This morning I was in a room with over 2,000 people. Advocates. Educators. Survivors. The National Sexual Assault Conference, right here in Washington DC. And I want to tell you something. I walked in there as an ally and I walked out feeling like I had been plugged into something. You could feel the resilience. You could feel the hope. From every single person there, whether they were a survivor, an advocate, or someone like me who showed up to stand alongside them.

I recently joined the advisory board of Women’s HQ. Please check out their website at womenshq.org. They are here for victims and survivors of violence and they offer helping hands to those who need it. I am honored to be part of that work.

I was also there because someone I have come to call a friend was going to be there. And I want to talk about her.

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GOOD TROUBLEMAKER: ELIZABETH STEIN

If you know the name Elizabeth Stein, you know why she matters. She is a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein. And she has been loud, and public, and relentless about what she is demanding: accountability. Transparency. Specifically around the Epstein Transparency Act. She has been on the front lines. Standing up for other survivors. Being there for them. Supporting them.

I saw her testify before the Democratic Judiciary Committee in the Senate. That was the first time I got to be in the same room with her. Today I got to see her again. And I have to say, in the months I have been getting to know her, Elizabeth Stein has inspired me.

I am tabbing her as a Good Troublemaker. She is empowering other women. She is being loud when she could be quiet and choosing that path every single day. She is choosing courage when silence would be so much easier.

Elizabeth, keep up the good fight.

GOOD TROUBLEMAKER: SUNITA DODDAMANI

The second person I want to highlight today is a former federal prosecutor. An Assistant US Attorney out of the Eastern District of Michigan. Her name is Sunita Doddamani.

She was fired by the Justice Department. She says it was retaliation, and I believe her. She is suing the Trump administration saying she was unlawfully dismissed for political reasons tied to her work prosecuting cases under the FACE Act. That is the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrants, a federal law that makes it a crime to use force or obstruction to interfere with people seeking or providing reproductive health care.

There have been so many people illegally fired by this administration. FBI agents. Lawyers. DOJ employees. People terminated for nothing other than doing their jobs in ways Donald Trump did not like.

Sunita Doddamani is not taking it lying down.

She is taking a huge risk. When you go after this administration at the legal level, they come back at you. This Justice Department has unlimited resources. And she is not letting that stop her. She is a career prosecutor. She was following the law. She believed in doing her job right. And they fired her for it.

I am giving her special kudos today. Good luck with your lawsuit, Sunita. Keep fighting.

Courage is contagious.

I felt it in that room this morning at the NSAC. I felt it watching Elizabeth Stein walk to the front and speak. I felt it reading about what Sunita Doddamani is doing.

Courage is contagious, y’all. When you see somebody standing up, it makes you want to stand up too. Let’s keep getting in good trouble. Necessary trouble.

-Harry

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Here is what I talk about in this week’s episode and a free preview:

On Friday, Donald Trump was up in New York campaigning. Not for himself, but does he ever really do anything that’s not for himself? He was in Nassau County stumping for his longtime friend Bruce Blakeman, trying to help him unseat Governor Kathy Hochul. Nothing new there. The man is a walking Hatch Act violation.

What caught my attention wasn’t the rally. It was the backdrop.

Row after row of law enforcement officers standing behind him. Clapping. Hanging on every word, including when he bragged that “we killed DEI” and then gestured at the officers behind him like props. “I don’t see the people behind me big on DEI. That’s not a DEI group, I can tell.”

Kind of ironic, considering the number of women and Latino officers standing right there behind him.

I wore that uniform for over 15 years. I believe policing is one of the most noble professions there is, when you do it for the people and not for a power kick. Protect and serve. That’s the job description. So watching officers stand there and cheer for the man who fomented the mob that beat and sprayed and stabbed my coworkers on January 6th, the man who pardoned the people who assaulted us and now wants to pay them?

It’s an absolute disgrace.

In this week’s episode of Standing Our Ground, I get into all of it. Why the Fraternal Order of Police endorsing Donald Trump three times is a betrayal of every officer who bled on January 6th, and why I turned in my own FOP membership. A story about the FOP and a January 6th rioter that I lived through and still can’t believe. And a self-proclaimed “proud J6 patriot” who has loaned himself millions of dollars to try to buy a seat in Congress, with Rudy Giuliani and Mike Flynn campaigning at his side. I’m naming him. I’m telling you exactly what he said about January 6th. And I’m telling you what I plan to do about it.

The full episode and the rest of this post are for paid subscribers. That’s how this work stays independent. No ads, no corporate sponsors, no political handlers. Just me, standing my ground, every week.

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Hey y’all, first, sorry for the late drop for this week’s Good Trouble Report. Technology got the best of me yesterday, and by the time I figured it out, it was too late to post. But this story couldn’t wait another day.

I want to take you to Salisbury, Maryland, right there on the Eastern Shore. It’s a town of about 33,000 people, and roughly one in ten of those residents is Haitian. That community has been there, working, building, worshipping. And right now, they’re terrified.

Since Trump revoked Temporary Protective Status for Haitians, ICE has been running raids through that community. TPS was put in place after the 2010 earthquake because Haiti was in a humanitarian crisis. Violence. Instability. No safe place to return to. Over a million people nationwide hold TPS, and about 350,000 of them are Haitian. These are people who came here legally, under a protection the United States government offered them. And now that protection has been yanked away.

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Pastor Roosevelt Toussaint at World Life Center church in Salisbury, says that his Sunday attendance has dropped more than 50 percent in just a few weeks. People are afraid to leave their homes. Think about that, a community so scared that they can’t even go to church. And he had this message for the President and he didn’t mince words: “We’re expecting you to have compassion for our people. They haven’t done anything wrong. All they came to this country to do is work and make a difference in our economy. There’s no security at home. If you really send us over there, you send us to die.”

That’s a pastor. Speaking plainly. That’s the truth.

Then there is Marjorie Estime, an American citizen of Haitian descent, and she had a message too: “I want to tell the President of the United States to stop the ICE program so that people can work, so that ICE can stop shooting them, persecuting them, and we can go back to normal.”

Back to normal. That’s all people want. To work. To worship. To live.

Pastor Toussaint sent a message to his congregation in Haitian Creole. He told them: “I’m praying this afternoon that God can make you invisible to the enemy.” And: “They put a lot of terror in your heart but God has come to tell you ‘Do not be afraid.’”

Do not be afraid. That’s Good Trouble language right there. John Lewis told us that. And I’ve seen what happens when people stand up. I think about Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good, American citizens in Minnesota who stood up for others and lost their lives for it. Courage is real, and it costs something. But so does silence.

Y’all know how I feel. These are human beings. They came here legally, they built lives, they are our neighbors. Sending them back to a country in crisis isn’t enforcement is cruelty. And the rest of us have a responsibility to say so out loud.

Courage is contagious. We must abolish ICE.

—Harry

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This week I’m covering three things that made me tired, then made me angry, then made me want to keep going.

The Oath Keepers case got dismissed. January 6th defendants are suing the government for $1 million each, claiming it was a government trap. ICE is deploying body cameras — but only releasing footage when it’s in their interest. And Governor Wes Moore did something in Maryland I want to talk about.

Paid subscribers get the full breakdown today — the written post, the Off Duty reflection on Friday, and everything throughout the week.

Free Preview:

If this is the week you’ve been thinking about subscribing, now’s a good time.

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📬 In Case You Missed It

→ The Fingerprints That Remain — my monthly series on what January 6th left behind

→ They Dismissed the Case. Now the Only Footprint Left Is Ours.

And a couple of clips worth sharing:

→ The Judge’s Chilling Words: “That Book Is Now Closed”

→ This is what fighting back actually looks like, not what they told you it would look like.

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On August 4th, the last January 6th case was dismissed.

The Oath Keepers. Seditious conspiracy. People I testified against in Judge Mehta’s courtroom. Two or three different occasions. I walked in there, raised my right hand, and told the truth about what happened to me and my colleagues on January 6th. I did that more than once.

Dismissed.

The Department of Justice sought it. The defendants, obviously, weren’t going to object. So the judge really had no choice.

But before he signed off, Judge Mehta wrote:

“Today’s epilogue diminishes the gravity of that day, denigrates the work of prosecutors and law enforcement officers who secured these convictions, and excuses criminal acts that caused a centuries-long pillar of our democracy, the peaceful transfer of power, to buckle.”

I appreciate strong words on paper. Problem is, that’s all we got out of this.

Check out a free clip from this week’s video:

In case you missed it:

• Five Years Ago Today I Raised My Hand — Jul 27, 2026
• Comey, Seashells, and a Weaponized Trump DOJ — Jul 28, 2026
• The Searing Injustice of the Dismissal of the Oath Keepers' Convictions — Aug 6, 2026

I testified in Judge Mehta’s courtroom several times.

I sat in that witness chair and told the truth about what happened on January 6th. What I saw. What I lived through. What it cost me. I did it because it was a continuance of my service to my country. I believed testimony mattered. Evidence mattered. That a federal courtroom was still a place where accountability would take place… and it was. Until it wasn’t.

Here’s what I want to be clear about: the courts are still holding the line. Judge Mehta followed the law. The Constitution is still the Constitution and he uses it as his roadmap while this administration is using it as toilet paper. When cases get dismissed, it’s not because judges are corrupt or broken (usually). It’s because the law requires it when the government itself decides to walk away from its own prosecution.

That’s what happened here. And that’s the part that makes me sick.

Todd Blanche and this DOJ didn’t just pardon the January 6th rioters. They went further. They’ve been proposing using taxpayer money, a slush fund, to pay, to reward the people who stormed that building. People who beat police officers. People who called me racial slurs while I was in uniform trying to protect the lives of the members they elected to represent them. And now the same administration is pulling the plug on prosecutions like this one, because it makes their fearless leader look bad. As if he needed any help looking bad, but I digress.

I’ve testified in a federal courtroom. I watched the process work exactly the way it’s supposed to. A jury convicted Stewart Rhodes and his counterparts. Evidence was presented, testimony was given, a verdict was reached. The system did its job. And then the people running the executive branch decided the outcome was inconvenient and started tearing it down from the inside.

That’s not the courts failing. That’s a President and an Attorney General choosing to protect their private militia over the officers who stopped them.

Here’s what the dismissal leaves behind: the lack of a footprint.

Not one the footprint of the men and women responsible for what happened that day. Not the footprint of a President who watched it unfold on television and let it keep going. Not the footprint of an Attorney General who has spent the last year deciding that the men who attacked democracy deserve compensation, not consequences.

The only footprints still visible now belong to the police officers who held the line.

We’re the ones left holding the record for that day.

I testified because I believe in accountability and that it would add to a body of truth that couldn’t be erased. And in a narrow sense, that’s still true. It’s in the transcript. It’s on the docket. It happened and the entire world had a front row seat. But accountability? That’s been deliberately, systematically dismantled by people who took an oath to uphold the law and chose to use it as cover instead.

The message being sent right now is that what happened on January 6th was either acceptable or inevitable. That the people responsible for it bear no responsibility. And now the president and the maga world blame the police for what happened.

I’m not angry at the courts. I’m angry at the people who showed up at the Capitol with weapons, a plan and bad intentions and walked away with pardons and paychecks, and in this case, their cases against them thrown out because the DOJ decided justice was optional.

The record exists. My testimony exists. The truth of what happened on January 6th exists. And I will keep saying it, in whatever room will have me, for as long as it takes.

Because if we don’t hold the line on the record, there is nothing left to hold.

First: The rioter payments. Trump’s team paid January 6th defendants — not out of sympathy, but as a strategic investment. You pay the people who will riot again when you need them. Senator Cornyn said it plainly. Nobody in the GOP did anything about it.

Second: Max Miller. An elected congressman. His ex-girlfriend’s own father won’t let her visit him alone. The allegations are credible, detailed, and serious. The party is silent.

Third: Todd Blanche. The man who defended Donald Trump in court — successfully — is being handed the Department of Justice. Epstein survivors were standing outside the building when it happened. The Senate confirmed him anyway.

No spine. No shame. No accountability.

Watch the full breakdown below.

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📬 In Case You Missed It

Michigan Votes Tomorrow. $50 Million Nobody Can See Votes Too.
Aug 3 — Dark money doesn't argue with you, it just drowns you out. Harry breaks down the $50 million flooding Michigan's primary — and what it means for every race that comes after.

Off Duty: Why I Showed Up for Epstein Survivors — And Why Every Man Should
Jul 31 — Misogyny isn't abstract to Harry. It never was. Why he showed up, and why every man should.

The Attorney General Works for America, Not Trump.
Jul 30 — Justice delayed is one thing. Justice obstructed is something else entirely. Harry on the Todd Blanche confirmation.

But there’s a second election happening underneath that one. And nobody voted to hold it.

$50 million in outside money has poured into this race with no accountability. And here’s the thing people miss: they don’t care who wins. Sure they are backing a candidate but their real goal is undermining democracy. If their candidate wins, they elected a mouthpiece for their issues and if the other candidate wins, they sent a message to that candidate and all candidates who oppose them: we will keep spending to defeat you no matter what. Win or lose, it warps our democracy in favor of powerful interests.

I know what this looks like from the inside.

I’ve had $11 million spent against me in this cycle alone. Another $5 million two years before that. I didn’t choose to be a target. I became one because I believe this silly idea that elected officials work for the people and not special interest groups. I ran because I believed in the work. What I learned is that dark money doesn’t argue with you, it just drowns you out. It picks the fight it wants to have on the landscape it controls, and it never has to show its face.

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That’s the connection people miss when they talk about threats to democracy. January 6 was visible. It was violent and it was real, and I was there to fight that fight. But the threat democracy faces every other day of the year doesn’t come with a mob. It comes with a wire transfer, a dark money PAC and a consultant five states away who never had to knock on a single door in Michigan.

Both are the same project: deciding for people instead of letting people decide.

Michigan voters will show up tomorrow and make a genuine choice. That matters. The argument they’re having about who they are and what they stand for, that’s worth having. But we should be honest about the weight on the scale that someone, not even the ballot, is able to apply. That someone? We’ll never know because it’s Dark Money.

Democracy isn’t just one day in January. It’s every primary, every choice, every dollar that flows into a race without a name attached to it.

That’s the fight. It didn’t end on January 6th. It’s happening tomorrow in Michigan. And it’ll happen again the day after that.

—Harry

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____________________________________

I grew up the only boy with four sisters.

Four. Sisters. Lol and I absolutely loved it!

I grew up in a house full of women. Four sisters and a mother. A bathroom that was never mine. That wasn’t stressful, it wasn’t weird, it was normal. I learned early that women’s lives, their values, their beliefs, their essence wasn’t a burden because they were different than mine. They’re mine to protect because they mattered to me.

That doesn’t leave you as you get older. It shapes you. Watching then and still watching now, how they moved through the world. Watching what they still have to put up with that I never did. Watching what it costs to be a woman in America every single day. You absorb all of that, even when you don’t realize it’s happening.

Now I’m a dad. I have a daughter named Daphne. And everything I watched growing up, everything I came to understand about what women navigate just to get through their day, it all lands differently when you’re looking at your daughter and thinking about the world she’s going to inherit.

Wednesday this week, I went to the press conference in support of the Epstein survivors. Not because someone asked me to show up. Not for a photo. Because you don’t grow up in a house full of women, you don’t raise a daughter, and then look away when survivors are standing up and asking to be seen, to be heard, for JUSTICE!!! You just go. Because that’s what you do when you truly want to be an ally and be supportive. You just show up!

Being there with them, supporting those women and man, Sky Roberts who is advocating for his late sister Virginia Roberts Giuffre, listening to them tell the truth about what was done to them and the powerful men who got away with it for so long, that meant something to me. As a dad. As a brother. As a son. As a man who was raised to understand that “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” That great quote is attributed to Bishop Desmond Tutu.

After I left, I got some dms and comments left for me. I’ll let this one speak for itself.

Charming. Real charming.

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Here’s what I want to say directly to the men reading this, especially the ones who look like me: being an ally isn’t a performance. It’s not a checklist. It’s not complicated. It’s what you already know is right if you were raised right, or if you’ve done the work to get there. Sometimes it’s just showing up. Literally walking into a room and saying, I see you, I believe you, I’m not going anywhere.

We have a lot of loud voices right now telling men that caring about women is weakness. Joe Rogan. Andrew Tate. Pete Hegseth. Some of them have built entire platforms out of making men feel like empathy is something to be embarrassed about and manliness is how much you can bench press. Like protecting the people you love is soft. Like calling out misogyny makes you less of a man.

I grew up with four sisters. I have a daughter named Daphne. My Mother who I love and cherish. And I promise you, there is nothing soft about any of it. Misogyny isn’t abstract to me. It never was. I know what it looks like because I grew up watching the people I love deal with it. And I have never once looked at any of them and thought, caring about you is making me less of a man.

Those guys and their followers have it exactly backwards.

Show up. Listen. Support. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

Happy Friday.

-Harry

He said something I can’t stop thinking about: “Justice doesn’t run out of leads. It runs out of courage.”

Then he pointed directly at the problem. When the Department of Justice won’t cooperate with active investigations into Epstein’s alleged co-conspirators. When victims keep asking where accountability went. When powerful people appear untouchable. That’s when the public loses faith in the institutions supposed to protect them.

Justice delayed is one thing. Justice obstructed is something else entirely.

Which brings me to Todd Blanche. Trump’s personal lawyer. The guy who represented him in multiple legal cases. Now Trump wants to make him Attorney General.

Let me be direct about what that means. The Attorney General is supposed to be the lawyer for the American people. Not the lawyer for one man. Not Trump’s fixer 2.0. The entire point of the Justice Department is to pursue justice without fear or favor, regardless of how powerful the person is.

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If Blanche gets confirmed, we’re handing Trump the keys to weaponize the very institution that’s supposed to hold him and everyone else accountable. We’re saying to every victim, every witness, every person waiting for justice: sorry, Donald comes first.

I’m grateful that Republican senators like John Cornyn and Thom Tillis are showing enough hesitation to postpone the confirmation vote. But honestly, I wish more people were raising hell about this. Because this isn’t partisan. This is about whether the Justice Department works for all of us or just for Donald Trump.

I’ve stood on the Capitol steps as a cop. I’ve watched what happens when people decide rules don’t apply to them. I’ve seen the chaos that follows. And I’m telling you, putting Trump’s personal lawyer in charge of the Justice Department is how democracies stop working. It’s how justice becomes a tool for whoever has the most power.

Although the vote on Blanche’s nomination got postponed. (That’s a small win) But postponed isn’t stopped. We need to keep the pressure on. Congress needs to hear from us. They need to know this isn’t acceptable.

The American people weren’t born yesterday. Don’t let them sell us out.

-Harry

This week that person is Erik Davis. And his story reminded me why I keep doing this.

He is a 53 year old teacher of Buddhist studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He’s a father of two and right now, Donald Trump’s Justice Department wants to put him in prison for six years…. upgrade to read the rest of the report.

You know the tongue twister. She sells seashells down by the seashore. Silly, right? A kid’s rhyme.

Well, Donald Trump’s Department of Justice is now treating seashells like a federal crime. Specifically, seashells arranged to spell out 8647. That’s what they’re going after. That’s what they’ve decided deserves their attention and resources.

And it gets worse. At the same time, lawyers for former FBI Director James Comey moved to dismiss the case against him, a case that exists for one reason and one reason only: because Donald Trump has decided the Department of Justice is his personal revenge machine.

Let that sink in for a second. The DOJ that’s supposed to be protecting the American people, prosecuting real crimes, upholding the rule of law. Instead the DOJ is spending its time on seashells and settling scores.

This isn’t justice. This is theater. Dangerous theater.

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I’ve seen what happens when institutions stand to serve one man’s fragile ego. I was there on January 6th. I saw what it looks like when accountability is circumvented and the people in power decide the rules don’t apply to them. This feels like the same stuff just wearing a cheap suit and carrying a briefcase.

When the DOJ goes after a man like Comey not because of evidence or a solid case but because Trump has a grudge, and when it opens investigations into people for arranging shells on a beach the message is clear: fall in line or we come for you.

That’s not America. That’s not what justice looks like.

The people running this department right now are counting on us to get exhausted. To throw our hands up and say it’s too much. Don’t give them that.

Pay attention. Stay loud. This is exactly the moment to keep pushing.

— Harry

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Five years ago today, I walked into a hearing room in the United States Capitol and testified under oath about what happened to me and my colleagues on January 6th.

I told them about the mob. The violence. The racial slurs screamed at me while I was in uniform, trying to protect the peaceful transfer of power. I told the truth. I have never stopped telling it.

That testimony led me to run for Congress. After I left the Capitol Police, I decided the only way to keep fighting for accountability was to go back to that building, this time as a member. I ran for an open seat in Maryland. I gave everything I had to that race. Outside special interests spent $11 million to silence me. I came in third. I am not going to pretend that it doesn’t sting.

But here is what I need you to understand: I am not depressed about losing a race. I am angry about the state of this country. Those are two very different things.

The fight for democracy never depended on any one election. I wrote a book called Standing My Ground. That was about what I did on January 6th, one officer, one day, one story. This newsletter is called Standing Our Ground because the work ahead of us belongs to all of us. I cannot do this without you and I am not going to try.

I will not gaslight you. I do not know if everything is going to be okay. What I do know is that if we keep showing up, if we keep fighting back, we give ourselves a chance. That is enough for me. I hope it is enough for you too.

Here is what Standing Our Ground will look like:

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• The 6th: On the 6th of every month. One story keeping January 6th accountability alive.

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On January 6th I stood in that building and held the line. Five years later I am still standing. So are you. That matters more than I can say.

Standing Our Ground together.

-Harry

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