{"id":5550,"date":"2026-08-30T14:34:51","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T14:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=5550"},"modified":"2026-08-30T14:34:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T14:34:51","slug":"the-paralyzing-intel-report-that-obliterated-my-peace-of-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=5550","title":{"rendered":"The paralyzing intel report that obliterated my peace of mind"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Have you ever woken in the morning steeped in a sense of nonspecific dread? It\u2019s undefined, and even though you have no idea what it\u2019s about, it\u2019s palpable. You recognize that it\u2019s just a feeling, not a fact, yet the heaviness presses. You scan the night\u2019s memories for a bad dream\u2026 nothing in jackboots chased you through a field, the mean girls didn\u2019t take your coat. <\/p>\n

Read more Lindsey Graham\u2019s final warning reveals something dark about Trump\u2019s America<\/a><\/p>\n

With dreams coming up empty, you look around. Did your psyche manage to bury something horrific, just to give you the mercy of sleep? Did yesterday bring a terminal illness diagnosis? An IRS audit? <\/p>\n

No. And yet. <\/p>\n

That foreboding sense, ominous and ill-defined, persists.<\/p>\n

Writing days don\u2019t always go as planned<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s how I woke up one day last week: Marinating in apprehension worthy of a straightjacket. It was a planned writing day, my favorite, and I had it all laid out: coffee, then pickleball, then up to the rooftop sofa to write under a tattered pergola. The morning dreads smashed that.<\/p>\n

Scanning for the source of what woke me up scared for the world, I remembered. Of course. It was something I stupidly read before bed the night before. It was a deep dive and counterterrorism efforts. Trump has systematically removed<\/u> U.S. counterterrorism and counterintelligence assets, the professionals tracking communications and operations of adversarial governments and terrorist cells planning bombs, manipulating U.S. politics, and sowing dangerous division, and reassigned them instead to monitor Trump\u2019s domestic political adversaries<\/u>.<\/p>\n

Trump gutted foreign risk monitoring functions under the DOJ, the FBI, and DHS<\/u>, while deliberately elevating terrorism risks those divisions were created to track. The threat environment from Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Mexico, and Cuba<\/u> is now at an all-time high<\/u>, and we have almost no detection system in place. <\/p>\n

Given the decimation of U.S. counterintelligence and counterterrorism agencies, it\u2019s hard to avoid concluding that Trump wants <\/em><\/em>to trigger another 9\/11<\/u>. For an administration deliberately accelerating climate<\/u> change as fires and storms rage, deliberately cutting access to life-saving therapies<\/u> while spreading contagious disease<\/u>, and deliberately wrecking peace-keeping alliances<\/u> while starting wars, it tracks that Trump would deliberately foment a terrorist attack. He\u2019s been threatening to declare<\/u> a national emergency, cancel elections<\/u>, and invade democratic-run states<\/u>; a massive terrorist attack on U.S. soil would give the perfect cover for all three.<\/p>\n

The daunting road ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n

Seeing how we got to this point, an oligarchs\u2019 coup<\/u> by any other name, isn\u2019t hard. It\u2019s fairly linear, starting with Reagan\u2019s trickle down fraud<\/u> that only helped the rich<\/u>, moving through Republicans\u2019 removal of accuracy requirements in the news<\/u>, and landing on Citizens United in 2010. Compared to that clarity, the map to get back is byzantine. <\/p>\n

I fear too many Americans are tuning out, that Steve Bannon\u2019s s— on the wall strategy<\/u> is working. Too many still don\u2019t realize that our divide is not between right and left, but between the top 1% and everyone else. Trump\u2019s oligarchs, now in control of the media, are keeping the nation enmeshed in orchestrated culture wars so that they can eliminate regulations and tax obligations, building unprecedented wealth for themselves<\/u> in the process. <\/p>\n

It hurts to admit that I\u2019m having a challenge of faith- faith that the 91 million voters who stayed home in 2024, even after seeing J6<\/u>, will vote this time. If Trump\u2019s attack on the U.S. capital, complete with a noose for the Vice President<\/u>, didn\u2019t move people to vote, what the hell will?<\/p>\n

Read more Tea partier warns Republicans catching \u2018all the Trump\u2019 they never wanted<\/a><\/p>\n

Eckhardt Tolle talks about a \u2018pain body<\/u>,\u2019 a negative emotion that spreads itself to other hosts like a contagion. I don\u2019t want to facilitate the transfer or increase of negativity by writing about it. But, despite my best efforts, the immense sadness lingers. It feels like grief, not just for my country, not just for people now suffering a lack of food<\/u> and healthcare<\/u> under this moron, not just for immiserated people all over the world for whom America was a beacon of hope, now extinguished. But it\u2019s also the loss of my own foundational assumption: all my life I\u2019d always assumed that enough Americans recognized the rarity of what we had, the basics of why<\/em><\/em> our constitution says what it says, that we\u2019d never allow anyone to seriously threaten our system<\/u>. <\/p>\n

But now, watching the oligarchs\u2019 spawn<\/u>, a corrupt idiot who rules by Fox News headlines, succeed in destroying the democratic rule of law<\/u>, I\u2019m not so sure.<\/p>\n

One week later<\/strong><\/p>\n

Outside of legal work, I haven\u2019t written anything since that anxiety-ridden morning. It was clearly time to look away for a week or two. Touch grass, read fluffy stuff, play more pickleball. Life threatens to change in an instant, and if Trump declares a midterm-seizing emergency, enabled by a Supreme Court clearly in on the coup, <\/u>things could happen very quickly. Me or not me, those jackboots are already chasing<\/u>.<\/p>\n

Most Americans know what\u2019s happening, but the Sinclair\/Fox News cohort\u201435% or so<\/u>\u2014 is not only oblivious to Trump\u2019s criminality and incompetence, they are likely to stay that way. Right wing media<\/u> will make sure they keep voting against their own interests until there\u2019s nothing left, including civil liberties. <\/p>\n

What needs to be done to save democracy is straightforward, but how to do it, not so much. Getting money out of politics<\/u>, returning accuracy<\/u> to the news, and balancing a corrupt Supreme Court<\/u> face such a high wall of opposition I\u2019m not sure we can scale it. Corporate wrongdoers<\/u> and the uber rich are profiting<\/u> so wildly from those structural flaws\u2014which is why they built them<\/u>\u2014I\u2019m not sure anything short of a civil war will pry their fingers off them. <\/p>\n

And so, instead of snark, insights, or legal analysis, all I can offer readers today is naked honesty: I fear for my country. On a good day, I see the risks as surmountable. Today is not a good day.<\/p>\n

Sabrina Haake is a political analyst and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Trump ally confesses \u2018Trump fatigue\u2019 gloom in brutal leaked audio<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever woken in the morning steeped in a sense of nonspecific dread? It\u2019s undefined, and even though you have no idea what it\u2019s about, it\u2019s palpable. You recognize that it\u2019s just a feeling, not a fact, yet the heaviness presses. You scan the night\u2019s memories for a bad dream\u2026 nothing in jackbo…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nThe paralyzing intel report that obliterated my peace of mind - Next Address America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nextaddressamerica.com\/?p=5550\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The paralyzing intel report that obliterated my peace of mind - Next Address America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Have you ever woken in the morning steeped in a sense of nonspecific dread? 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