A lawyer who named Mein Kampf his favorite book of 2013, and praised Hitler’s grasp of propaganda, has now signed a brief asking the courts to defer to the President’s personal judgment that journalists are national security threats.
Hitler’s 1933 state labeled someone an enemy by judgment of their views, and treated their speech as a threat to the security of the nation.
First were political opponents of Hitler. That meant Communists and Social Democrats filled Dachau within two months of him seizing power.
The regime then extended it to Jews and a growing list of others. The list grew as officials improvised toward whatever they understood Hitler wanted, under legal instruments that licensed action outside the ordinary law. The mechanism always stayed the same.
The Trump administration is using the same mechanism today. His Justice Department brief filed September 22 in CNN v. Trump (D.D.C. No. 1:26-cv-03287) applies it to the press.
The brief and the Trump administration’s own statements line up with Hitler’s regime, row by row.
| 1933 | 2026 |
|---|---|
| Mein Kampf I/10: the state must ignore the “Geflunker einer sogenannten Pressefreiheit” (humbug of so-called press freedom). | DOJ brief: White House access is “a privilege.” Asks the court to overrule Sherrill v. Knight. |
| Mein Kampf I/10: the state must shield the people from bad or malicious “educators” and watch the press most closely. | DOJ brief: the President decides who is a “bona fide” journalist. |
| Mein Kampf I/10: press freedom means “straflose Volksbelügung und Volksvergiftung” (unpunished lying to and poisoning of the people). | White House letters: “trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security.” Trump: fake news has “grown like Cancer.” |
| Goebbels, introducing the Schriftleitergesetz: he intends to remain the press’s “warm-hearted protector.” | Trump: “not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish.” |
| Hitler: Social Democrats as Novemberverbrecher, the traitors who stabbed the army in the back. | Trump on Democratic lawmakers: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.” |
| Mein Kampf I/10: take the press out of the hands of “Volksfremden und Volksfeinden” (aliens and enemies of the people). | NSPM-7: “extremism on migration, race, and gender” as a common thread of domestic terrorism. |
| Reichstag Fire Decree, “zum Schutz von Volk und Staat”: press freedom suspended. | DOJ brief: courts should defer to the President’s “personal judgment of national security considerations.” |
A legal instrument is paired with a category the state defines. The 2026 list covers immigrants, “extremism” on gender, Democratic lawmakers accused of sedition, and now three news organizations. The mechanism accepts any label.
Michael Velchik, the Justice Department lawyer who signed the CNN ban brief, submitted a Harvard Latin paper written from Hitler’s perspective in 2011, according to three people in the department. And last year he argued the absurd Harvard funding case, claiming it was the fight against antisemitism.
Trump has already announced the next entry for his Hitler-era targeting machine: “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”