And the fallout is already reaching the White House. Susie Wiles is out as chief of staff, and Donald Trump has picked Stephen Miller to replace her. After voters delivered a massive rejection of his agenda, he’s putting the architect of his immigration crackdown in charge.

Maritsa joins Miles and Xander for a particularly satisfying round of losses. Trump landed on the cover of TIME with an “I Voted” sticker over his mouth, a judge blocked his giant arch, and even his beloved LIV Golf is going under. Meanwhile, Katie Miller blamed Republican mothers for failing to vote, only to admit she didn’t cast a ballot herself.

And remember when we told Trump officials to lawyer up? They’re listening. Steve Scalise is warning Republicans to prepare for Democratic investigations, while White House aides are reportedly racing to hire attorneys before their colleagues beat them to it. Elon Musk might want to get in line.

Plus, Bill Murray confronts Trump’s economic adviser Kevin Hassett about his perpetual smile, and we say goodbye to the DJT Solemate Award with one final round of nominees.

What a week. Enjoy the losses!

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NEXT WEEK ON THE ANT HILL

• MON, NOV 9 — TUNNEL TALK — This is the space where Defy Ants get to sound off on what’s happening right now: the headlines, the WTF moments, and the stories of defiance. Tell us what’s got the colony buzzing this week, and we’ll share some of your responses with the whole hill.

• TUES, NOV 10 — TRIVIA TUESDAY — Test your knowledge of defiance throughout history, and we’ll give a shoutout to everyone who gets all five right AND a $15 discount on any swag in our swag store!

• WEDS, NOV 11 — MY DEFIANCE MISSION — On Mission Wednesdays, we highlight the defiance actions Members are taking in their own communities. Tell us your story here. Every action counts!

• THURS, NOV 12 — SHOW US YOUR ANT-ITUDE! — We wanna see your DEFIANCE swag, your original artwork, your unique ways of shouting out your defiance to the world in creative ways. Send your pics to our editor here.

• THURS, NOV 12 — DEFIANCE BOOK CLUB — Our current selection is: 1984 by George Orwell. We’ll be discussing Part 2, Chapters 7 & 8 on Substack Live @ 2:30 pm ET. It’s never too late to join the party! Visit your library or favorite bookstore to pick up a copy.

• FRI, NOV 13 — DOGS (AND CATS!) OF THE DEFIANCE — That’s right…even our furry friends are sticking it to the man. Do you have a dog (or a cat or a horse or a rabbit or a ferret…) that would sooner lift their leg on Trump than play fetch? Send us a pic, and they might be featured in a future issue! Because fighting authoritarianism is hard work, a little fun is important too. :)

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DEFIANCE Members are absolutely crushing it, spreading the word about our club for the courageous to their friends. There is strength in numbers, and that’s exactly what defiance requires. Here’s how you can help build our numbers—and get a shoutout on the Daily with Miles and Xander:

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We discussed the breaking news in the video above. Donald Trump has responded to losing Congress by handing the keys to the White House to the man who dreamed up the cruelest parts of his presidency.

Xander and I found out LIVE as we were going into our weekly coffee. Susie Wiles is out, Trump anno…

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The CEOs who gave Donald Trump cash and gold trinkets (and sought to influence his White House) are about to be gifted subpoenas.

Somewhere in Washington this morning, the head of government affairs for one of America’s biggest companies is re-reading this Washington Post article and feeling anxious. He’s deciding whether to send it to his billionaire boss. That’s because Democrats are drawing up a wave of investigations into the corporations that spent the last two years courting Donald Trump. And the executives who oversaw those influence campaigns are, in the Post’s words, bracing for an onslaught.

I know many of the people who’ve got twisting stomachs this morning. I used to work with them. After I left government, I spent a period of time advising some of the top emerging technology, AI, defense, space, and biotech companies in the country on how to deal with Washington, D.C. (and often why to stay away from it). Far too many of them were eager to become “MAGA” once Trump was re-elected, despite warnings about how quickly power changes hands in Washington.

CEOs couldn’t resist the idea of currying favor with Trump directly. He is, after all, so obviously susceptible to being bought off, whether it’s through flattery or funding. I saw it myself inside his first administration. Hell, everyone saw it. The man is a malfeasance magnet. And the tech titans and billionaires were all too willing to influence a man who was ready to be influenced.

Those CEOs have no idea what’s about to hit them.

Before I get to that, I want to take a moment to remind you how they handled the return of America’s most obviously corrupt president. They didn’t just try to make peace with him. A lot of those wannabe oligarchs showered the president with literal gifts. They wrote checks to his inaugural fund, underwrote the monument he is building to himself on the White House lawn, aired documentaries about his wife (and paid her for the privilege), settled lawsuits they should’ve won, and showed up in the Oval Office bearing tributes made of actual gold.

All the while, those same companies were asking the federal government for billions of dollars in contracts, tariff exemptions, or regulatory sign-off on blockbuster mergers.

There’s a name for this: corruption. And as the investigations roll forward, I believe you’ll see evidence of a more damning word: bribery.

The conventional wisdom is that corporate America showed a lack of courage. In my view, that’s far too kind. What I expect you’ll learn over the next two years is that some of these executives (not all, but some) engaged in something closer to criminal capitulation.

The cowardice part is easy to document, because it happened on camera:

In January 2021, Mark Zuckerberg threw Trump off Facebook because, he said, the risk of keeping him on the platform was “simply too great.” Three and a half years later he was calling Trump’s fist pump “badass,” wiring a million dollars to the inaugural fund, and sitting beside the president at a White House dinner, assuring him of the “huge investments” everyone at the table was making.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees that the January 6 insurrection was “the antithesis of democracy.” By 2025, he was at dinner with the man who fomented it, praising him.

Jeff Bezos once offered to strap Trump to a Blue Origin rocket and send him to space, ostensibly to save America from the failed businessman. This spring, he went on CNBC and described the president as a “more mature, more disciplined” version of himself. (That very same month, Trump’s account posted or reposted 861 times on Truth Social, amplifying posts calling Barack Obama a “traitor” and demanding the arrest of his rivals, branding a New York Times reporter a “lowlife,” and sharing AI images of himself escorting a handcuffed alien, kissing a statue of Jesus, carved into Mount Rushmore, looming over Greenland, and wading shirtless through the Reflecting Pool beside a woman in a bikini.)

Elon Musk said in 2022 that it was time for Trump to “hang up his hat and sail into the sunset.” He then spent roughly $290 million putting him back in office and told a rally that thanks to Trump, “the future of civilization” was assured.

Tim Cook called the January 6 attack to prevent the peaceful transfer of power a “sad and shameful chapter” in our history. Last August, he walked into the Oval Office, opened a white Apple box, and presented Trump with a glass plaque on a 24-karat gold base. He left with an assurance that Apple would be spared a 100 percent tariff on imported chips.

Watching grown men who run trillion-dollar companies grovel like this gave me second-hand embarrassment. We’ve never seen such a spectacle of corporate fawning over a president. But embarrassment isn’t a crime. It’s what came afterwards that might be.

One line of inquiry for Democrats will be the Trump ballroom. The Post obtained the secret donor list for the $330 million Trump raised to bulldoze the East Wing of the White House and build himself a gilded party hall. Apple and Nvidia each put in $25 million, and Nvidia asked that its gift be kept anonymous. In fact, at least $77 million came from donors who insisted their names be kept hidden. I wonder why.

I can tell you what congressional investigators will be focusing on. A watchdog group found that within six months of the demolition, more than half of the known corporate donors had been awarded new or expanded federal contracts worth over $50 billion. Meanwhile, a slew of them received favorable treatment from the Trump administration on policy issues they cared about. And some watched as antitrust, labor, or securities cases against them were eased or dropped by the government altogether.

I’ve helped run corporate giving initiatives at major companies before. I’ve steered money to wounded veterans and anti-poverty work. This was not that. Not a single soul at Nvidia believed the Donald J. Trump Ballroom was the most pressing social need in America. For many of these executives, I suspect the payments were made to curry favor with the one man who controlled their contracts and their regulators. Otherwise, why did they want the donations kept secret? To be humble about their generosity? Or, perhaps, to avoid questions about their motives?

The ballroom was only the most visible tribute. Disney paid Trump $15 million to settle a defamation suit most media lawyers thought it would win… Paramount paid $16 million over a routine 60 Minutes edit and had its $8 billion merger approved by the FCC weeks later… Meta paid $25 million and X paid $10 million to settle suits over suspending Trump’s accounts after an attempted coup… Google paid $24.5 million, with nearly all of it earmarked for the ballroom… and Amazon paid $40 million for a Melania Trump documentary, more than it has ever spent on a documentary, with most of the money flowing to the First Lady herself.

You’re starting to see why the billionaires are panicking. For every one of these acts, there’s a paper trail somewhere. Each major company has a D.C. office, and each of those offices spent late 2024 and all of 2025 trading emails, texts, and Slack messages about how to position their company with the incoming president. There are messages on their servers from Trump’s team. Outgoing messages about ways they’re willing to work with the president. Phone call logs from aides. Calendar holds for private dinner meetings near the White House. Discrete inquiries about how to get on the list for Oval Office events and presidential trips. Instructions on which checks to write, and when.

Bookmark this prediction. Some of those messages will show company officials advising, in writing, that the way to protect a contract or clear a merger was to spend money on Trump, his vanity projects, or his political priorities. They may not all have been that stupid, but somewhere someone slipped up. For years, I watched smart people in those jobs walk a tightrope between their morals and their money. During this administration, a lot of them slipped on the wire, and I suspect at least a few were sloppy enough to leave evidence of their ethical fall.

In fact, before Democrats take power, they should be sending document preservation requests to every single one of these companies.

Whether any of this is charged as a crime will depend on exactly how it was carried out, what was said, and by whom. Lawyers will quibble over that in the years to come. But by then it might not matter. For better or worse in the age of the digital mob, the court of public opinion moves much faster than the court of law. When the congressional hearings into the pro-Trump billionaires begin and the documents come out, I expect you’ll see CEOs dethroned by their own boards (and boards dethroned by their shareholders) long before any jury is seated.

So here’s my message to the oligarchs scheduling phone calls with major law firms for advice this weekending (including, I suspect, some of the same law firms that cut capitulation deals with Trump). You could’ve simply run your companies. Instead, in fits of greed and fear, you sought ways to pay off a president who was abusing his power and torching the U.S. Constitution.

You will be rewarded for your work. Just not in the way you hoped.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

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• TODAY: FRIDAY COFFEE — Come one, come all! But only DEFIANCE.org Members can ask questions. This is where Xander and Miles let their hair down. No question is off limits. We go LIVE @ 2pm ET on www.DEFIANCE.News and post the video afterwards.

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is facing possible impeachment, and Trump is asking advisers whether he should replace him with outgoing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The same DeSantis who’s been publicly trashing the Republican Party’s performance since Tuesday. Meanwhile, Marco Rubio is on resignation watch, and a significant DOJ official resigns.

But Democrats are wasting no time preparing their investigations. Incoming House Oversight chair Robert Garcia has started naming who he intends to investigate, while Senate Democrats are putting up actual job postings for lawyers and investigators.

And what has Trump learned from voters rejecting his agenda? Judging by his first public appearance after the election, absolutely nothing. He spent it bragging about his ballroom, while his administration continued expanding ICE detention. Journalist Andrea Pitzer (@andreap), author of One Long Night, joins us to discuss the history of concentration camps and the companies profiting from Trump’s detention policies.

Plus, in Who’s Joining the DEFIANCE, two payphones are giving Democrats and Republicans a chance to talk to each other. The conversations are worth hearing.

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THIS WEEK ON THE ANT HILL

• FRI, NOV 6 — DOGS (AND CATS!) OF THE DEFIANCE — That’s right…even our furry friends are sticking it to the man. Do you have a dog (or a cat or a horse or a rabbit or a ferret…) that would sooner lift their leg on Trump than play fetch? Send us a pic, and they might be featured in a future issue! Because fighting authoritarianism is hard work, a little fun is important too. :)

GROW THE DEFIANCE

DEFIANCE Members are absolutely crushing it, spreading the word about our club for the courageous to their friends. There is strength in numbers, and that’s exactly what defiance requires. Here’s how you can help build our numbers—and get a shoutout on the Daily with Miles and Xander:

1. Go to https://www.defiance.news/leaderboard

2. Use the buttons provided to share your personal referral link on X, Facebook, or email. Or, copy the link (circled in the example below) to share it via text or other social platforms.

Two words have sparked a firestorm in Washington since the election.

“LAWYER UP.” Those words have been viewed millions and millions of times since Tuesday. And they’ve led to a supposed split among Democrats.

On one “side” is Hakeem Jeffries, the likely incoming Speaker, who says the American people don’t want Democrats to “get even” with the Trump administration; they want them to get things done because life is too expensive. On the other “side” is Robert Garcia, the likely incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who posted those two words after the returns came in. Cable news has spent two days treating these men as rival camps.

It’s a fake fight. Jeffries is saying Democrats won’t go hunting — arbitrarily — for enemies to punish in a revenge quest, like Trump has. He’s not saying the U.S. Congress will ignore the largest blitz of alleged criminal conduct in the history of the nation’s capital. Indeed, it seems that the people pushing the “move on” line the hardest are Trump allies who can feel a subpoena coming, including Trump himself who suddenly seemed open to working with Democrats “for the good of the country” — but only if they’re not “destructive,” in which case he’s pledged scorched earth against them.

He’s scared. It’s not hard to see why.

There are literally hundreds of documented episodes of alleged corruption in Trump’s Washington, including scandals involving self-dealing, theft of taxpayer dollars, bribery, extortion, foreign influence over elected officials, the sale of pardons, and far more. The only reason none of it has been investigated is that the president has the Justice Department and FBI firmly under his thumb.

But now we’re supposed to move on? Under what conceivable theory does a change in the sheriff’s office mean all the criminals in town get absolved of their crimes? The new sheriff got the job because of the crime wave.

The past two years have seen literally historic allegations of wrongdoing. You don’t have to take my word for it. Federal judges have ruled against the Trump administration in hundreds of cases, finding that they violated the law or the U.S. Constitution itself. In immigration detention cases alone, they’ve ruled against it nearly 20,000 times — 20,000 times — and many of those judges were appointed by Republicans or by Trump himself. They’ve found that he violated the First Amendment by stripping security clearances from his enemies as “political retribution.” They’ve ruled that he violated the Fifth Amendment by deporting people without due process, trying, as one judge wrote, to “read an entire provision out of the Constitution.” They’ve called his blacklisting of law firms that represented his critics a “shocking abuse of power” under the Sixth Amendment, and labeled his order ending birthright citizenship a “blatantly unconstitutional” assault on the Fourteenth Amendment.

And that’s before you get to the money. For our documentary CORRUPTIONLAND, we reviewed 100 episodes of alleged corruption in Trump’s Washington, and together they implicate more than a third of a trillion dollars in federal funds, contracts, and deals. You want me to believe Americans are ready to shrug off a heist of that magnitude? Doing so would be an admission that the rule of law means nothing and that crime is perfectly fine as long as your party holds the White House. No. Never.

To be fair, it would be a mistake for Democrats to pick out Trump henchmen they dislike and go looking for crimes to pin on them. That’s exactly what the president did to James Comey, Letitia James, me, and plenty of others, and it was the idiot’s inversion of how justice works — so nakedly political that even his own chief of staff tried to limit the time Trump spent “score settling,” reportedly giving him a 90-day shot clock on his revenge campaign before he needed to focus on governing. (Apparently, the shot clock still hasn’t expired.)

There’s a world of difference between that and a Democratic Congress opening probes into credible allegations of criminal conduct… and following the facts wherever they lead.

Does anyone object to reopening the Epstein investigation, in which some 1,400 women and girls were abused? Does anyone object to looking into the suspiciously timed trades placed by people who seem to have known what the president was about to announce? Does anyone object to Congress asking whether pardons were bought, letting well-connected felons walk free and leaving their victims without roughly $240 million in court-ordered restitution? Does anyone object to finding out how the president’s family made billions in crypto while his own Justice Department disbanded the task force that polices crypto fraud?

The only people who object to that are the potential co-conspirators.

So the investigations are coming, and nothing in Washington can stop them. When the hearings start, I expect the “move on” people to start singing a different tune. If the January 6 investigation taught us anything, it’s that Trump’s lieutenants won’t stay loyal if they face prison time. To be clear, Congress can’t lock anyone up. But a future Justice Department can — and so can the states that receive criminal referrals from Congress.

While some are so devoted they’d gladly sit in a cell for a man who doesn’t care about them, many others can do math. The moment that prison becomes a real possibility, they’ll start talking. And they’ll talk fast.

Which is why we’re not waiting for January 3. Last night on DEFIANCE Daily, we announced a $10,000 grant to the Rule of Law Project, a group of former federal prosecutors and FBI agents who are collecting evidence of wrongdoing and providing it to Congress and the states. The group is led by 30-year Justice Department veteran Mark Blumberg, who is preparing to send investigators into communities to interview witnesses and pull records, then drafting memos and possible indictments for prosecutors at the federal, state, and local level. Blumberg calls it giving prosecutors “the gift of time.”

I call it karma. The people Trump purged from the Justice Department and the FBI (in an apparent effort to stifle investigations) are reassembling to initiate the criminal probes that should’ve begun the moment the corruption allegations started flooding in.

The debate is over. The investigations are about to start. The only open question is who flips first.

Now we have an army.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

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WHAT’S COMING UP AT DEFIANCE

• TONIGHT: DEFIANCE DAILY — Join us for one of the top 10 news podcasts in America, every weeknight @ 5pm ET LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, YouTube, or X — or listen to the replay — including on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. TONIGHT’S GUEST: Author and journalist Andrea Pitzer. If you missed last night’s episode, catch it here:

• TOMORROW: FRIDAY COFFEE — Come one, come all! But only DEFIANCE.org Members can ask questions. This is where Xander and Miles let their hair down. No question is off limits. We go LIVE @ 2pm ET on www.DEFIANCE.News and post the video afterwards.

• ADD US TO YOUR CALENDAR — You can access the DEFIANCE.org Google Calendar here. That way, you’ll never miss a meeting, event, or broadcast.

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Americans showed up on Tuesday night and handed Donald Trump a historic defeat. Democrats flipped both chambers of Congress, with at least seven Senate pickups and a projected 28-seat gain in the House.

And DEFIANCE members helped make it happen. Over the past year, this community supported more than 35 organizations with millions of dollars, funding voter protection efforts and organizing in key battleground states. Our goal was to make the election “too big to rig.” Tuesday night, Americans delivered.

THIS WEEK’S MISSION: THE INVESTIGATIONS BEGIN!

MAGA leadership might be heading for the exits, but we’ve got a few words for them: NOT SO FAST.

The election is over, but the investigations are just beginning.

Former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori (@ankushkhardori) joined us to discuss what Democrats should investigate now that they control both chambers of Congress. Rep. Robert Garcia has already warned Trump’s allies to “lawyer up,” while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is emphasizing affordability over getting even.

But as Ankush explained, congressional oversight is one of the few things Democrats can pursue without the White House’s cooperation. And voters have made their priorities clear: corruption and affordability are crucial.

Americans deserve both. And this week’s mission is to start delivering accountability NOW.

YOUR MARCHING ORDERS

We’re putting money behind the mission.

DEFIANCE awarded a $10,000 grant to the Rule of Law Project, led by former federal prosecutor Mark Blumberg. His team of former DOJ prosecutors and FBI agents is investigating allegations of ICE and Border Patrol abuses and public corruption.

Their goal is to build prosecution-ready case files, complete with witness statements and documentary evidence, for state, local, and potentially future federal prosecutors. As Mark explains: criminal investigations take time, and waiting two more years risks losing valuable evidence.

The project is already attracting retired federal agents and volunteer attorneys. Now it needs resources to put investigators in the field.

Your action: Help fund the investigations. Even a small donation helps cover investigators’ travel, evidence collection, and the work needed to prepare cases. But not everything needs to be monetary; contact your representatives and let them know about the project and lead them to get involved.

Support the Rule of Law Project: https://ruleoflawproject.org

Find more DEFIANCE actions: https://www.defiance.org/actions

Last night, Americans voted for accountability. We’re making sure the work starts today.

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🖥️ IF YOU MISSED IT

You can watch the full Weekly Mission Briefing at the top!

As always — stay loud, stay brave, and stay together.

Best,

The DEFIANCE.org Team

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THIS WEEK ON THE ANT HILL

• THURS, NOV 5 — SHOW US YOUR ANT-ITUDE! — We wanna see your DEFIANCE swag, your original artwork, your unique ways of shouting out your defiance to the world in creative ways. Send your pics to our editor here.

• THURS, NOV 5 — DEFIANCE BOOK CLUB — Our current selection is: 1984 by George Orwell. We’ll be discussing Part 2, Chapters 5 & 6 in our Members-only chatroom @ 2:30 pm ET. It’s never too late to join the party! Visit your library or favorite bookstore to pick up a copy.

• FRI, NOV 6 — DOGS (AND CATS!) OF THE DEFIANCE — That’s right…even our furry friends are sticking it to the man. Do you have a dog (or a cat or a horse or a rabbit or a ferret…) that would sooner lift their leg on Trump than play fetch? Send us a pic, and they might be featured in a future issue! Because fighting authoritarianism is hard work, a little fun is important too. :)

GROW THE DEFIANCE

DEFIANCE Members are absolutely crushing it, spreading the word about our club for the courageous to their friends. There is strength in numbers, and that’s exactly what defiance requires. Here’s how you can help build our numbers—and get a shoutout on the Daily with Miles and Xander:

1. Go to https://www.defiance.news/leaderboard

2. Use the buttons provided to share your personal referral link on X, Facebook, or email. Or, copy the link (circled in the example below) to share it via text or other social platforms.

Our Members-Only Meeting is TODAY, right after DEFIANCE Daily. So our daily podcast is 5-6pET, and the Members-Only Meeting is 6 - 630pET.

👉 **Please register HERE to join us on the Zoom today, Wed, Nov 4 @ 6pm ET / 3pm PT.**

We’ll recap the MASSIVE election results — and get your feedback on what comes next for our Club. The major work of fighting corru…

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I want to tell you about a phone call I had this morning. It solidified for me how seismic last night actually was.

I spent the night in Washington rather than at home, bouncing between election parties and live coverage of the midterms. We invested a lot in this election. Literally. For the better part of a year, our DEFIANCE.org community has been announcing new actions almost every week to protect our elections and fight back against Trump, under a banner we stole from him: make the midterms “too big to rig.”

And it worked.

Democrats took back both chambers of Congress in an election that will be written about for many years to come. Deep-red states went blue in one of the most powerful repudiations of a president we’ve ever seen. The margins were so wide in these races that Trump’s anticipated crackdown — up to and including the potential for federal agents to seize ballots in races his people lost — never materialized. They knew they couldn’t get away with it.

But even though I was literally up almost all night reporting on the results, I hadn’t fully processed any of it until my wife called. I could hear it in her voice after she’d only said a few words. Maybe even after only the first one. “Honey…”

Hannah and I are lifelong conservatives who met, of all places, inside the first Trump administration. We like to say we “found love in a hopeless place.” Inside secure briefing rooms, we bonded over a shared revulsion at what we were watching. And she stood by me after I made a decision that was guaranteed to blow up our lives: turning against Trump, unmasking myself as his “Anonymous” internal critic, and spending years afterwards warning that he posed a mortal danger to the Constitution if he ever returned to office.

That danger came to pass. Donald Trump returned. And the damage he’s done is difficult to capture in its totality.

In less than two years, he’s nearly destroyed the U.S. Constitution. He ignored laws passed by Congress by the dozen… took a wrecking ball to agencies he had no legal authority to delete… purged the civil service… fired the watchdogs… remade the Justice Department into an instrument of revenge… ordered the prosecution of his critics by name… thumbed his nose at the courts… put troops on the streets… sent masked agents to kidnap people in the night… shipped them to foreign prisons without hearings… teased the suspension of habeas corpus rights and the invocation of the Insurrection Act… sued newspapers and threatened broadcast networks… arrested journalists… extorted law firms and universities… jailed students for what they said… and tried to literally rewrite parts of the Constitution by executive order.

You can disagree with a president’s “policies.” But these were attacks on the rules that govern the system itself. While the courts tried to hold the line, most of the guardrails that are supposed to stop corruption were ripped out, as we recounted in a documentary ahead of the midterms.

So I told Hannah I was having trouble processing all of it. How do you even describe what happened last night against that backdrop? Where do you begin?

“Well,” she said, “just think about what’s happened to us. Look at how much has changed”

She was right, as usual. Our family’s experience over the past two years is a very tiny but telling microcosm of what the country has been through. Indeed, we knew after the 2024 election that our lives would never be the same. We knew Trump would come back and wreak havoc. And we knew he’d come for us.

He did.

On April 9, 2025, he gathered reporters in the Oval Office and signed an order his own aides later said was meant to “send a message” to his foes. For the transgression of speaking out against him, he accused me of “treason,” a crime punishable by death, and directed federal agencies to investigate me. Without evidence. In a sense, it was the justice process run in reverse in a way that — until then — I’d only read about in foreign despotisms. Declare the man guilty, then send the agents to find a crime.

I’ve told that story so many times that I now feel strangely removed from it, like it really is an anecdote in one of those history books about a nation taken over by a would-be dictator. But it was real. And the thing that upended our lives didn’t actually turn out to be the agents or the legal maneuvering. It was the rush to the exits all around us.

The fear of a returned Trump was so great that we lost almost our entire support network. Our circle of friends. Business partners. Some family. People who stood beside us at our wedding told us they’d need to keep their distance, lest they suffer guilt-by-association consequences. Few of them said it outright. Many just stopped answering phone calls. Others offered phrases that I still can’t get out of my head, like the couple we were very close with that asked for us to keep our distance for a while and remarked: “We have to put our oxygen masks on first.”

Then the safety net fell out. My own business partners set fire to the company we’d built together, informing me that because I was a “public enemy” of the president, they’d either find a way to remove me for cause or start a new company without me if I didn’t resign. I was gobsmacked.

We even struggled to find lawyers. Trump had so thoroughly intimidated the big firms that several I’d worked with in the past quietly let me know they couldn’t take the case. Within weeks we were without an income, without many of our closest friends, and without any real certainty that we were safe in our own country. It was lonelier than anything I’d ever experienced.

And in time, we became the tiniest data point. Because it happened to so many other people — and often with far worse outcomes — like the people who’ve been sent out of our country in violation of their rights and away from their families and with no recourse whatsoever.

But at the time, it felt like our world had ended. Hannah and I reflected on it. How we’d faced the urgent necessity of downsizing our lives… how we worried about protecting our daughter amid the death threats… what we’d do if our own government tried to put me in prison. There were nights after the baby went to sleep that we sat on the floor of our closet packing go-bags and scrolling through our retirement accounts to figure out what we could liquidate.

“They took pretty much everything away. Almost no one stood by us,” she said, holding back tears. “And now we have an army.”

That last line got me. I’m not a terribly emotional person. But that was the feeling I’d been struggling to capture all morning.

After Trump returned, America became a place that felt foreign to itself. A place where free speech was no longer free, where it was treated as treasonous, where the people who dared to exercise it were stripped of their dignity and held up in front of the masses to “send a message” to anyone else who might cross the leader. And in a single night, it became a place where Americans stood up together in stunning defiance to repudiate it.

This was by no means assured. There were points last year when I thought we might not make it. When former political leaders and pro-democracy colleagues suggested in hushed conversations that my wife and I should consider claiming asylum in a safe allied nation, I knew we’d entered uncharted territory. The only way out was if people stood up, and it would be risky for the first of them. Even some of the bravest people I know had gone silent after Trump’s return and the breathtaking retribution we all witnessed. In our own lives, the people who were still around pleaded with us not to “poke the bear” and advised us to keep our “heads down” until it blew over.

Yes, they’d taken pretty much everything from us. But I wasn’t ready to let them take my country.

In time, the watchword in our house became “defiance.” And everything changed. Our own personal fears and anguish became a sort of slow-burning resolve. Eventually, I decided to ignore the advice of the capitulators to just quietly restart my career and try to forget what had happened to us. I wanted to give more people the confidence to fight back, knowing how hard it had been for us to make the decision. There’s strength in numbers, they say, and that might be our only way out. So a year ago, we launched this organization, and frankly, we had no idea whether anyone would show up.

Now look where we are. Look at what happened last night. It was never a foregone conclusion that America would rise up against what was happening. Other nations have collapsed under less pressure. But we did. The judicial branch that Trump has pressured to the point of breaking now has a Congress behind it. And two branches of government are prepared to rein in the rogue third branch.

Of course, it’s not over. A Congress can check Donald Trump, but it can’t undo all the damage overnight. A man who treats the Constitution the way that he does won’t be stopped solely by losses at the ballot box. I’ve long predicted he’ll become even more reckless after a setback like this.

But when I think about the sea of people who turned out yesterday — in places I never imagined, like South Carolina and Texas and Kansas and everywhere in between — I know that Hannah is right. We were isolated and afraid before, but that’s changed.

Now we have an army.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

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P.S. DEFIANCE.org is a nonprofit “club for the courageous.” We literally exist to FIGHT the corruption you just read about. We announce a new effort every week to counter Trump’s abuses of power. That’s what your membership funds. If you haven’t yet, become a member today.

WHAT’S COMING UP

• WEDS, NOV 4 — DEFIANCE DAILY — We have one of the top 10 news podcasts in America. Join us every weeknight @ 5pm ET LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, YouTube, or X — or listen to the replay — including on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. TONIGHT is “Mission Wednesday,” which means we will announce another major action to counter Trump’s corruption.

• WEDS, NOV 4 — MONTHLY MEMBER MEETING — Note time change: The meeting will be held immediately following DEFIANCE Daily at 6pm ET! If you’re a Member, you can register below.

• FRI, NOV 6 — WEEKLY COFFEE — Come one, come all! But only DEFIANCE.org Members can ask questions. This is where Xander and Miles let their hair down. No question is off limits. We go LIVE on www.DEFIANCE.News @ 2pm ET and post the video afterwards.

• ADD US TO YOUR CALENDAR — You can access the DEFIANCE.org Google Calendar here. That way, you’ll never miss a meeting, event, or broadcast.

THE ANT HILL IS OUR MEMBERS-ONLY CORNER OF THE COLONY, WHERE “DEFY ANTS” GET MORE THAN JUST THE NEWSLETTER.

IF YOU’RE ALREADY A DEFIANCE MEMBER, THEN MARCH RIGHT IN. IF NOT, SIGN UP HERE, SO YOU DON’T MISS A THING.

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Former Congresswoman Susan Wild (@thoroughlywildthinking) joined us at the top of the show to talk about what she’s watching tonight and the fallout from Haley Stevens’ stunning endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan. Wild knows Stevens personally and was among the Democrats who publicly condemned her decision.

We also covered the voting problems already giving Trump allies ammunition for fraud claims. In Westchester County, New York, ballot scanners malfunctioned, but election officials have procedures in place to secure and count those votes.

And with Israel becoming an increasingly unpopular issue among many voters, including his own, Trump appears to be throwing an Election Day Hail Mary. This morning, he announced plans to end billions in U.S. aid to Israel, a move he claims he's been discussing with Netanyahu for months. In the end, it all came down to a “bad talking point” for him heading into tonight’s election.

Plus, in Who’s Joining the DEFIANCE, a Texas Young Republicans leader resigned rather than support her party’s candidate.

We’re joining Jim Acosta’s election night coverage at 7 PM ET, so stick with us as the results come in. And if you’re still waiting to vote when the polls close, stay in line!

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THIS WEEK ON THE ANT HILL

• WEDS, NOV 4 — MY DEFIANCE MISSION — On Mission Wednesdays, we highlight the defiance actions Members are taking in their own communities. Tell us your story here. Every action counts!

• THURS, NOV 5 — SHOW US YOUR ANT-ITUDE! — We wanna see your DEFIANCE swag, your original artwork, your unique ways of shouting out your defiance to the world in creative ways. Send your pics to our editor here.

• THURS, NOV 5 — DEFIANCE BOOK CLUB — Our current selection is: 1984 by George Orwell. We’ll be discussing Part 2, Chapters 5 & 6 in our Members-only chatroom @ 2:30 pm ET. It’s never too late to join the party! Visit your library or favorite bookstore to pick up a copy.

• FRI, NOV 6 — DOGS (AND CATS!) OF THE DEFIANCE — That’s right…even our furry friends are sticking it to the man. Do you have a dog (or a cat or a horse or a rabbit or a ferret…) that would sooner lift their leg on Trump than play fetch? Send us a pic, and they might be featured in a future issue! Because fighting authoritarianism is hard work, a little fun is important too. :)

GROW THE DEFIANCE

DEFIANCE Members are absolutely crushing it, spreading the word about our club for the courageous to their friends. There is strength in numbers, and that’s exactly what defiance requires. Here’s how you can help build our numbers—and get a shoutout on the Daily with Miles and Xander:

1. Go to https://www.defiance.news/leaderboard

2. Use the buttons provided to share your personal referral link on X, Facebook, or email. Or, copy the link (circled in the example below) to share it via text or other social platforms.

Never, in the long history of the United States of America, has one man taken so much from so many to spend on so few.

If you think that might be exaggeration, I will politely point you to the president’s remarks yesterday. With one day left to make his case to the country, Donald Trump walked down to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, stood in front of a poster board reading “Back, and more beautiful than ever!” and addressed an audience of a few dozen people in folding chairs. This was his closing argument for the midterm elections.

“The pipes now are totally renovated!” he began, enthusiastically. Words the American people have been waiting a lifetime to hear.

He held up a photograph of a rusty drainpipe. Then he held up another of a dumpster.

“It’s a massive piece of pool,” he said, looking back over his shoulder at it. The new pipes, he explained, are “very important in terms of the algae and other things. And it’s a complete job, and we’re very proud of it.”

If you missed it, we recapped this remarkable speech on our show last night. But I’ll sum it up for you: to make his case for keeping the MAGA movement in power, the president took Americans on a meandering verbal tour of his vanity projects and how much redecorating he’s been doing (on their dime) in the nation’s capital.

Highlights include his observations that the reflecting pool behind him now has “great reflectivity” and the “bad aroma” is now gone…

… that the new granite around it is not necessarily “new” because granite “literally has thousands of years of life”…

…that the Corinthian columns at the White House are “the most beautiful in the world”…

…that the grass he’s replaced around the building was necessary and that grass is “like the human being, has a life also”…

…that his ballroom and brand new helipad are getting “rave reviews” and that the latter was needed because “they were landing helicopters — big, new helicopters, they were landing it literally in the mud”…

…that he’s making a final push to build his arch which “from a beautification standpoint, it will be the most beautiful arch in the world”…

…that the structure, being built in his honor, “will be one of the great things we’ve ever done”…

…and that he’s been hard at work ripping up a public golf course in DC because it was in “a very dangerous and horrible condition.” That last one was important. The president clearly sensed how alarmed Americans have been about the “dangers” of the golf course. And yesterday, Trump finally put those fears to rest.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum summed up the afternoon from the little stage: “The president’s a builder. You can’t keep him away!”

By our producer’s count, 61 percent of his remarks went to his own renovation projects and less than a quarter to the election itself. When he finally got around to it, he conceded that “for some reason, the sitting president doesn’t win the midterms.”

He closed his remarks: “I could get into the nation, but for that, you don’t have enough time.” Alas, not enough time to talk about high prices and data centers. Only the stuff that matters, like a gold-speckled Oval Office.

If you expected the White House staff to be wiping their jaws off the floor in response to the single most out-of-touch speech ever delivered by an American president before an election, you’d be wrong. Very wrong. None of this surprised the people who work for him.

As CNN reported yesterday:

“Aides have long said Trump is at his happiest when working on the renovation projects — which, aside from the ballroom and pool, also include a proposed triumphal arch, a new helipad, paved-over Rose Garden, driveway stone, guest bathroom, colonnade decor, portico plaster work, two 100-foot flagpoles and an ongoing attempt to inject as much gold as possible into the Oval Office.”

Voters at least got to see their president happy.

And lest they forget what gives him joy, Trump stood in front of the most symbolic symbol of it that’s ever symbolized presidential malfeasance. Trump personally ordered renovations to the Reflecting Pool that hardly anyone was asking for (and without congressional authorization), handed the job to a favored contractor without competitive bidding, and watched it fill with algae. He blamed vandals, had five people arrested, and demanded his handpicked prosecutor charge anyone who touched the water. It turned out the contractor caused the damage. So taxpayers paid to fix it a second time for the president. And in the process, the Pool has become the most powerful exhibit of Trump’s corruption.

Even if the White House staff wasn’t amazed, I was.

Indeed, my closing argument for the midterms was a 35-minute film documenting one hundred episodes of alleged corruption since Trump’s reelection— implicating more than a third of a trillion dollars in federal funds, contracts, and deals — laid out on the National Mall for anyone to see. Then his closing argument was to stand on that same Mall, in front of the single clearest symbol of what we documented, and defend it. It felt like Donald Trump and I were working together again. At the very least, we’re on the same page for once.

Lately I’ve been reminding people what Benjamin Franklin told the Constitutional Convention in June of 1787:

“There are two passions which have a powerful influence on the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of power, and the love of money. Separately each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but when united in view of the same object, they have in many minds the most violent effects.”

The founders knew what unchecked power does to the man who holds it. But they never got to watch it on video like we did yesterday. We now possess the purest example in American history of a president so detached from the people he governs that he believes they want to be subjects, admiring his marble and his helipad from the other side of the rope line.

Historians will not cite Marie Antoinette anymore. No, no, no. They will cite Donald J. Trump. And they will recount how his self-dealing and self-aggrandizement mobilized a nation against him.

This was already going to be a historic election. But yesterday, Trump made it a symbolic one for the ages. He bragged about how he’d flooded the swamp of Washington, D.C. with our money and amidst our misfortune. Today we start draining it for real.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

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P.S. DEFIANCE.org is a nonprofit “club for the courageous.” We literally exist to FIGHT the corruption you just read about. We announce a new effort every week to counter Trump’s abuses of power. That’s what your membership funds. If you haven’t yet, become a member today.

THE REAL CLOSING ARGUMENT

Our explosive documentary is now available for streaming on YouTube HERE or ad-free at CORRUPTIONLAND.org. If you’re in the San Diego area, you can go to a special screening later this week. See below.

DEFIANCE DAILY

In case you missed it, last night’s episode of DEFIANCE Daily is below. Catch our next episode tonight at 5 pm ET!

TRACK THE TRUMP-EPSTEIN READING ROOM & BOOKMOBILE

The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Bookmobile & Reading Room is in Florida for the midterms. It will be near West Palm Beach TODAY AND TOMORROW. If you’re in the area, RSVP now to experience it for yourself.

THE ANT HILL IS OUR MEMBERS-ONLY CORNER OF THE COLONY, WHERE “DEFY ANTS” GET MORE THAN JUST THE NEWSLETTER.

IF YOU’RE ALREADY A DEFIANCE MEMBER, THEN MARCH RIGHT IN. IF NOT, SIGN UP HERE, SO YOU DON’T MISS A THING.

Read more

We have one question: Who told him this was a good idea?

With more than 57 million early votes already cast, Trump’s attempts to interfere with the election continue to come up short. A federal judge tossed his DOJ’s lawsuit in Alaska, although Trump is already entertaining the idea of a do-over if Republicans lose. And while we were live, breaking news came in that the Supreme Court had rejected his emergency bid to set aside more than 20,000 California ballots.

We also dug into the political firestorm in Michigan, where Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens endorsed Republican Mike Rogers two days before the election, despite previously promising to support Abdul El-Sayed. Her explanations have raised more questions than answers, especially after former Michigan Gov. Jim Blanchard said he witnessed Stevens’ fiancé, Jason Turkish, pressuring her to abandon El-Sayed. Turkish has longstanding ties to pro-Israel political circles and had already announced his support for Rogers over El-Sayed’s criticism of Israel. Whether those connections explain Stevens’ sudden reversal is still an open question.

Let us know in the comments: Why do you think Haley Stevens flipped?

In Who’s Joining the DEFIANCE, a now-former Trump supporter has an emotional change of heart. This one is well worth a watch.

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THIS WEEK ON THE ANT HILL

• TUES, NOV 3 — TRIVIA TUESDAY — Test your knowledge of defiance throughout history, and we’ll give a shoutout to everyone who gets all five right AND a $15 discount on any swag in our swag store!

• WEDS, NOV 4 — MY DEFIANCE MISSION — On Mission Wednesdays, we highlight the defiance actions Members are taking in their own communities. Tell us your story here. Every action counts!

• THURS, NOV 5 — SHOW US YOUR ANT-ITUDE! — We wanna see your DEFIANCE swag, your original artwork, your unique ways of shouting out your defiance to the world in creative ways. Send your pics to our editor here.

• THURS, NOV 5 — DEFIANCE BOOK CLUB — Our current selection is: 1984 by George Orwell. We’ll be discussing Part 2, Chapters 5 & 6 in our Members-only chatroom @ 2:30 pm ET. It’s never too late to join the party! Visit your library or favorite bookstore to pick up a copy.

• FRI, NOV 6 — DOGS (AND CATS!) OF THE DEFIANCE — That’s right…even our furry friends are sticking it to the man. Do you have a dog (or a cat or a horse or a rabbit or a ferret…) that would sooner lift their leg on Trump than play fetch? Send us a pic, and they might be featured in a future issue! Because fighting authoritarianism is hard work, a little fun is important too. :)

GROW THE DEFIANCE

DEFIANCE Members are absolutely crushing it, spreading the word about our club for the courageous to their friends. There is strength in numbers, and that’s exactly what defiance requires. Here’s how you can help build our numbers—and get a shoutout on the Daily with Miles and Xander:

1. Go to https://www.defiance.news/leaderboard

2. Use the buttons provided to share your personal referral link on X, Facebook, or email. Or, copy the link (circled in the example below) to share it via text or other social platforms.

Donald J. Trump and his lawless lieutenants are scared about what’s coming. They should be.

Less than two weeks ago, the richest man in the world issued a threat to the U.S. Congress. Responding to reports that Democrats plan to investigate him if they win the House, Elon Musk posted a warning: “Live by the sword, die by the sword. Those who pick fights with me should understand that I will find out who is really pulling the strings and come for them.”

Even for Musk, it was menacing… and stupidly reckless. “Die by the sword”? That’s going to be his message for the people who are readying probes into his business dealings and alleged misconduct inside the Trump administration?

Well, the people he’s trying to scare don’t show signs of being spooked. Democrats told the Washington Post they’re eager to get started. One of them, Rep. James Walkinshaw, responded to Musk directly: “No swords or strings, @elonmusk. I’d just like you to explain to Congress and the American people why DOGE failed so miserably and why you then lied about the savings.”

Threats won’t stop this train.

And tomorrow, the American people will go to the voting booths, and most major forecasts show they’re likely to deliver a stinging rebuke. Democrats are projected to retake the U.S. House — with Decision Desk HQ putting the odds at 84 percent and CNN’s final model at 92 percent. If they do, all the House gavels for all of the oversight committees will change hands on January 3rd. That’s the day the age of accountability begins.

To be fair, we’ve heard variations of this phrase in the past and watched them fizzle. During and after Trump’s first term, the threads of accountability were left dangling. The Mueller report was buried by Trump’s own attorney general… then the January 6th inquiry… moved at a snail’s pace… special prosecutor Jack Smith built two cases that never reached trial as the defendant himself returned to the White House — and the cases were dismissed. Trump thought the lesson was that he could outlast the investigations and win.

This time it will be very different. He’s got nowhere left to run and neither do his deputies. The anger of the populace is transcending party lines, and the push for accountability will barrel forward no matter what stunts he tries to pull.

The textbook case of a president trying to shut down investigations into his own conduct was in 1973. That year, Richard Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor, and his attorney general and deputy attorney general resigned rather than carry it out. The executive branch’s investigative machinery was (for a moment) turned off. It didn’t matter. The Senate’s Watergate Committee plowed forward with hearings, the House Judiciary Committee opened impeachment proceedings, and within ten months, Nixon was gone.

Trump has done something similar but on a scale Nixon wouldn’t have dared. Our current president didn’t fire one prosecutor. His Justice Department fired scores of prosecutors who worked on cases against him or in corners of DOJ that could open probes into his misconduct, while FBI agents have been systematically purged from the bureau, including the ones who investigate corrupt public officials. All the while, he’s indicted his opponents, opened investigations into his critics (myself included), jailed reporters, branded political foes as terrorists, and tried to do just about anything he can think of to scare those who’d shine a light on his misconduct.

He’s even preemptively gone after the people he knows might investigate him again from Capitol Hill. By CNN’s count, at least thirteen members of Congress (every one of them a Democrat) have landed under criminal scrutiny on an absurd array of claims. He’s tried to investigate and even imprison Sens. Mark Kelly, Elissa Slotkin, Adam Schiff and Ruben Gallego, and Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, Chrissy Houlahan, Robert Garcia, Eugene Vindman, Ilhan Omar and LaMonica McIver... all because he evidently fears that they’ll be the ones to come after him when they retake the majority.

It’s about to backfire in spectacular, karmic fashion. As noted earlier, Democrats in Congress are brushing off the intimidation and preparing to staff up their committees for years of investigations into Trump administration corruption.

Meanwhile, some of the prosecutors and agents Trump pushed out are coming together to probe him from the outside. Last week on MSNOW, one of them named Mark Blumberg (a nearly thirty-year veteran of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division) announced the Rule of Law Project, a group of former federal prosecutors and investigators who are building prosecution-ready cases on Trump corruption and abuses of power that the current DOJ has been designed to overlook. Their plan is to hand those cases to state attorneys general, to local district attorneys, to Congress, and to a future Justice Department that will actually do its job.

(We’ll be featuring them on DEFIANCE Daily this week. Stay tuned.)

This is where Nixon is, once again, an insufficient historical analogy. Trump will face a system that’s ready to come for him and his inner circle in ways we’ve never seen. There’s a U.S. House with subpoena power... fifty state legal systems... hundreds of county prosecutors... and a shadow Justice Department staffed by the very people he thought he’d successfully shut up by pushing them out of their jobs. He can’t close these doors or use presidential “immunity” to make them go away.

When Elon Musk tweeted “live by the sword, die by the sword,” he obviously intended it as a threat. But he should’ve written it as self-fulfilling prophecy. He and the rest of Trump’s henchmen have spent two years swinging at everyone who questioned them. They’ll soon see the sword is changing hands.

We’re not intimidated. We never were. And starting January 3rd, our defiance will be the opening rallying cry of a new age. The age of accountability.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

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P.S. DEFIANCE.org is a nonprofit “club for the courageous.” We literally exist to FIGHT the corruption you just read about. We announce a new effort every week to counter Trump’s abuses of power. That’s what your membership funds. If you haven’t yet, become a member today.

CORRUPTIONLAND

CORRUPTIONLAND is available nationwide at CORRUPTIONLAND.org and on YouTube @Defiancedotorg. Watch it, then send it to everyone. This is your most important GET OUT THE VOTE tool! We have 24 hours left until Election Day.

DEFIANCE DAILY

In case you missed it, Friday night’s episode of DEFIANCE Daily is below. Catch our next episode tonight at 5 pm ET!

TRACK THE TRUMP-EPSTEIN READING ROOM & BOOKMOBILE

The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room is in Florida for the midterms. It will be in West Palm Beach now through Wednesday, November 4. If you’re in the area, RSVP now to experience it for yourself.

THE ANT HILL IS OUR MEMBERS-ONLY CORNER OF THE COLONY, WHERE “DEFY ANTS” GET MORE THAN JUST THE NEWSLETTER.

IF YOU’RE ALREADY A DEFIANCE MEMBER, THEN MARCH RIGHT IN. IF NOT, SIGN UP HERE, SO YOU DON’T MISS A THING.

Read more

Republican attack ads are backfiring spectacularly. In Iowa, a GOP ad attacking a Democrat over child safety features a woman who pleaded guilty to child endangerment. And in Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy’s latest attack ad has venues canceling his campaign events.

Meanwhile, two right-wing voter fraud crusaders are facing questions about voting violations of their own. James O’Keefe is even facing felony charges.

Carlos Calzadilla-Palacio (@carloscalzadillapalacio) of Disrupt joins us for the festivities, including Trump’s ongoing feud with Barack Obama over the Cheesecake Factory, and a Trump rally attendee who was too young for Jonestown but wanted to see a cult up close.

Plus, JD Vance is jealous of another senator’s backside, as our Solemate nominees compete for Trump’s affection. Who takes home the coveted Florsheim? You’ll have to watch to find out!

Get more from Miles Taylor in the Substack app

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NEXT WEEK ON THE ANT HILL

• MON, NOV 2 — TUNNEL TALK — This is the space where Defy Ants get to sound off on what’s happening right now: the headlines, the WTF moments, and the stories of defiance. Tell us what’s got the colony buzzing this week, and we’ll share some of your responses with the whole hill.

• TUES, NOV 3 — TRIVIA TUESDAY — Test your knowledge of defiance throughout history, and we’ll give a shoutout to everyone who gets all five right AND a $15 discount on any swag in our swag store!

• WEDS, NOV 4 — MY DEFIANCE MISSION — On Mission Wednesdays, we highlight the defiance actions Members are taking in their own communities. Tell us your story here. Every action counts!

• THURS, NOV 5 — SHOW US YOUR ANT-ITUDE! — We wanna see your DEFIANCE swag, your original artwork, your unique ways of shouting out your defiance to the world in creative ways. Send your pics to our editor here.

• THURS, NOV 5 — DEFIANCE BOOK CLUB — Our current selection is: 1984 by George Orwell. We’ll be discussing Part 2, Chapters 5 & 6 in our Members-only chatroom @ 2:30 pm ET. It’s never too late to join the party! Visit your library or favorite bookstore to pick up a copy.

• FRI, NOV 6 — DOGS (AND CATS!) OF THE DEFIANCE — That’s right…even our furry friends are sticking it to the man. Do you have a dog (or a cat or a horse or a rabbit or a ferret…) that would sooner lift their leg on Trump than play fetch? Send us a pic, and they might be featured in a future issue! Because fighting authoritarianism is hard work, a little fun is important too. :)

• FRI, NOV 6 — Xander will join San Diego Indivisible groups for a screening of CORRUPTIONLAND, followed by a Q&A. If you’re in the San Diego area, RSVP for this special event at: https://www.mobilize.us/bethechangesd/event/1078053/

GROW THE DEFIANCE

DEFIANCE Members are absolutely crushing it, spreading the word about our club for the courageous to their friends. There is strength in numbers, and that’s exactly what defiance requires. Here’s how you can help build our numbers—and get a shoutout on the Daily with Miles and Xander:

1. Go to https://www.defiance.news/leaderboard

2. Use the buttons provided to share your personal referral link on X, Facebook, or email. Or, copy the link (circled in the example below) to share it via text or other social platforms.

Miles

Get more from Miles Taylor in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Read more

If you don’t show up, I know what happens after Election Day.

In January I posted a scorecard of the major warnings I’d made about a second Trump term. Ninety percent had already come true. The handful that hadn’t are getting close.

I’ve spent the better part of a decade predicting Donald Trump’s next moves, sounding the alarm about his abuses of power, and crisscrossing the country to get people to defect from his movement (and now to defy it). Hell, my first book was even called A WARNING. Candidly, this isn’t how I wanted to spend these years. But the warnings were necessary, and too many have come true.

Before the 2024 election I wrote BLOWBACK, built on interviews with roughly a hundred Republicans and former colleagues who served alongside me in the first Trump administration. I asked them what Trump wanted to do the first time that he would do the second time around. The list will feel very familiar: revenge investigations into his critics… a sweeping purge of the civil service… yes-men running the most powerful agencies… Congress’s spending power ignored… troops sent to American cities… intelligence politicized… self-enrichment and corruption… abandonment of our allies and cozying up to dictators… disaster aid and federal money used as leverage over Blue States… political opponents branded as terrorists… and so on.

Every one of those is now in the green column. But I’m no Nostradamus. I merely saw what Trump wanted from the inside, listened to him from the outside, and understood the downside of letting him get near power again.

So I implore you to consider one more warning, from a guy who has a pretty good track record.

This one is about what happens if you — and the rest of us in the pro-democracy movement — don’t vote on Tuesday and don’t drag everyone we know to the polls. Trump knows he will have unchecked power if his movement wins on November 3. And if the margins are tight or if we fall short, here’s how the back half of this term plays out.

Donald Trump will contest the results he doesn’t like. It’s already underway. His Justice Department has launched legal actions in states with competitive races and appears to have more on the way. In recent days, DOJ issued grand jury subpoenas to California and Washington election officials and tried to set aside 20,000 mail ballots from voters it calls noncitizens, a request a judge tossed. This could get much uglier, with the FBI sent to seize ballots, chaos in the streets, and the use of emergency powers and legislative maneuvers to suppress the political opposition.

Then he will keep his grip on the legislative branch. A Congress that stays MAGA-aligned stays silent. That’s it. Don’t expect any sudden political courage. There will be no subpoenas, no hearings on the retribution campaign, no re-opening of the Epstein investigation, no check on a president who already ignores spending directives. And what does that mean? It means he’s taking billions and billions of federal dollars and spending them how he wants — the most sweeping and under-reported power abuse of his presidency.

He will take over the Federal Reserve. He’s most of the way there. Jerome Powell is no longer in the chair, and Trump’s replacement cleared the Senate on a party-line vote. The Supreme Court blocked his firing of Governor Lisa Cook by a single vote while backing his power over other independent agencies, and he promptly warned there was more coming. Unchecked, he will finish the job in 2027. That means he will effectively control your interest rates… effectively control the printing of money… and could detonate the economy in ways you’ve never imagined in your worst nightmares.

He will prosecute and jail his critics. Trump’s already indicted a former FBI director who investigated him, a sitting state attorney general who prosecuted him, and his own former national security adviser who spoke out against him. The career prosecutors who resigned rather than bring those cases are mostly gone, and the next targets won’t just be former officials. They’ll be governors, members of Congress, donors, organizers, protesters, and more. He’s said he doesn’t need convictions. For the intimidation to work, he just needs to ruin more lives along the way.

He will seek to finish off the free press. His FCC chairman has threatened to revoke broadcast licenses over Iran war coverage and ordered ABC stations to reapply early. Journalists have been indicted for covering a protest in a church. And he’s kicked outlets he doesn’t like out of federal buildings. The next wave will be far worse and will include real federal action against news networks, more reporters monitored and arrested, DOJ and Trump lawsuits against individual reporters in independent media, and a wholesale ejection of the free press from the halls of power, including the White House.

He will flout the courts. Last year, Trump menacingly warned reporters that he has a way to evade judicial scrutiny: by taking over. Specifically, as I’ve warned about for years, he’s fantasized about invoking the Insurrection Act and taking us close to martial law; if that happens, in his words, there will be “no more court cases, there is no more anything.” If Trump has no Congressional check on his power, he’ll be much more willing to defy the last check — the courts — including unfavorable decisions from the Supreme Court.

He will put troops on American streets and keep them there. The Court blocked his National Guard deployments last December, so he pulled most of the troops while reminding everyone that he could still invoke emergency powers to do it again and at scale. If he has shirked the remaining constitutional checks on his power, by the summer of 2027, I expect soldiers policing major American cities (at least Democrat-run cities) on his orders, and the bloody peril of social unrest.

He will rewrite the rules of who gets to vote. The House has already passed the SAVE Act, which would end online and mail registration for millions. Though it stalled in the Senate, Trump will manage to secure its passage if power doesn’t change hands in Congress. The Supreme Court has already let DHS hand states an expanded citizenship database to scrub their voter rolls, and his blocked mail-ballot orders become law the moment a compliant Congress passes them. Make no mistake: this will result in the president having the de facto ability to create voting “blacklists” and wielding extraordinary power over federal elections.

He will refuse to leave. Trump has said himself that he’d “love” a third term, he’s explored it, and Steve Bannon says that “there is a plan.” The Trump Organization already sells the hats. He won’t surrender power unless he has a path to an office that shields him from accountability, whether it’s continuation in the presidency, the vice presidency behind a placeholder, the Speaker’s gavel (second in the line of succession, and the Constitution is silent on whether he can hold it), or something invented. If he controls Congress, he can steer his way toward any of these outcomes.

The 2028 election will not be certifiable. With the aforementioned crackdown, Trump will be able to make sure the voter rolls are favorably purged, mail-in voting is gutted, election officials are afraid of prosecution, troops are ready to suppress the vote in opposition cities, a compliant Fed is goosing the economy, and a threatened press is more docile. Whatever happens in that vote, there will be no legitimate way to certify it, and no independent institution left with the ability to review it. Accordingly, the constitutional order will face the prospect of total collapse; indeed, a democracy whose processes are no longer democratic stops being one.

That’s what happens if you don’t vote.

Forestalling such a dystopian future depends on a Congress willing to act. An overwhelming election result will tell Trump that the multitudes have turned against him. He and his officials will be made to fear the prospect of investigations, accountability, and justice, and while this won’t stop the man entirely, it will rein in his power considerably.

Maybe you think this is hyperbolic. If so, I bet you thought my second-term predictions were overstated. Well, now you’re living in them. I’ve been right about this man often enough that it haunts me. But you can make me wrong on Tuesday. I hope you’ll make the time to vote. It’s not a lot to ask.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

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P.S. DEFIANCE.org is a nonprofit “club for the courageous.” We literally exist to FIGHT the corruption you just read about. We announce a new effort every week to counter Trump’s abuses of power. That’s what your membership funds. If you haven’t yet, become a member today.

CORRUPTIONLAND

CORRUPTIONLAND is now available nationwide at CORRUPTIONLAND.org, along with an interactive corruption map. Watch it, then send it to everyone. It’s premiering on YouTube TODAY. This is your most important GET OUT THE VOTE tool!

DEFIANCE DAILY

In case you missed it, last night’s episode of DEFIANCE Daily is below. Catch our next episode tonight at 5 pm ET!

TRACK THE TRUMP-EPSTEIN READING ROOM & BOOKMOBILE

The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room is in Florida for the midterms. It will be in West Palm Beach beginning on Sunday, November 1. If you’re in the area, RSVP now to experience it for yourself.

THE ANT HILL IS OUR MEMBERS-ONLY CORNER OF THE COLONY, WHERE “DEFY ANTS” GET MORE THAN JUST THE NEWSLETTER.

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But with five days until the midterms, there’s no time to put our feet up. Current and former FBI officials are warning that Trump could order agents to seize ballots or voting machines. And while we were live, breaking news: the DOJ issued subpoenas to California election officials over its claims about 20,000 suspected noncitizen voters. The subpoenas order employees to appear in court the day after Election Day.

We also examine an AP investigation into ICE detaining a man for nearly a year despite substantial evidence he’s an American citizen.

Former Washington Gov. Jay Inslee joins us to discuss why Trump’s administration is welcoming Brazil’s defeated presidential candidate while pursuing deportations at home, and how Trump’s oil investments are growing as Americans pay more at the pump.

Plus, our newest member of the DEFIANCE has a direct line to the Vatican.

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• FRI, OCT 30 — DOGS (AND CATS!) OF THE DEFIANCE — That’s right…even our furry friends are sticking it to the man. Do you have a dog (or a cat or a horse or a rabbit or a ferret…) that would sooner lift their leg on Trump than play fetch? Send us a pic, and they might be featured in a future issue! Because fighting authoritarianism is hard work, a little fun is important too. :)

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It took Barack Obama one joke to get the president of the United States to sabotage his party’s midterm election chances.

Last Saturday in Cleveland, Obama walked rally-goers through the absurdity of Trump’s gold-leafed Oval Office, the paved-over Rose Garden, the helipad, and the billion-dollar ballroom-bunker complex rising where the East Wing used to be. He summed it up in a sentence: Trump has the White House “looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”

It was a funny throwaway line in a speech about corruption and the cost of living. And the real point was that the sitting president is so out of touch that he’s redecorating his palace while Americans can’t afford groceries.

And Trump couldn’t let it go. So much so that he began a multi-day process of self-implosion, the likes of which we’ve rarely seen burn so brightly in American politics.

First, Trump attacked Obama on Truth Social that very night… and again on the tarmac Monday, calling him a “lousy president.” Then, he flew to Mississippi, stood in front of a rally that was supposed to be focused on saving an at-risk GOP Senate seat, and kept circling back to the Obama insult. Not one or two times. But for roughly ten minutes. Ten minutes of Trump visibly flustered by the whole ordeal and defending his gold trim, the marble, his new granite helipad, and the ballroom to people who came to hear about their jobs.

I was on set at CNN that night as they aired a supercut of it. You had to see it to believe it.

“We have the most beautiful marble,” Trump protested, trying to persuade his audience. “It’s not money. It’s peanuts. We built the most magnificent ballroom you’ve ever seen. It’s under construction. It’s ahead of schedule. Barack Hussein, he didn’t talk about that. He talked about the ballroom that, he spends all his time thinking about the ballroom. That has to be pristine. And I would try and explain that to a guy like Obama, but he wouldn’t understand.”

Oh, Mr. President, I think Obama understands very well.

The liberal and conservative panelists on set with me at CNN could barely hold back their laughter. I might’ve been in the worst shape. I was having trouble composing myself as we came back from the clip.

Americans already knew what Obama was talking about. We’ve watched Trump’s fixation with redecorating the White House pretty much swallow him whole. In March, two days after he ordered the strikes that started the Iran war, Trump used a Medal of Honor ceremony to gush about his ballroom instead of addressing the solemness of the ceremony or the fact that we were at war.

“I picked those drapes in my first term,” he smiled to attendees. “I always liked gold.”

Meanwhile, gas prices were beginning to soar as the bombs dropped.

But this week when he was called out for it, Trump’s descent into self-destructive territory didn’t stop with his defensive response to Obama. Remarkably, he confessed to another rally crowd that his own advisers had begged him not to brag about oil profits while people were paying $4.29 a gallon. But he bragged anyway.

“I don’t give a damn, I’m going to say it. We’re making a freaking fortune!” he gushed to what I imagine must’ve been a confused audience.

Who is the “we” in this sentence? It’s certainly not the people at the pump. Presumably, the president was bragging about the U.S. oil companies themselves posting record profits off a war he started. Somehow in his twice-warmed-over microwaved mind, he wants his followers to think that counts as a win for the family filling up their minivan. Don’t worry, he assures them, all the cash you’re forking over to the oil execs will, you know, trickle back down to you… someday!

That right there — those absurd comments — could’ve set the record for the most out-of-touch thing a president has said on the eve of an election. Ever. But he didn’t stop there.

Tuesday night in Corpus Christi, Trump brought up the $5,000 checks he’s promised to send Americans if and only if Republicans keep Congress. In a bizarre moment, he invited the crowd to spend the money on him… at his own club… as his guests at Mar-a-Lago. Then, he seemed to remember how high his own club’s prices actually were.

“For $5,000, the most you’ll be able to buy is a hamburger and maybe a small dessert. I’m not even sure you could buy that,” he said. “No, don’t go there. That’s not a good place if you’re price-conscious.”

Marie Antoinette must’ve been smiling from the grave. Finally, “let them eat cake” had been supplanted by something an order of magnitude more callous.

Trump’s closing argument on corruption and affordability — the two issues voters say matter most — seems to boil down to this: Don’t worry about my renovations, they’re beautiful, and that’s good for America. Also, if gas prices bother you, just be happy that my oil friends are getting rich. And if you’re still upset, come have a burger at my club, which you can’t afford even with the $5,000 I’m dangling, so on second thought don’t bother, poor people.

In a window that he’s supposed to be “on message,” Trump’s comments went from self-defeating… to self-destruction… to full-on political self-immolation in less than a week.

So last night in Atlanta, Obama couldn’t resist:

“He’s literally doing arts and crafts while we’re fighting a war and trying to deal with out-of-control prices,” he said, laughing. “The president wasn’t even mad about the Saddam Hussein comparison. That part didn’t bother him. But he was very upset about the Cheesecake Factory comments.”

Then the part he clearly savored:

“They mobilized a whole-of-government response to that joke. Not to inflation, but to that joke. Y’all didn’t see this? This really happened. And the Treasury Secretary, who happens to be worth half a billion dollars, he’s out there in front of the Cheesecake Factory explaining how he ordered the delicious French dip cheeseburger instead of the egg rolls.”

The former president knew he’d walked the current one into a trap. Days before an election, he’d gotten Trump on his back foot, defending indefensible corruption and mocking the plight of the people themselves. The people who will vote on November 3 whether to re-hire or fire Trump’s enablers.

Last week ended with Obama making a joke. This week, Trump took it as poorly as you could possibly imagine. And next week, voters will have the last laugh.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

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P.S. DEFIANCE.org is a nonprofit “club for the courageous.” We literally exist to FIGHT the corruption you just read about. We announce a new effort every week to counter Trump’s abuses of power. That’s what your membership funds. If you haven’t yet, become a member today.

CORRUPTIONLAND

CORRUPTIONLAND is now available nationwide at CORRUPTIONLAND.org, along with an interactive corruption map. Watch it, then send it to everyone. We’re putting it on YouTube soon, too. This is your most important GET OUT THE VOTE tool!

DEFIANCE DAILY

In case you missed it, last night’s episode of DEFIANCE Daily is below. Catch our next episode tonight at 5 pm ET!

TRACK THE TRUMP-EPSTEIN READING ROOM & BOOKMOBILE

The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Bookmobile is in Florida this week. If you’re in the Tampa area TODAY, visit trumpepsteinreadingroom.com/tour to RSVP. The Reading Room will be in West Palm Beach beginning on Sunday, November 1. RSVP now to experience it for yourself.

THE ANT HILL IS OUR MEMBERS-ONLY CORNER OF THE COLONY, WHERE “DEFY ANTS” GET MORE THAN JUST THE NEWSLETTER.

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There are only six days until the midterms, and Donald Trump’s Justice Department is running out of time to win its election-related lawsuits.

A Trump-appointed judge in Utah threw out the DOJ’s demand for voter data. A federal appeals court rejected its emergency attempt to set aside roughly 20,000 California ballots. And in Washington, D.C., a grand jury refused to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide whose January 6 testimony made her a target of Trump’s ire.

Even Trump’s effort to remake a public golf course has run into a judge who refuses to budge.

But the biggest win this week belongs to our members at DEFIANCE: CORRUPTIONLAND is officially out, streaming free at corruptionland.org. We’ve already had a million site visits and 60,000 people sign on.

THE MISSION: STOP THE STEAL

Yesterday, Trump was asked a simple question: Would he respect the results of next week’s election?

His answer? “I will — if they’re honest elections.”

There it is. Six days before voters finish casting their ballots, Trump is already leaving himself an escape hatch.

And his administration isn’t waiting until Election Day to act. The DOJ is suing Alaska over an election that hasn’t happened yet. Election officials are preparing for the possibility of federal agents showing up at polling places, attempts to seize ballots, and interference with certification.

So we’re preparing, too.

Kim Rogers of the State and Local Election Alliance (SLEA) joined us to explain how election officials are protecting the process and what happens if the federal government tries to interfere.

Then we welcomed Doran Schrantz of The Power Lab, who helped organize the massive civilian response to ICE operations in Minneapolis. Her message is simple: don’t wait for someone else to organize your community.

And we’re putting resources behind that work. Today, DEFIANCE announced a $45,000 grant to The Power Lab, in partnership with One For Democracy, to help protect election results through January.

You made this happen.

YOUR ACTIONS: GET READY NOW

Election Day is Tuesday. But the work of protecting the results could continue long after the polls close.

As a DEFIANCE.org member, here’s how you can prepare this week:

1️⃣ Build your network of 10 to 15 people. Reach out to neighbors, friends, or parents from school. Start a Signal or text thread and get everyone ready to respond together.

2️⃣ Call your member of Congress, Democrat or Republican. Ask them to publicly commit to counting the votes, seating the winners, and rejecting attempts to sabotage the election. Then get your network to call, too.

3️⃣ Pledge to respond to the call. If there’s a call to peacefully assemble, show up. If you can’t, help someone else get there, bring food, make signs, or organize shifts.

We don’t have to wait until something goes wrong to get ready.

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🖥️ IF YOU MISSED IT

You can watch the full Weekly Mission Briefing at the top!

As always — stay loud, stay brave, and stay together.

Best,

The DEFIANCE.org Team

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THIS WEEK ON THE ANT HILL

• THURS, OCT 29 — SHOW US YOUR ANT-ITUDE! — We wanna see your DEFIANCE swag, your original artwork, your unique ways of shouting out your defiance to the world in creative ways. Send your pics to our editor here.

• THURS, OCT 29 — DEFIANCE BOOK CLUB — Our current selection is: 1984 by George Orwell. We’ll be discussing Part 2, Chapters 3 & 4 in our Members-only chatroom @ 2:30 pm ET. It’s never too late to join the party! Visit your library or favorite bookstore to pick up a copy.

• FRI, OCT 30 — DOGS (AND CATS!) OF THE DEFIANCE — That’s right…even our furry friends are sticking it to the man. Do you have a dog (or a cat or a horse or a rabbit or a ferret…) that would sooner lift their leg on Trump than play fetch? Send us a pic, and they might be featured in a future issue! Because fighting authoritarianism is hard work, a little fun is important too. :)

GROW THE DEFIANCE

DEFIANCE Members are absolutely crushing it, spreading the word about our club for the courageous to their friends. There is strength in numbers, and that’s exactly what defiance requires. Here’s how you can help build our numbers—and get a shoutout on the Daily with Miles and Xander:

1. Go to https://www.defiance.news/leaderboard

2. Use the buttons provided to share your personal referral link on X, Facebook, or email. Or, copy the link (circled in the example below) to share it via text or other social platforms.

Something remarkable happened in a U.S. courtroom yesterday. An FBI agent blurted out the truth about Trump’s politicized investigations.

That agent took the stand in Washington, D.C. to defend a case that he admitted his own office didn’t believe was legitimate. Under cross-examination, Special Agent Bryan Witt acknowledged that the prosecution of two former FBI officials (accused of lying about Hunter Biden’s laptop) was commonly regarded inside his office as a “witch hunt.” He also confirmed who had ordered it: FBI Director Kash Patel, who issued the directive the day that Trump himself demanded a probe.

It’s hard to overstate how damaging this is to the FBI’s case. It’s not like Special Agent Witt’s words were a leak from some anonymous source. He said it under oath, and he’s the very same agent who filed the criminal complaint on behalf of the FBI in the first place, alleging that two ex-FBI officials misled Congress about the Hunter Biden laptop investigation, something those two individuals vehemently deny. Under cross-examination, Witt confessed to worries that the whole thing looked “political.”

Let me step back for just a moment because two things happened yesterday that are historically significant.

The first is that Donald Trump’s Justice Department has shown, once again, that it will not relent in its campaign to prosecute the president’s perceived enemies. The second is that the American people, in the form of federal agents, grand jurors, and judges, are refusing to go along with it.

This duality was shown last night with breaking news about Cassidy Hutchinson. A federal grand jury in Washington declined to indict her for the testimony she gave the January 6th committee about Trump’s conduct that day. Prosecutors were attempting to charge her with lying to Congress. Yet when they brought in a panel of ordinary citizens, as a grand jury, those citizens refused to accept the facts of the government’s case. They said “no.”

Grand juries almost never do this. The old line is that a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich. Yesterday, the sandwich gave the middle finger.

I didn’t know Cassidy well in the first Trump administration. She started working in the White House just a few months before I resigned in protest. But we share plenty of former colleagues, including several who have since spoken out against Trump, and I’ve never heard anyone question her character. She told the truth about what she saw on January 6th at enormous personal cost, and the White House’s response, four years later, is to try to put her in prison for it.

The grand jurors who listened to that case understood exactly what they were being asked to do. And they refused.

Then there’s the case I mentioned above, against ex-FBI agents Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides. Unlike Cassidy, I know them well. We worked closely together on protecting the security of our elections from foreign interference, when Nikki was deputy assistant director and Brad was section chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force. These are two people who spent their careers in the shadows, dedicating their lives to protecting Americans from threats most of us won’t hear about for decades.

They’re among the most honorable public servants I have ever worked with. I mean that. And their reputations among other FBI agents are sterling. When the charges dropped last week, I was gobsmacked. I texted a former top FBI leader the news, and his response was the same as mine: Those two are the best of the best.

Last week, the Justice Department charged them with lying to Congress in 2023 about what they knew of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Then, in the middle of the night before their hearing, prosecutors filed a “superseding complaint” tacking on an obstruction charge, without bothering to get a judge’s approval. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui was not amused. He refused to sign off on the new complaint, called the maneuver unusual, and reminded prosecutors that if they want to charge a case like this, it has to go to a grand jury.

Given what grand juries in Washington have been doing lately, the department might want to think about that.

The whole case couldn’t be more profane. The administration is pouring the resources of the FBI and the Justice Department into a six-year-old grievance about a laptop. Meanwhile, a new book excerpted in Vanity Fair alleges that Jared Kushner, the president’s own son-in-law and Middle East envoy, had access to undisclosed foreign bank accounts holding hundreds of millions of dollars in Saudi and Emirati money, intended to buy influence inside the U.S. government. (Kushner of course flatly denies the allegations, says they are fabrications, and has threatened to sue.)

Ask yourself which story deserves the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice that you pay for. The government’s answer tells you everything you need to know about the DOJ we actually have.

In the end, I believe Nikki and Brad will be vindicated. But they should never, ever have been dragged into a courtroom in the first place. The fact that the lead agent assigned to their case openly confessed that his FBI colleagues called it a “witch hunt” should be enough for all Americans to see this for what it really is.

Despite the pushback, we all know Trump will keep trying. He’s made clear that the Justice Department’s mandate is to punish the people who crossed him.

But yesterday showed us that his intimidation isn’t working anymore. Grand jurors are saying “no.” Judges are saying “no.” Even the FBI’s own agents are sitting on the witness stand and refusing to toe the party line. The American people are done with this lawless circus, and they’re saying so — inside and outside the system.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

Share

P.S. DEFIANCE.org is a nonprofit “club for the courageous.” We literally exist to FIGHT the corruption you just read about. We announce a new effort every week to counter Trump’s abuses of power. That’s what your membership funds. If you haven’t yet, become a member today.

CORRUPTIONLAND

CORRUPTIONLAND is now available nationwide at CORRUPTIONLAND.org, along with an interactive corruption map. Watch it, then send it to everyone. This is your most important GET OUT THE VOTE tool!

DEFIANCE DAILY

In case you missed it, last night’s episode of DEFIANCE Daily is below. Catch our next episode tonight at 5 pm ET!

TRACK THE TRUMP-EPSTEIN READING ROOM & BOOKMOBILE

The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Bookmobile is in Florida this week. If you’re in the Tampa area on Thursday, visit trumpepsteinreadingroom.com/tour to RSVP. The Reading Room will be in West Palm Beach beginning on Sunday, November 1. RSVP now to experience it for yourself.

THE ANT HILL IS OUR MEMBERS-ONLY CORNER OF THE COLONY, WHERE “DEFY ANTS” GET MORE THAN JUST THE NEWSLETTER.

IF YOU’RE ALREADY A DEFIANCE MEMBER, THEN MARCH RIGHT IN. IF NOT, SIGN UP HERE, SO YOU DON’T MISS A THING.

Read more