Just after 2:08 this afternoon, the President of the United States of America finally broke. While seated behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, surrounded by almost a dozen of his most obedient yes-men, he lost all control. While being asked questions that he did not want to answer, he snapped, raising his voice and threatening the press. His first attack started with him seething as he said, “Wait! Wait! Quiet. Quiet! What’s wrong with you? Are you a sick person?” Then, while pointing directly at the same reporter’s face minutes later, he said, “NO! NO!... I don’t know who the hell you are, but you better be careful!!!” The reporter, Andrew Feinberg, later posted on social media: “I had told him exactly who I was not five minutes before this exchange.”
As ugly as his words were, as he once again turned on the press and verbally attacked a reporter, it was the announcement he had just made, in which he turned on the country, that was even more dangerous.
With Vice President JD Vance, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, Dr. Oz, Stephen Miller, and Nick Shirley, a little-known 24-year-old conservative instigator and influencer, all standing right behind him, the President of the United States of America presented what he called the Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program, which he attempted to describe as a tool to fight the made-up claim of rampant fraud having overtaken our country.
What it really is, and what it was created to do, is provide a new tool to turn Americans into informants who make claims and reports about their neighbors and others in their communities. And it comes complete with a financial incentive to reward them for accusing their neighbors of crimes of fraud, while also placing Donald Trump himself in the position of deciding whose reports get paid and who gets investigated.
Here is what Donald Trump said when he announced it: “Anybody that can prove that he turned somebody in, in other words, he or she, if you turn somebody in and you, let’s say, report and you find a billion dollars, we are giving a commission to that person of 1%.”
“All of those people that are willing to do the right thing and turn people in that they know where there’s been something that happened that they know all about, they’re going to become rich.”
Then he said this: “I will be the arbitrator of all of these decisions. In other words, I’ll determine whether or not the person is deserving.”
He continued: “It’ll be a binding arbitration. You’ll get your money immediately, but I’ll make the determination.”
Then he looked at the room and asked: “Does everybody trust me to do it? I promise. There’s nothing in this for me.”
When it was time for questions, a reporter asked him about the details and reminded him that there was already a mechanism to report crimes like this and be rewarded financially, the False Claims Act, which was enacted all the way back in 1863. This act already pays whistleblowers between 15 and 30 percent of the money that is recovered. Donald Trump’s reply was another non-answer. He said that his program was different because the numbers involved were bigger. When asked whether criminal charges would be required before someone received a payout, Donald Trump said, “I don’t think so.” Vance jumped in and confirmed that it wouldn’t require charges, because the administration’s intention with this program is to reward people when accusations lead to recovered money, not when those accusations result in criminal convictions. That means accusations do not have to be proven to have happened under the same standard of proof that courts use. They do not have to hold up in a courtroom or meet the standard required for a criminal conviction. The accusation might very well be enough, because it is already the punishment and another weapon this administration can use to punish dissent and keep people in line.
Donald Trump made it sound like the opportunities for reporting your own community members could be very lucrative. However, the DOJ’s own published rules state that rewards under the new program range from ten thousand to thirty thousand dollars. Trump told reporters today that there would be no such limit and that people could earn millions, yet the official rules describe a very different arrangement.
To make matters worse, he already has an enforcement division ready to act on all of these reports. With ICE still raiding American cities right now, these federal agents are deployed with the power to detain, arrest, and deport. But what Donald Trump did not have, until today, was a way to turn over 330 million Americans into their eyes and ears. That is what this program is really building, a police state where we all walk around in fear while a feeder network for Trump’s federal enforcement agency carries out Donald Trump’s worst abuses of power.
The horrors of how this could be used are even more concerning. Let’s say that a tip comes in about someone in Trump’s inner circle; he could simply dismiss it with no investigation or consequence. He even said as much in his own words, saying that he will personally determine who is “deserving” of the payouts, meaning that he could shield anyone he wants, without any oversight or public record.
He could also use it as retaliation. Say a tip came in or his administration fabricated one targeting a journalist, activist, political opponent, or anyone this administration views as an enemy. Donald Trump could use that accusation as a pretext to unleash the full weight of the federal government against them. The accusation doesn’t even have to be proven true to destroy someone’s life, drain their savings, terrorize their family, and send a message to everyone watching: this is what happens when you speak up.
Then there is the leverage this could provide to the Trump Regime. If someone is accused and Donald Trump quietly makes it go away, that person now owes him. He could create his own little mob-style protection racket, where the price of being left alone is absolute loyalty, and the threat of being blackmailed and having everything taken away always hangs over their heads.
The President could also try to use it to compensate January 6 defendants with federal funds earmarked for this program. He could, in essence, pay people he designates as “whistleblowers,” potentially rewarding loyalists under the guise of fraud bounties. If those decisions were made without independent verification, as he is proposing, or a meaningful appeals process, it could become another way to distribute government money as political favors.
Senator Bernie Sanders saw right through Donald Trump’s scheme, posting on social media: “That’s great, Mr. Trump. I’d like to report a theft. A man inside our government illegally spent nearly $22 million in taxpayer dollars on bogus campaign ads praising himself. He now resides on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Taxpayers want to know when they’ll get their money back.”
What makes this program especially cruel is that prices are up, and families are stretched past the breaking point. So when the President of the United States tells a struggling country that they can become rich by turning someone in, he is exploiting their suffering. They think about making rent, paying for groceries, and putting gas in the car. He is counting on desperate people doing desperate things, even sacrificing their neighbors and others in their communities for their own comfort and safety.
If we do not stop him, we will not recognize our country, and the entire world will be in increasing danger. History has seen this before; none of it is new. During the McCarthy years, the United States government maintained a network of paid informants who testified before congressional committees and in criminal trials. One man alone accused over 200 people of being Communists before eventually admitting that he had made it all up. By then, the damage was done, and thousands of Americans lost their jobs during the Red Scare because of accusations, not because they were convicted of a crime.
The Gestapo operated in much the same way. Many had imagined that Hitler’s secret police were a large surveillance apparatus, when it was actually a relatively small organization that let ordinary citizens do a lot of the work for it. They depended on neighbors reporting neighbors. Some who did this dirty reporting felt a calling to do so and acted out of ideology. But many just acted out of spite, jealousy, or personal grudges. There were also financial and social incentives that turned informing on others into a tool of self-advancement. Trump is now taking the worst parts of both of these and combining them into his own special brand of authoritarianism, using fear, intimidation, and cash payouts.
We know that Donald Trump needs us divided to complete his authoritarian takeover, so he is trying to get us to turn on each other. That has been his strategy from the very beginning. He isn’t doing this just for the sake of causing chaos, but because he knows that division can be a powerful tool for maintaining control. He wants us so busy fighting and fearing each other that we forget who actually did this to us: Donald Trump and his sycophants.
So it is going to be on us. Every single one of us, to remember who we are, not just as Americans but as human beings. To look out for each other and resist being driven into the darkness the President is trying to drag us into. We must refuse to let his cruelty win by making us cruel, too. We have to stand up and protect the people beside us, especially the ones who are being targeted for telling the truth, like the journalists in the Oval Office today.
People like Andrew Feinberg, who didn’t back down, who asked the hard questions that needed to be asked when most of the press corps stayed silent. That is what courage looks like right now. And courage is not free. It comes at a price.
With this latest round of attacks and threats to the First Amendment and against all of us speaking out and refusing to accept Trump’s takeover of our country, I want to thank you all again for supporting this work with your paid memberships. You are the reason I can do this every single night, keep it free, and never put it behind a paywall. I want the same support for as many other people as possible because we are going to need every voice out there willing to stand up during these very dark days. If you are able to, and it won’t cause any financial stress, please think beyond just my voice and consider your other favorite sources of news and information. Think about the other voices that are showing up with honesty and bravery. The reporters still asking real questions. The independent writers and journalists who are holding the line when legacy media is looking the other way. See if they have a paid subscription and subscribe.
We have three tests in front of us right now that will determine the future of our country and the world. Will we have free and fair elections? If we do, will the candidates we vote into office actually get seated? And do we still have a free press willing to tell us the truth? If any one of those falls, the road ahead for this country gets very dark, very fast. The things we can do right now to secure the survival of our country in this moment are to make sure as many people as possible vote and to make sure the media that has not surrendered itself to pseudo-state propaganda is still standing on the right side of history by funding their survival and supporting their reporting.
In this dark period for our country, we can find comfort in remembering something that history has shown us. The last time this kind of McCarthyism tried to take hold, it did not end well for the people behind it. It did not end well for Joseph McCarthy, whose name became synonymous with shame and ruin all these decades later. It also did not end well for Adolf Hitler, whose reign of terror ended in a bunker that is now under a nondescript parking lot in Berlin, Germany. This will not end well for Donald Trump either, with hearings, investigations, and maybe even impeachment and removal. Nor will this end well for any of the enablers standing behind him. It never does. Because movements built on fear and cruelty always collapse under their own weight. The only question is how much damage they do before they fall, and that part is up to us. In just two weeks, or sooner if you have early voting, we will finally get to make our voices heard at the ballot box. This time, we are going to make sure our voices are the loudest they have ever been. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
PS. You can make a significant difference right now by subscribing to my Substack. Your support helps me cover more ground and keep telling the truth about the lies and destruction unfolding in this country.
This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.
Picture of the day: I don’t have a picture to share from Hitler’s bunker because I didn’t take one. It was nondescript on purpose, and the memory of those horrible days belongs to those we lost, not the evil that caused them. Instead, here is a picture of my family back in 2019 on a biking tour of Berlin for a travel story I was writing. It was one of the most educational afternoons I have ever experienced and another one of the wake-up moments for me about what was really happening back home under Trump’s rule. It also helped spur another round of me diving deep into trying to understand how everything happened during that time in history. And although now I understand how it happened, the German people’s vulnerability coming off of their crushing defeat and the resulting treaty after WWI, along with the economic devastation and political instability that followed, I still will never fully understand it at the same time. Because these types of atrocities can never fully be understood. What I do know is that nobody or no country is immune to authoritarianism, and that is why these elections are so important. We might not be living exactly in the early rise of Nazi Germany, but we are also not all that far removed from it either.
Links to sources used in writing this article:
President Trump and Vice President JD Vance Make an Announcement: YouTube Video
https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/calendar/
https://newrepublic.com/post/216863/you-better-be-careful-trump-lashes-white-house-reporters
https://www.npr.org/2025/12/31/nx-s1-5662600/nick-shirley-minnesota-fraud
https://www.yahoo.com/news/meet-andrew-ferguson-chairman-ftc-012411169.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/5-people-who-lied-congress-what-happened-them-n941936
I presume thousands of people are getting together to be whistle blowers about Trump?
We all need to be whistle blowers against Trump.
He can’t lock all of us up.
And he really does HAVE TO GO.