Autocracy Watch: Lawfully and non-violently withholding our consent for the attack on America’s governmental fabric

The Situation on Friday,  from Lawfare, urged the impeachment of Judge Emil Bove as soon as a majority in the House of Representatives exists to do it.

Today, my social media feeds are an incoherent melange of stories, some related to one another, some not, some important and meaningful, some emphatically neither. There are tariffs; there’s jobs data and resulting personnel actions; there’s a bit of Sydney Sweeney—of whose good jeans I have now heard; there are Texas Democrats fleeing their state; there are non-Texas Democrats pretending they are up to retaliating against Texas Republicans over redistricting. There’s famine in Gaza. And there’s still a bit of Jeffrey Epstein hanging around.

All of which is to say that it’s a good time to ignore the news and to return to the subject of non-cooperation with The Situation—a matter which I treated back at the beginning of March when I declared that “I don’t know about you, but I am not interested in cooperating any more.”

My point in that column was that we should all figure out ways, lawfully and non-violently, to slow things down, to make society work a little less efficiently, to withhold our consent for the attack on America’s governmental fabric.

I have spent a lot of time since writing this column thinking about what mass non-cooperation with The Situation looks like in practice, and I have been moved that others have gotten in touch with their own thoughts and ideas on the subject. Excellent experiments have taken place.

I have also been reading on the subject and thinking about it conceptually, trying to envision mass action based on highly-distributed forms of non-cooperation that are not destructive, not violent, yet are also more than just holding signs and chanting things. 

I have to say, after studying the problem for a few months, I have not yet come up with a magic bullet.

Let’s consider the pros and cons of a few different forms of non-cooperation:

Denying a quorum to the Texas legislature seems like an excellent form of non-cooperation. It will slow down redistricting in the Lone Star State. It gets a lot of attention. It may spur other actions. And it stands for a larger form of non-cooperation, which others may take up: that is, non-participation in official actions that may require one’s participation to take place at all. It’s great—as far as it goes.

The trouble is that most of us aren’t legislators and thus can’t band together with a few dozen of our colleagues to collectively shut down institutions from which The Situation demands anti-democratic action.

Most of us aren’t in a position to operationalize this particular form of non-cooperation—which is to say that it’s not scalable and can’t be done in a distributed fashion.

Here’s one that can be done in a more distributed fashion: I have exactly no intention of cooperating with ICE in its current roundup of undocumented aliens—and neither, it seems, do a lot of other people, both citizens and officials. What’s more, I would have no hesitation about filming any ICE raid which I might happen to witness and making that public—as many others are doing. 

The non-cooperation of civilian bystanders with these law enforcement activities—some by activists and some by people who just happened to be present—has been a salutary thing, raising a lot of awareness of what “mass deportation” really means. These policies have become increasingly unpopular as more and more people have seen them in action. As long as people are careful not to do more than express their views, take pictures, and film things—not, that is, to dox people or to interfere physically with lawful activity—it strikes me as a constructive form of non-cooperation with a dangerous policy. 

But again, there are limits—and risks to personal safety and liberty. As we’ve all seen, it’s not going to stop what ICE is doing. It’s not going to shame members of Congress into refusing to balloon ICE’s funding. And the administration is actively proud of these videos. It stages this sort of brutality and makes ads out of its own videos.

So again, useful, but not a silver dagger.

Here’s a third area of non-cooperation, one which hits close to home for me: For the first time in my life, there are whole categories of government actions in my field with which I will not assist and upon which I will not advise.

Only a few months ago, I was proud to serve on an advisory board convened by DHS on intelligence matters. I would not serve on such a board today. Similarly, I would not assist on or consult with NSA, FBI, the Defense Department, or the Justice Department on policy matters—all of which I have done proudly in the past under administrations of both parties. It’s not that I don't think that career officials in all of those areas are struggling with hard questions. They are. It’s that I don’t trust the leadership of these agencies to act in an apolitical fashion any more—even, perhaps especially, on national security matters. I don’t trust that my advice will be used for the benefit of the country, rather than for the benefit of The Situation. So I will not cooperate. I will not participate. And in that judgment, I am certainly not alone.

The trouble with this form of non-cooperation is that it is a bit bespoke—precious, even. Pam Bondi and Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard don’t want my advice anyway, so announcing that I won’t show up to a party to which I haven’t been invited is striking a bit of a pose. And that’s true even if to the limited extent my point scales. When I say I’m not alone, after all, what I mean is that there are a few hundred, maybe a few thousand people, who are self-consciously not participating in helping the executive branch with national security work. I imagine that there are a bunch more in other fields—fields like public health and climate science. And as the Lord High Executioner might put it, “they’ll none of them be missed.”

Trumpism is, at its core, a war on elites and expertise, so a small handful of elites declaring that they are withholding their expertise is very far from a pressure point; it is threatening The Situation with a good time.

None of this is to criticize the people who are taking these approaches. They all have a place in the mood of non-cooperation that an active citizenry should be contemplating these days.

There may be no single mass act of non-cooperation that everyone can participate in, that is more than momentary, and that paralyzes The Situation. It may be that diversity of non-cooperation is itself an essential part of the mood.

But I keep thinking about it. I keep stewing on it. 

“In this country,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in an essay published in 1844, “we are very vain of our political institutions, which are singular in this, that they sprung, within the memory of living men, from the character and condition of the people, which they still express with sufficient fidelity, — and we ostentatiously prefer them to any other in history.” Emerson was contemptuous of the preference: “But our institutions, though in coincidence with the spirit of the age, have not any exemption from the practical defects which have discredited other forms. Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well.”

Eventually, every actual state is corrupt—and the corruption of this one is happening before our eyes. The search for ways to undermine that corruption, to withhold consent, to not participate in it and to not cooperate with it, to not obey its laws too too well, strikes me as an essential part of maintaining goodness.

The Situation continues tomorrow.

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Tennessee executed man who killed girlfriend and two daughters

 The 28th Execution of 2025

A man convicted of killing his girlfriend and her two young daughters in the 1980s said he was “hurting so bad” while he was given a lethal injection on August 5, 2025 in Tennessee, where authorities had refused to deactivate his implanted defibrillator despite claims it might cause unnecessary, painful shocks as the drugs were administered, reported The Associated Press.

Black’s attorney said they will review data kept by the device as part of an autopsy.

Black died at 10:43 a.m., prison officials said. It was about 10 minutes after the execution started and Black talked about being in pain.

Asked for any last words, he replied, “No sir.”

Black looked around the room as the execution started, lifting his head off the gurney multiple times, and could be heard sighing and breathing heavily. All seven media witnesses to the execution agreed he appeared to be in discomfort. Throughout the execution, a spiritual adviser prayed and sang over Black, at one point touching his face.

“Oh, it’s hurting so bad,” Black said, as he lay with his hands and chest restrained to the gurney, a sheet covering up past his lower half, and an IV line in his arm.

“I’m so sorry. Just listen to my voice,” the adviser responded.

Black was executed after a back-and-forth in court over whether officials would need to turn off his implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, or ICD. Black, 69, was in a wheelchair, suffering from dementia, brain damage, kidney failure, congestive heart failure and other conditions, his attorneys have said.

The nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center said it’s unaware of any other cases with similar claims to Black’s about ICDs or pacemakers. Black’s attorneys said they haven’t found a comparable case, either.

Black killed his girlfriend and her 2 daughters

Black was convicted in the 1988 shooting deaths of his girlfriend Angela Clay, 29, and her two daughters, Latoya Clay, 9, and Lakeisha Clay, 6. Prosecutors said he was in a jealous rage when he shot the three at their home. At the time, Black was on work-release while serving time for shooting Clay’s estranged husband.

Clay’s sister said Black will now face a higher power.

“His family is now going through the same thing we went through 37 years ago. I can’t say I’m sorry because we never got an apology,” Linette Bell, Angela Clay’s sister, said in a statement read by a victim’s advocate after the execution.

Black’s lawyer said the execution was shameful.

“Today, the state of Tennessee killed a gentle, kind, fragile, intellectually disabled man in a violation of the laws of our country simply because they could,” attorney Kelley Henry said.

The legal fight over Black’s defibrillator

In mid-July, a trial court judge agreed with Black’s attorneys that officials must have the defibrillator deactivated to avert the risk that it could cause unnecessary pain and prolong the execution. But Tennessee’s Supreme Court overturned that decision Thursday, saying the other judge lacked authority to order the change.

The state disputed that the lethal injection would cause Black’s defibrillator to shock him and said he wouldn’t feel them regardless.

Henry said Black’s defense team will carefully review autopsy results, EKG data from Black and information from the defibrillator to determine what exactly happened during the execution. The lethal injection protocol is still being challenged in court.

She said she was especially concerned about his head movement and complaints of pain because the massive dose of pentobarbital used to kill inmates is supposed to rapidly leave them unconscious.

“The fact that he was able to raise his head several times and express pain tells you that the pentobarbital was not acting the way the state’s experts claim it acts,” Henry said.

Prison officials did not comment on witnesses and Black’s attorney saying he appeared conscious or his complaints of pain.

It was Tennessee’s second execution since May, after a pause for five years, first because of COVID-19 and then because of missteps by state corrections officials.

Twenty-eight men have died by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S., and nine other people are scheduled to be put to death in seven states during the remainder of 2025. The number of executions this year exceeds the 25 carried out last year and in 2018. It is the highest total since 2015, when 28 people were put to death.

Black’s condition

Black had an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, which is a small, battery-powered electronic device that is surgically implanted in the chest. It served as a pacemaker and an emergency defibrillator. Black’s attorneys have said a doctor can send it a deactivation command without surgery.

The legal case also spurred a reminder that most medical professionals consider participation in executions a violation of health care ethics.

Intellectual disability claim

In recent years, Black’s legal team has unsuccessfully tried to get a new hearing about an intellectual disability they say he’s exhibited since childhood. People with intellectual disabilities are constitutionally barred from execution. 

His attorneys have said that if they had delayed a prior attempt to seek his intellectual disability claim, he would have been spared under a 2021 state law. That is because the 2021 law denies a hearing to people on death row who have already filed a similar request and a court has ruled on it “on the merits.”

A judge denied Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk’s attempt to get Black a new hearing. Funk focused on input from an expert for the state in 2004 who determined back then that Black didn’t meet the criteria for what was then called “mental retardation.” But she concluded that Black met the new law’s criteria for a diagnosis of intellectual disability.

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CREATORS: The Tragic Abduction and Murder of Etan Patz is Back in the News

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
August 5, 2025

In 1979, a 6-year-old boy disappeared on his way to his Manhattan school bus stop. Etan Patz's disappearance changed the way people parent, launching the missing and exploited children's movement. Patz was never found.

Thirty-three years later, Pedro Hernandez was arrested and charged by the Manhattan district attorney's office with second-degree murder and first-degree kidnapping.

According to The New York Times, "Hernandez was living in New Jersey when a relative told authorities that he suspected him of killing Etan. Prosecutors said that Mr. Hernandez had a history of sexually abusing a family member, drug use and domestic violence."

This arrest was high-profile. As one of the nation's most infamous child abductions, with an arrest decades after the crime, one would think the police would want to make sure everything was done by the book. Not in New York City.

The police elicited a confession from Hernandez after seven hours of questioning. That isn't particularly unusual, but the confession came before he was administered his Miranda warnings. After he confessed, he was mirandized by the police who had Hernandez repeat his confession on tape, according to court filings.

The New York Times reported, Hernandez's first trial in 2015 ended with a hung jury after 18 days of deliberation. The lone holdout said that his primary reason had been Hernandez's initial confession, which to the juror seemed "coerced."

In 2017, a second jury convicted Hernandez on the ninth day of deliberations. The jury foreman later remarked that "deliberations were difficult."

Last month, a federal court granted Hernandez a new trial.

A quarter-century after Patz disappeared, Americans were presented with a list of six crimes that could happen in their local communities. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found that Americans expressed the greatest concern for their children being abducted and sexually molested.

Child abductions by strangers have consistently remained a concern for parents. Despite the more than 30,000 juveniles who are reported missing every year to the National Crime Information Center, it is rare for children to be abducted by strangers. Roughly 182 children were kidnapped by people outside their families in 2019, the latest year for which data is available, according to a study published in 2022 by the Department of Justice.

A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found nearly one-in-three U.S. parents with children younger than 18 say they are extremely or very worried about their children being abducted.

Etan's disappearance, the murders of Adam Walsh, Polly Klaas and JonBenet Ramsey ushered in, and fueled, an era of hyper-vigilance for parents. Parents' irrational fear of stranger danger changed the way parents care for their children, and the way children interact with adults and their peers for that matter. Politicians jumped on the stranger danger bandwagon. Starting with former President Ronald Reagan proclaiming the day Etan Patz disappeared, May 25, as National Missing Children's Day, politicians have enacted more and more draconian laws to deal with the sexual abuse and exploitation of children.

Hernandez's arrest and conviction for killing Etan should have provided some closure for a case that had extraordinary implications. His new trial will open wounds festering for 46 years. The upheaval could have been avoided.

Hernandez was arrested and tried in a cold case based on flimsy evidence devoid of any forensic evidence. Then investigators interviewed Hernandez without advising him of his rights. The police then read him his rights and interviewed him a second time, getting a second taped confession. This tactic flew in the face of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2004.

The Court, in a 5-4 decision, found the second confession inadmissible, particularly when the police strategy was to intentionally undermine the effectiveness of the Miranda warnings. That decision is the key to Hernandez's successful appeal and Etan Patz being back in the news.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino

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Senate confirms Fox News host as U.S. Attorney for DC

Jeannine Pirro has been among the most prominent and fiercest allies of Trump, including denying the outcome of the 2020 election

The U.S. Senate voted to confirm former Fox News host and prosecutor Jeanine Pirro as U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., reported NBC News.

The vote was along party lines, 50-45, with Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Roger Wicker, R-Miss., Tim Scott, R-S.C., Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., not voting.

Pirro had been serving as interim U.S. attorney for D.C. since May, after Trump appointed her to replace conservative activist Ed Martin as the top federal prosecutor in Washington.

In a Truth Social post announcing Pirro’s appointment, Trump lauded the former prosecutor as a “powerful crusader for victims of crime" and "incredibly well qualified for the position."

Pirro has been among the most prominent and fiercest allies of Trump, previously using her platform as a host of two Fox News programs to push conspiracy theories about voting in the aftermath of Trump's 2020 election loss. She was cited in a defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems for her role spreading election disinformation. Fox News ultimately reached a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion in 2023.

Pirro previously served as an assistant district attorney for Westchester County, New York, ultimately becoming the first woman elected to serve as the Westchester County district attorney. During her tenure, Pirro started the first domestic violence unit in a prosecutor's office, an accomplishment Trump cited in his decision to appoint her as a U.S. attorney.

Following her judicial career, Pirro in 2005 launched an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination for Senate in New York, aiming to challenge then-incumbent Hillary Clinton. Soon after, she launched a campaign for New York attorney general, but the effort was ultimately derailed by a federal probe over a plot by Pirro to record her then-husband, Albert Pirro, who she suspected was having an affair.

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Trump administration has cut more than half of gun violence prevention programs

The Trump administration has terminated more than half of all federal funding for gun violence prevention programs in the U.S., cutting $158 million in grants that had been directed to groups in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Baltimore, reported Reuters.

Of the 145 community violence intervention (CVI) grants totaling more than $300 million awarded through the U.S. Department of Justice, 69 grants were abruptly terminated, opens new tab in April, according to government data analyzed by Reuters.

The elimination of CVI programs is part of a broader rollback at the department's grant-issuing Office of Justice Programs, which terminated 365 grants valued at $811 million in April, impacting a range of public safety and victim services programs.

A DOJ official told Reuters the gun violence grants were eliminated because they "no longer effectuate the program's goals or agency's priorities." Thousands of Office of Justice Programs grants are under review, the official said, and are being evaluated, among other things, on how well they support law enforcement and combat violent crime.

The majority of CVI grants were originally funded through the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act and part of a push by former President Joe Biden to stem the rise of gun violence in America, including establishing the first White House Office for Gun Violence Prevention.

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Things can always be worse: Iranian authorities severed the fingers of three men convicted of theft

Iranian authorities severed the fingers of three men convicted of theft, said Human Rights Watch (HRW) as reported by Jurist-News. HRW Iran researcher Bahar Saba denounced the punishment, stating, “Amputation is torture, plain and simple. Yet Iran persists in carrying out cruel and inhuman punishments that fly in the face of its human rights obligations.”

Mehdi Shahivand, Mehdi Sharafian and Hadi Rostami were detained in August 2017 following accusations that they had burglarized several houses and robbed safes. The court sentenced all of the individuals to amputations of four fingers of their right hands, leaving only the palm and the thumb. In April of 2022, HRW stated that there was evidence that the trials were unjust:

Evidence strongly suggests that the trial was grossly unfair. According to case information review by Human Rights Watch and accounts of informed sources, the men did not have access to lawyers during the investigation phase and only saw a lawyer twice–once when they signed the retention documents and once during the court hearings. The men have also said that the authorities tortured and ill-treated them while in the custody of the police’s Investigation Unit (Agahi) in Urmia… beating and flogging them and suspending them from their hands and wrists.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner in June 2022 called on authorities to cancel the planned amputations of these three men, along with five others. The UN reported that, per Iranian civil society organizations, at least 237 people who were “mostly from poorer segments of society” were sentenced to amputations between January 2000 and September 2020, with sentences being carried out in at least 129 cases.

Hand amputation is grounded in Article 278 of the Islamic Penal Code, which permits this type of punishment for “Hudud crimes” such as theft, adultery, slander and drinking alcohol. Iran’s Human Rights Monitor detailed some of the history of amputation in Iran, emphasizing that despite “widespread international condemnation, Iranian authorities have continued to enforce this brutal punishment beyond 2020.” Critics maintain that this penalty is a stark violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). While Iran has ratified the ICCPR, it has not signed or ratified the CAT. The ICCPR explicitly mandates that “[n]o one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Iran has recently been subjected to strict international scrutiny due to record executions and other purported violations of international law.

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Florida carries out state's 9th execution of 2025

 The 27th Execution of 2025

A man convicted of the 1994 killings of his wife and their two children became the ninth person put to death in Florida this year, his death on July 31, 2025 marking a state record for a single-year execution total since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the death penalty decades ago, reported The Associated Press.

Edward Zakrzewski, 60, was pronounced dead at 6:12 p.m. following a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. After the return of the U.S. death penalty in 1976, Florida carried out a high of eight executions in 2014, a one-year total only matched this year with a mid-July execution and now exceeded.

“I want to thank the good people of the Sunshine State for killing me in the most cold, calculated, clean, humane, efficient way possible. I have no complaint,” Zakrzewski said after the curtain to the death chamber went up shortly after 6 p.m.

He was lying on a gurney covered with a white sheet. Before the drugs began flowing, he also quoted from a poem as 14 witnesses looked on, plus media reporters and prison staff.

Once the drugs were administered, Zakrzewski began breathing deeply, surrounded by three Corrections Department staffers in dark suits. One of them shook Zakrzewski by the shoulders and shouted his name. There was no reaction, and then he was still.

Florida this year has carried out more executions than any other state, while Texas and South Carolina are tied for second with four each. A 10th execution is scheduled in Florida on Aug. 19 and an 11th on Aug. 28 under death warrants signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

No members of the victims’ family spoke with reporters after Thursday’s execution.

Twenty-seven men had died by court-ordered execution so far this year in the U.S., while nine other people are set to be put to death in seven states during the rest of 2025. Florida also was the last state to execute someone, giving Michael Bernard Bell a lethal injection on July 15.

Zakrzewski was sentenced to die for the June 9, 1994, killings of his 34-year-old wife Sylvia and their children Edward, 7, and Anna, 5, in the Florida Panhandle. Trial testimony showed he carried out the killings at their Okaloosa County home after his wife sought a divorce, and he had told others he would kill his family rather than allow that to happen.

The woman was attacked first with a crowbar and strangled with a rope, court testimony showed. Both children were killed with a machete, and Sylvia was also struck with the blade when Zakrzewski thought she had survived the previous assault, according to court records.

Zakrzewski’s lawyers filed numerous unsuccessful appeals over the years, including a final plea for a stay of execution that the Supreme Court denied on Wednesday.

On Thursday morning, Zakrzewski awoke at 5:15 a.m. and later in the day had a meal that included fried pork chops, root beer and ice cream, state Department of Corrections spokesman Paul Walker said. He said Zakrzewski had one visitor and “remained compliant” as his execution time neared.

Kayle Bates, who was convicted of abducting a woman from an insurance office and killing her in 1982, is next scheduled to be executed in Florida on Aug. 19. DeSantis also has signed a death warrant setting an Aug. 28 execution date for Curtis Windom, who was convicted of killing three people in the Orlando area in 1992.

Florida uses a three-drug cocktail for its lethal injection: a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the state Department of Corrections.

Before Thursday’s execution, opponents pointed to Zakrzewski’s military service as an Air Force veteran and the fact that a jury voted 7-5 to recommend his execution, barely a majority of the panel. They noted that under current state law, he could not have received the death penalty with a split jury vote.

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