You have committed a crime.
How Republicans created the Kafkaesque regime of selective prosecution that they once claimed to fear.
You have committed a federal crime.
Probably more than one. In fact, if you’re an average professional who has filled out lots of government forms, signed and mailed contracts, has semi-complicated taxes, some investments, financial relationships, and a mortgage, you’ve almost certainly run afoul of several federal statutes over the years.
Though plenty of people get swept up in life-ruining investigations by overly zealous prosecutors, most Americans go about their lives, occasionally breaking federal laws without fear of prison, because no free country would unleash its prosecutors to pursue every violation of every statute in our labyrinthine criminal code.
Federal prosecutors make choices. This vague concept of prosecutorial discretion prevents millions of technical lawbreakers from losing their freedom or suffering the devastating consequences of a criminal accusation by the government.
Not long ago, conservatives dreaded the possibility that an unconstrained executive branch might unleash its prosecutors to pursue violations of every law on the books.
In 2004, The Cato Institute released Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything, which argued that “[w]ith more than 4,000 federal offenses on the statute books, and thousands more buried in the Code of Federal Regulations, it is now frighteningly easy for American citizens to be hauled off to jail for actions that no reasonable person would regard as crimes.”
In 2010, the Heritage Foundation warned that “the federal government may have made you a criminal for very innocent actions” and published One Nation Under Arrest: How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors, and Activist Judges Threaten Your Liberty.
The best-known book from this era was Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent, by Harvey Silvergate, whose calls for reforms addressing the hazards of overcriminalization and selective prosecution have been repeatedly cited by self-professed libertarian Republicans in Congress.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) pointed to Three Felonies A Day last year when he introduced his Mens Rea Reform Act of 2024 and the End Endless Criminal Statutes Act. He was also the lead Republican on the bipartisan Count the Crimes to Cut Act, which would force an inventory and cleanup of federal criminal offenses. When they were conducting oversight of the FBI during the first Trump administration, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee leaned on the arguments in Three Felonies, as did Sens. Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul, when they pushed a bill to add a criminal intent requirement to statutes that are silent on the issue.
Now, a version of the world that these Republicans once warned of has arrived.
After a seven-month purge—and the installation of pathetic Trump lackeys lusting for revenge, such as Ed Martin and Jeanine Pirro—the Department of Justice under Pam Bondi is a fully politicized tool of the president, who is using its enormous powers to destroy political opponents with allegations of criminal conduct that would previously either go unprosecuted, or, at the very least, would be insulated from the taint of politics by internal safeguards.
John Bolton had his home and office raided by the FBI, allegedly over the handling of classified materials.
Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff, and now Lisa Cook are all accused of some kind of mortgage fraud.
Jack Smith, the former special counsel who prosecuted Trump, is under investigation by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel over alleged Hatch Act violations.
A stream of leaks suggests that Obama- and Biden-era national security officials, as well as the two presidents themselves, are the subject of criminal probes.
In April, Trump ordered the DOJ to open investigations of Christopher Krebs, the former director of CISA, and Miles Taylor, a former DHS official and the author of the “Anonymous” op-ed and book. And, of course, Trump regularly muses about targeting other opponents with criminal probes (Chris Christie was the latest).
It is almost pointless to note that the Republicans in Congress who professed to care about selective prosecution and a weaponized DOJ have been silent as Trump has built an executive branch apparatus to smear and indict that is far darker than anything Silvergate feared.
Actually, to be fair, those Republicans haven’t all been silent. Rand Paul told Fox News that Bolton “has done a lot of damage to the life, liberty and treasure of so many Americans” and that “if he also is found to have broken the law regarding national security, it will be some small form of justice for the evil he has perpetrated over the years.” And House GOP leaders publicly praised FBI and DOJ leadership as the Bolton raids happened.
Under this system, nobody who criticizes the government is safe. If you are targeted by Trump and his fascist—I don’t deploy that adjective lightly, but it is sadly apt at this moment in 2025—enablers, the government is powerful enough to ruin your life.
Maybe you will be harassed “only” with leaks about impending criminal investigations that never actually materialize. If you’re more unlucky, they might scoop up some details about some technical violation of law buried in the federal code that would never normally be prosecuted. Maybe a federal judge will throw out your case, calling out the government for its shameful conduct. Or maybe your judge will be Emil Bove, and you’ll go to jail. As this system matures—it’s only month eight—and becomes more aggressive, some Trump opponents who are targeted solely because of their political views might even have committed a real crime that nobody will want to defend.
But if the predicate for an investigation is simply that the target opposed Trump, shouldn’t we treat any ensuing action against that opponent as illegitimate?
I think the answer is yes. This is why I find the micro coverage of Lisa Cook’s mortgage applications or John Bolton’s handling of government documents pointless and deeply unfair to them.
In the justice system erected by the Trump administration, criminal accusations against the president’s opponents should be presumed to be purely political acts with none of the opprobrium we might attach to the target of a legitimate prosecution by a government that abides by the rule of law.
Remember, you could be next.
It’s truly horrible. But we need to do what these people did to grab power rather than get lost in this mess. They started by grabbing power locally. We must learn how to do that.
We’re not helpless. It’s much worse now that Trump has power, but fascists have been disassembling democracy for decades now.
Actually, first they came for our teachers about four decades ago. They did to our schools what they’re now doing to our country. Trust me. I was a teacher. Life now feels like continuous Deja Vu’s for me. Hire incompetents. Paralyze people with fear. Get them to feel hopeless and fall apart. See WhiteChalkCrime.com.
We can get in their way so they can’t succeed.
Instead of letting frustration takeover, people who care about democracy need to run for a school board in a group of four on a save democracy platform. That way you control that district.
School Boards have total control but administrators have manipulated people to think administrators do. They don’t. The School Board vote IS the power.
Selfish people run for their own agendas and give control to fascist administrators, but that’s the only way that superintendent has power. It’s all about votes. You can stop them with a solid group of other-centered citizens, the antidote to fascism.
We could control every school district. People don’t understand this. The people are the ONLY watchdog for our schools. Because they don’t know this, they’ve let our schools - democracy’s foundation - implode.
Not all horrible things make us helpless. Not learning what you can do about it is what makes people helpless. That’s why reading and learning is so important.
They’re like spiders building webs of “I can do whatever I want to trap you.” They can only trap you if you let their cruelty immobilize you.
Spread the word and take over our schools by having a group of four that sticks together on democracy. Don’t worry if you were a bad student, if you have no child in your school, or if you’re old or young. Read my book A Graver Danger and you’ll understand education better than most of the people working in our schools. You’ll be a hero.
My book explains how to end school shootings. I doubt there’s a more popular issue to run on.
But do it with three others so you control the vote. Alone, they’ll eat you alive the way they do teachers so they can turn them into zombies. You must do this in a solid group!
Since fascists own the guardrails now, we must
spread this truth so we can plant the flag of democracy all over this country and have power that’s ours.
Instead of focusing on who’s next, we must build democracy’s power one school district at a time.
Bottom line it’s all about power. We must not let them bury us in fear and hopelessness. We must and can build our power.
As you watch so many kneel in fear thinking they can’t do that to me, I’m not afraid, keep in mind that hopelessness is their tool for you. Their plan is bury us all one way or another. The solution is be proactive. Do something.
We need a grass roots get on school boards movement. Get one going in your district; even if you can’t run, you can help make it happen