[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on December 4, 2025.]

by Steven J. Harper

On Friday, November 28, the Washington Post reported that when the U.S. military began attacking small boats in the Caribbean, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had issued a verbal order that it should “kill everybody.”

When the first attack occurred on September 2, the initial missile strike destroyed the boat but left two survivors clinging to the wreckage. To comply with Hegseth’s order, Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley authorized a second strike that killed them.

If true, it’s a war crime.

Hegseth called the Post’s reporting “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory,” claiming that the drug-smuggling operations were “lawful under both U.S. and international law.”

Then the doubletalk began.

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[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on November 20, 2025.]

The next time you hear that Trump has somehow reversed his earlier resistance to releasing the Epstein files, remember that he hasn’t. He could have ordered their disclosure long ago.

by Steven J. Harper

Jeffrey Epstein may have committed suicide in 2019, but he remains an albatross around President Donald Trump’s neck. During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised to release all of the Justice Department’s Epstein files. As president, he could honor that pledge with the stroke of a social media post. Instead, he has done everything in his power to prevent such disclosure.

Some pundits claim that Trump has finally reversed his earlier resistance to releasing the files. He hasn’t. Rather, he has deployed yet another strategy to achieve his true objective – continued secrecy. And he’s relying on his faithful sycophant, Attorney General Pam Bondi, to execute it.

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https://stevenjharper.substack.com/p/trumps-latest-epstein-gambit

[This post first appeared at Common Dreams on October 24, 2025.]

He wants the US Supreme Court to legitimatize these unlawful deployments. Heaven help us all if they do.

by Steven J. Harper

President Donald Trump’s ICE raids in American cities are not simply efforts to deport undocumented immigrants or battle crime. In addition to creating fear and desensitizing law-abiding citizens to a military presence on American streets, Trump wanted to pick a fight.

And he has.

Specifically, Trump wanted a legal fight that he could take to the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. If it accepts his justification for “federalizing” the National Guard over a state governor’s objections, he’ll have unrestrained power to deploy the military on American soil any time, any place, and for any reason.

The implications are staggering. Fear has gripped neighborhoods where armed troops patrol the streets as something akin to an occupying force. During the 2026 midterm elections, deployments would be a powerful voter suppression tool.

Trump’s Legal Argument

In the cases challenging Trump’s National Guard deployments in Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago, his lawyers have argued that the courts have no power to review the President’s decisions. His claimed factual basis is not subject to challenge. His decision is final. His authority is absolute.

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https://stevenjharper.substack.com/p/with-troop-deployments-in-us-cities

[This post first appeared at Common Dreams on October 17, 2025.]

Hegseth Can’t Handle the Truth

by Steven J. Harper

On September 30, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pontificated before his captive audience of 800 admirals and generals whom he had summoned from locations around the globe. The media reports of the event focused on soundbites: new physical fitness requirements, grooming standards (“no more beardos” – but don’t tell Vice President J.D. Vance or the President’s son), eliminating “woke” policies, and other elements of his department’s new “warfighting culture.”

Observing that the military’s policy on “hazing, bullying, and harassment is overly broad,” Hegseth also said that the inspector general’s office “has been weaponized, putting complainers, ideologues and poor performers in the driver’s seat.”

He dealt with that problem too.

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https://stevenjharper.substack.com/p/pete-hegseth-cant-handle-the-truth

[This article first appeared in Crain’s Chicago Business on October 2, 2025.]

Big Law firm partners promote themselves as the best, brightest, and toughest lawyers in America. But nine firms capitulated to President Donald Trump because they feared a fight with him to preserve their constitutional rights. Now they’re grappling with the growing costs of appeasing a bully.

Trapped By Their Own Business Models

With average partner profits of more than a million dollars, the Big Law firms that settled were uniquely positioned to resist Trump’s unlawful executive orders aimed at the heart of the legal profession. They could have banded together, spearheaded a high-profile resistance, and honored the sworn oath that every attorney takes to uphold the Constitution.

To be fair, more than 500 firms signed an amicus brief challenging Trump’s order targeting the Perkins Coie firm. But the vast majority of the Big Law firms that generate the most revenue remained silent. Nine went a step farther and settled by promising a combined total of $940 million in free legal services to Trump-approved causes.

And therein lies the rub.

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https://stevenjharper.substack.com/p/the-exploding-costs-of-big-laws-capitulation

[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on October 8, 2025.]

by Steven J. Harper

“Waste, fraud, and abuse”

It’s President Donald Trump’s battle cry as he dismantles federal agencies, fires hundreds of thousands of employees, and demoralizes the workers who remain. It’s also another of his false flag operations.

Rather than ferreting out corruption, waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement in the federal government, Trump has undermined the very professionals who have that job: inspectors general.

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https://stevenjharper.substack.com/p/trump-destroys-another-guardrail

[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on September 21, 2025.]

by Steven J. Harper

In the final minutes of FBI Director Kash Patel’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 16, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) acknowledged the obvious: Individuals on the left should not have celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination, but influential voices on the right were inflaming the situation.

The bottom line, Tillis observed, was that escalation of the rhetoric on the right was making the FBI’s job of law enforcement more difficult.

Trump Disagrees

Sen. Tillis’s analysis would have come as a shock to President Donald Trump, who blamed the episode on the “radical left.” Speaking Wednesday night from the Oval office only hours after Kirk’s death on September 10 – before the identity or motives of the assassin were known – he issued a video message from the Oval Office:

“My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials, and everyone else who brings order to our country.”

Listing recent attacks against himself and other conservative figures, he didn’t mention violence against Democrats, including: the assassination of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband; the shooting of another Minnesota legislator and his wife; the arson attack on Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D-PA) residence; or the attack on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband. Those omissions were an important tell: Trump is going after Democrats.

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https://stevenjharper.substack.com/p/the-ugly-aftermath-of-charlie-kirks

[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on August 27, 2025.]

A Timeline of Trump’s Futile Epstein Diversions

by Steven J. Harper

Drip, drip, drip…

For months, Trump has tried to divert public attention from the Jeffrey Epstein/Ghislane Maxwell files. But he can’t shake the story, and it keeps getting worse.

The Reversal

Trump campaigned for the presidency on the promise to release all of the files relating to Epstein’s sex trafficking in minors. To supercharge his MAGA base, he fueled conspiracy theories that the files contained something sinister involving prominent Democrats.

February 2025: Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, told a Fox News interviewer that Epstein’s client list was sitting on her desk, awaiting her review before its release.

May: Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche informed Trump that his name appeared in the Epstein files, The New York Times later reported.

July 7: FBI Director Kash Patel – who had also pushed conspiracy theories about the files during Trump’s campaign – issued a two-page memo stating that there was no Epstein client list and that the Justice Department would not release any additional materials relating to the matter.

July 16: Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Maurene Comey was fired. Comey was a lead prosecutor in the investigation and prosecution of Epstein and his co-conspirator, Ghislane Maxwell. She was also the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey and chief of the Violent and Organized Crime Unit. The memo gave no reason for Comey’s abrupt termination.

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https://stevenjharper.substack.com/p/a-timeline-of-trumps-futile-epstein

[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on August 19, 2025.]

by Steven J. Harper

President Donald Trump and Republicans face a daunting challenge: How to preserve power in the wake of their wildly unpopular policies? Their strategy is to intensify the GOP’s decades-long quest to limit voter participation. Selecting the voters likely to cast ballots for them is far better than letting all voters select their leaders.

Trump has taken the strategy to a whole new level. And he’s doing it out of fear and desperation.

Fighting History

During midterm elections, the president’s party loses seats in Congress. In Trump’s first term, Republicans lost 40 seats in the House in 2018. In 2010, President Barack Obama’s Democrats lost 63.

The exceptions are few and far between. In the aftermath of 9/11, President George W. Bush’s GOP gained eight House seats in 2002, but then lost 30 in 2006. In 1998, President Bill Clinton’s Democrats gained five seats, but that didn’t offset the 52 seats that they had lost in 1994. In all but three midterm elections from 1934 to 1994 – from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton – the president’s party lost House seats. It did a little better in the Senate, gaining seats in only six of 23 midterm elections since 1934.

With Republicans holding a slim 219-212 majority heading into the 2026 midterms, Trump has every reason to panic at what awaits him in 15 months.

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[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on August14, 2025.]

by Steven J. Harper

When we left convicted sex offender Ghislane Maxwell, she had just received several remarkable gifts from the Trump administration.

First, while serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking minors as Jeffrey Epstein’s procurer, she got an unprecedented meeting with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the second highest official in the Justice Department. Blanche was also President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer in the hush-money trial resulting in his 34 felony convictions. That such a meeting even occurred astonished legal observers across the political spectrum.

Second, only a week later, the Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons transferred Maxwell out of the Florida Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, a minimum security prison with horrendous conditions. Her new home is the Federal Prison Camp in Bryan, Texas – a “Club Fed” that houses white-collar criminals and celebrities who have far better living quarters and relative freedom of movement.

The Plot Thickens

Now independent journalist and podcast host Allison Gill (“Mueller, She Wrote” on Bluesky) reports, “I have Ghislaine Maxwell’s security score, custody level, transfer code, public safety factor, and sex offender waiver.”’

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My August 5, 2025 interview with Ian Masters on Background Briefing is available here: https://www.backgroundbriefing.org

[This article first appeared on Common Dreams on August 3, 2025.]

by Steven J. Harper

On July 24 and 25, convicted sex offender Ghislane Maxwell met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche – the number two official in the Department of Justice. At the time, Maxwell was three years into her 20-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institute in Tallahassee, Florida (FCI Tallahassee). A week later, the Bureau of Prisons – an agency of the Department of Justice – confirmed that she’d been transferred to the Federal Prison Camp at Bryan, Texas (FPC Bryan).

It’s not a pardon, but it’s a big improvement in her quality of life. 

On the outside, it’s the difference between double-fenced barbed wire and a wrought iron fence akin to that of a gated community. On the inside, the differences are more dramatic.

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[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on July 29, 2025.]

by Steven J. Harper

On August 10, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein – accused of sex trafficking in minor girls – committed suicide in his jail cell while awaiting trial, and a new conspiracy theory was born: Powerful forces silenced him. Releasing the Justice Department’s files on Epstein would reveal a “client list” of high-profile individuals, including prominent Democrats, who had a motive to kill him.

Then-President Donald Trump jumped aboard the conspiracy bandwagon. Six years later, he’s now trying desperately to stop it.

Setting the Stage

Hours after Epstein’s death, Trump retweeted a post alleging that Bill Clinton was connected to Epstein’s death. Trump’s supporters dutifully followed his lead:

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Here’s my July 21, 2025 interview discussing Bill Moyers: Radio Parallax with Doug Ellison:
https://radioparallax.com/single-shows/5740/

[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on July 21, 2025.]

Stephen Colbert’s Firing: The Critical Unanswered Question

by Steven J. Harper

Timing is everything.

The news that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will end in May 2026 has focused on whether his termination was part of a “deal” (implicit or explicit) to get Federal Communications Commission approval of the pending merger between CBS’s parent company Paramount and Skydance Media. If so, it was another “bend-the-knee” moment in the media’s ongoing capitulation to Trump’s attack on democracy’s foundational institutions.

But the timing of the announcement itself is raises a critical unanswered question: Why now? It was either pandering to President Donald Trump, management’s incompetence, or both.

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[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on July 15, 2025.]

The Tragedy of Thom Tillis

by Steven J. Harper

The incompetence of President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense is painfully obvious. Former Fox & Friends weekend host Pete Hegseth was never qualified for the job. Belatedly, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) – who became the key vote to confirm the nominee – now admits it.

Tillis squandered a unique opportunity to protect the nation from Hegseth. The country is now paying the price for his cowardice.

Tillis’s Reversal

In a phone call with Trump just before Christmas, Tillis promised to support all of Trump’s cabinet picks. But he developed strong reservations about Pete Hegseth – strong enough to participate in a secret effort to kill the nomination. Serious issues about character, statements about barring women in combat, and allegations of sexual misconduct dogged Hegseth. He had none of the qualifications necessary to run the defense department of more than two million military and civilian personnel.

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[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on June 30, 2025.]

A Personal Tribute to Bill Moyers, Who Never Stopped Pushing

by Steven J. Harper

On June 26, America lost an iconic force for good. I lost a great friend.

A Life of Public Service

A partial summary of Bill Moyers’ impressive life fills entire pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post – treatment reserved for royalty and rock stars. Bill was both.

In those pages you’ll read about his illustrious political career as President Lyndon Johnson’s special assistant, press secretary, and key architect of the “Great Society” – a collection of programs that are now in danger, including the War on Poverty that produced Medicare, Medicaid, the Food Stamp Act and the Economic Opportunity Act; the Civil Rights Act of 1964; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965, and more.

You’ll marvel at his unparalleled journalism that resulted in landmark documentaries, best-selling books, dozens of EmmyAwards, two Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia University Awards, nine Peabody Awards, three George Polk Awards, and the first-ever Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the American Film Institute.

A Source of Private Inspiration

I’m going to cover different ground that you won’t find anywhere else. During the final years of Bill’s life, I had the honor of working directly with him on one of his most important missions: preserving democracy.

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[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on June 25, 2025.]

Trump’s One Big Beautiful (Ugly) Bill v. An Unsung Hero

by Steven J. Harper

In the dead of night at 2:53 a.m. on May 22, the House of Representatives began to consider President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” 

Four hours later, Republicans passed it by a single vote – 215 to 214. It included a provision that effectively forgave most of Trump’s unconstitutional actions and undermined the federal courts. 

Republicans in the Senate made it worse.

Over the weekend, an unlikely hero blocked this assault on the Constitution: the Senate parliamentarian. Will her ruling stick? Or will Senate Republicans detonate the “nuclear option” to save the provision?

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https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/trump-bill-vs-parliamentarian

[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on June –, 2025.]

RFK Jr.’s Deadly War on Science

by Steven J. Harper

During an NBC interview on November 6, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was cleaning up his lifelong anti-vaccination act as he lobbied to become Health and Human Services Secretary in the Trump administration.

“If vaccines are working for somebody, I’m not going to take them away,” he said. “People ought to have choice…”

Kennedy is not a doctor or a scientist, but he got the job as America’s top public health officer. Now he’s making the wrong choices for all of us.

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[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on May 27, 2025.]

Trump and his Big Law Firms Keep Losing

by Steven J. Harper

President Donald Trump and the Big Law firms that surrendered to his unconstitutional executive orders suffered another bad week.

Trump Loses Again

In a 52-page opinion, U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates – a 2001 appointee of President George W. Bush – rejected the Justice Department’s effort to defend Trump’s executive order targeting Jenner & Block. Trump’s own words doomed it: 

Like the others in the series, this order—which takes aim at the global law firm Jenner & Block— makes no bones about why it chose its target: it picked Jenner because of the causes Jenner champions, the clients Jenner represents, and a lawyer Jenner once employed. (Jenner & Block v. U.S. Department of Justice, et al. Civil Action No. 25-916 (JDB) p. 1)

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[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on May 22, 2025.]

Laura Loomer: Trump Whisperer

Meet the influential right-wing conspiracy theorist who has U.S. President Donald Trump’s ear.

by Steven J. Harper

Laura Loomer is 31 years old and a graduate of Barry University, a private Catholic university. A former commentator on Alex Jones’s Infowars and a far-right conspiracy theorist, she has 1.5 million followers on X. Loomer traffics in anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric. She has called herself a “proud Islamophobe” and “pro-white nationalism.”

And she has President Donald Trump’s ear.

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[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on May 15,.2025.]

by Steven J. Harper

The Big Law firms that capitulated to President Donald Trump’s unconstitutional demands thought they were buying peace with his administration, preserving their client relationships, and protecting their bottom lines.

Recent developments illustrate the growing magnitude of their mistake.

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[This article first appeared at Common Dreams on May 4, 2025.]

LAWYERS BEHAVING BADLY

by Steven J. Harper

President Donald Trump directed Attorney General Pam Bondi “to seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable, and vexatious litigation,” including legal filings for improper purposes and statements that are not based on evidence.

Bondi should start with the White House attorneys who drafted Trump’s executive orders targeting Big Law firms – and her Justice Department lawyers trying to defend them.

Did Real Lawyers Write These Orders?

Cloaked in empty rhetoric about “conduct detrimental to critical American interests,” retribution is at the core of Trump’s edicts.

[To continue reading, please click here to reach my Substack page. (No paywall)]: https://stevenjharper.substack.com/p/lawyers-behaving-badly