I’m usually glued to the TV when a president, sitting justices, and members of Congress come together in one room — separate branches in one hallowed space, a time capsule played forward from men in powdered wigs.
The Haake Take
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
By now everyone reading this knows that Stephen Colbert was facing legal repercussions if he aired his interview with James Talarico on Monday’s Late Show. It’s also clear that Trump’s FCC is suddenly, just in time for the midterms, targeting left-leaning talk shows under the “equal time” rule, a rule that hasn’t applied to talk shows since 1959.
Parts of the winter world are frozen. Europe, the U.S. Midwest, and even Southern states are enduring the worst cold in years as the North Pole rapidly melts, pushing frigid Arctic air through a weakened polar vortex into non-Arctic regions.
Last week, I watched the Attorney General of the United States sneer at the rule of law and felt sick. I’ve been a federal trial lawyer for decades, and there was the titular head of American law defecating on it to applause from Fox News, who called Bondi’s performance “entertaining.”
Despite repeated judicial rulings rejecting Trump’s 2020 election claims, he persists. Proving that his ego burned through his prefrontal cortex and seared his last shard of reasoning capacity, after his attempt to extort Minnesota voter rolls failed, Trump’s FBI raided an election center in Georgia and seized them directly. Both acts were preludes to a dangerous fantasy, one that ends in “taking over” national elections.
The Fourth Amendment protects you from tyranny. It protects you from government agents busting down your door without probable cause. It says you are secure in your home “against unreasonable searches and seizures,” which means no warrants shall issue without “probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation.”
When former CNN news anchor Don Lemon filmed a marathon seven-hour protest at a Minneapolis church last week, Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s assistant AG, publicly threatened him: “You [Lemon] are on notice! A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws! Nor does the First Amendment protect your pseudo journalism of disrupting a prayer service.”
The Trump administration is trying to take the world back, not just to the Dark Ages when people were tortured to death for their beliefs, but to the Stone Age when Neanderthals with the heaviest clubs held the most power. Neanderthals commandeered fecund hunting grounds from weaker neighbors because they could. But when they came up against more organized, ordered, and civilized Homo Sapiens, they became extinct.
In Minneapolis, Minnesota, a masked ICE agent shot and killed another person, the 14th ICE shooting under Trump to date.
On November 26, 2025, in a quiet northern suburb of Hong Kong, a fire broke out in the middle of the day. The fire was unusual in intensity and duration, consuming seven of eight high rise towers. Despite the quick response of well-equipped fire trucks, the blaze spread quickly and burned for more than 43 hours.
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