Raw Story

I saw some of my former Naval War College colleagues at the recent No Kings rally in Providence. Given that National Guard troops and protestors had clashed in Los Angeles at an earlier June rally protesting ICE raids, we wondered whether we would see National Guard troops as we marched, where they would be from, and their mission? We didn’t. That doesn’t mean, however, that there is no need for concern about the future.

The National Guard is unique to the U.S. military given it is under the authority of both state governors and the federal government and has both a domestic and federal mission. Governors can call up the National Guard when states have a crisis, either a natural disaster or a human-made one. Federal authorities can call on the National Guard for overseas deployment and to enforce federal law.

President Dwight Eisenhower used both federalized National Guard units and regular U.S. Army units to enforce desegregation laws in Arkansas in 1957. But using military troops to intimidate citizens and support partisan politics, especially by bringing National Guard units from other states has never been, and should never be, part of its mission.

But that’s what is happening now.

A host of Democratic U.S. senators, led by Dick Durbin of Illinois, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called for an inquiry into the Trump administration’s recent domestic deployment of active-duty and National Guard troops to Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Portland, Oregon, and Memphis, Tennessee.

In an Oct. 17 letter to the Defense Department’s Inspector General, the senators challenge the legality of the domestic troop deployment and charge that it undermines military readiness and politicizes the nation’s military.

Ostensibly, the troops have been sent to cities “overrun” with crime. Yet data shows that has not been the case. Troops have been sent to largely Democratic-run cities in Democratic-led states.

The case for political theater being the real reason behind the deployment certainly was strengthened when largely Republican Mississippi sent troops to Washington D.C., even though crime in Mississippi cities like Jackson is higher than in D.C. Additionally, there is an even more dangerous purpose to the troop presence — that of normalizing the idea of troops on the streets, a key facet of authoritarian rule.

There are fundamental differences in training and mission between military troops and civilian law enforcement, with troop presence raising the potential for escalation and excessive force, and the erosion of both civil liberties and military readiness.

Troop deployments have hit some stumbling blocks. Judges, including those appointed by President Donald Trump, have in cases like Portland impeded administration attempts to send troops. Mayors and governors, including Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, have pushed back as well.

While the Trump administration has shown its willingness to ignore the law, it has also shown a significant ability to come up with a “Plan B.” In this case, Plan B, used by many past dictators, is likely the utilization of private military companies (PMC).

Countries have used these mercenary organizations to advance strategic goals abroad in many instances. Though the Wagner Group, fully funded by the Kremlin, was disbanded after a rebellion against the regular Russian military in 2023, Vladimir Putin continues to use PMCs to advance strategic goals in Ukraine and other regions of the world wrapped in a cloak of plausible deniability. Nigeria has used them internally to fight Boko Haram. The United States used Blackwater in Afghanistan in the early days after 9/11. Overall, the use of PMCs abroad is highly controversial as it involves complex tradeoffs between flexibility, expertise and need with considerable risks to accountability, ethics and long-term stability.

Domestically, the use of PMCs offer leaders facing unrest the advantage of creating and operating in legal “gray zones.” Leaders not confident of the loyalty of a country’s armed forces have resorted to these kinds of private armies. Adolf Hitler relied on his paramilitary storm troopers, or “brown shirts” to create and use violence and intimidation against Jews and perceived political opponents. Similarly, Benito Mussolini’s “black shirts,” Serbian paramilitaries, and PMCs in Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya served similar purposes.

President Donald Trump has said he is “open” to the idea of using PMCs to help deport undocumented immigrants. He has militarized Homeland Security agents to send to Portland, evidencing his willingness to circumvent legal challenges. And perhaps most glaringly, poorly qualified and trained masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are already terrorizing American cities.

At the No Kings rally in Providence my former colleagues and I did see a man in an unfamiliar uniform — with a gun and handcuffs — standing alone on the sidewalk along the march path. He wasn’t doing anything threatening, just watching. In the past, he might not have even been noticed.

But that day he was. Some people even waved to him. Protestors are not yet intimidated, but they are wary, and rightfully so.

Be aware, America. They have a Plan B.

• Joan Johnson-Freese of Newport is professor emeritus of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College and a Senior Fellow at Women in International Security. She earned a Ph.D. in international relations and affairs from Kent State University. She is an adjunct Government Department faculty member at Harvard Extension and Summer Schools, teaching courses on women, peace & security, grand strategy & U.S. national security and leadership. Her book, “Leadership in War & Peace: Masculine & Feminine,” was released in March 2025 from Routledge. Her website is joanjohnsonfreese.com.

There's one government agency that the Washington Post says can push back on President Donald Trump, but they don't have long to do it.

Writing Monday, the Post explained that the Government Accountability Office has an appointee whose term expires in two months.

"The agency’s leader, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, has about two months left in his term, and Trump will nominate his replacement, potentially scuttling some of the Government Accountability Office’s most forceful attempts at oversight — including by taking the White House to court if necessary," the report said.

Already, the agency has retained a law firm to navigate whether the White House is breaking the law over spending issues.

“They are looking at everything,” said a source when speaking to the Post.

Once Trump is able to appoint his own people to the post, the agency will be "defanged," the Post described.

Congress can send Trump a list of who they think should be appointed, but the president can ignore it and pick whomever he wishes.

Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought has spent his first few months in the post claiming the GAO is illegitimate and that it "shouldn't exist" to begin with. Republicans in Congress already tried to kill funding to the agency so that they couldn't afford to sue the administration on behalf of Congress, the report said.

"But the agency has taken on more prominence in recent months. A federal appeals court in August held that only GAO had the standing to sue over violations of spending laws, cutting out the groups that claimed harm from Trump’s decisions," the report explained.

“If Trump nominates the next comptroller general — I don’t want to make a political thing out of it, but his track record about caring about oversight and independent evaluations is not terribly strong,” said Henry Wray, a former GAO lawyer and ethics counselor. “GAO is really the only truly independent source of executive branch oversight in government.”

The most recent legal example is Trump attempting to kill funding allocated by Congress before he was president. The GAO could step in and say that it violates the Impoundment Control Act.

Read the full report here.

The teetering campaign of Maine oysterman Graham Platner to be the Democratic Party’s nominee to oppose Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) should she run for re-election in 2026 suffered another blow over the weekend.

According to a report from Axios’ Holly Otterbein on Monday, Kevin Brown, who took the place of departed former political director Genevieve McDonald on the Platner campaign, is bowing out after taking the job last Tuesday.

Brown, a longtime friend of the potential nominee for the U.S. Senate seat, issued a statement to Axios explaining, “Graham is a dear friend. I started this campaign Tuesday but found out Friday we have a baby on the way. Graham deserves someone who is 100% in on his race and we want to lean into this new experience as a family, so it was best we step back sooner than later so Graham can get the manager he deserves."

The political neophyte has been battered by revelations about his past for days after making a splash as a potential threat to Collins, whose seat is considered vulnerable because of Donald Trump’s unpopularity.

As Otterbien wrote, “It's the latest in a series of personnel shakeups for Platner's campaign, which was endorsed by progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) but has been thrown into turmoil because Platner made controversial social media posts in the past and had a tattoo that looked like a Nazi symbol.”

“The Democratic Senate primary in Maine has become a battle between the party establishment and its progressive wing. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is the top target for Senate Democrats in the 2026 midterms,” she added before pointing out the Gov. Janet Mills (D) jumped into the race last week, adding more turmoil to the closely-watched race.

You can read more here.

Calling the North Carolina Republican Party’s new congressional district map “surgical racism with surgical precision,” Bishop William J. Barber II of Repairers of the Breach was in Raleigh Thursday, announcing a lawsuit challenging the redistricting effort—pledging that the state’s voters will “challenge gerrymandering in the courts, in the streets, and at the ballot box.”

“This is a direct attack on the state’s Black Belt district and marginalized communities,” said Barber at a news conference announcing the legal challenge, a day after the state House of Representatives approved the new map in a party-line vote.

The new map, which was passed by the state Senate earlier this week and cannot be vetoed by Democratic Gov. Josh Stein under state law, will likely give the GOP an additional seat in the US House after the 2026 midterm elections.

President Donald Trump has called for mid-decade redistricting efforts by the GOP in states including Missouri and Texas, as well as North Carolina, with state Republicans heeding his demands.

North Carolina’s new map will likely give Republicans 11 of the state’s 14 districts by moving some Black voters out of the 1st District and into the 3rd District. Had the new map been in place in 2024, Trump would likely have won 55% of the vote in the new 1st District in 2024, up from the 51% he won.

Barber denounced the redistricting efforts across the country as “political robbery” by a party that wants “to rob people of their rights through this racially based gerrymandering... so that they can give power or keep power in the US Congress to engage in political violence,” including by cutting healthcare and blocking the passage of living wages.

“We’ve seen this pattern before—the use of redistricting and voting laws to divide, diminish, and deny,” said Barber. “But the truth is simple: When you steal people’s representation, you steal their healthcare, their wages, and their future. That’s why we will fight back... to make clear that in North Carolina, and across America, the people’s will cannot be gerrymandered out of existence.”

Barber said Republicans in the state Legislature are “gambling” to win another seat, instead of trying to win over voters.

“They’re saying, ‘Let’s move this county over here, let’s move this county over here,’ he said at the press conference. ”Black voters in Congressional District 1 make up approximately 40% of the population, and there’s a growing Latino population that makes up 7%... Black communities, Latino communities, and rural, working-class, poor white voters, if the districts are fair, have the power to build a fusion electorate that can overcome the greedy oligarchs’ will to control elections in our state.“

Along with filing a legal action against state lawmakers to challenge the legality of the map, Barber said Repairers of the Breach will hold a ”Mass Moral Fusion Meeting“ and public hearing on November 2.

”If they won’t hold public hearings, we will,“ said Barber. ”This is our Edmund Pettus Bridge moment... Black, white, and brown together—because our democracy is not for sale.“

President Donald Trump sought to target Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) after the lawmaker served on the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 probe and worked on both impeachment cases. That effort has reportedly hit a brick wall, however.

Last week, MSNBC revealed that the Maryland prosecutor who went after former National Security Advisor John Bolton was stuck on the Schiff case, so she pivoted to focus more on Bolton. Now it appears the Schiff case has stalled entirely.

Writing Thursday, Ryan J. Reilly, Kristen Welker, Michael Kosnar and Carol E. Lee wrote for NBC News that the investigation “came to a standstill," according to a federal law enforcement official.

U.S. Attorney Kelly Hayes reportedly met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche earlier this week to ask how to move forward without the goods on Schiff.

"The decision out of that meeting was for Hayes to pursue more evidence, and the case remains ongoing," reported NBC, citing one of the sources.

Schiff has retained former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara as his counsel.

In a statement to NBC News, Bharara said: “It seems pretty clear that a team of career prosecutors have thoroughly reviewed the politically-motivated allegations against Senator Schiff and found they are unsupported by any evidence and are baseless.”

“The transparently vindictive effort to pursue the Senator has no merit, and if there is any justice left in the Justice Department, this should be the end of the matter,” he added.

Read the full report here.

President Donald Trump said he pardoned Changpeng Zhao, a billionaire who boosted a crypto company owned by the Trump family, because "a lot of people" said he was innocent.

During a Thursday Oval Office event, a reporter asked whether Zhao's pardon had anything to do with his family's World Liberty Financial crypto venture.

"I do pardon a lot of people," Trump replied. "A lot of people say that he wasn't guilty of anything. He served four months in jail, and they say that he was not guilty of anything."

"That what he did, well, you don't know much about crypto," he told the reporter. "You know nothing about nothing, you know, fake news. But let me just tell you that he was somebody that, as I was told, I don't know him. I don't believe I've ever met him. But I've been told by — a lot of support, he had a lot of support. And they said that what he did is not even a crime."

Trump claimed that Zhao had been "persecuted by the Biden administration," even though he pleaded guilty to violating U.S. anti-money-laundering requirements.

"So I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people," Trump concluded.