The beating heart of DEFIANCE.org is our Weekly Mission Briefing. Every Wednesday, we take real action to counter Donald Trump’s abuses of power.

Trump is hemorrhaging supporters. And this week, DEFIANCE.org is funding the people who help them walk out the door. If you only have 30 seconds: the defections from MAGA have gone from a trickle to a flood… we brought on two of the sharpest minds on authoritarianism and Republican defection to explain why… and we awarded a $20,000 DEFIANCE.org grant to an amazing group called Leaving MAGA for their work in battleground states ahead of the midterms. If you are a DEFIANCE.org Member, YOU made this possible.

THE DETAILS

FIRST, our DEFIANCE “win of the week”: the defiance is fist-pumping in plain sight. A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to restore every national park sign it stripped under Trump’s executive order, with a hard deadline of July 3rd — just in time for America’s 250th birthday. As Xander put it: this is the only dictatorship where the monuments to the ruler come down as fast as they go up.

SECOND, we convened a panel to explain why people stay in authoritarian movements… and why they’re now leaving in droves.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat (historian, New York Times bestselling author, author of Lucid on Substack, and one of the world’s leading experts on strongman politics) walked us through what she calls “autocratic backfire,” i.e. when the strongman surrounds himself with sycophants, family, and yes-men who keep his secrets but don’t know what they’re doing, the corruption and incompetence compound until discontent spreads even among the formerly faithful. Ten years into Trump’s emotional reconditioning of his base, the cult of Trump-as-infallible is finally cracking.

Tara Setmayer (former GOP communications strategist, one of the most prominent conservative voices against Trump, and founder of The Seneca Project) spoke to what it actually takes to leave. She walked out of the party the night Trump refused to concede in 2020 and the GOP let him. Her message to the would-be defectors was that you can still be a conservative and say this guy duped us.

THIRD, we funded the people doing this work on the ground. We awarded a $20,000 DEFIANCE.org grant to Leaving MAGA, founded by the extraordinary Rich Logis — himself a former MAGA activist on a redemption arc — for their organizing work in battleground states ahead of the midterms. Rich and his team run free weekly support groups, a Reaching Out Guide for families, and direct outreach to people having doubts. As we said on air: defections were crucial to defeating Trump in 2020, and what Rich is doing may be more effective than almost any other strategy out there to protect our democracy.

Finally, we gave DEFIANCE.org Members their weekly actions in support of the Leaving MAGA mission. Check those out, below!

YOU MADE ALL OF THIS POSSIBLE. WE ARE IN AWE OF YOUR COURAGE.

YOUR MISSION, IF YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT

As a DEFIANCE.org Member, you’re already refusing to let democracy die on our watch. Here’s what we need from you this week if you want to go above and beyond:

1️⃣ Read Leaving MAGA’s “Reaching Out Guide” — Before you talk to anyone, read the guide. It’s a practical playbook for how to have these conversations with friends and family wrapped up in the movement without being patronizing. The link is HERE. The whole thing comes down to one principle Miles keeps repeating: empathy as the exit ramp. Don’t forget it!

2️⃣ Have the conversation — After you read the guide, meet with one friend or family member and listen. Ask why. As Xander put it: you can usually empathize with the why — nobody likes corruption in DC, forever wars, or what’s happened to the middle class. Once you understand the “why,” you can have an honest conversation about what to do. Don’t tell them “I told you so.” That feels good and saves nothing. If you want to win, show them the exit ramp.

3️⃣ If MAGA has fractured your family, you’re not alone. Join a support call — Leaving MAGA hosts free weekly support groups (Tuesdays) for people who’ve had relationships broken by a loved one’s descent into the movement ripping America apart. There’s no financial hindrance. They’re open and free on purpose. If this has been painful for you, the link is HERE. Miles and Xander are both planning to take these actions this week… and report back.

4️⃣ BONUS: Share your badge. You earned it. Post it and let your networks know the fight to bring people out of MAGA is real and happening right now.

🖥️ IF YOU MISSED IT

Watch the full Weekly Mission Briefing at the top, including the full conversation with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Tara Setmayer, and Rich Logis.

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

Your friends, in defiance,

Miles Taylor & Xander Schultz

THE DEFIANCE WATCHLIST

We are tracking these stories today.

1. TRUMP THREATENS TO KILL UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS IN ALL 50 STATES. For the first time in history, the Trump administration is threatening to withhold federal funding for unemployment assistance across all 50 states, warning governors it will use “every available tool” to combat alleged fraud. Nearly 2 million Americans are currently receiving those benefits. Without federal support, state-run systems could be forced to shut down entirely. Critics say this has nothing to do with fraud — it’s the same playbook the administration used against Medicaid, SNAP, and every other social program it wants to gut. More ominously, this appears to be yet another way the Trump administration is trying to get leverage over its political opponents. We suspect RED STATES won’t face challenges in keeping the unemployment money flowing. But BLUE STATES? That’s who Trump is really targeting.

2. TRUMP’S MAIL BALLOT POWER GRAB IS ALREADY BEING IMPLEMENTED. In March, Trump signed an executive order handing the Department of Homeland Security control over federal voter registration lists, effectively deciding who gets to cast a mail ballot. Opponents immediately sued (including legal challenges funded by DEFIANCE.org), calling it “flagrantly unconstitutional.” A judge refused to block it, saying it was too early. Well, turns out it that it’s no longer “too early” — the U.S. Postal Service has just published a rule proposal to carry it forward, and DHS has issued multiple implementation memos. With elections just months away, opponents are back in court demanding it be stopped NOW.

3. ACT OF DEFIANCE — MAGA FIGURES ARE DEFECTING OVER THE TERRIBLE IRAN DEAL. MAGA world is flipping out over the Iran deal, and major GOP names are defecting in the wake of the humiliating agreement. Sen. Bill Cassidy called it “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades” and declared “Reagan is rolling over in his grave,” Sen. Thom Tillis is alarmed by the $300 billion reconstruction fund the US is now on the hook for, and even Lindsey Graham — a reliable Trump stalwart — express his concerns. But the loudest fury is coming from the very MAGA media allies Trump spent months amplifying to sell this war: Fox's Mark Levin is in open revolt (“I sure as hell hope I am misreading and mishearing things”), Marc Thiessen ripped the payout as a Marshall Plan for an enemy regime that's still standing, Trey Gowdy asked “How are we better off? What did we get?,” Erick Erickson cast it as an American surrender, the right erupted as National Review demanded Trump release the text, and even Ben Shapiro warned his audience that supporters who stood by Trump would be “extraordinarily disappointed.” Before the war, the Strait of Hormuz was open, Iran was under crushing sanctions, and 13 Americans were still alive. This is just the latest in a string of eruptions pushing Republican senators to their limit… and those defections are helping to weaken Trump’s movement in a major way.

WHAT’S COMING UP

• TONIGHT — DEFIANCE DAILY — Every weeknight @ 5pm ET, you can watch our hour-long podcast LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, YouTube, or X— and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• FRIDAY — NOTE: We won’t have a DEFIANCE Daily or a Weekly Coffee this Friday, as it’s a federal holiday!

• 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.

We’re only halfway through the week, and it’s already shaping up to be one of the most embarrassing stretches for Donald Trump (and for the United States of America) in a long time.

I’ll begin with Iran. In February, Trump launched a war against a regime he called a menace to the entire world. This week, he ended it by handing that same regime a $300 billion sweetheart deal — a truly astonishing sum spent to buy a promise we already had, namely that Tehran would not build a nuclear bomb. To put that number in perspective, it’s roughly five years of funding for the Department of Homeland Security that I used to help run. And it’s about three times the annual budget of the entire Iranian government.

So Trump is proposing the world “pay” our adversary several times what it costs to run their whole country, all in exchange for words on paper we’d already been given.

I worked on Iran issues in the first Trump administration, at various points. I’ll add to the chorus of criticism by noting that this “deal” may turn out to be one of the most humiliating compacts in U.S. diplomatic history. Even one of Trump’s single biggest boosters for the war, Fox News regular Marc Thiessen, couldn’t find a way to squirm himself into a position to defend it. Instead, he suggested it would be as if the Allies in World War II had decided to give the Nazis a massive fund “to rebuild Germany” while Hitler was still in power.

Ouch.

But the humiliation on the world stage doesn’t stop there. All of this began while Donald Trump was supposed to be in Europe huddling with our closest allies. Instead, he postponed the G7 meeting by a day so he could host a UFC cage match on the White House lawn for his 80th birthday. When he finally did arrive in France, the U.S. team was apparently unable to so much as agree on a communiqué with its fellow democracies, so they ditched the usual practices of releasing a joint statement at the summit. (If you can’t even write a press release with your friends, are they really your friends?)

I wrote about the deeper meaning of all this today in Britain’s i Paper:

“He arrived in France this week as the most diminished American president in the history of the transatlantic alliance. Diminished not only in tanks or dollars, but in the only currency that has ever made the West more than the sum of its parts, which is trust.”

Unfortunately, this is the direction we’ve been trending since Trump’s first term. He loathes spending time with his fellow democratic leaders because he feels judged by them. He is. They don’t believe anything he says, and why would they? They’ve been dealing with his petulance for a decade. In the first administration, I watched him torch a G7 meeting from inside the Situation Room by complaining about having to go meet with our allies and then upending the summit once he got there with embarrassing missives, before ditching the event altogether to fly to North Korea.

He’d rather deal with a despot than fellow democracies. Back then, I told colleagues the president had a “weakness for strongmen,” and that — until he was gone — it would put terrible strain on our alliances. If they didn’t trust us because of Trump’s behavior, America would suffer gravely. Now Trump’s tantrums have become national policy. As I put it in the i Paper:

“Trump’s fickle moods have, in their minds, morphed into something bigger than just a bad weather event. They’ve become the diplomatic equivalent of climate change. Massive. Long-term. System-changing.”

The damage is measurable. Last week in DEFIANCE News, we featured a survey that found that just 11 percent of Europeans now regard the United States as an ally. This is a record low. And the consequence is exactly what you would fear. Our enemies no longer respect us, and our friends are quietly making other plans. Humiliating, indeed.

Most of the component democracies in the G7 that Trump huddled with this week no longer believe in America and are preparing for a future without it, including building up their militaries independent of the United States. While Trump didn’t flick a Starburst at a fellow world leader at this week’s summit (as he did in 2018 in Canada) or snub handshake while wearing his signature pouty face, he didn’t need to. The damage was done before he got there. He’s used sweeping demonstrations of U.S. power against our friends since he came back to office, from slapping punishing tariffs on their goods to threatening to seize their territory.

Trump has debased himself and his country — thoroughly and completely — like no other American leader before him. The real question now is whether our friends will wait any longer for us to get our act together. If they do decide to “move on” from the United States, Trump’s global humiliation will be complete.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor
P.S. Help spread the defiance by sharing this post.

Share

THE DEFIANCE WATCHLIST

We are tracking these stories today.

1. TRUMP IS DISMANTLING THE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT, ONE PIECE AT A TIME. The administration announced this week it’s moving federal work related to “special education” from the Department of Education to the Departments of Health and Human Services and Justice — what? — peeling off two of the department’s core responsibilities without a single vote in Congress. Officials are calling the handoffs “partnerships.” Former employees are calling it decimation: “This isn’t a late-model Toyota that you can sell for parts,” one said. Here’s why it matters. Only Congress can abolish a department it created, so Trump is hollowing out the Department of Education, piece by piece, until there’s nothing left to formally close. The people who pay for it are disabled students whose protections have stood for 50 years.

2. THE PENTAGON IS RUNNING OUT OF WEAPONS. BUT DON’T WORRY, THEY SWEAR THEY’RE NOT. Trump quietly invoked the Defense Production Act last week to force defense companies to ramp up munitions production, after the war with Iran drained stockpiles faster than the country can rebuild them — a campaign that, by one outside estimate, burned through more than half of several critical missile systems. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spent this week on Capitol Hill pitching senators on $350 billion to refill those same stockpiles, even though he told the country on national television days ago that “our stockpiles are great, and they’re only getting stronger.” Why it matters: you don’t invoke a Cold War emergency power and beg Congress for $350 billion to solve a problem you insist doesn’t exist, and Hegseth himself testified in April that some of these munitions could take months or years to replace. Either the stockpiles are fine or they’re not. We reckon someone’s not telling the truth, and we intend to keep asking until they do.

3. TRUMP’S DOJ IS NOW PERSONALLY SHIELDING ELON MUSK FROM THE LAW. The NAACP sued Musk’s xAI after it installed 59 unpermitted gas turbines (in Southaven, Mississippi, to power its Memphis supercomputer) in apparent violation of the Clean Air Act. Yet the DOJ’s response wasn’t to dispute the illegal pollution; it was to argue that it doesn’t matter whether xAI is breaking the law, so long as the Trump administration says it’s fine. The DOJ is claiming the power to cancel any “citizen suit” — the 50-year-old tool that lets ordinary communities haul polluters into court when regulators won’t — which would swing the door wide open to outright “pay-to-pollute” corruption. And the harm is real. Those turbines pump more than 5,300 tons of smog-forming pollutants into Memphis and North Mississippi every year, into communities already living with elevated rates of asthma and cancer. Expect this to escalate in the courts, as it should.

4. ACT OF DEFIANCE — NEWSOM TO THE DOJ: INVESTIGATE TRUMP, NOT ME. California Governor Gavin Newsom’s top lawyer sent a letter this week to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche telling him to redirect his attention to the “open-air corruption market that the White House has become.” The DOJ has reportedly been digging into Newsom and his wife, yet another indication the Justice Department is operating as a personal weapon for Trump. The president’s former defense lawyer is aiming federal investigators at the man most likely to challenge Trump’s MAGA coalition in 2028, while the corruption in plain sight at the White House goes untouched. But the Governor is fighting back — hard — and we’re here for it.

WHAT’S COMING UP

• TONIGHT — WEEKLY MISSION BRIEFING — This is the “beating heart of DEFIANCE.org.” Every Wednesday @ 5pm ET we do a special episode of DEFIANCE Daily and announce real actions to combat Trump’s corruption. So tune in. Replays available afterwards.

• TOMORROW — DEFIANCE DAILY — Every weeknight @ 5pm ET, you can watch our hour-long podcast LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, YouTube, or X — and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our most recent episode is below!

• FRIDAY — NOTE: We won’t have a DEFIANCE Daily or a Weekly Coffee this Friday, as it’s a federal holiday!

• 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.

ONE MORE THING

Forward this email to someone who should join the defiance. We are growing the club. I won’t let a wannabe dictator destroy the country I spent my career protecting. That’s why I launched DEFIANCE.org — a club for courageous Americans asking, “WHAT CAN I DO?” Each week, we defy Trump by taking real action to thwart his abuses of power. Become a Member today at DEFIANCE.org/join or here on Substack. 100% of proceeds go to the pro-democracy fight. Or sign up for occasional updates for free below. We publish breaking news and analysis at DEFIANCE.News.

The Justice Department opened the day with a dramatic 94-page indictment against 15 people in Minnesota — lots of words like “antifa,” “conspiracy,” and “lawlessness.” When reporters asked what injuries federal agents actually suff…

Read more

Donald Trump claimed he’d “end the weaponization” of government. Instead he’s gone after twenty authors who’ve written books critical of him, a DEFIANCE News analysis finds.

Since returning to office in January 2025, the president has used federal prosecutors, presidential directives, and his own personal lawsuits to pursue or punish scores of different authors who’ve published books that were critical of him, according to a review conducted by DEFIANCE News, including — most recently — January 6 Committee star witness Cassidy Hutchinson.

The twenty documented targets span the national security establishment, the president’s own former administration, and his extended family. They include two former FBI directors, two former heads of the CIA and national intelligence, a sitting U.S. senator, a former Republican congresswoman who investigated the January 6 attack, and a niece who disclosed his finances, among others. The common thread, according to the review, is that each published an account critical of Trump.

The methods vary. Former FBI Director James Comey and former National Security Adviser John Bolton have been indicted on felony charges. Comey’s case was dismissed on procedural grounds in November, and the Justice Department has since brought a new indictment over a social media post made by the former director. Meanwhile, a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Florida has issued more than 130 subpoenas in a revived investigation into the origins of the 2016 Russia inquiry, reportedly sweeping in former officials John Brennan, James Clapper, Peter Strzok, and Andrew McCabe — all of whom had already been threatened by Trump and all of whom are authors of books critical of the president. McCabe’s attorney has called the probe “a vendetta in search of a crime.”

Most recently, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division opened a criminal investigation into Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide whose January 6 testimony became a 2024 memoir. The probe is said to be focused on whether she “misled” Congress in her testimony against Trump. Last year, the president also went on a blitz of stripping security clearances of critics, including singling out impeachment witnesses Alexander Vindman and Fiona Hill by executive order, both of whom had published books criticizing their former boss.

(Not long after, in April 2025, he signed a similar directive aimed at me as well, ordering a federal probe on the grounds of “treason” after the publication of my most recent book. Asked for comment, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said “[Taylor is] a sack of shit. His book either belongs in the discount bin of the fiction section or should be repurposed as toilet paper.” Since that time, nine-out-of-ten warnings in the book have come to fruition.)

After returning to office, the president also continued to advance a lawsuit he brought against journalist Bob Woodward over a book that dropped devastating revelations just ahead of the 2020 election. A judge has since thrown that case out. He’s also pursued his estranged niece, Mary Trump, in court over her highly critical books and the underlying material behind them.

Amidst the flurry of legal actions and threats against anti-Trump authors, the president and his appointees have consistently said his actions are driven by law rather than politics, with senior officials defending the president’s authority to direct the Justice Department to pursue investigations. Yet the pursuit of people who’ve written unflattering portrayals of Trump has gone from a subtle pattern to what now amounts to a systematic campaign of retribution.

One legal scholar, who I spoke to recently, said the pattern has no clean precedent beyond Richard Nixon’s secret “enemies list,” albeit with one distinction. Nixon concealed his roster of targets in an internal memo. Trump’s roster now shows up in indictments, public directives, and posts demanding the prosecution of named individuals. Indeed, never before has a White House developed such an extensive and open “blacklist” of American authors who’ve criticized the commander in chief.

In pursuing these targets, Donald Trump has proven (unintentionally, and at great expense) the oldest cliché in publishing. The pen is mightier than the sword. Yet he appears hellbent on using the latter to exact revenge.

Authors Critical of Trump: Targets of Retribution

Tier 1 — Indicted

James Comey — A Higher Loyalty (2018), Saving Justice (2021) — Former FBI director. Indicted in September 2025 on one count of false statements to Congress and one of obstruction; case dropped. Since indicted again related to a social media post of seashells that purportedly “threatened” Trump’s life.

John Bolton — The Room Where It Happened (2020) — Former Trump national security advisor. Indicted on 18 counts over classified material allegedly contained in his diaries, although none of it is alleged to have actually ended up in his book.

Tier 2 — Under Investigation / Subpoenaed

John Brennan — Undaunted (2020) — Former CIA director. The FBI opened a criminal probe in July 2025 after Trump CIA Director Ratcliffe referred a “lessons-learned” review of the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment to the Justice Department. Separately subpoenaed in the Southern District of Florida (SDFL) “grand conspiracy” probe into the origins of the Russia investigation.

James Clapper — Facts and Fears (2018) — Former Director of National Intelligence. Named alongside Brennan and Comey as “excessively involved” in drafting the 2017 assessment and swept into the SDFL Russiagate counter-investigation subpoena wave in late 2025.

Peter Strzok — Compromised (2020) — Former FBI official. Subpoenaed in November 2025 by the SDFL grand jury as the FBI’s former lead Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence agent; a perennial Trump target because of his 2016 anti-Trump texts.

Andrew McCabe — The Threat (2019) — Former acting FBI director. Subpoenaed in March 2026 in the same conspiracy probe. As noted above, his attorney, Michael Bromwich, called it “a vendetta in search of a crime.”

Adam Schiff — Midnight in Washington (2021) — U.S. Senator. Mortgage-fraud allegations sent to DOJ; the Maryland U.S. Attorney opened a probe over Schiff’s Maryland/California primary-residence claims. Clearance also revoked.

Miles Taylor — A Warning (2019, anonymous), Blowback (2023) — Former Trump DHS chief of staff. Named in an April 2025 presidential memorandum directing a DHS/DOJ probe. Trump claimed “treason.” Security clearance revoked.

Cassidy Hutchinson — Enough (2024) — Former Trump official. DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, under Harmeet Dhillon, opened a criminal investigation around April 2026 into whether she lied to Congress in her January 6 testimony, following a referral from Rep. Barry Loudermilk.

Eric Swalwell — Endgame (2021) — Former Member of Congress. Threatened with mortgage fraud investigation while in office. (Since his resignation from Congress amidst allegations of impropriety, DOJ has reportedly opened another investigation into him.)

Tier 3 — Officially Targeted (clearances stripped, memoranda, referrals, public threats)

Alexander Vindman — Here, Right Matters (2021) — Former Trump National Security Council staff. Security clearance revoked by March 2025 presidential memorandum. First-impeachment witness.

Fiona Hill — There Is Nothing for You Here (2021) — Former Trump National Security Council staff. Clearance revoked in the same March 2025 memo. Testified in the first impeachment alongside Vindman.

Adam Kinzinger — Renegade (2023) — Former Member of Congress. Clearance revoked in the March 2025 memo. As a J6 committee member, he is also exposed to the recurring GOP/DOJ push to prosecute the committee’s work.

Liz Cheney — Oath and Honor (2023) — Former Member of Congress. Clearance revoked. Referred by Rep. Loudermilk in December 2024 for alleged witness tampering tied to Hutchinson, and the subject of Trump’s public musings about prosecution and even military tribunals.

Norm Eisen — A Case for the American People (2020) — Former Obama official and ambassador. Clearance revoked (more than once). A lead litigator against the administration.

Andrew Weissmann — Where Law Ends (2020) — Former federal prosecutor. Clearance revoked in the March 2025 memo. Lead Mueller prosecutor and frequent on-air critic.

Mark Esper — A Sacred Oath (2022) — Former Trump Defense Secretary. A recurring target of Trump’s retribution rhetoric and named among “disloyal” former officials with veiled threats of action and revocation of Esper’s security detail.

Chris Christie — Republican Rescue (2021), Let Me Finish (2019) — Former NJ governor. Persistent Trump antagonist and former ally; Trump has publicly threatened a DOJ investigation.

Tier 4 — Targeted Through Trump’s Personal Litigation

Bob Woodward — Rage (2020), War (2024) — Famed Washington Post journalist. Trump sued Woodward, Simon & Schuster, and Paramount for roughly $50 million over The Trump Tapes audiobook, claiming a copyright interest in his own interview answers. A federal judge dismissed the suit in July 2025.

Mary Trump — Too Much and Never Enough (2020), Who Could Ever Love You (2024) — Trump’s niece. He brought a breach-of-contract/NDA suit (over her sharing his tax records with the New York Times, which she disclosed in her first book); a New York judge declined to pause the case during his presidency.

THE DEFIANCE WATCHLIST

We are tracking these stories today.

1. TRUMP REBRANDS AMERICA’S 250TH AS A “TRUMP RALLY.” Fresh off his UFC birthday spectacle at the White House, Trump has announced that the nation’s 250th-anniversary celebration on the National Mall will be headlined by “the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all.” After a string of artists pulled out of the Freedom 250 “Great American State Fair” over its partisan tilt, the president began inserting himself into the festivities — first hosting the fair’s opening ceremony, now branding the July 4 event at the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument as his own rally. Freedom 250 is the White House task force Trump created by executive order, separate from the bipartisan commission Congress chartered to mark the milestone. His face is already slated for the commemorative passports and the gold coin. Nothing says “Happy 250th, America” quite like minting the sitting president’s likeness onto the currency.

2. SUPREME COURT TAKES UP TRUMP’S INDEFINITE DETENTION POLICY. The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether the government can hold immigration detainees facing deportation for prolonged periods — months or even years — without ever granting a bond hearing. The case before the justices involves two green-card holders convicted of aggravated felonies, held for seven months and nearly two years with no chance to argue they weren’t a flight risk. But the stakes run far wider: the administration has reclassified broad categories of immigrants into mandatory detention, treating people arrested anywhere in the country — including longtime residents with no criminal record — as if they were recent border-crossers, stripping them of hearings they’d once have received. The lower courts have split, with some appeals courts upholding the policy and others striking it down. That split is what carried it to a Supreme Court that has repeatedly sided with Trump on immigration. We’ll be watching.

3. VANCE DANGLES A $300 BILLION FUND FOR IRAN. Vice President JD Vance said Iran could access a $300 billion reconstruction fund under the new peace agreement — provided Tehran honors obligations laid out in a deal whose terms still haven’t been released. Washington says Iran agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz permanently; Tehran says it agreed only to 60 days of free passage while talks continue. Even Sen. Lindsey Graham conceded that Iran’s view of the deal “seems different than what the American negotiating team is claiming.” Pressed on the gap, Vance acknowledged there are still a lot of important details to work out. We’ve “ended” a war on terms the two sides can’t agree on… and in either case, those terms are a historic humiliation for the United States. Count on Democrats to win the midterms with this message.

4. ACT OF DEFIANCE — PRESERVATION GROUPS SUE TO STOP TRUMP’S STATUE “GARDEN.” Six preservation and cultural-heritage organizations sued the administration Monday to block Trump’s planned “National Garden of American Heroes” in West Potomac Park, arguing the project can’t proceed until it clears the reviews and authorization the law requires. They cite the Commemorative Works Act, which bars new monuments in that stretch of the Mall, and the administration’s decision to skip mandatory planning and fine-arts reviews. The park just finished a major seawall restoration; Trump wants to fill it with some 250 life-size statues. The coalition’s position is simple: follow the law first. If it weren’t for defiant lawsuits like this, America would look a hell of a lot different right now.

WHAT’S COMING UP

• TONIGHT — DEFIANCE DAILY — Every weeknight @ 5pm ET, you can watch our hour-long podcast LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, YouTube, or X — and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our most recent episode is below!

• WEDNESDAY — WEEKLY MISSION BRIEFING — This is the “beating heart of DEFIANCE.org.” Every Wednesday @ 5pm ET we do a special episode of DEFIANCE Daily and announce real actions to combat Trump’s corruption. So tune in. Replays available afterwards.

• FRIDAY — WEEKLY COFFEE — Come one, come all! But only Members can ask questions. Join us on Substack or at DEFIANCE.News every Friday at 2p ET. Replays available 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.

ONE MORE THING

Forward this email to someone who should join the defiance. We are growing the club. I won’t let a wannabe dictator destroy the country I spent my career protecting. That’s why I launched DEFIANCE.org — a club for courageous Americans asking, “WHAT CAN I DO?” Each week, we defy Trump by taking real action to thwart his abuses of power. Become a Member today at DEFIANCE.org/join or here on Substack. 100% of proceeds go to the pro-democracy fight. Or sign up for occasional updates for free below. We publish breaking news and analysis at DEFIANCE.News.

The audacity is almost impressive. Almost.

…

Read more

Last year, the White House considered a proposal that could’ve enabled the president to arrest anyone, without a stated reason.

A bombshell report from two New York Times journalists reveals that the Trump administration debated suspending what’s called “habeas corpus,” the centuries-old right to force the government to explain, in front of a judge, why it has locked you up. With the president’s encouragement, senior officials in the West Wing studied whether they could switch off one of the oldest guarantees under the law by simply declaring they had the power to arrest people without justification.

While the initial focus was on speeding up mass deportation, such an order would have — in effect — cleared the way for the Trump administration to arrest anyone it wanted and prevent them from challenging their detention. We throw around words like “autocracy” and “fascism,” and at times folks dismiss them as hyperbole, but you cannot read this news without seeing how serious the situation actually is.

For those who might have forgotten, the writ of habeas corpus is what stands between a free person and arbitrary imprisonment. It’s the constitutional requirement that stops a government from being able to make you disappear. In the entire history of the American republic, it’s only been suspended a handful of times amidst war and armed rebellion, including during the Civil War and, most recently, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Even then, the courts challenged or curtailed aspects of those suspensions as unconstitutional.

Yet according to reports, Stephen Miller and his circle wanted to invoke those historical analogies, though not to repel an invading army. White House aides considered having the president just declare that habeas corpus no longer applied to certain categories of migrants, which would have hypothetically allowed DHS agents to round up anyone they suspected of being in the United States illegally and send them out of the country, without those arrested individuals being allowed to challenge their imprisonment and without a judge having the chance to weigh in.

Apparently, even some officials inside the Trump administration found this alarming, and the proposal was put on hold. But the danger hasn’t passed.

An administration that has considered erasing a foundational constitutional right — by merely declaring it void — has demonstrated quite clearly to the American people that it’s got an appetite for erasing others. Indeed, the New York Times reporting makes clear that the extreme measures didn’t stop at habeas corpus. The same faction inside the White House also pushed to invoke the Insurrection Act to crush anti-Trump protests with federal troops, a possibility I’ve been warning about since I quit the first Trump administration.

All of these “ideas” remain possible actions this White House may take in the years to come. So what on earth could stop them? For now, the answer is provided by the same document that Trump and his aides considered tossing in the trash. The U.S. Constitution itself. The court system — outlined in Article III of the founding document — has shown itself more resilient than expected against Trump’s ongoing crime spree.

America’s judges are the thin and unglamorous barrier between the rest of us and a constitution-wrecking colossus. Just this month, Trump has absorbed one judicial humiliation after another. A federal judge made him scrape his name off the Kennedy Center, ruling that only Congress can name it. Another ordered him to restore the slavery and climate exhibits he’d stripped from our national parks, accusing his administration of trying to rewrite the nation’s history “with a white-out pen.” And any day now the Supreme Court is expected to tell him that he cannot simply cancel another part of the U.S. Constitution, which protects birthright citizenship.

The courts are holding for now. But that’s not the main story.

The story is still that there’s a man in the White House willing to literally cancel parts of the Constitution the moment they inconvenience him. He’s also got a circle around him hunting for the next opening. Against the seriousness of this anti-constitutional threat, judges can only do so much. The rest is on us. And we can only successfully hold the line by naming what they are doing, by refusing to be numbed by it, and by never, for a single day, wavering in our defiance against it.

Stories like this shouldn’t be ignored because they’re scary. They should be shared. They should be a rallying cry. My long-held view is that if you want to stand on the right side of history, you must stand up.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor
P.S. Help spread the defiance by sharing this post.

Share

THE DEFIANCE WATCHLIST

We are tracking these stories today.

1. U.S. AND IRAN STRIKE A “DEAL.” IT COULD BE THE WORST IN U.S. DIPLOMATIC HISTORY. According to reports, the two sides have reached an agreement to end the three-month war, with Trump ordering an end to the U.S. naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and the regime allegedly agreeing to reopen it to commerce. Details are set to come later this week, but early reports suggest Iran may get $24 billion in unfrozen assets as part of the agreement, in exchange for making promises it already made in a nuclear agreement struck with the Obama administration more than a decade ago. If that’s the case, then the Trump administration took America to war with Iran… spent billions and upended the global economy… and only made its adversary stronger, richer, and more capable of entrenching itself in power indefinitely. Mission accomplished?

2. TRUMP’S “HISTORY ERASER” GETS SHOT DOWN. A federal judge has temporarily blocked a Trump order meant to rewrite history exhibits at national parks across the United States. In a devastating ruling, the judge wrote: “Under the guise of promoting American dignity, this Administration seeks to share a limited history by ordering the removal of all signs, displays, and interpretive exhibits at National Parks that do not align with its preferred narrative, thereby telling half-truths.” Indeed, as a result of the order, government workers used crowbars to remove an exhibit in Philadelphia about slaves owned by the nation’s first president, George Washington. The judge ordered that the restoration be complete by July 3, ahead of the nation’s 250th birthday.

3. ACT OF DEFIANCE — DC TURNS TRUMP’S BIRTHDAY PARTY INTO A PROTEST PIT. Trump celebrated his 80th birthday Sunday with UFC fights on the White House lawn, but protesters showed up to crash the party. Demonstrators built their own fake prison cell stuffed with puppet heads of Trump, Bondi, Vance, Patel, Hegseth, and Leavitt. A judge had already tossed a lawsuit to block the event, but that didn’t stop the chants of “Whose house? Our house!”

WHAT’S COMING UP

• TONIGHT — DEFIANCE DAILY — Every weeknight @ 5pm ET, you can watch our hour-long podcast LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, YouTube, or X — and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• WEDNESDAY — WEEKLY MISSION BRIEFING — This is the “beating heart of DEFIANCE.org.” Every Wednesday @ 5pm ET we do a special episode of DEFIANCE Daily and announce real actions to combat Trump’s corruption. So tune in. Replays available afterwards.

• FRIDAY — WEEKLY COFFEE — Come one, come all! But only Members can ask questions. Join us on Substack or at DEFIANCE.News every Friday at 2p ET. Replays available 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.

ONE MORE THING

Forward this email to someone who should join the defiance. We are growing the club. I won’t let a wannabe dictator destroy the country I spent my career protecting. That’s why I launched DEFIANCE.org — a club for courageous Americans asking, “WHAT CAN I DO?” Each week, we defy Trump by taking real action to thwart his abuses of power. Become a Member today at DEFIANCE.org/join or here on Substack. 100% of proceeds go to the pro-democracy fight. Or sign up for occasional updates for free below. We publish breaking news and analysis at DEFIANCE.News.

A $1.8 billion slush fund that’s supposedly dead but won’t stay buried. Trump’s name being physically pried off the Kennedy Center as we speak. A UFC fight at the White House that a federal judge reluctantly allowed, but mother nature may have other plans…

Read more

More innocent people will soon be unjustly prosecuted in the “land of the free.” Now is the moment to decide if you’ll stand up when it happens… or just look down and stare at the table.

I got a heads up last night. I’m told that the Trump administration plans to charge additional critics of the president soon. I could write a lengthy essay on how surreal it is that we live in a time in which this is so routine — that the leader of the country uses the powers of his office to ensure his opponents are charged with crimes as punishment for having exercised their First Amendment rights — that such updates arrive almost casually. Like sports scores.

The Soviet-ization of American life is farther along than most people realize.

While the ranks of the defiant in this country are swelling — the Americans who will not tolerate the subversion of the Constitution and the trampling of our rights — I worry more than ever about the ones who haven’t spoken up. The people who go about their daily lives, trying mightily to tuck the bad news away in their minds, are doing just as much damage to the republic as Donald Trump himself. Their silence is sanction. Their willful ignorance is willing acceptance of a new normal in which criticism of the leader is criminalized and in which his critics are systematically targeted for prosecution in the hope that putting them behind bars might dampen the defiance against Trump. Meanwhile, millions of American public servants and small business owners and voters and immigrants and universities and nonprofits and outspoken individuals now live with the quiet fear that they could be next.

And so this morning, I felt compelled to share something with you. I sent this essay out nine months ago, just as James Comey, Letitia James, and John Bolton were being charged in the first wave of “enemy indictments” by the highly corrupted and wholly devoted Donald J. Trump Department of Justice (it is no longer the U.S. Department of Justice, as it no longer operates in America’s interests).

The words below are from a statement Russian dissident Alexei Navalny made after one of the trials against him by Vladimir Putin’s regime in Russia. Like the absurd cases being brought against Trump’s foes, the actual charges hardly mattered. Putin’s regime was going to find something — anything — to charge Navalny with in order to shut him up for challenging the government.

Eventually, the regime succeeded. Navalny was poisoned, imprisoned, and ultimately died in captivity in Russia in 2024. But before he was silenced, Navalny spoke often, and with moral clarity, about the true nature of authoritarianism. He called out the system of repression in Russia and, most importantly, the culture of cowardice the allowed it to exist in the first place.

I pulled an excerpt for you from his memoir, Patriot. As I wrote nine months ago, I think you’ll understand why. In Navalny’s closing at the conclusion of one of the Kremlin’s sham trials, he offered one of the most stirring indictments of dictatorship in the modern era.

It wasn’t a speech to sway the court. The justice system had already decided his fate before he was ever charged or faced trial. Instead, it was a message to the millions of citizens who chose to look the other away. (In Russian parlance, to “stare at the table.”)

His warning was devastating. Tyranny doesn’t require mass participation. It just requires mass acquiescence, or simply indifference. When people stare down at the table and say nothing — instead of speaking out — a tyrant can lock up his critics and destroy a nation’s institutions with ease.

This week, as we await word of Trump’s demand to charge more of his enemies with crimes, Navalny’s words echo louder than ever. Like Putin, our current president is trying to jail his critics. He’s already appointed loyalists willing to carry out illegal orders. And he doesn’t need to fire gunshots to rule by fear; all he needs are just enough people willing to look the other way.

Read and share, please. Perhaps forward it to one person you think should heed his words. And most of all, when the bad news comes, don’t stare at the table. Do something about it.

How many times in their life is someone who has committed no crime and who has not broken the law given the chance to deliver the final word? Never. Zero times. Well, if they’re unlucky, maybe once. But over the course of the last year and a half, two years if you count the appeals process, this is probably my sixth or seventh, possibly my tenth, “final word.” I’ve heard the phrase “Defendant Navalny, you have the chance to say a final word” on many occasions. I have the impression that with your final word—for me, for anyone, for everyone—come your final days. You’re always being asked to deliver your final word. I say this, but at the same time I see that these final days don’t come to pass.

And there’s one thing in particular that convinces me of this. If I were to take a photograph of the three of you [the judge and the two prosecutors], or better still all of you together with representatives of the so-called victims, those people with whom I’ve been dealing in recent times, it would show people with downcast eyes, staring at the table. Do you realize that you are all constantly looking down at the table? You have nothing to say. [Judge] Yelena Sergeyevna [Korobchenko], what’s your favorite phrase that you use constantly to address me? You know exactly what it is. Investigators, prosecutors, FSIN officials, civil judges, criminal judges, you all address me with one and the same phrase: “Alexei Anatolievich, well, you understand…” I understand everything; all except for one thing:

Why do you always stare at the table?

I am suffering under no illusions. I understand perfectly that none of you will suddenly leap up and overturn that table, nor will you say, “I’ve had enough of all this!” Neither will the representatives of Yves Rocher stand up and say, “Navalny has convinced us with his eloquent words!”

People are made differently. The human consciousness compensates for the feeling of guilt; if it didn’t, people would constantly be throwing themselves onto dry land like dolphins. It’s impossible for you to go home at the end of the day and say to your children or your husband, “You know, today I took part in the sentencing of someone who was clearly innocent. Now I feel really bad about it and will always feel bad.” We don’t do that, because we’re made differently. Either they say, “Alexei Anatolievich, you understand how it is,” or they say, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” Or they’ll say, “You shouldn’t have messed with Putin,” as a representative of the Investigative Committee said recently. “If he hadn’t attracted attention to himself, if he hadn’t waved his arms around, if he hadn’t got in people’s way, more than likely everything would have just gone away.”

Nevertheless, at this point in the proceedings it’s very important for me to address those who’ll watch or read my final words. It is, of course, quite useless. Still, you people who stare at the table, this is effectively a battle taking place between those crooks who’ve seized power and those who want to change something. We are fighting for the hearts and minds of those who simply stare at the table and shrug their shoulders. People who, when all they need to do is not do something vile, they go ahead and do it anyway.

There’s a well-known quotation—nowadays everyone loves to quote someone—from the well-known book To Slay the Dragon. “Everyone’s been taught to do bad things, but you, you swine, how did you end up being top of the class at it?” This isn’t addressed specifically to this court. There are huge numbers of people who are forced to do a vile thing, but then there are those (and this is the most common scenario) who do a vile thing without anyone coercing them or even asking them to. They simply stare down at the table and try to ignore everything that’s going on around them. And our struggle for the hearts and minds of the people who stare at the table is to explain to them once again that they shouldn’t just stare but confess to themselves that, sadly, the whole system of power in our beautiful country, and everything that’s happening, is based on endless lies.

I stand before you and am prepared to stand here for as long as it takes to show you all that I don’t want to put up with this lying—and I won’t put up with it. The whole thing is literally lies from start to finish, do you understand? They tell us that the interests of Russians in Turkmenistan do not exist, but for the interests of Russians in Ukraine it is necessary to start a war. They tell me that no one oppresses Russians in Chechnya. They tell me that no one oppresses Russians in Chechnya. They tell me that no one steals in Gazprom. I’ll bring you specific documents that prove that these officials have unregistered property and companies.

They say, “There’s nothing of the sort.” I tell them that we’re ready to take part in elections and we’ll beat you. We’ve registered our party and we’re working hard. They say to me, “That’s nonsense. We’ll win the elections and you won’t even be taking part in them, not because we won’t allow you to, but because you didn’t fill in the forms properly.”

Everything is built on lies, on constant lying, do you understand? And the more concrete proof of something that we present to you, the bigger the lies that we come up against. These lies have become the whole modus operandi of the state; they’re now its very essence. We watch our leaders give speeches, and we hear lies from start to finish, be it on important matters or trivial ones. Yesterday Putin said, “We don’t own any palaces.”

Yet we’re taking photos of three palaces every month! We publish them and prove it to the world. “We don’t own any palaces.” And we don’t have any oligarchs, either, who are constantly feeding off the state. Just take a look at the documents that show how the head of Russian Railways has registered half of the state corporations in Cypriot and Panamanian offshore zones.

Why do you put up with these lies? Why do you just stare at the table? I’m sorry if I’m dragging you into a philosophical discussion, but life’s too short to simply stare down at the table. I blinked and I’m almost forty years old. I’ll blink again and I’ll already have grandchildren. And then we all will blink again and we’ll be on our deathbeds, with our relatives all around us, and all they’ll be thinking about is, “It’s about time they died and freed up this apartment.”

And at some point we’ll realize that nothing we did had any meaning at all, so why did we just stare at the table and say nothing? The only moments in our lives that count for anything are those when we do the right thing, when we don’t have to look down at the table but can raise our heads and look each other in the eye. Nothing else matters.

It’s precisely because of all this that I’m in this rather distressing position. This cunning but distressing plan that the Kremlin has chosen in its battle with me, when they try not only to lock me up but to drag other innocent people into it. Pyotr Ofitserov with his five kids. I have to look his wife in the eye. I’m convinced that those whom they threw in jail after the protests on Bolotnaya Square hadn’t done anything wrong. They arrested them simply to try to scare me and others like me who are the leaders of the opposition. Now they’re going after my brother. He, too, has a wife and two children. Now they’re going after my parents. All of them understand what’s going on, and they support me. I’m very grateful to my family, but it’s just…

I’ll admit something: you can pass it back to them that, yes, it does bother me that innocent people get thrown in the same boat as me. And maybe this is wrong, but I’ll say it: they won’t stop me even by taking hostages. Because nothing in life can have any meaning if you tolerate these endless lies, if you just agree to everything, especially when there is no reason to. Just to agree for the sake of saying, “We agree.”

I shall never agree with the system that’s been constructed in our country, because this system is designed to rob everyone who’s in this courtroom right now. Everything’s been set up in such a way that what we have now is a junta. There are twenty people who’ve become billionaires who control everything, from state procurement to the sale of oil. Then there’s a further thousand who are feeding at this junta’s trough. No more than a thousand people, in fact: state deputies and crooks. There’s a small percentage of people who don’t agree with this system. And then there are the millions who are simply staring at the table. I’ll never stop my fight with this junta. I’m going to continue fighting this junta, by campaigning and doing whatever it takes to shake up these people who are staring at the table. You included. I’m never going to stop.

I have no regrets about calling on people to take part in an unauthorized demonstration. I mean the demonstration in front of the Lubyanka, which was the start of all this. Yes, I acknowledge that it didn’t succeed. But I don’t regret for one second that I did it. I don’t regret for one second that I set out to do battle with corruption. A few years ago my lawyer Vadim Kobzev told me something that I’ve never forgotten. He said, “Alexei, they’re bound to put you in jail. You stir things up so much that they won’t stand for it. Sooner or later they’re going to put you in jail.”

Once again, though, our human consciousness comes to terms with this. You can’t carry on with the idea in the back of your mind that they’re going to put me in jail. I simply put it out of my mind, yet at the same time I’m aware of everything that I do. And I can tell you that I don’t regret a single thing I’ve done. I shall keep calling on people to take part in collective action, including carrying out the right to freedom of association.

People have a legal right to rise up against this illegal, corrupt power, against this junta that has grabbed and stolen everything it could, that has siphoned trillions of dollars out of the country in the form of oil and gas. And what benefit have we gained from all this?

I’m going to repeat in this court the final words that I said at the end of the Kirovles case. Nothing’s changed since that time. By staring at the table, we’ve allowed them to rob us blind. We’ve allowed them to invest this stolen money in Europe somewhere. We’ve allowed them to turn us into cattle. What have we gained? What have they paid you while you’ve been staring at the table? Nothing! Do we have health care? No, no health care. Do we have education? No, no education. Have they provided us with good roads? No, they haven’t given us good roads. Let’s ask the secretary how much they earn. Eight thousand rubles a month. Maybe 15,000 with bonuses. I’d be very surprised if court ushers receive more than 35,000 or 40,000 rubles a month.

The paradox is that dozens of crooks every day rob us and you blind—and we allow this to happen! Well, I’m not going to stand for it. I say again that I’m going to remain on my feet however long I have to, be it one meter from this cage, be it one meter inside this cage. I’m going to stand tall. There are more important things in this life.

I want to say it again: the trick worked, with my family, with those dear to me. Nevertheless, don’t forget that they support me in everything. But none of them intended to become political activists. So there’s absolutely no need to send my brother to prison for eight years, or, indeed, to send him to prison at all. He didn’t want to be involved in politics. You’ve already caused our family enough pain and suffering because of this. There’s absolutely no need to take it further. As I’ve already told you, taking hostages won’t stop me. But at the same time, I fail to see why the authorities think they have to kill these hostages now.

Maybe this is going to sound naive, and I know it’s become the norm to laugh ironically and sneer at these words, but I call on absolutely everyone not to live by lies. There is no other way. There can be no other solution in our country today.

I want to thank everyone for their support. I call on everyone not to live by lies. I want to say loud and clear that they may put me in isolation, they may imprison me, but someone else will rise up and take my place. I haven’t done anything unique or difficult. Anyone could do what I’ve done. I have no doubt that there will be people in the Anti-Corruption Foundation and others too who will continue in the exact same way as me, whatever the courts decide—the courts whose only purpose is to give the appearance of legality to this process.

Thank you.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor
P.S. Help spread the defiance by sharing this post.

Share

ONE MORE THING

Forward this email to someone who should join the defiance. We are growing the club. I won’t let a wannabe dictator destroy the country I spent my career protecting. That’s why I launched DEFIANCE.org — a club for courageous Americans asking, “WHAT CAN I DO?” Each week, we defy Trump by taking real action to thwart his abuses of power. Become a Member today at DEFIANCE.org/join or here on Substack. 100% of proceeds go to the pro-democracy fight. Or sign up for occasional updates for free below. We publish breaking news and analysis at DEFIANCE.News.

Then Trump got involved.

Today, Democrats and 19 Republicans tanked the extension of one of the government’s most powerful surveillance programs. Hours later, Trump abandoned his own intelligence chief pick but it was too late. So now FISA is headed toward expiration anyway.

Then Ellie Leonard joins us to discuss new reporting on the Epstein files, including the revelation that White House officials were holding Situation Room meetings over the political fallout. Who could have been the leak? Ellie has a theory worth picking up on.

And finally, we look at a story most politicians are ignoring until it lands in their backyard: Trump’s EPA says communities are on their own when it comes to the exploding data center industry. We’re joined by Michigan congressional candidate William Lawrence whose campaign places data centers on notice.

Get more from Miles Taylor in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

The beating heart of DEFIANCE.org is our Weekly Mission Briefing. Every Wednesday at 5p ET, we take real action to counter Donald Trump’s abuses of power.

Trump isn't just targeting Latino communities with raids and deportations — he's trying to scare them away from the ballot box. We either let that intimidation spiral into more MAGA victories, or we protect our neighbors' right to vote, win back Congress, and put a real check on the authoritarian in the White House. We're choosing the latter.

So here’s what we did about it this week…

THE DETAILS

FIRST, we heard from Pima County District Attorney Laura Conover about what it looks like on the ground when a local leader refuses to abandon her Latino constituents.

• She walked us through the real challenges of protecting and supporting communities living under the threat of federal intimidation — and why local officials holding the line matters more than ever.

• She discussed the challenges that the mere threat of ICE at the polls has already created for Latino voters and the importance of protecting and promoting vote by mail when a threat like this looms.

SECOND, we announced CRUCIAL support from DEFIANCE.org for Voto Latino.

• We heard from their Executive Director Beatriz Lopez on how they plan to reach and empower Latino voters across the country heading into 2026.

• Beatriz made a point that stuck with us: this is the moment to organize Latino communities precisely because Trump has given them receipts. The trauma he has inflicted on these communities isn’t just pain — it’s evidence on why to oppose him and fuel to bravely turn out despite their efforts to intimidate.

• We awarded a $15,000 grant to help Voto Latino launch experimental messaging campaigns to find what best empowers Latino voters to feel safe and turn out — then scale those learnings to win the midterms.

  ---

YOUR MISSION, IF YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT

As a DEFIANCE.org Member, you’re already supporting critical work through your membership fees. Now comes where we put in the elbow grease…

1️⃣ Relationally organize in competitive districts The most powerful thing you can do is talk to the people already in your life. Reach out to friends, family, and neighbors in competitive districts. Have the conversation. Build the trust. That’s how we win.

2️⃣ Become a Voto Latino partner Sign up to receive toolkits and resources to help organize Latino voters in competitive districts near you. This is relational organizing — and it wins elections.

👉 Sign up here: https://votolatino.org/partners/

3️⃣ Save 866-OUR-VOTE This is the national election protection hotline. Save it. Share it. Make sure every voter you know has it before 2026.

4️⃣ Tell your Secretary of State to keep ICE away from polling locations No one should have to choose between voting and fear of deportation. Contact your Secretary of State and demand they push DHS and ICE to stay away from the polls.

👉 Find your Secretary of State here: https://www.nass.org/memberships/secretaries-statelieutenant-governors

5️⃣ BONUS: Share your badge. You earned it. Post it and let your social networks know the fight to protect honest public servants is real and happening right now.

🖥️ IF YOU MISSED IT

Watch the full Weekly Mission Briefing at the top!

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

Your friends, in defiance,

Miles Taylor & Xander Schultz

P.S. What’s coming up? We’re full-time focused on saving the republic. Join us for our next broadcast. Watch LIVE for free. Members get access to the replay.

• DEFIANCE DAILY — Every weeknight @ 5pm ET. Watch our hour-long podcast LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, YouTube, or X — and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts!

• WEEKLY MISSION BRIEFING — Every Wednesday @ 5pm ET. Same ways to watch, above! Replays available afterwards.

• WEEKLY COFFEE — Every Friday @ 2pm ET. Join us on Substack or at DEFIANCE.News for Members-only coffee every Friday at 2p ET. Replays available afterwards.

• MONTHLY MEMBERS-ONLY MEETING — First Wednesday of every month @ 5pm ET. These are sent out the week of, via Zoom. Replays available afterwards.

P.P.S. Add us to your calendar. You can access the DEFIANCE.org Google Calendar here or add it to your Outlook/iCal/other calendars here. That way, you’ll never miss a meeting, event, or broadcast.

Get more from Miles Taylor in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

I was wrong to say Donald Trump is a “danger” to America’s powerful NATO alliance. New data shows how he’s already destroyed it, without tearing up the treaty or even firing a shot.

The proof arrived this week with some truly terrible numbers. A new survey from the European Council on Foreign Relations finds that just 11 percent of Europeans across fifteen countries now regard the United States as an ally. That’s a record low. And the gut punch comes just days before Trump is slated to fly to France for a G7 meeting, which will be followed in a few weeks by a NATO meeting in Turkey.

Trump will go into those meetings as the most diminished American president in the history of the transatlantic alliance.

To put this into perspective, the number of Europeans who view America as an ally has plummeted 50 percent since Trump took office. The collapse, in other words, hasn’t been gradual. It’s accelerated, halving the world’s most consequential friendship in barely a year and a half. An optimist might say that such numbers are just the “mood” of a passing moment. That would be a mistake.

Alliances aren’t built on paper. Like a marriage, that’s just where they get documented. America’s most important alliances are built around shared belief, i.e. a conviction that when the worst comes, your friends will come for you. The genius of the postwar order that American diplomats Dean Acheson and George Marshall built was that it made that belief credible enough to deter the Soviet Union for forty years without a shot fired across the Fulda Gap.

Deterrence lived in the minds of our enemies. And it’s in the mind that Trump has done his damage.

The same poll found that majorities in every country surveyed now doubt America would actually defend them if they were attacked. That’s a stake in the heart of the NATO alliance. The core promise of Article 5 (that an attack on one is an attack on all, which is what our friends invoked when they ran to our defense after 9/11) is no longer believed by the very people it was written to protect. You can’t deter an adversary with a “guarantee” your allies now think is hollow.

Even if Trump doesn’t care about this or is too inept to understand these numbers, Vladimir Putin is paying close attention.

So Europeans are doing what frightened nations have always done. They’re arming themselves in the belief that our friendship is over. Support for higher defense spending is climbing, and nearly half of Europeans now back collective EU borrowing to fund their own protection. But they’re not buying American anymore. They’re shifting to European companies and European independence. I can’t overstate what this means for the long run. Our allies used to buy the same weapons as us, from us, because they anticipated fighting alongside us. Now they’re not. Because they don’t.

There’s one fragile point of light in the figures. In every country except Bulgaria, majorities of Europeans believe relations will improve the moment Trump leaves office. Europe hates what this president has made of America, and it’s counting the days until he’s gone, like the rest of us are.

But at that point, the damage to our transatlantic alliance may have already been done. If the general public doesn’t believe in the promise of NATO, then NATO itself is an empty promise. That doesn’t mean the alliance is gone for good. It just means that the next American president who cares about the fate of democracy will be forced to spend time building a bridge back across the Atlantic that shouldn’t have needed to be built.

Trump told us he’d put America first. Instead he’s taught the free world to live without us. I hope he gets an earful in Europe.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor
P.S. Help spread the defiance by sharing this post.

Share

THE DEFIANCE WATCHLIST

We are tracking these stories today.

1. TRUMP’S $70 BILLION DEPORTATION MACHINE JUST GOT FUNDED. The House narrowly passed a $70 billion reconciliation package funding ICE and Border Patrol through the end of Trump’s term on a 214-212 vote that briefly deadlocked before leadership dragged one reluctant Republican across the line. Every Democrat voted no. The bill also carries the rotting corpse of Trump’s $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization” fund (the slush fund he wanted to use to compensate his pardoned Jan. 6 allies), which Republicans declined to formally strike down — and which some Senators say will remain a political albatross. The deportation machine is now fully funded. The question is what it does next.

2. TRUMP’S SPY POWER GAMBLE IS BLOWING UP IN HIS FACE. Section 702 of FISA, which is the government’s warrantless surveillance program and one of America’s most critical intelligence tools, is on the verge of expiring. And Trump is the one who lit the fuse. By appointing Bill Pulte, a man with zero intelligence credentials and a track record of weaponizing databases against political enemies, as acting Director of National Intelligence, Trump has triggered a rare bipartisan revolt. Democrats are threatening to let the program go dark entirely rather than hand Pulte access to it. Even Republicans — including Senate Majority Leader Thune — are begging Trump to back down. And of course, Trump is rolling these dice amid a war with Iran, where a critical intelligence tool might be useful. Trump is now facing a choice between his ego and national security. If history truly does repeat itself, we already know which one wins.

3. ACT OF DEFIANCE — HOLLYWOOD HEAVYWEIGHTS ARE READY TO FIGHT. When Donald Trump returned to office, some of the loudest voices went quiet out of fear. The silence from Hollywood was deafening. But now thousands of celebrities are fighting back. Led by Jane Fonda’s “Committee for the First Amendment,” influencers are organizing for a moment they say is far worse than McCarthyism. “What’s happening now in this country is much more grave, much more serious than what was happening back in the late ’40s and early ’50s,” Fonda said in an interview with The Washington Post. On Sunday, the day of Trump’s birthday and UFC Fight, the Committee will host a protest celebration in New York called Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the First Amendment.

WHAT’S COMING UP

• TONIGHT — WEDNESDAY — WEEKLY MISSION BRIEFING — Our Members told us to stay focused on protecting the 2026 midterm elections; and so we shall. This is the “beating heart of DEFIANCE.org.” Every Wednesday @ 5pm ET we do a special episode of DEFIANCE Daily and announce real actions to combat Trump’s corruption. So tune in. Replays available afterwards.

• TOMORROW — DEFIANCE DAILY — Every weeknight @ 5pm ET, you can watch our hour-long podcast LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, YouTube, or X — and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our latest episode is below.

• FRIDAY — WEEKLY COFFEE — Come one, come all! But only Members can ask questions. Join us on Substack or at DEFIANCE.News every Friday at 2p ET. Replays available 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.

ONE MORE THING

Forward this email to someone who should join the defiance. We are growing the club. I won’t let a wannabe dictator destroy the country I spent my career protecting. That’s why I launched DEFIANCE.org — a club for courageous Americans asking, “WHAT CAN I DO?” Each week, we defy Trump by taking real action to thwart his abuses of power. Become a Member today at DEFIANCE.org/join or here on Substack. 100% of proceeds go to the pro-democracy fight. Or sign up for occasional updates for free below. We publish breaking news and analysis at DEFIANCE.News.

Last night, Trump attended the Knicks game, got booed, denied getting booed, and then watched the Knicks lose. In fairness, he was asleep for part of the game.

Then we turn to a House hearing on the Southern Poverty Law Center, where Republicans spent the day arguing the real problem isn’t extremism. It’s …

Read more

Yesterday, Donald Trump nominated Todd Blanche to run DOJ. As the Senate considers whether to make the man attorney general, we hope they’ll adopt our official nickname for him: Todd “Carte Blanche.”

Todd Blanche’s qualification for the nation’s top law-enforcement post is not a glittering record as a prosecutor (though he was once considered something of a mainstream lawyer). It turns out that his real qualification is that he spent the last several years as Donald Trump’s personal defense attorney, fighting indictment after indictment. He’s carried into DOJ that sidecar, ride-or-die, love-like-a-loyalist aesthetic into the department, where prosecutors under his watch have thrown out tens of thousands of corruption and national security cases, readjusting America’s legal firepower onto Trump’s personal foes and political targets, like Democrats, immigrants, and a vast array of presidential critics.

In effect, he’s given Trump “carte blanche” to do with the Justice Department whatever he pleases. The term is French for “blank document” or “blank cheque,” i.e. the full authority to act however one pleases, with no questions asked. No two words better capture what Blanche has handed his old client at the Justice Department.

I said as much on CNN the other night, below. And I wasn’t even the harshest voice on the panel. I was sitting on the screen alongside Mimi Rocah, the former New York district attorney who actually served with Todd Blanche, knew him well, and had every professional reason to give him the benefit of the doubt. She did, for a while.

“But my hopes about Mr. Blanche were quickly dashed,” she said, “because he’s never left the role of President Trump’s defense attorney…but that is absolutely not his job now.”

When a former colleague (who used to like you, no less) tells the country you’re unqualified, it’s not a good sign. The audition reel backs her up. Blanche has run obvious interference for Trump on the Epstein Files, helped birth a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization fund” designed to shovel taxpayer money to criminals who conspired with or for the benefit of Trump, and has been the voice of the president’s legal revenge campaign against his enemies, willing to go on Sunday talk shows and — with a straight face — explain why a former FBI director posting vacation photos poses a threat to the life of a president.

To put it another way, Todd Blanche has shamelessly devoted himself to pleasing a president who’s hellbent on hacking the Constitution into kindling for a cacophonous corruption bonfire, the likes of which we’ve never seen in American history.

In that light, “unqualified” doesn’t seem to cut it.

Yet as the “acting” attorney general, he’s already running the place. The DOJ wrecking ball has been swinging, every day, into the walls of our democratic institutions. A demolition from the inside that Congress has done pathetically little to stop. So why write any of this, you ask, if the outcome feels ordained?

I’ll tell you. It’s because I hear a sound coming from the Republican side of the aisle. It’s not exactly the sound of “the resistance,” but it’s at least worth calling “the reluctance.” There’s a growing unease among Republican senators about Trump’s self-serving agenda. Surely some of them rolled their eyes at the nomination of Todd Carte Blanche, while others have voiced concern about Trump’s decision to hand the entire intelligence community to a housing official, Bill Pulte — a man who’s never worked in national security and whose only apparent qualification is that he, too, is willing to use his official powers to help go after Trump’s enemies.

So what’s that sound I hear? Somewhere inside the flaccid consciences of those Republican senators who I used to work with, there’s a smaller conscience trying to get attention. A conscience within a conscience. He’s squeaking desperately in the dark, while his master turns up the volume on Fox and Newsmax. I think we need to smuggle a megaphone in for that little guy. We’d like to help him deliver his message to the boss, clearly and loudly: “Stop! Don’t do it! Americans don’t want Todd Carte Blanche!”

Most Americans want to keep their Constitution intact. If senators merely consulted that dusty document, they’d recall that they have an essential role to play in preserving it. In this case, that means preventing sycophants from taking over the levers of justice in the United States of America. We didn’t vote our senators in to write blank cheques. We voted them in to balance the books.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor
P.S. Help spread the defiance by sharing this post.

Share

THE DEFIANCE WATCHLIST

We are tracking these stories today.

1. IRS CAUGHT MISUSING SENSITIVE TAX DATA. A new watchdog report confirms what we already suspected: the IRS is weaponizing its files for the White House. After being told to fork over tax data to ICE — ostensibly for Trump’s immigration crackdown — it appears that basic safety protocols weren’t followed, putting taxpayer information at risk for the people whose data was sent to ICE. Senator Ron Wyden is now calling for investigations. This comes on top of Senators sounding the alarm last year about the Trump administration weaponizing IRS data against political opponents, not to mention Trump’s sweetheart deal for himself to evade future IRS investigations into his own taxes. We reckon all this IRS data meddling is gonna get some folks sent to prison.

2. TRUMP, ONCE AGAIN, TRIES TO FIRE WHOEVER TELLS HIM “NO” — EVEN PEOPLE WHO DON’T WORK FOR HIM! The president took to social media yesterday to demand the U.S. Senate fire its parliamentarian, the chamber’s chief nonpartisan referee and rulebook expert. Why? Well, she ruled that Trump’s voter suppression bill — the SAVE America Act — didn’t belong in a bigger budget package. So Trump took to Truth Social demanding Majority Leader Thune “immediately” fire her, calling her “nasty.” Thune has refused the demand, warning it would destabilize the entire Senate. The Majority Leader is reportedly at his “breaking point” with Trump. We can’t imagine this helps.

3. TRUMP’S $100,000 VISA FEE WAS JUST RULED UNLAWFUL. A federal judge in Boston struck down the administration’s $100,000 fee on H-1B visas — a fee widely seen as another way to punitively curb legal immigration — ruling that the executive branch doesn’t have the authority to create what amounts to a new tax without congressional approval. The fee had triggered panic among employers, hospitals, and universities already struggling to hire doctors, teachers, and researchers. Trump allies called the ruling “judicial activism.” We call it the rule of law, striking back.

4. BONUS — ACT OF DEFIANCE — NEW YORK DID WHAT WE PREDICTED: BOOED THEIR HEARTS OUT. Yesterday, we forecasted that Trump’s attendance at the Knicks game in NYC would not go over well. New Yorkers delivered. The arena erupted in comedically loud disapproval of Trump, while he stood there with a dopey smile. Organizers clearly tried to avoid booing by featuring Trump on screen during the national anthem, perhaps thinking people wouldn’t shout him down during the nation’s song. No such luck. One outlet described the booing as “thunderous.”

WHAT’S COMING UP

• TONIGHT — DEFIANCE DAILY — Join us tonight for a conversation with former MAGA activist Rich Logis, who now runs an organization called LEAVING MAGA. Every weeknight @ 5pm ET, you can watch our hour-long podcast LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, YouTube, or X — and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our latest episode is below!

• WEDNESDAY — WEEKLY MISSION BRIEFING — This is the “beating heart of DEFIANCE.org.” Every Wednesday @ 5pm ET we do a special episode of DEFIANCE Daily and announce real actions to combat Trump’s corruption. So tune in. Replays available afterwards.

• FRIDAY — WEEKLY COFFEE — Come one, come all! But only Members can ask questions. Join us on Substack or at DEFIANCE.News every Friday at 2p ET. Replays available 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.

ONE MORE THING

Forward this email to someone who should join the defiance. We are growing the club. I won’t let a wannabe dictator destroy the country I spent my career protecting. That’s why I launched DEFIANCE.org — a club for courageous Americans asking, “WHAT CAN I DO?” Each week, we defy Trump by taking real action to thwart his abuses of power. Become a Member today at DEFIANCE.org/join or here on Substack. 100% of proceeds go to the pro-democracy fight. Or sign up for occasional updates for free below. We publish breaking news and analysis at DEFIANCE.News.

Additionally, Trump owns stock in UFC’s parent company while personally promoting the event… Interesting. The plaintiffs’ attorney called it “a private, commercial, corrupt use of our most s…

Read more

I’m a little bit amazed that White House staff let Donald Trump talk himself into going to a sporting event tonight… where he’s going to be mercilessly booed.

The Washington Post is one of the few publications that has picked up on this. As Dan Diamond wrote this morning, in an article entitled: “Shower of boos expected when Trump becomes first sitting president to attend NBA Finals,”

Trump said he will watch Game 3 of the best-of-seven series between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs as the guest of Knicks owner James Dolan. Some sports fans and analysts have urged Trump not to attend the game — commentator Stephen A. Smith said it would create an unnecessary spectacle — or pledged to jeer the president.

Online betting services are already forecasting that he will get booed upon entering Madison Square Garden.

I said that I was “amazed” above because, as someone who once helped manage the environments a national leader walks into, I can tell you that you don’t usually set them up to get savaged. That is, unless that leader lives in a sycophantic echo chamber. And everyone is scared to tell him or her the truth.

That’s why tonight’s trip to Madison Square Garden is so revealing, in my view. Donald Trump is voluntarily stepping outside the bubble his staff spends every waking hour constructing, into a building full of New Yorkers who voted against him overwhelmingly and hardly need new reasons to boo at him. They will relish this opportunity. Yet Trump is somehow convinced that he’s loved by New Yorkers. And I suspect that’s because his messianically adoring second-term staff is too weak to tell him that he’s loathed by New Yorkers and about to get the full NYC welcome.

What’s more, New Yorkers have watched him turn the presidency into the national version of an overpriced concession stand. They’re pissed off about it, like we all are. Ordinary Americans have been struggling to afford soaring prices with their shrinking wallets, while Trump has been converting our American presidency into his personal brand — pardoning donors, monetizing access, producing cash-for-criminals schemes that would make the mob blush, treating the Treasury like a tip jar, and treating the rest of us like his personal ATM machine.

A Knicks crowd isn’t going to need a lot of prodding to boo him out of the building.

He’ll scowl and squint his eyes. Then he’ll wave it off as a “hostile” crowd and watch the game. Sometime later tonight or in the morning, as long as the booing goes viral, he’ll post something petulant and unhinged. Perhaps he’ll claim Madison Square Garden was “rigged” against him. Surely the Democrats bought out all the seats — of what might be the most expensive game to attend ever — just to hear him mocked. (I say that jokingly. But the price tag would almost be worth it.)

It’s worth remembering that the last time Trump was in Madison Square Garden was for a 2024 rally just days before his election victory. He hasn’t learned a thing since. He’s apparently convinced himself that he’ll emerge from his economy-wrecking, Constitution-torching second term unscathed or, more fantastically, beloved. But there will be consequences for his corruption. Small ones for now, like an arena filled with boos. And much, much bigger ones to come.

Tonight, deep-blue New York gets to remind him.

Go Knicks.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor
P.S. Help spread the defiance by sharing this post.

Share

THE DEFIANCE WATCHLIST

We are tracking these stories today.

1. ICE WILL NO LONGER REPORT SOME DETAINEE DEATHS. ICE has ended an agency policy that required officials to report deaths that happened within 30 days of a detainee’s release. The rule was put in place to ensure ICE could not avoid accountability by releasing seriously ill detainees before they died. Under the new policy, deaths that occur after a person is released from ICE custody, including those who die shortly after being taken to a hospital, will no longer be included in ICE’s official death reports. As sick as this is, it won’t keep ICE from being held accountable. If anything, the decision puts a glaring spotlight on detainee health… and we can assure you that local prosecutors are watching.

2. TRUMP MELTS DOWN IN NBC INTERVIEW. In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, Trump denied ever promising to keep the United States out of new wars, despite repeatedly making that pledge during his 2024 campaign. He also defended the ongoing U.S.-Iran conflict, saying it is not an “endless war” and insisting that gas prices will fall once the conflict ends, assurances which likely convinced not a single viewer watching. Trump also voiced support for the anti-weaponization “slush fund” for January 6 insurrectionists, even as his administration has said the plan is no longer moving forward. The interview was bad enough… and then…

3. TRUMP ENDS INTERVIEW AFTER QUESTIONS ON ELECTION FRAUD CLAIMS. The president stormed out of the conversation with NBC’s Kristen Welker after being repeatedly pressed for evidence supporting his claims of election fraud in California. As Welker pressed him more broadly, including for evidence that the 2020 election was stolen, Trump descended into a stream-of-consciousness series of accusations about how the press was crooked, James Comey was a crooked cop, and that the interviewer herself, NBC’s Kristen Welker, was crooked. “I’ve had enough,” he said. And then he took his ball and went home.

4. BONUS — ACT OF DEFIANCE — LAWSUIT SEEKS TO BLOCK UFC EVENT AT THE WHITE HOUSE. A federal lawsuit filed Saturday is attempting to stop the UFC fight event scheduled for June 14 on the White House South Lawn, set to celebrate Donald Trump’s 80th birthday. The lawsuit argues that the event would improperly benefit President Trump, UFC executives, and other private companies, while also claiming the administration failed to obtain proper authorization and environmental review for the event. The Trump administration has called it a baseless attempt to block a major event. We call it defiance.

WHAT’S COMING UP

• TONIGHT — DEFIANCE DAILY — Tonight we welcome back fan favorite onto the show, Mr. . Every weeknight @ 5pm ET, you can watch our hour-long podcast LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, YouTube, or X — and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our latest episode is below!

• WEDNESDAY — WEEKLY MISSION BRIEFING — This is the “beating heart of DEFIANCE.org.” Every Wednesday @ 5pm ET we do a special episode of DEFIANCE Daily and announce real actions to combat Trump’s corruption. So tune in. Replays available afterwards.

• FRIDAY — WEEKLY COFFEE — Come one, come all! But only Members can ask questions. Join us on Substack or at DEFIANCE.News every Friday at 2p ET. Replays available 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.

ONE MORE THING

Forward this email to someone who should join the defiance. We are growing the club. I won’t let a wannabe dictator destroy the country I spent my career protecting. That’s why I launched DEFIANCE.org — a club for courageous Americans asking, “WHAT CAN I DO?” Each week, we defy Trump by taking real action to thwart his abuses of power. Become a Member today at DEFIANCE.org/join or here on Substack. 100% of proceeds go to the pro-democracy fight. Or sign up for occasional updates for free below. We publish breaking news and analysis at DEFIANCE.News.

That’s the move. No black ops, no supervillain monologue — just some guy in a cubicle adding your name to a database and watching your bank account, your benefits, and your entire legal existence slowly stop working.

We also touch on how a judge torched the administration’s illegal immigration freeze, Jake Lang lost a battle against wind, Freedom 250 died the embarrassing death it always deserved, and somewhere in Washington, a team of government employees is being paid — with your tax dollars — to scrape Donald Trump’s name off of things.

Jennifer Welch from I’ve Had It joins us to share her input on these topics and enjoy the MAGA losses of the week.

Plus, it’s Solemate Friday! Dave Rubin showed up to a Jubilee video completely unprepared to defend the president. Caroline Sunshine went on CNN and made a CNN anchor say “I’m embarrassed for you” out loud. And Marco Rubio testified before Congress that the President of the United States is simply... a night owl.

Tune in to see who won this week's Solemate award!

Get more from Miles Taylor in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Get more from Miles Taylor in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Read more

Even if Trump’s ballroom project dies, it won’t go away completely. That’s because the investigation into the ballroom will be massive.

Congress just denied Donald Trump the billion dollars he wanted to help build his “huge” new White House ballroom, and the gilded vanity project could be headed for the chopping block, depending on what an appeals court says. But a new watchdog report makes clear that there will, one day, be a sweeping federal bribery probe into how it all came about.

There’s an old truth that my prosecutor friends know but that business executives always seem to forget. The people who end up in handcuffs after corruption probes aren’t just the officials who solicit bribes. They’re the people who pay the bribes, too.

I’ve been saying for months that the government-affairs staff at every company that wrote a check for Donald Trump’s vanity ballroom should be losing sleep. This week, a new Public Citizen report called Ballroom Billions explained why. Of the 27 publicly known corporate donors who bankrolled the $400 million demolition of the East Wing, 14 have hauled in more than $50 billion in new or increased federal contracts since they paid up. And 16 of them are sitting on federal enforcement actions that have been conveniently softened, paused, or made to disappear.

As Public Citizen’s Jon Golinger put it, these firms didn’t donate to Trump’s ballroom project “out of the goodness of their hearts.” Many of them were obviously buying access. And then incredibly and arrogantly, the White House tried to pass the bill to the rest of us. That’ll turn out to be a fatal error. Because the funding bait-and-switch has drawn even more scrutiny toward the project — the kind that could eventually get people charged with crimes.

The White House calls this a “fake” conflict of interest. But you can almost hear the panic under their voices. It’s not fake. It’s so brazen it should be illegal, and in many cases, future federal prosecutors might discover that it was. What we’ve seen these recent months is the open-air conversion of the President’s House into a pay-to-play ballroom. The price of admission is (evidently) a cash transfer to Trump’s vanity project, the reward might be a federal contract, and the loser is the U.S. taxpayer.

Whatever shadow deals might’ve been done to make all of this happen, I can promise they won’t stay secret forever. Although the administration negotiated a covert funding agreement to let donors hide themselves, they were sloppy and stupid. Public Citizen pried it loose through a simple FOIA lawsuit, and more disclosures will surely follow. Administrations come to an end. Statutes of limitations do not run out as fast as a news cycle.

And then there are the internal emails, the Slack threads, and the memos inside some of those companies, wherein some vice president of government affairs stupidly wrote down *why* the company decided to fund a dictator’s dance hall. Those will be subpoenaed. I can already see the image of U.S. senators reading them back to those people in Congressional hearings. Corporate executives will be asked, under oath, what they expected in return for their “donations”… and what they got.

The ballroom may not be so huge. But the reckoning will be.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor
P.S. Help spread the defiance by sharing this post.

Share

THE DEFIANCE WATCHLIST

We are tracking these stories today.

1. COURT RULING OFFICIALLY PLANS TO SCRUB TRUMP’S STAIN OFF THE KENNEDY CENTER. Trump’s egotistical decision to graffiti his name onto Kennedy Center back in 2025 has officially been reversed, and lawyers at the Kennedy Center are now scrambling to comply. That removal is scheduled for no later than June 12th. And according to a report yesterday, staff have been directed to take Trump’s name off more than just the building. “This includes email signatures, email communications, letterhead, website, brochures, promotional materials, press releases, signs, references in contracts, MOUs, and other agreements, and every other reference to the ‘Trump Kennedy Center,’ the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, or similar name,” according to an internal email obtained by The Atlantic.

2. TRUMP MAY COME TO REGRET HIS LAWSUIT AGAINST THE BBC. After suing BBC for $10 billion dollars in 2025 for “defamation” (by stitching together damning clips of Trump exhorting his insurrectionist followers on January 6, 2021), Trump’s legal team was asked to hand over financial information to defend the outrageous lawsuit. That’s apparently information Trump’s legal team is NOT eager to share. They’ve responded in a filing that they don’t want to make those records available… and we have a sneaking suspicion the court won’t be thrilled. This is what happens when you bring controversial lawsuits. You open yourself up to exposure.

3. SENATE DIGS THE GRAVE FOR TRUMP’S SAVE AMERICA ACT. Trump’s plan for sweeping voter suppression via the so-called “SAVE” America Act, has officially failed in the Senate. If passed, the legislation would have required voters to show a document proving their U.S. citizenship, and made it difficult for millions of ordinary Americans — including married women who’ve changed their last names — to exercise their democratic rights. Election watchers are now bracing for Trump to turn his attention from changing the laws to manipulate the election to breaking the laws. Too bad for him, an army of state prosecutors are ready to sue.

4. BONUS — ACT OF DEFIANCE — 18 HOUSE REPUBLICANS TURN THEIR BACKS ON TRUMP’S AGENDA WITH UKRAINE. As we’ve been saying, Congressional Republicans have not yet exactly become “the resistance” to Trump. But they sure are becoming “the reluctance.” And that includes on Ukraine, where the White House has tried to loosen America’s support in favor of Trump’s dictator buddy Vladimir Putin in Russia. Yet this week, 18 House Republicans supported a Democrat-drafted bill to ramp up military aid to Ukraine after Trump viciously opposed the measure. The security package would reaffirm U.S. support for Ukraine and NATO, authorize more than $1.5 billion in new security assistance and $8 billion in direct loans.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT — A WEEK OF DEFIANCE

Here were our shows and articles this week!

• Donald Trump’s crime spree is starting to go very badly. This past week has shown that defiance not only makes a difference; it may be what saves our democracy.

• “What would Scott Pelley do?” That’s the question all reporters should be asking. The 60 Minutes veteran got himself fired for standing up against the hostile takeover of his show and the wider assault on the First Amendment.

• Donald Trump just tripled the size of his personal army inside government. It was illegal. The White House quietly issued an order turning 8,000 top “civil service” jobs into roles that serve at the pleasure of the president.

• You can find this week’s DEFIANCE Daily episodes HERE, including the most recent one, below.

WHAT’S COMING UP

• THIS AFTERNOON — WEEKLY COFFEE — Come one, come all! But only Members can ask questions. Join us on Substack or at DEFIANCE.News every Friday at 2p ET. Replays available afterwards.

• THIS EVENING (ET) — DEFIANCE DAILY — Tonight we welcome renowned podcaster and commentator ! Fridays are lit on DEFIANCE Daily. Don’t miss it. Every weeknight @ 5pm ET, you can watch our hour-long podcast LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, YouTube, or X — and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our latest episode is below!

• NEXT WEDS — WEEKLY MISSION BRIEFING — This is the “beating heart of DEFIANCE.org.” Every Wednesday @ 5pm ET we do a special episode of DEFIANCE Daily and announce real actions to combat Trump’s corruption. So tune in. Replays available 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.

ONE MORE THING

Forward this email to someone who should join the defiance. We are growing the club. I won’t let a wannabe dictator destroy the country I spent my career protecting. That’s why I launched DEFIANCE.org — a club for courageous Americans asking, “WHAT CAN I DO?” Each week, we defy Trump by taking real action to thwart his abuses of power. Become a Member today at DEFIANCE.org/join or here on Substack. 100% of proceeds go to the pro-democracy fight. Or sign up for occasional updates for free below. We publish breaking news and analysis at DEFIANCE.News.

The ghost of slush-fund past paid Senate Republicans a visit this week. Unfortunately, instead of exorcising it, they voted to keep it alive.

After days of congratulating themselves for stopping Trump’s $1.8 billion fund, Republicans were given a chance to actually kill it. The result? Fifty votes to keep the door open…

Read more