An Escalation In Narrative Warfare

Caroline Leavitt Press Briefings This Week

Summary of Key Information 

Caroline Leavitt, in her official capacity as White House Press Secretary, delivered a highly charged briefing that: 

• Defended the defiance of SCOTUS orders in the Abrego Garcia deportation.
• Promoted the administration’s partnership with Nayib Bukele. 
• Described mass deportations—including to foreign prisons—as “counterterrorism.” 
• Explicitly framed Democrats and the press as sympathetic to terrorists and gang members. 
• Justified the $2B defunding of Harvard over “illegal antisemitism” using a twisted interpretation of Title VI. 
• Floated removal of tax-exempt status from universities. 
• Discussed possible deportation of U.S. citizens to El Salvador. 
• Defended Trump’s directive to DOJ to investigate a political opponent (Chris Krebs). 
• Implied selective compliance with court orders is legal if justified by “national security.” 
• Ended with an announcement that Trump will sign a memo barring “ineligible aliens” from Social Security benefits. 

Autocratization Analysis 

Judicial Defiance & Legal Reframing 

• Quote: “We are complying with all court orders.” 
• Reality: Trump defied a 9-0 SCOTUS ruling on deportation. 
• Tactic: Rebranding noncompliance as legal interpretation, not obstruction.
• Echoes Orbán’s tactic of slowly nullifying constitutional oversight through alternative legal narratives. 

Loyalty Economy in Law Enforcement

• ICE operations are being militarized and glorified, presented as a moral crusade rather than law enforcement. 
• Deportations are justified with cherry-picked examples of violent crime, crafting a dehumanizing narrative to justify extrajudicial removals. 

Propaganda Framing of Universities as Internal Enemies 

• Harvard = Antisemitic = Illegal = Defunded 
• This echoes Erdoğan’s academic purges, where “terrorism” became synonymous with ideological nonconformity. 
• Title VI is weaponized to suppress dissent and create a precedent for broader federal funding purges.

Exporting the Carceral State 

• The administration is actively discussing sending American citizens to Bukele’s prisons. 
• This is historically unprecedented in modern U.S. governance and mirrors Cold War era “disappearance” tactics used by Latin American dictatorships with U.S. backing. 

Institutional Capture 

• DOJ orders against Chris Krebs represent a direct abuse of prosecutorial power for personal vendettas. 
• Framing it as a lawful executive order shows the normalization of selective prosecution as a tool of the state. 

Narrative Manipulation and Media Delegitimization 

• The new “media seat” is occupied by far-right outlet Washington Reporter, signaling an Orban-style reshaping of the press corps. 
• Legacy journalists are mocked and dismissed for asking about legal violations. 
• Language is militarized: “terrorists,” “illegal alien criminals,” “Democrat Party defenders of MS-13.”

Historical Parallels 

• Hungary (Orbán): Suppression of independent universities, judiciary disempowerment, court-defying executive orders. 
• Turkey (Erdoğan): Framing civil institutions like universities as enemies of the state, deporting critics. 
• El Salvador (Bukele): Carceral “mega-prison” expansion, use of terrorism framing to disappear and imprison without due process. 
• Nazi Germany (1933–34): Judicial power neutralized under the guise of national security. Universities purged and reoriented toward regime loyalty.

Future Implications 

• Deportation to foreign prisons becomes normalized. U.S. citizens and legal residents could be targeted next under a broadening terrorism narrative. 
• Academic institutions will be increasingly coerced into ideological compliance through financial blackmail and surveillance. 
• DOJ may become a prosecutorial weapon, especially targeting individuals tied to election integrity (e.g., Krebs). 
• Court rulings will be selectively followed. Legal precedent will be displaced by executive discretion.

How the Trump Administration Is Misusing Title VI 

Title VI has been a legal foundation of anti-discrimination enforcement for decades. It’s used to protect students of color, immigrants, disabled students, and others from systemic bias in education and health care. Without it, the federal government would have no leverage over institutions engaging in racist or discriminatory practices. Trump and Leavitt are inverting the logic of Title VI.

Here’s how: 

• They claim universities are violating Title VI by failing to crack down on speech and protest they label as anti-semitic. 
• In doing so, they’re reframing campus protest as “illegal discrimination”—a distortion of what Title VI is intended to protect. 
• The goal isn’t to protect Jewish students (many of whom are participating in these protests). The goal is to: 
• Defund ideological opposition, especially elite academic institutions.
• Install a federal oversight framework for campus speech and faculty control.
• Create a chilling effect where universities censor themselves to avoid losing funding. 

This is textbook authoritarian logic: Use civil rights law not to protect marginalized groups, but to discipline opposition institutions under the guise of civil rights. 

Historical Parallels 

• Orbán (Hungary) used anti-terror laws to shut down Central European University. 
• Erdoğan (Turkey) expelled or jailed thousands of academics after labeling them “terrorists.” 

In both cases, the justification was framed as national security or protecting minorities, but the goal was regime consolidation.

Trump Says He'd Like to Deport "The Worst of the Worst" U.S. Citizens

“We’re only talking about the most violent, repeat offenders. Rapists. Murderers. Nobody wants them in their community.”

Why this framing is dangerous

Authoritarian leaders always start with “the worst of the worst.” Hitler started with criminals and the disabled. Duterte in the Philippines started with drug dealers. Bukele started with MS-13, and then began imprisoning innocent people, teenagers, and activists with tattoos. 

Framing it this way manufactures public consent by appealing to fear and disgust. But once the mechanism exists, it expands rapidly.

Trump doesn’t define who counts as a ‘criminal’ 

• Is someone a “foreign terrorist” because they belong to a gang? Because they protested? Because they overstayed a visa? 
• Is someone a “rapist” based on conviction, allegation, suspicion, or just government designation? 

He doesn’t say. That ambiguity is strategic. 

He has already blurred the line between citizen and non-citizen

• Trump officials confirmed in this very press briefing that they are exploring deporting U.S. citizens. 
• That violates the 14th Amendment, but it’s framed as a legal question—a chilling echo of citizenship stripping used by regimes like Nazi Germany and contemporary India (under Modi). 

It builds infrastructure that can later be used on broader categories

Once the American public accepts that it’s okay to strip someone of their rights, send them abroad, and deny them due process, those same tools can be used against protesters, activists, journalists, and “disloyal” citizens. This is how regimes expand their control. 

Let’s look at this as a logic ladder to understand the threat in simple terms: 

• Step 1: “We’re just deporting murderers.” 
• Step 2: “We believe this person might be a rapist.” 
• Step 3: “They’re undocumented and accused of gang activity—close enough.” 
• Step 4: “They’ve been critical of the government and have a criminal record.” 
• Step 5: “They’re a threat to national values. We’re sending them to a prison abroad.”

Propaganda or Worse? 

This briefing in combination with Trump and Bukele’s disturbing meeting in the Oval Office Monday goes beyond propaganda. What we’re witnessing is governing doctrine being articulated through press ritual: 

• Construct moral absolutes (child rapists vs. patriotic Americans) 
• Blur legal definitions and institutional legitimacy 
• Use the press room as a performance space for domination

In Practice: The U.S. Has Now Crossed the Rubicon 

What’s happening now is: 

The Executive is treating the Judiciary as advisory. Trump has positioned himself above the law by making the Constitution functionally optional through strategic noncompliance. This is a soft coup tactic: maintaining the form of government while stripping it of binding power. 

Historical Parallels 

• Andrew Jackson famously said of a SCOTUS ruling: “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” 
• Hungary’s Orbán ignored judicial rulings by replacing or neutering courts and packing them with loyalists. Enforcement mechanisms evaporated. 
• Turkey’s Erdoğa did the same—keeping the illusion of rule of law but bypassing all court limits in practice. 

Who is harmed? 

• All branches of government lose legitimacy when judicial rulings are ignored. 
• Federal workers, civil servants, and vulnerable populations lose protection under the law. 
• The public loses the last check on executive authority. 

Who benefits? 

• Trump gains power through legal defiance without accountability. 
• His inner circle of loyalists—now embedded in the DOJ and federal agencies—gain autonomy to act without fear of legal reprisal. 
• This creates a parallel legal order based on loyalty, not law. 

Future Implications 

If this precedent sticks, judicial review is dead in practice—no matter how many rulings the Court issues. Trump will escalate the use of defiance as policy, conditioning the public to accept judicial nullification. We are entering an era of selective law enforcement, where laws apply only to the disloyal. 

Resistance Strategy: What Can Be Done? 

• Track and document defiance—build a public record for international human rights bodies and future prosecutions. 
• State and local resistance: Governors, mayors, and state courts can push back by refusing to implement federal directives that violate constitutional rights.
• Legal alliances must shift from assuming judicial supremacy to building enforcement redundancy (e.g. using state AGs, international courts, and whistleblower protections). 
• Narrative defense: Public discourse must reframe what’s happening—not as “Trump ignoring a ruling” but as an authoritarian regime defying constitutional governance.

Crossing the Rubicon: When a Leader Breaks a Rule That Was Never Meant To Be Broken

The Rubicon was a small river marking the boundary between Caesar’s military command and the Roman heartland. Roman law forbade generals from crossing it with troops—doing so was considered an act of war against the Republic. So when Caesar led his army across and reportedly said “Alea iacta est” (“The die is cast”), he knowingly shattered the illusion of constitutional order, and it triggered the collapse of the Roman Republic and started a civil war.

That’s what makes a Rubicon different from a mistake or overreach. It’s a conscious, public choice to say: “I don’t answer to the law anymore.”

If Trump's open defiance of the Supreme Count goes without consequence, that is our Rubicon.