"True power comes from the people, and on June 14 we must prove it"

 

"True power comes from the people, and on June 14 we must prove it"

"Aura of inevitability is a lie" "Trump will only succeed if everyone agrees to believe the lie." Leah Greenberg Co-Executive Director Indivisible  Over the last six weeks, we’ve gotten the occasional question about why Indivisible, together with our coalition of incredible partners, called for No Kings Day on June 14. Why another protest? What is it going to accomplish? Shouldn’t we be [insert alternate tactic] instead? These are good-faith questions, and they stem from very reasonable concerns. The speed, scope, and scale of the MAGA assault -- on our rights, our neighbors, our democracy -- is staggering. The stakes are enormous. There are days when nothing we’re doing feels sufficient to the magnitude of the horrors we face. Protest is a tactic. And with any tactic, there’s a danger of tactical freeze, of it getting stale, of deploying it without a real strategy in mind. And it’s easy to look at any single protest and ask, “what did that even accomplish? What was the point?” So I want to take a step back and talk about the role of a peaceful mass mobilization like No Kings in the context of our strategic analysis. If you’ve been listening to us over the last few months, you’ve heard us talk about the idea of autocratic breakthrough -- a period when a would-be dictator basically sprints to consolidate their power, crush the institutions and people who could push back, and create a chilling climate for everyone else.  For the would-be dictator, success depends on projecting power and creating an aura of inevitability. They need you to believe that Trump is the new normal, that the MAGA movement will be in power for the long haul, that the only rational move is to go along, keep your head down, and protect your own interests.  We’ve seen over the last six months what happens when this aura of inevitability goes unchallenged. Institutions -- from state governments to businesses to civil society to higher education to media -- start to fall in line, do what Trump tells them, and/or go silent. Here’s the thing: The aura of inevitability is a lie. It’s all a lie. Power in American society doesn’t derive from the top down. Trump’s grasp is brittle, and he’s overreaching dramatically. He will only succeed if everyone agrees to believe the lie. Or, as our friend Reverend Barber says: A king is only a king if we bow down. Countering the aura of inevitability requires a hundred different tactics and strategies. It looks like making an example of Target for obeying in advance and getting rid of its DEI policies. It looks like protesting and toxifying Elon Musk until he bows out of government. It looks like students at Georgetown making a list of Big Law collaborators and organizing their peers to steer clear. It looks like federal workers refusing to obey illegal or unethical orders. It looks like building the muscles and the relationships for collective action. In short, it requires a countless number of people in a countless number of places to do something that the Trump regime doesn’t want them to do, or to NOT do something the Trump regime wants them to do. That’s how we shake off the aura of inevitability and halt the autocratic breakthrough. For that to happen, people need to feel like we’re part of something bigger. We need to understand that we’re part of a movement. We need to feel like we will win. That’s where No Kings comes in. With 1,800 events nationwide, in every state, this will be the single largest protest of this Trump administration. A single mobilization won’t turn this ship around. But it can do a few very important things: Change the narrative. A massive show of popular opposition everywhere in the country can disrupt Trump’s effort to project strength. It shows that resistance is big, powerful, growing, and everywhere. Bring in new people. A mobilization of this scale and scope reaches people who aren’t yet engaged, and -- if done right -- helps to draw them into a cycle of action and relationships on the ground. Foster community. When you show up, you realize that not only are you not alone -- you’re actually part of something enormous. And that helps to build the shared sense of identity we’ll need for the path ahead. Spread courage. After Hands Off!, we heard from people in positions of power within institutions -- law firms, universities (one big university, in fact), and elsewhere -- who told us they were emboldened by the protests to push back on pressure from the Trump regime. As we often say, courage is contagious.  And No Kings comes at an absolutely crucial moment.  Trump and Stephen Miller’s vicious anti-immigrant crackdown has been escalating over the last few months. The scale of the cruelty and terror they’ve created is almost impossible to put into words. And they have been cynically, intentionally sending their masked, unaccountable ICE forces into blue cities and states, communities where no one wants them. They’ve been working overtime to manufacture chaos, so that they have a pretext to deploy military forces to crack down on dissent for all of us. Trump’s birthday parade and his attack on LA are all part of the same agenda of fascist theatrics, divide and conquer politics, and the consolidation of power. Trump wants to look strong. What he doesn’t understand is that true power comes from the people. And on June 14th, we’re going to prove it. If you haven’t found your closest No Kings protest, please check out our map, register, and then help us get out the word by sharing with friends and family.

We Are Witnessing the First Stages of a Trump Police State

An unarmed protester signals his disdain as he walks through tear gas from Trump stormtroopers.

 

The national guard’s deployment in Los Angeles sets the US on a familiar authoritarian pathway. History shows the results.

 

Robert Reich / Guardian UK

 

Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich. (photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star)

 

10 June 25

Now that Donald Trump’s tariffs have been halted, his big, beautiful bill has been stymied, and his multi-billionaire tech bro has turned on him, how does he demonstrate his power?

On Friday morning, federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) conducted raids across Los Angeles – including at two Home Depots and a clothing wholesaler – in search of workers who they suspected of being undocumented immigrants.

Though figures vary, they reportedly arrested 121 people.

They were met with protesters who chanted and threw eggs before being dispersed by police wearing riot gear, holding shields, and using batons, guns that shoot pepper balls, rubber bullets, teargas, and flash-bang grenades.

On Saturday, Trump escalated the confrontations, ordering at least 2,000 national guard troops to be deployed in Los Angeles county to help quell the protests.

He said that any demonstration that got in the way of immigration officials would be considered a “form of rebellion.” Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, called the protests an “insurrection”.

On Saturday evening, the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, threatened to deploy active-duty marines, saying: “The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement are designed to prevent the removal of Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil. A dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK. Under President Trump, violence and destruction against federal agents and federal facilities will NOT be tolerated.”

We are witnessing the first stages of a Trump police state.

Last week, raids in San Diego, in Martha’s Vineyard and in the Berkshires led to standoffs as bystanders angrily confronted federal agents who were taking workers into custody.

Trump’s dragnet also includes federal courthouses. Ice officers are mobilizing outside courtrooms across the US and immediately arresting people – including migrants whose cases have been dismissed by judges.

History shows that once an authoritarian ruler establishes the infrastructure of a police state, that same infrastructure can be turned on anyone.

Trump and his regime are rapidly creating such an infrastructure, in five steps:

(1) declaring an emergency on the basis of a so-called “rebellion”, “insurrection”, or “invasion”;

(2) using that “emergency” to justify bringing in federal agents with a monopoly on the use of force (Ice, the FBI, DEA, and the national guard) against civilians inside the country;

(3) allowing those militarized agents to make dragnet abductions and warrantless arrests, and detain people without due process;

(4) creating additional prison space and detention camps for those detained, and

(5) eventually, as the situation escalates, declaring martial law.

We are not at martial law yet, thankfully. But once in place, the infrastructure of a police state can build on itself.

Those who are given authority over aspects of it – the internal militia, dragnets, detention camps, and martial law – seek other opportunities to invoke their authority.

As civilian control gives way to military control, the nation splits into those who are most vulnerable to it and those who support it. The dictatorship entrenches itself by fomenting fear and anger on both sides.

Right now, our major bulwarks against Trump’s police state are the federal courts and broad-based peaceful protests – such as the one that many of us will engage in this coming Saturday 14 June, on the No Kings Day of Action.

It is imperative that we remain peaceful, that we demonstrate our resolve to combat this tyranny but do so non-violently, and that we let America know about the emerging infrastructure of Trump’s police state and the importance of resisting it.

These are frightening and depressing times. But remember: although it takes one authoritarian to establish a police state, it takes just 3.5% of a population to topple him and end it.

A diapered Donnie soars over the result of his scorched earth military assault on Los Angeles protestors. It's hell's version of Disney Land.

Trump tries to turn California into a war zone as protesters fight back

Protesters confront a line of U.S. National Guard in the metropolitan detention center of downtown Los Angeles, on June 8, followingFriday's immigration raid protest.

President spoiling for a fight in California 

 

By Oliver Willis 

Daily Kos Staff 

Monday, June 09, 2025 at 9:45:06a MDT 

 

REPUBLISHED BY: 

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Over the weekend, protests against immigration raids carried out by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles intensified as Trump demanded a military response to people exercising their right to protest. The protests follow a push by the Trump team for more immigration raids, disrupting local communities and lives, with ICE bragging on social media that they had arrested 118 people during a June 6 raid.

Protesters gather at the U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Prisons after federal 

Los Angeles area residents organized protests against ICE beginning Friday, after the agency swept up migrants at Home Depot locations. The situation escalated after Trump wrote “bring in the troops” on his social media account and signed a memo Sunday night authorizing the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to the area.

 

Trump’s actions were slammed by LA Mayor Karen Bass, who said in a message to residents, “What we’re seeing in our city is chaos provoked by the Trump Administration.” Bass specifically noted, “When you raid Home Depots and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armored caravans through our streets, you cause fear and panic.”

“This is exactly what Donald Trump wanted. He flamed the fires and illegally acted to federalize the National Guard. The order he signed doesn’t just apply to CA. It will allow him to go into ANY STATE and do the same thing. We’re suing him,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on Monday.

Police have used flash bang grenades, rubber bullets, and other weapons against protesters and journalists in the ensuing chaos.

The escalation follows a reported push at the highest levels of the Trump administration for more visible immigration enforcement after early efforts have fizzled.

A May 30 report in the conservative Washington Examiner revealed that ICE agents are feeling pressured to inflate deportation and arrest numbers. Multiple immigration officials told the outlet that Stephen Miller, senior Trump aide and the architect of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies in both of his administrations, has spearheaded the effort.

“They’ve been threatened, told they’re watching their emails and texts and Signals,” an official told the Examiner, referencing the intensified focus from higher-ups. Miller reportedly held a meeting with ICE officers, directors, and special agents and told them, “You guys aren’t doing a good job. You’re horrible leaders.”

“Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?'” an official told the Examiner.

Within days, operations began in Los Angeles, triggering a response in the community.

During the 2024 presidential election, Trump routinely lied about the criminal danger posed by undocumented immigrants. Trump regularly exaggerated the overall number and rates of crime purportedly committed by migrants—returning to his longtime racist obsession with blaming this mostly Latino segment of the population.

In office, Trump and his team are finding out that there aren’t the numbers to justify his dangerous rhetoric and so they have instead done things like abducting dissenters and deporting people who haven’t been convicted of any crime.

California officials like Newsom and Bass have made it clear to Trump that they do not want the National Guard operating in their state and city. The state of California is planning to file a lawsuit on Monday challenging President Trump’s order federalizing its National Guard forces, according to The New York Times.

Trump wants an excuse to attack the left and continue to justify his anti-immigrant bigotry, so he will continue to escalate. And while things seem to finally be calming down in downtown LA, protests are expected in more than a dozen cities nationwide.

CA Gov. Gavin Newsom responds to Trump's military call-up: 

Last night, President Trump ordered the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles, using the excuse of protests against his immigration raids.

Let me be totally clear about what is happening here.

We have been working closely with law enforcement. There is no unmet need. The President is attempting to inflame passions and provoke a response.

He would like nothing more than for this provocative show of force -- and Pete Hegseth's absurd threat to deploy United States Marines on American soil – to escalate tensions and incite violence.

These are not people who have some deep conviction about protecting law enforcement. This is a President who failed to call up the National Guard when it was actually needed -- on January 6th -- and then pardoned the participants as one of his first acts as president.

They want a spectacle. They want the violence.

They think this is good for them politically.

That is why White House aides were posting pictures of Trump getting popcorn last night.

This is not the way a civilized country behaves. It is completely deranged behavior.

To the people of Los Angeles and across the country who are protesting these immigration raids:

Don't give them the spectacle they want. Never use violence. Speak out peacefully and in large numbers.

I know many of you have been watching the news about this, so I thought it important to reach out.

Thank you for reading,

Gavin Newsom

ALL THAT GLITTERS: The Fool’s Gold in Trump’s White House Is Already Looking Tarnished

Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty

As Trump’s presidency implodes, it seems inevitable that his White House will show similar wear and tear.

Jill Filipovic

Published Jun. 7 2025 9:00AM EDT

The Daily Beast 

Donald Trump is back in the White House, and this time around, he’s done some major renovations. A home, any decent designer will tell you, should in its aesthetic reflect its inhabitants: Their lifestyles and their values. And Trump has certainly remade the White House in his image. It’s tacky, showy, and narcissistic—but luckily his changes don’t seem built to last.

The Trump White House also appears to have more gold in it than the Federal Reserve. It’s as if Liberace joined forces with Scrooge McDuck. Trump has added copious amounts of gold to every conceivable surface: More paintings with thick gold frames, more gold vases and urns and tchotchkes, even gold paint on the crown molding. There’s even a gold-framed New York Post cover with Trump’s mug shot on it.

President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney are pictured in the Oval Office at the White House on May 6, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The golden doorknobs are polished to maximum gleam; when shadow President Elon Musk showed up to his farewell event in the Oval Office (with a black eye), Trump handed him a golden key. He probably wants that back now but still. There are no reports of golden toilets—yet—but virtually no other surface seems untouched. 

“A gilded rococo hellscape” is how one photo editor and creative consultant described it in The New York Times. The president who purports to want to make America great again seems to actually want to make the American capitol Versailles.

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told The Wall Street Journal that, “It’s the Golden Office for the Golden Age.” Really though, it’s more of a gilded office for a new gilded age: A time when the rich swill champagne in their mansions and members-only clubs while the masses suffer through profound political polarization and extreme inequality. Today, the world’s uber-wealthy can buy a Trump Gold Card—of course—visa to get into the US; immigrants who aren’t flush, on the other hand, see the doors slam shut.

President Donald Trump holds the $5 million dollar Gold Card as he speaks to reporters on board Air Force One on April 3, 2025. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Donald Trump has always loved the ostentatious and ornate. His apartments are notoriously gaudy, as are the buildings he slaps his name on (typically in huge gold letters). He first announced his presidential run a decade ago by descending down a golden escalator.

But it all seems to quickly lose its sheen. The Trump name is so deeply associated with grift and chintz that many once-affluent buyers have fled his building. When the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino imploded in Atlantic City after years of neglect, crowds gathered to cheer. This is not a man who builds things that last. This is a man who makes things shiny for as long as it takes him to cash his checks.

Trump Called in His ‘Gold Guy’ for White House MakeoverGILT TRIP

Yasmeen Hamadeh

For all his new-money fixation on expensive, shiny things, Trump’s economic policies have badly tarnished his presidency. The president has managed to repeatedly roil global markets, earn a downgrade of America’s credit, raise consumer prices and make it impossible for businesses to adequately plan for anything; various tariffs have been removed and revised, put back and removed again, threatened and teased and so on. The back-and-forth has been so endless that Wall Streeters have a nickname for it: TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out.

The president seems to now be saying he will negotiate individual trade deals with countries the world over, an endeavor that will at least keep him too busy to hang up any more gold-framed paintings of himself. (He has thusfar been unable to make very few such deals, instead telling Americans they should simply expect to buy fewer toys for their children.)

As Golden Ages Go, This One SucksALL THAT GLITTERS...

David Rothkopf

But what else is Trump himself busy with? Cashing in. He’s started a small crypto empire, enjoying the spoils of those foolish enough to buy into his schemes, or canny enough to know buying in can get them access. A state-owned Emirati company has invested some $2 billion in one of the Trump family’s enterprises. He’s accepting a free luxury jet from Qatar. 

Unlike previous presidents, he has not put his own assets in a blind trust. He has used his position to extract free work from some of the country’s top law firms, who he has intimidated out of challenging him or his agenda. As his administration is cutting basic services for Americans, he’s trimming the White House with gold, and sitting on a growing pile of it.

The question now is what will come first: The flaking of the White House gold leaf, or the falling-apart of Trump’s presidency itself.

Breaking up is hard to do: Trump and Musk are over and it's getting ugly

Back to back.  'First buddy' no more: Things will be awkward if Donald Trump and Elon Musk are ever in the same room again.

Elon goes rogue with multiple attacks on Dear Leader 

 

By Emily Singer 

Daily Kos Staff 

Thursday, June 05, 2025 at 11:30:07a MDT 

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

By Emily Singer Daily Kos Staff REPUBLISHED BY Donald Trump and his co-President Elon Musk were inseparable during Trump's first 100 days in office.

Trump heaped praise on Musk during uncomfortable Cabinet meetings, even as public opinion soured on the multibillionaire and his destructive Department of Government Efficiency; dined with Musk at his trashy Mar-a-Lago club; hawked Musk's failing Tesla cars in a wildly unethical event on the White House lawn; and overlooked Musk's rampant drug use to give his biggest donor a glowing send-off after he announced he was leaving the administration.

But now that Musk is trashing the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that House Republicans passed in May and Senate Republicans are now working to get to Trump's desk, Trump says their special friendship may be no more.

"Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don't know if we will anymore," Trump told reporters Thursday in the Oval Office.

The president added that he was "surprised" to see Musk hammering what is intended to be Trump's signature piece of legislation.

“You were here, everybody in this room practically was here as we had a wonderful send-off, he said wonderful things about me, couldn’t have nicer, said the best thing,” Trump said. “He’s worn the hat, ‘Trump was right about everything,’ and I am right about the Great Big Beautiful Bill.” 

Trump also accused Musk of turning on the “Big Beautiful Bill”—which slashes Medicaid and food stamps, cuts green energy subsidies, extends tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the rich, and explodes the deficit—because it ends electric vehicle subsidies.

"I'm very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here,” Trump said. “All of a sudden he had a problem and he only developed the problem when he found out that we're going to have to cut the EV mandate.”

Musk has already responded to Trump’s attack.

“False, this bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!” Musk wrote in a post on X. 

Trump and Republicans had enthusiastically embraced Musk—largely due to the fact that the richest man in the world spent hundreds of millions to help Trump get elected, and they worried that if they criticized him they'd be hit with an onslaught of Musk-financed primary attacks.

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Related | 7 of Elon Musk's worst co-president moments as he exits White House

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But now that Musk has gone rogue and done the unforgivable—i.e. criticize Dear Leader—it's unclear what will happen next.

After Trump’s Oval Office diss, Musk argued in a post on X that “Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.”

“Such ingratitude,” Musk added.

When announcing his exit from the Trump administration, Musk said he was taking his money and getting out of politics. But if he's instigated by Republican attacks, he could easily flip on that decision.

Whatever happens next, we have our popcorn ready to watch the Republican infighting play out.

It's a bird.  It's a plane.  It's a flying muskrat.  Our dynamic duo in happier times.

 

Boulder attack spotlights Trump efforts to weaken FBI's terrorism fight

Law enforcement officials investigate after an attack on the Pearl Street Mall, on June 1, in Boulder, Colorado.

 Pardon of Jan. 6 rioters, praising Nazis as "very fine people" set tone for de-emphasis  

 

By Oliver Willis 

Daily Kos Staff

Monday, June 02, 2025 at 11:00:10a MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

An attack on Sunday that injured eight people at a mall in Boulder, Colorado, has been described as a “targeted terror attack” by the FBI, according to the Associated Press. 

The incident highlights actions taken by the Trump administration that have hobbled federal law enforcement in fighting terrorism while also shining a spotlight on the shortcomings of the personnel that President Donald Trump has put in charge of the Department of Justice and the FBI.

On Sunday, a man reportedly yelling “Free Palestine” used a makeshift flamethrower to attack participants at a “Run for Their Lives” event who were advocating for the release of hostages being detained by Hamas in Gaza since 2023. Several people injured in the attack were hospitalized and the suspect was arrested.

Since taking office in January, Trump has made policy decisions that hobble law enforcement attempts to fight crimes that are classified as terrorism.

Historically, combating domestic terrorism has been a joint effort by federal, state, and local government. But under Trump, local law enforcement is shouldering more of the burden.

Instead, Trump’s obsession with attacking immigration has led to critical federal funding being diverted away from combating extremism and instead directed toward immigration issues. At the same time, the administration has cut back on resources like a national database that tracked domestic terrorism, bending to conservative complaints that the federal government focused too much on dangerous threats posed by right-affiliated groups.

The Trump administration has also cut grants for studies exploring ways to combat domestic terrorism and protect the public from violent extremism.

At a recent event discussing efforts in Michigan to fight hate crimes, Cynthia Miller-Idriss of American University’s Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab explained, “The federal government is gone on this issue.”

Early in his administration Trump made it clear that he was going soft on domestic terrorism.

He chose—even over the objections of some Republicans—to issue pardons to more than 1,500 of the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. Several of those people who sought to overturn the official results of the 2020 election that Trump lost have gone on to commit new crimes.

The senior official tasked with directly combating domestic extremism, FBI Director Kash Patel, got his nomination by promoting baseless pro-Trump conspiracies and penning a series of children’s books that were essentially fan fiction fantasies about Trump. His underling, Assistant FBI Director Dan Bongino, also got Trump’s attention by promoting Trump-friendly conspiracies on his podcast and recently complained to Fox News that his new job is too hard.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has domestic terrorism as part of her portfolio, has spent most of her time in office appearing on Fox News to promote the administration’s agenda. When she isn’t doing that she has been calling for Trump’s Democratic critics to be silent and arguing that protests against Trump donor Elon Musk could lead to criminal charges.

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Related |Team Trump is making a list of Jews—what could go wrong?

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The administration’s rhetoric in condemning attacks also raises questions. The Justice Department said in a statement the Boulder attack was a “needless act of violence, which follows recent attacks against Jewish Americans”—but Trump has a long history of antisemitic remarks and anti-Jewish bigotry, even infamously praising Nazis as “very fine people.”

Trump and his team are compromised on the issue of combating violent extremism and opposing antisemitism, with vulnerable Americans left in the crosshairs.

  The event has been described as a “targeted terror attack” by the FBI.

‘We are guilty. Period.’: Jan. 6 rioter refuses pardon from ‘felon Trump,’ claims president has been ‘gaslighting’ followers

Left: Pam Hemphill announces on Facebook that she is going to Washington DC on Jan. 6. Right: Then former President Donald Trump after appearing before the Brotherhood of International Teamsters. 

 “You know that everybody there was guilty. I couldn’t live with myself. I have to be right with me. And with God.”

 Jerry LambeJun 2nd, 2025, 11:40 am

Law & Crime  

An Idaho woman who was found guilty of storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and encouraging others to do the same is now working to ensure that she is not among the more than 1,500 rioters to be pardoned by President Donald Trump.

Pamela Hemphill, who was 69 years old in 2022 when she was sentenced to two months in jail for her role in the attack, is actively refusing the president’s clemency, claiming that Trump’s mass pardons and commutations are part of his larger effort to push false claims about the crimes committed by his followers that day.

“The pardons just contribute to their narrative, which is all lies. Propaganda. We were guilty, period,” Hemphill said in a recent interview with CBS News.

“We all know that they’re gaslighting us,” she said. “They are using January 6 to just continue Trump’s narrative that the Justice Department was weaponized. They were not, When the FBI came to my home, oh my God, they were very professional. They treated me very good.”

Hemphill in January 2021, flew to Washington, D.C., from Idaho to support Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, court documents show

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Prosecutors said she pushed through police lines three different times as the crowd outside the Capitol grew increasingly violent. She also encouraged her fellow rioters to push their way inside the building, and she was later seen inside the Rotunda itself.

Additionally, when police offered to help Hemphill, prosecutors said she “needlessly” exaggerated her injuries in an effort to distract officers from more violent protesters.

Hemphill pleaded guilty in January 2022 to one count of demonstrating, picketing, or parading in a Capitol building — a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail, a fine up to $5,000 and up to five years of probation. Hemphill requested a sentence of probation only, while prosecutors suggested that she serve at least 60 days in jail, three years of probation and 60 hours of community service.

Since storming that Capitol, Hemphill says she has realized that Trump’s claims about winning the 2020 election were not true and regrets getting caught up in the false narrative, referring to the MAGA movement as a “cult” and the president as “felon Trump” who should be blamed for what happened.

“How could you sleep at night taking a pardon when you know you were guilty?” she told CBS. “You know that everybody there was guilty. I couldn’t live with myself. I have to be right with me. And with God.”

According to CBS News, Idaho Sen. James Risch, a Republican, has been assisting Hemphill in her effort to formally refuse the pardon.

Though his office told the network that it “cannot disclose details” about Hemphill’s case due to “privacy concerns,” records reportedly show that the Office of the Pardon Attorney wrote the senator about the pardon in April stating, in part, that “Hemphill’s non-acceptance is noted.” The correspondence reportedly also noted that Hemphill would not receive a formal certificate of her pardon.

Asked what she thinks will happen if the president hears about her position, Hemphill said Trump would probably call her “an ungrateful lady” and will probably tell government officials to “give her the worst you can give her.”

 

Pam Hemphill says it is “felon Trump” who 

should be blamed for what happened.