."

Wilson laid out a variety of ways in which Trump and the MAGA movement are having a bad Christmas, from the Epstein files to the economy.

"There is no unringing this bell of stupidity," Wilson told Jong-Fast. "They have f----- it up. They have made a giant mistake."

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